OK, let's clear this up once and for all. The TiVo is NOT a good platform to try to turn into an MP3 player.
All of the MPEG work that the TiVo does is handled by dedicated chips. The decoder is an IBM CS22. A quick look at this page lets us know that it will decode layers 1 and 2, but not three. So, playing MP3's through the decoder chip is out.
So, how about doing it in software? Well, the processor in the box is a PowerPC G03GCX. Taking a quick glance at this document tells us that it is capable of running at 50, 66, or 80 MHz. Hmm... so which is it? Browsing through the log files on the TiVo itself informs us that the kernel is detecting the processor running at 53 MHz (on my box). Not quite the sort of horsepower you want for decoding MP3's.
Really, if you want a dedicated MP3 player, building one from a cheap leftover Pentium 200 box would be a much simpler solution, and give you a much better end result.
The TiVo people want you buying hardware from them, not building it yourself,
Actually, the TiVo people have little reason to care about this. They don't sell hardware, they simply license their software and system specs to other manufacturers.
Phillips and Sony, now those are the folks have reason to be miffed about this. Although, it's hard to feel sympathy for them, especially after the "Upgrade Program" that Phillips had for awhile. It basically consisted of adding 15 GB of disk to your TiVo for a mere $300. (15 GB of disk was retailing for around $100 at the time.)
well, when it stops being scary, then it's time to quit. The adrenaline rush that comes with scaring yourself half out of your mind is the whole point.
Anyway, I've got 10 jumps behind me, and it still scares the crap out of me when I walk up to that open door at 14,000 feet, so I guess I'll keep going for awhile.:)
There's nothing like seeing the world from a 14,000 foot freefall to really put everything back in perspective. And you'll feel alive and energized for days afterwards. The first time I jumped, my palms sweated for four days.:)
(And no crap about being afraid of heights. The more it scares you, the more good it will do you.)
If they're dumb enough to let their number show on my caller ID, you bet your ass I do.
If I have time on my hands, I'll call them and try to sell them my dead battery collection several times in an evening. If I'm short on time, I'll just send a fax to that number, which will, of course, auto-redial every 4 minutes and greet them with a pleasant little screech tone.
Given that the thing runs a 54mhz CPU (as reported in my logfiles), and that said CPU is already pretty much pushed to the max, I don't think Apache is the best idea.
I do think that browser control of the TiVo would be cool, but you'd want to use a lighter weight web server, or ideally, something custom written for the job.
That's a ways down the road, and would only be useful for archiving. The processor in the box isn't capable of doing MPEG-4 decoding, or even MPEG-2 for that matter.
First, you need to be able to get the data stream off of their MFS filesystem, which hasn't been tackled yet. It's also likely, but not proven, that the data is stored encrypted.
Next, you've dot to decode the mpeg2 and re-encode it to mpeg4. I've done this on fast machines and it's a time-consuming process. Doing it on a 54mhz processor, which is already pushed to the limit just running the standard stuff, is going to take *forever*.
Re:You say Potato, I say Tomato..
on
Hacking The Tivo
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· Score: 1
The primary Quantum drive that comes with the unit has a built-in serial number which the TiVo service validates against. The PRIMARY drive cannot be changed, ghosted, etc. since the serial number is validated everytime the unit 'phones home'.
Mostly true. To clarify: When a brand new unit is set up for the first time, the serial number is read from the primary hard drive and stored in a prom on the motherboard. From then on, the unit uses the serial # from prom to authenticate to the service. Once the initial setup is done, you can replace the primary drive with another brand and still have a functional unit.
the secondary drive is not auto-recognized unless the primary drive (operating system drive) knows to look for the second drive.
That's close. It not only has to notice the second drive, but the second drive must be set up in a precise way that will trigger their scripts to prepare it for use. A drive prepared in such a way has come to be called a "blessed drive" in the TiVo discussion forums. The point of the topic is that a group of folks outside of TiVo have now figured out how to "bless" a drive.
Now note, that the secondary drive is also supposed to have a serial number which matches against the first drive. TiVo currently doesn't look at the serial # on the second drive... if the start doing that, you'll lose your 2nd drive.
Again, close. If they start validating serial #'s from both drives, you'll lose your whole unit, not just the additional space. Unless, of course, you have complete image backups on hand of partitions 10 and 11 from the original drive, which is a rather large chunk of data to keep on hand. At present, there is no way to back out of the upgrade aside from raw image backups of the original drive.
