Tivo Source Code Released

notsosilentbob writes " Philip's Tivo Linux changes are up on their website." I've been lusting over a tivo for quite some time now. Its super cool to see a big company make good on the GPL tho. Now I just got to buy one. (for those who don't know, the tivo is a digital VCR that runs linux and stores up to 30 hours of tv on an internal harddrive).

Comments

Digital commercial deletion?

[kramer]

Okay, I've never played with the Tivo, but I've been thinking about the one feature that would make this thing perfect. Digital commercial deletion. I'd love to be able to watch my favorite shows with VCR automatically skipping commercials.

I remember reading about a VCR that had this as a feature. It detected the commercials by the half second or so of blank screen that precedes the commercials. It kept track of these blanks, and those that were only a few minutes long were judged to be commercial breaks. These were auto fast forwared through by the VCR. I understand it worked pretty well except for the fact that it occasionally cut out the credits.

Now the random access of the Tivo offers the oportunity of instantly skipping the commercials instead of waiting for the fast forward. Even better, the TIVO could delete the commercials and save on disk space.

With the release of the code, I would think this would be a great open source project for someone to try. I might even consider buying a TIVO if someone got this feature working.

Re:Digital commercial deletion?

[SlydeRule]

I remember reading about a VCR that had this as a feature. It detected the commercials by the half second or so of blank screen that precedes the commercials. It kept track of these blanks, and those that were only a few minutes long were judged to be commercial breaks. These were auto fast forwared through by the VCR.

I've got one, the Panasonic PVS-9670. It works pretty much like kramer says.

During recording, it makes an internal note each time it thinks it detects a DC restoration signal. When recording is done, and it's got some free time, it rewinds the tape and marks the beginning and end of each commercial break. It does appear to use time spans to distinguish commercials from program; the short bits are the commercials. This marking process is time-consuming; for a 1-hour program recorded at SP, it takes about 15 minutes before the VCR finally shuts down.

During playback, on encountering a "start commercial" marker, it goes into fast-forward to the next "end commercial" marker.

There are setup menu options to turn off the marking on record, and to turn off the auto-skip on playback.

The results are pretty good. I'd estimate it gets it right >80% of the time. It's most likely to mess up when there are a lot of commercials in a row, especially if your local station breaks in to run local spots. In that case, it tends to stop skipping early, leaving you watching the last couple of commercials.

I've never seen it skip anything which wasn't a commercial.

In any event, if it gets it wrong, the worst that happens is you have to grab the remote control and do it yourself, which is what you'd've had to have done anyway. No real loss.

Is quality/price ratio good enough, yet?

[dmorin]

The only reason I didn't buy a Tivo for the folks this xmas is that I want to see the difference in quality of the recording. In the 14 hour version, you only get that much if you record at the lowest quality, which their chart shows as being good for "talking heads" whatever the hell that means. If you want to record "action" you're down to 4 hours, which is barely enough for 2 movies. Would that even hold an entire football game, ya think? The best use of this device is NOT, as they're marketing it, to be an "instant rewind" for when you go to the bathroom. The best feature is the idea of the preferences, and of smart recording. If every week I record Computer Chronicles and push the "thumbs up" button, then when PBS shows Triumph of the Nerds again, Tivo will *automatically* record it for me because it knows I like computer shows. And for that feature, it is important to have lots of disk space so that it can record a bunch of stuff for you.

What I hope to see by next xmas is several companies come out with these things. Possibly a standard or two. And a 30-50 hour version for about $400-$600, instead of $1000. Then, I'd buy one in a snap.

I thought it would be cool to add a voice synthesizer. You come home from work, turn it on, and it tells you "Hello, Duane. Jenna Jameson was on Good Morning America this morning, and I thought you might like that so I recorded it."

d

Read The Fine README, everyone

[Zach Frey]

Note to all who think they can convert their Linux PC into a TiVo now, please remember that the GPL requires Philips to release the changes they make to the Linux kernel and all GPL'ed untilities, but not to the TiVo application itself. (Although Philips are going above and beyond the call of duty here, by releasing changes to GPL'ed development tools which are not shipped as part of Tivo, something they are not obligated to do).

From the README --

This directory contains three different archives - "commands", "kernels", and "toolchain". The archives are in GNU "tar" format, and have been compressed using GNU Zip (.gz suffix) and BZIP2 (.bz2 suffix). The .gz and .bz2 versions of each archive are identical except for the compression format - you need only one version of each.

If you're reading this README from our FTP site, and don't want to spend the time to download these archives via your Internet connection, you can receive a copy of the software on CD-ROM if you wish. A nominal copying-and-distribution charge applies if you order the CD-ROM. Please contact "webmaster@tivo.com" for information if you're interested in order a CD-ROM copy of this software.

Please refer to the COPYING file in each directory for detailed information on the license and distribution terms which apply to each specific tool, utility, compiler, kernel, or whatever. Most of this software is under the GPL, while some of it (e.g. libraries) are under the LGPL.

