On Wed, Jun 30, 2004 at 06:13:42PM -0700, Bob Miller wrote: > BTW, I now have a video source hooked up to a TV tuner card installed > in a system. But the video source is a TiVo and the TiVo's disk is > kerfluie. Any day now I'm actually going to watch some TV on my > 'puter, though...
So um, which model is it Bob? I'm pretty sure I can find the solution to resurrecting any series 1 machine in about twenty minutes or so. The series 2 machines are a different story. I know S1 users of just about every model, though, and the S1s are so old now that every single one of them has a backup of their drive, just in case. You know, I've had a thought about my old SVR-2000. The version of the TiVo software running on it is frankly kinda buggy. As it happens the kernel is vulnerable to several nasty things, and none of the PowerPC TiVos will ever see an update again. And yet with the exception of the TiVo program guide data (and even that, actually) everything about the TiVo hardware is open, documented, and waiting for some bored geek to tinker with it. My thinking is that it is high time someone tries to gather geeks with PPC TiVos get together and write their own software for the thing so that it can be maintained. Some issues: - Anything done to a PPC TiVo could probably be done to an ARM TiVo. I doubt TiVo wants people replacing the software on their S2 boxes. All the same, I doubt they care what people do with old S1s anymore, with a few exceptions. - Exception #1: Especially given the possibility of using the codebase on an ARM TiVo, I suspect TiVo would be rather miffed to see a free codebase for the hardware that just goes off to TVGuide for its listings for free. (TiVo can legally do nothing about it, but they can make a S3 box even harder to hack.. The S2 already requires SMT soldering to get around the firmware.) - Exception #2: Although one could probably emulate the existing TiVo software's network access in its entirety, with the exception of checking for software updates, it's a fair bet that doing so might cause some problems, particularly in that the TiVo guide data is known to several hackers, but deliberately undocumented and the hackers that do anything with it have chosen not to release anything that could potentially allow other people to figure it out or get TiVo service without paying for it. Using the service without allowing people to do so without paying for it is a Big Scary Problem. I think the legal team at TiVo might find something to hit the project with, should someone find a way to do it. - Exception #3: One of the things I have considered is finding another S1 box.. Maybe another SVR-2000 with a dead drive. I'd love to take one and slave it to a master TiVo such that the two machines would act like a single dual-tuner machine. TiVo expects that if you're running two of these things that you'll be paying for two. Plus, the code to share guide data on a LAN is the code to share it across the Internet... - Exception #4: TiVo's "product lifetime" subscription generally is intended to last the life of the unit. A month after I finally ponied up the $250 (it's more now), my HD died. Theoretically, that means I buy a new TiVo and pay for a new lifetime subscription right? Well, if you backed up a software image and don't mind doing some hacking, no. Free software which uses TiVo's service would make product lifetime mean the lifetime of the logic board. Or, since all the software does is read and send the machine's serial number to identify itself, it would trivially be able to last the lifetime of the TiVo owner... There's no foolproof way I can think of to avoid the things that would Really Annoy TiVo. The sheer audacity of such a project might be enough to set them off. Still, one can provide the same security that TiVo provides: the guide data is literally protected using an obscurity scheme. It can be (and has been) figured. It's probably not unreasonable to most people if the stuff that goes and fetches data from TiVo is not free software. In fact, most of the TiVo hacking community would be seriously annoyed if it were because it would surely bring down the wrath of the legal department somehow. The format used for the guide database on disk should probably not be the same used by TiVo. Several good reasons for this, but let's begin with it being a bad format to begin with. In fact, it would be a good thing if the thing didn't use or work with standard TiVo drive setups at all. MFS for the longest time was taboo, and indeed the question of whether or not it is possible to extract video from a TiVo's MFS partition is still a resounding "NO! And you're bad/evil/immoral for asking!" Of course, you can, while the thing is running if you've got the right software and a network card. Hmm, one thing about MFS is that it is designed to work pretty much exclusively with huge files, and it's intended to cope with the power dying on it at any moment. In fact, only /var is mounted rw on a TiVo, and the system is capible of rebuilding the /var partition if something goes wrong.. MFS partitions aren't ever mounted. _______________________________________________ EUGLUG mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.euglug.org/mailman/listinfo/euglug