There have been several attempts to hack and upgrade the Tivo with varying degrees of success. Several people have upgraded their 14 hour version to the 30 hour
The previous upgrades required you to have a 30 hour unit available to clone drives from. As of a couple days ago, it is now possible to add a second drive with access to only one TiVo, using tools available on the TiVo, and a linux box with a patched kernel and a modified version of pdisk.
My 14 hour TiVo now has 40 hours capacity (ok, 39h 55m if you want to be picky). Next, I'm going to get a 30 hour unit, which should be upgradeable to somewhere in the neighborhood of 72 hours.
Re:You say Potato, I say Tomato..
on
Hacking The Tivo
·
· Score: 1
Nope, ghost doesn't recognize the partitions on the tivo disk. Linux doesn't recognize them without a kernel mod. Also, they're running a kernel that still has the 33.8 gig limit, if you use a disk larger than that, a variable in the kernel overflows and Bad Things Happen.
I just bought a Tivo last night. Has anyone successfully added another big drive in thier Tivo?
Yes, you can add a second drive. The kernel they used has the 33.8 gig limit, so you can't go larger than that yet. It's not yet clear if we're going to be able to get an upgraded kernel in place without active assistance/participation from TiVo. (It's not just a matter of compiling a kernel and dropping it in place. There are other issues we're uncovering.)
There have been 2 reports of someone doing a self upgrade on the space. One guy copied the second drive from a fresh, unused Tivo, the other guy says he figured out how to "bless" a drive so the Tivo software recognizes it.
So far, there have been three units upgraded using the "blessing" procedure. My unit is the 40 hour mentioned in the blessing instructions.
While the upgrade seems to work perfectly, people should keep in mind that these upgraded units have only been in service for a day or two now. Not long enough to really tell if there will be negative effects.
On the whole, the harm done was only a week's wages. I would tell her to document it so her next employer won't have the same problem and to otherwise just suck it up.
Point 1: "a week's worth of wages" is not something you refer to as "only." For many people, a week without wages means a week without food on the table, gas in the car, etc... Happily, I've got a tiny bit of savings now, but I have been in a position in the past where losing a week's pay would have been absolutely devastating.
Point 2: If people to whom this happens just "suck it up", then what incentive do these investigative companies have to perform accurate work.
My advice: Hire a good lawyer and sue the investigator for everything your lawyer's imagination can dream up. Even if you don't win a lot, the investigator will have to pay to defend the lawsuit and will likely think twice before doing such sloppy work in the future. It's possible, perhaps even likely, that a lawyer would accept the case on contingency, so it wouldn't even cost her a dime unless she won.
And my own personal opinion is that Courtney Love was cool for saying all that
I agree. Whether or not I agree with her (I do agree with most of it) she at least seems to have given the matter some thought and was expressing some honest opinions. She also displays an admirable lack of fear of the "new economy."
I'm also glad to see Motley Crue (one of my all-time favorite bands) coming up on the clueful side of the issue. Their stance on electronic distrubution isn't new, when their last album was released, before the mp3 craze, they had all of the tracks on the album available in RealAudio format for several weeks before the ship date. Apparently, several of the band members have also developed reputations for being very good about responding to fan e-mail.
Ethically, you shouldn't, because the GPL isn't there to educate, but to ensure that the code remains free. If you are "learning" from GPLed code and implement something the same way that the GPL code did, you've broken the intent that the code remain free.
While I don't totally disagree, I do think if you make that statement, you step into a pretty sticky place. What time limit would you put on the learning? I'm working on a (open) project right now, and am using and learning from GPL code for that project. Since it's open that shouldn't be a problem.
Are you saying that since I'm learning techniques from GPL code that, ethically, I should refrain from ever, for the rest of my life, working on a closed project that tackles the same sorts of problems?
An NTSC VCD is 352x240. However, to get the best quality, you need to capture at 352x480. This is due to the fact that NTSC video is interlaced, so you need to capture at double the verticle resolution in order to capture both fields. Once you've got that, a high-quality resize algorithm will effectively de-interlace the clip and combine the fields.
While the DoJ can request that the US Supreme Court take the case and jump past the appeals courts, the US Supreme Court is under no obligation to take the case.