The "commands" archive contains the source code for all of the GPL-licensed programs which are included in the TiVo Personal Television System software. These versions are current as of the 1.2.0 and 1.2.1 versions of the TiVo software.

total 17
dr-xr-xr-x 10 dplatt root 3072 Oct 14 10:56 bash-2.02/
dr-xr-xr-x 2 dplatt root 2048 Oct 14 10:56 cpio-2.4.2/
dr-xr-xr-x 12 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 10:56 e2fsprogs-1.06/
dr-xr-xr-x 9 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 10:56 fileutils-3.16/
dr-xr-xr-x 8 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 10:57 grep/
dr-xr-xr-x 10 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 10:57 gzip-1.2.4/
dr-xr-xr-x 10 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 11:00 modutils-2.1.85/
dr-xr-xr-x 6 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 11:00 net-tools-1.432/
dr-xr-xr-x 5 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 11:00 procps-1.2.9/
dr-xr-xr-x 5 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 11:00 ps/
dr-xr-xr-x 11 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 11:01 sh-utils-1.16/
dr-xr-xr-x 3 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 11:01 sysklogd-1.3.26/
dr-xr-xr-x 10 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 11:01 textutils/
dr-xr-xr-x 2 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 11:01 tnlited/

The "kernels" archive contains the source code for the Linux kernel in the TiVo Personal Television System software. The "linuxdist-2.1.24" source tree is configured for use on an Intel X86 development platform. The "linux-2.1" source tree is configured for use on the PowerPC-based hardware system on which the TiVo software actually runs.

total 2
dr-xr-xr-x 15 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 10:58 linux-2.1/
dr-xr-xr-x 15 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 11:00 linuxdist-2.1.24/

The "toolchains" archive contains the source code for various GNU software development tools and libraries used in the development of the PowerPC-based TiVo software releases. Although the compilers and development utilities are not shipped with the TiVo-based receivers, they are provided here as a courtesy to developers and other curious individuals.

total 14
dr-xr-xr-x 3 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 11:01 binutils/
dr-xr-xr-x 3 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 11:03 gcc/
dr-xr-xr-x 5 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 11:09 gdb/
dr-xr-xr-x 59 dplatt root 8192 Oct 14 11:13 libc/
dr-xr-xr-x 2 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 11:13 libc-ppc/
dr-xr-xr-x 2 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 11:13 tcdmem/
dr-xr-xr-x 2 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 11:13 xppcbt/

No.

[SEWilco]

This looks to be just their modifications to GPL software. It's their changes to the kernel and some commands.

Tivo obviously has a program which does copy-from-TV-signal-to-disk and play-from-disk-to-TV. I did not recognize that program, and if they wrote their own they do not have to publish it. With the Linux video interfaces it might not be technically difficult, but it sounds like they created a nice user interface and that's what is important (well, picture quality probably is most important..and a lot of Monday Night Football fans just found how important sound is to them when it failed).

Voice Synthesis:

[Craig Maloney]

Yeah, I can see it now:

"I'm sorry Duane, but I cannot allow you to watch Regis and Kathy Lee today."

"Let me see Regis, Hal"

"I think you should sit back calmly, take an aspirin, and watch 'Meet the Press', Duane."

"That does it"

"Just what do you think you're doing, Duane. My memory is going. I can feel it... My mind is... LILO: Loading Linux........."

It's great!

[Therlin]

I have a 14hr Tivo. It's amazing! 14 hrs is plenty, I have yet to complain about recording space. I love the suggestions it makes. It's great to come home to find out that Tivo recorded The Simpsons for you without having to tell it. The GUI is easy to use and it works without a problem. It's hard to watch TV without Tivo. When I go to a friend's place and watch TV I always want to pause or rewind, or to get the program summary, or to see what's playing next, but I can't because they don't have one. It's addictive. I don't work for Tivo or anything, I just have one and I couldn't live without it.

Re:Why Would I want to Pause Television?

[mstra]

I don't think that the pause feature is included for "freeze frame" analysis of Kramer's entrance into Jerry's apartment.

Rather, it is intended to allow a person to "pause" the playback of live TV to answer the telephone, get the door, grab a snack, or otherwise engage in normal, non-TV behavior.

I myself have a Tivo, and have used the Pause feature to make it much easier to skip commercials. I simply pause the show for the first five or ten minutes (depending on the show length), do something else, and then start it up. This allows me to keep a buffer behind the show to skip the commercials.

Actually, I've discovered a couple things from having my Tivo. Number one, I have NO idea when shows are on anymore. I set the box to record X-Files, the Simpsons, Drew Carey, and various others, and just watch them when convenient (usually around 10 PM when I'm going to bed). I also saw that even after only having the box for two weeks, it has spoiled me. I was at a friend's house on Sunday, and was very irritated that I couldn't fast-forward through the commercials during Futurama.

Another nice feature of the Tivo is the three-second rewind after you stop the fast forward. When fast-forwarding through the commercials, one tends to hit "play" after two-three seconds of program playback have passed...this buffer is pretty much dead-on. It's one of my favorite features.

The only real drawback I've seen so far is that it has a slight error in my programming lineup - it has the wrong channel number for my local cable's BBC America channel, which meant I couldn't record the French and Saunders marathon the other day.

And speaking to recording quality...I don't use this thing to tape movies, so the second-highest recording quality gives me more than enough recording space and the quality still kicks the crap out of VHS.

m.

Re:Why Would I want to Pause Television?

[Thomas Charron]

I answer the phone, I pause the playback, not missing a beat.

I *REALLY* need to goto the bathroom, I pause playback.

DAMNED, the kids where screaming, what the heck did I miss? *rewind*

I'm in commercial, and need to check dinner. I come back, and it's 1 minute into the show again.. *Rewind*. On next commercial, *FF* to catchup with the live broadcast.

I can think of many, and by testimony of other users, it's a VERY handy and addictive feature..