[rescue] TiVo Hack

[gonufer]

joshua d boyd wrote:
> What do you mean by broadcasting the tivo?

Multicasting it around the building over ethernet using
ShowMeTV.

> And what is the Ultra5 for?

SunVideo and ShowMeTv to broadcast the audio/video over
the network.

The setup looks like:

	DirectTV -> TiVo -> Ultra 5 -> building network

The TiVo controls the satellite box via Infrared, the Ultra 5
controls the TiVo over ethernet.

> How are you controlling the TiVo?  I mean, what is the TCL server doing to
> control the tivo?

It provides access to the innards of the TiVo including a web page
that mimics the TiVo remote control allowing people to control
the TiVo from their office.  TiVo is somewhat based on Tcl, it's
used as their scripting language even though the core app, myworld,
is written in a compiled language (C or C++).  You can find the
Tcl scripts that "phone home" (setup PPP, run ntp, transfer files)
and do other tasks on the disk if you look around.  So the http
daemon being written in Tcl makes it very easy to install and gives
it full access to the object database on the Media File System.

> care to post links about that?

http://pvrhack.sonnik.com/tivo/dl_info.asp?DLID=21

> I see info on upgrading harddrives, and Trimble's (or was that Trumble,
> well whatever the SAMBA guy's name is...) ethernet page, but what other
> good pages are there?

http://pvrhack.sonnik.com/
http://tivo.samba.org/index.cgi?req=all

The "TiVo Underground" forum at www.avsforum.com is a good place to
start reading about hacking your TiVo.


>>-greg (whose TiVo's have double the memory of those from the factory)
> 
> Err, is that all you've done to yours?

No, the disk storage was doubled and the network card added but
anyone can do that, only a small handful of people have added
more memory.

> If so, why?

16MB just isn't enough... you can hear the disk seeking when it
swaps.

> Lastly, does anyone know, was the TiVo designed by IBM?

TiVo owns the design and companies like Sony and Philips license it. 
The motherboards in the Sony and Philips TiVo boxes are identical.  I 
don't know who originally designed it but it the design doesn't seem be 
unusually weighted towards using IBM parts.  It has an IBM PowerPC, and 
IBM MPEG decoder, a Sony MPEG encoder, a customTiVo ASIC, some Conexant 
modem parts, Micron DRAM, etc.  The details can be seen at:

	http://www.9thtee.com/insidetivo.htm

-greg


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