With a normal case, that would be true. With antitrust law, it's different. The same law that allows the DoJ to push the appeal straight to the Supreme Court also requires the Supreme Court to hear the case.
MS Office for Mac is using MacOS widgets, it doesn't have to look exactly the same as in Windows, but Staroffice and Kylix have to use Windows-like widgets
Perhaps because the Mac has a standard GUI, while Linux does not. If you're porting to the Mac, it's logical to make it look like a Mac app. When you port to Linux, there is no such standard/universal GUI, so it seems that the fallback position is to make the Linux app look like whatever version you've already got done.
What good has visual programming environments provided for windows?
Lots.
Just this morning I wrote an app for my boss that lets him generate custom reports from the backend database of a proprietary program we use.
Using C++ Builder, it took me 15 minutes. I could probably have done it in Access in an hour or so. Had I used a non-visual method, and just made API calls to create the GUI, I'd say this one would have tied up the better part of the day.
Visual programming environments make the GUI design simple and let you concentrate on the actual problem you are trying to solve, instead of keeping track of the x,y coordinates of the corners of some button you're putting in a dialog box.
how many useful apps have been made with something like delphi or visual c or whatever?
Heh. Probably the vast majority of useful Windows programs were done in such an environment. Oh, you want a specific example, you say? Try VirtualDub. It's a very high quality, very useful video capture and editing program that is GPL'd and written in, you guessed it, Visual C++.
Well, it depends on how strictly you want to define "right after". I'd say within 5 minutes would still qualify, and that's plenty of time to copy the binary into the startup folder and hit the machine with a ping of death to force a reboot.
Not that the PC Anywhere theory is implausible, I'm just making the point that it wouldn't be too much more difficult to get the same access even without getting lucky.
I think that this seems a little more plausible (less implausable?) than finding/installing BO.
I have to disagree. Finding BO is no big trick, just go to the web site and download it. It would also be much easier to install/hide from a remote location because of it's smaller size.
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OK, let's clear this up once and for all. The TiVo is NOT a good platform to try to turn into an MP3 player.
All of the MPEG work that the TiVo does is handled by dedicated chips. The decoder is an IBM CS22. A quick look at this page lets us know that it will decode layers 1 and 2, but not three. So, playing MP3's through the decoder chip is out.
So, how about doing it in software? Well, the processor in the box is a PowerPC G03GCX. Taking a quick glance at this document tells us that it is capable of running at 50, 66, or 80 MHz. Hmm... so which is it? Browsing through the log files on the TiVo itself informs us that the kernel is detecting the processor running at 53 MHz (on my box). Not quite the sort of horsepower you want for decoding MP3's.
Really, if you want a dedicated MP3 player, building one from a cheap leftover Pentium 200 box would be a much simpler solution, and give you a much better end result.
The TiVo people want you buying hardware from them, not building it yourself,
Actually, the TiVo people have little reason to care about this. They don't sell hardware, they simply license their software and system specs to other manufacturers.
Phillips and Sony, now those are the folks have reason to be miffed about this. Although, it's hard to feel sympathy for them, especially after the "Upgrade Program" that Phillips had for awhile. It basically consisted of adding 15 GB of disk to your TiVo for a mere $300. (15 GB of disk was retailing for around $100 at the time.)
Yep, I use VMWare under Win2k to run Linux quite a bit. (Yes, there are good reasons for this.) Linux performs just fine under VMWare.
But, then again, I've also been happy with the performance of Win2k running under VMWare for Linux. It's slower than native, but still usable.
well, when it stops being scary, then it's time to quit. The adrenaline rush that comes with scaring yourself half out of your mind is the whole point.
:)
Anyway, I've got 10 jumps behind me, and it still scares the crap out of me when I walk up to that open door at 14,000 feet, so I guess I'll keep going for awhile.
Go skydiving.
:)
There's nothing like seeing the world from a 14,000 foot freefall to really put everything back in perspective. And you'll feel alive and energized for days afterwards. The first time I jumped, my palms sweated for four days.
(And no crap about being afraid of heights. The more it scares you, the more good it will do you.)
You call up solicitors?
If they're dumb enough to let their number show on my caller ID, you bet your ass I do.
If I have time on my hands, I'll call them and try to sell them my dead battery collection several times in an evening. If I'm short on time, I'll just send a fax to that number, which will, of course, auto-redial every 4 minutes and greet them with a pleasant little screech tone.
Given that the thing runs a 54mhz CPU (as reported in my logfiles), and that said CPU is already pretty much pushed to the max, I don't think Apache is the best idea.
I do think that browser control of the TiVo would be cool, but you'd want to use a lighter weight web server, or ideally, something custom written for the job.
There already is a HOWTO. It's posted in several places on AVS, and at least once here on /.
You can find it in this post.
That's a ways down the road, and would only be useful for archiving. The processor in the box isn't capable of doing MPEG-4 decoding, or even MPEG-2 for that matter.
First, you need to be able to get the data stream off of their MFS filesystem, which hasn't been tackled yet. It's also likely, but not proven, that the data is stored encrypted.
Next, you've dot to decode the mpeg2 and re-encode it to mpeg4. I've done this on fast machines and it's a time-consuming process. Doing it on a 54mhz processor, which is already pushed to the limit just running the standard stuff, is going to take *forever*.
The primary Quantum drive that comes with the unit has a built-in serial number which the TiVo service validates against. The PRIMARY drive cannot be changed, ghosted, etc. since the serial number is validated everytime the unit 'phones home'.
Mostly true. To clarify: When a brand new unit is set up for the first time, the serial number is read from the primary hard drive and stored in a prom on the motherboard. From then on, the unit uses the serial # from prom to authenticate to the service. Once the initial setup is done, you can replace the primary drive with another brand and still have a functional unit.
the secondary drive is not auto-recognized unless the primary drive (operating system drive) knows to look for the second drive.
That's close. It not only has to notice the second drive, but the second drive must be set up in a precise way that will trigger their scripts to prepare it for use. A drive prepared in such a way has come to be called a "blessed drive" in the TiVo discussion forums. The point of the topic is that a group of folks outside of TiVo have now figured out how to "bless" a drive.
Now note, that the secondary drive is also supposed to have a serial number which matches against the first drive. TiVo currently doesn't look at the serial # on the second drive... if the start doing that, you'll lose your 2nd drive.
Again, close. If they start validating serial #'s from both drives, you'll lose your whole unit, not just the additional space. Unless, of course, you have complete image backups on hand of partitions 10 and 11 from the original drive, which is a rather large chunk of data to keep on hand. At present, there is no way to back out of the upgrade aside from raw image backups of the original drive.
There have been several attempts to hack and upgrade the Tivo with varying degrees of success. Several people have upgraded their 14 hour version to the 30 hour
The previous upgrades required you to have a 30 hour unit available to clone drives from. As of a couple days ago, it is now possible to add a second drive with access to only one TiVo, using tools available on the TiVo, and a linux box with a patched kernel and a modified version of pdisk.
My 14 hour TiVo now has 40 hours capacity (ok, 39h 55m if you want to be picky). Next, I'm going to get a 30 hour unit, which should be upgradeable to somewhere in the neighborhood of 72 hours.
Nope, ghost doesn't recognize the partitions on the tivo disk. Linux doesn't recognize them without a kernel mod. Also, they're running a kernel that still has the 33.8 gig limit, if you use a disk larger than that, a variable in the kernel overflows and Bad Things Happen.
I just bought a Tivo last night. Has anyone successfully added another big drive in thier Tivo?
Yes, you can add a second drive. The kernel they used has the 33.8 gig limit, so you can't go larger than that yet. It's not yet clear if we're going to be able to get an upgraded kernel in place without active assistance/participation from TiVo. (It's not just a matter of compiling a kernel and dropping it in place. There are other issues we're uncovering.)
There have been 2 reports of someone doing a self upgrade on the space. One guy copied the second drive from a fresh, unused Tivo, the other guy says he figured out how to "bless" a drive so the Tivo software recognizes it.
So far, there have been three units upgraded using the "blessing" procedure. My unit is the 40 hour mentioned in the blessing instructions.
While the upgrade seems to work perfectly, people should keep in mind that these upgraded units have only been in service for a day or two now. Not long enough to really tell if there will be negative effects.
On the whole, the harm done was only a week's wages. I would tell her to document it so her next employer won't have the same problem and to otherwise just suck it up.
Point 1: "a week's worth of wages" is not something you refer to as "only." For many people, a week without wages means a week without food on the table, gas in the car, etc... Happily, I've got a tiny bit of savings now, but I have been in a position in the past where losing a week's pay would have been absolutely devastating.
Point 2: If people to whom this happens just "suck it up", then what incentive do these investigative companies have to perform accurate work.
My advice: Hire a good lawyer and sue the investigator for everything your lawyer's imagination can dream up. Even if you don't win a lot, the investigator will have to pay to defend the lawsuit and will likely think twice before doing such sloppy work in the future. It's possible, perhaps even likely, that a lawyer would accept the case on contingency, so it wouldn't even cost her a dime unless she won.
And my own personal opinion is that Courtney Love was cool for saying all that
I agree. Whether or not I agree with her (I do agree with most of it) she at least seems to have given the matter some thought and was expressing some honest opinions. She also displays an admirable lack of fear of the "new economy."
I'm also glad to see Motley Crue (one of my all-time favorite bands) coming up on the clueful side of the issue. Their stance on electronic distrubution isn't new, when their last album was released, before the mp3 craze, they had all of the tracks on the album available in RealAudio format for several weeks before the ship date. Apparently, several of the band members have also developed reputations for being very good about responding to fan e-mail.
Ethically, you shouldn't, because the GPL isn't there to educate, but to ensure that the code remains free. If you are "learning" from GPLed code and implement something the same way that the GPL code did, you've broken the intent that the code remain free.
While I don't totally disagree, I do think if you make that statement, you step into a pretty sticky place. What time limit would you put on the learning? I'm working on a (open) project right now, and am using and learning from GPL code for that project. Since it's open that shouldn't be a problem.
Are you saying that since I'm learning techniques from GPL code that, ethically, I should refrain from ever, for the rest of my life, working on a closed project that tackles the same sorts of problems?
An NTSC VCD is 352x240. However, to get the best quality, you need to capture at 352x480. This is due to the fact that NTSC video is interlaced, so you need to capture at double the verticle resolution in order to capture both fields. Once you've got that, a high-quality resize algorithm will effectively de-interlace the clip and combine the fields.
Well, all of the information that I've seen indicates that the Supreme Court *does* have to hear the case.
But then again, I'm not a lawyer, or even a pre-law student, so perhaps I've left some important documents out of my reading.
If I'm wrong, then I will, of course, stand corrected.
While the DoJ can request that the US Supreme Court take the case and jump past the appeals courts, the US Supreme Court is under no obligation to take the case.
With a normal case, that would be true. With antitrust law, it's different. The same law that allows the DoJ to push the appeal straight to the Supreme Court also requires the Supreme Court to hear the case.
MS Office for Mac is using MacOS widgets, it doesn't have to look exactly the same as in Windows, but Staroffice and Kylix have to use Windows-like widgets
Perhaps because the Mac has a standard GUI, while Linux does not. If you're porting to the Mac, it's logical to make it look like a Mac app. When you port to Linux, there is no such standard/universal GUI, so it seems that the fallback position is to make the Linux app look like whatever version you've already got done.
Just a thought.
What good has visual programming environments provided for windows?
Lots.
Just this morning I wrote an app for my boss that lets him generate custom reports from the backend database of a proprietary program we use.
Using C++ Builder, it took me 15 minutes. I could probably have done it in Access in an hour or so. Had I used a non-visual method, and just made API calls to create the GUI, I'd say this one would have tied up the better part of the day.
Visual programming environments make the GUI design simple and let you concentrate on the actual problem you are trying to solve, instead of keeping track of the x,y coordinates of the corners of some button you're putting in a dialog box.
how many useful apps have been made with something like delphi or visual c or whatever?
Heh. Probably the vast majority of useful Windows programs were done in such an environment. Oh, you want a specific example, you say? Try VirtualDub. It's a very high quality, very useful video capture and editing program that is GPL'd and written in, you guessed it, Visual C++.
Well, it depends on how strictly you want to define "right after". I'd say within 5 minutes would still qualify, and that's plenty of time to copy the binary into the startup folder and hit the machine with a ping of death to force a reboot.
Not that the PC Anywhere theory is implausible, I'm just making the point that it wouldn't be too much more difficult to get the same access even without getting lucky.
I think that this seems a little more plausible (less implausable?) than finding/installing BO.
I have to disagree. Finding BO is no big trick, just go to the web site and download it. It would also be much easier to install/hide from a remote location because of it's smaller size.
Actually, that's not very far fetched. Assuming she does, in fact, have a web-cam, back orifice provides this functionality with a single mouse click.