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Comments: 197 +- Ask Slashdot: Reusing Old TiVo Hardware? on Sunday November 08, @12:17PM
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hardhack
buss_error writes "I have old TiVo hardware that I'd like to reuse — however, I find in searching that the most frequent reply is: 'Don't cheat TiVo!' I don't want to cheat TiVo — in fact, I'd like to nuke the drive with a completely open-source distro with no TiVo drivers at all. Some uses I think would be interesting: recording video for security cameras or a drive cam; a unit for weather reporting; fax/telephone; a power monitor for the home; or other home automation. I would prefer a completely TiVo-free install — this is because I have major issues with TiVo and don't want the slightest taint of their intellectual property. But, since I paid for the hardware, I'd like to wring some use out of it rather than simply putting it in the landfill."
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Tried It (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What a pain in the butt. In order to do any of that kind of stuff, you need a "media key". I had to subscribe to activate my Tivo just to b
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Probably some idiot who couldn't even figure out how to post a reply in the right thread.
TiVO-IZATION (Score:3, Informative)
Isn't TiVO-ization one of the main reasons why the GPL was updated to v3?
Re: (Score:2)
Whether the v3 is better really depends upon who you are and what you want with the code.
Sorry, what you're asking for is too easy to abuse (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Sorry, what you're asking for is too easy to ab (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, what you're asking for is too easy to abuse
Genuine question (I'm not being rhetorical): do you consider using hardware you own for personal, constructive purposes ever to be "abuse"?
Parent
Re:Sorry, what you're asking for is too easy to ab (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Sorry, what you're asking for is too easy to ab (Score:5, Insightful)
The abuse is in the percieved theft of service.
If you're using a TiVo, as a TiVo, without paying TiVo, you're 'stealing'.
This is a self-regulating phenomenon that popped up in the TiVo community.
I totally don't get it, unless people are talking about the guide data (which of course makes sense). I bought my TiVo when they first came out -- it was $400 and it belongs to ME. I didn't have to promise to buy their service to get the box at that price, and I never did -- I already know what channels all my shows are on, so I just use it as a plain DVR and program it by hand. How am I a criminal? Now I just wish the damn thing knew about the new daylight savings rules, or at least had a way to set the clock short of pulling out the hard drive and adding a command to the startup script (the RS232 port has never worked). Plus it would be nice to make it stop giving an error screen every time I go to the main menu, badgering me to buy the service. Why is it considered sacrilege to ask how to deal with that, on an expensive box that I already paid for?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
TIVO can call it anything they want. They still can't make you buy their service just because you own their hardware.
Re:Sorry, what you're asking for is too easy to ab (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely, positively false.
I personally own a Toshiba-branded TiVo series 2 box, which came with free lifetime basic service (which essentially means the channel guide and nothing else, but that works for me just fine).
I have never paid a dime directly to TiVo (though no doubt Toshiba paid some form of licensing fee), and use one of their their products 100% legitimately. I do note, however, that they appear to no longer offer their "basic" service, nor any "lifetime" terms - Their loss, because I will never buy another box from them (and really, I would upgrade at this point, what with no digital or HD support in my box; but as TiVo clearly doesn't want to sell to me, I will probably end up screwing around with Myth again in a year or two instead, and have a lot more motivation this time to make it work as I want).
That said, if you remove the channel guide from that (and yeah, I know about the "advanced" features like remoting and such, but I've never found myself "needing" to watch a recorded show anywhere but home), what does TiVo really sell? If you turn their box into a time-based (rather than content-based via the channel guide) digital VCR, you've "stolen" absolutely nothing. They sold you hardware, you used it in a way they might not like but don't really have any right to complain about (again, key point, without using any of the features of their subscription). See
Parent
Re:Sorry, what you're asking for is too easy to ab (Score:5, Interesting)
The idea that the 'channel guide' is some valuable thing is stupid anyway.
We need to get away from the entire model of having third parties provide guides.
Channels should provide their programming guide. Each channel should, somewhere, have that information in a standard format.
And a list of the links to those guides should be collected on the cable and sat providers websites, in some format computers and boxes can important them.(And I'm sure someone would provide broadcast lists for major metropolitan areas.)
Someone makes a damn standard XML format, and the channels would just dump their data straight into it. It's like 20 fucking hours of programming, one time, to publish their damn schedule, and from them on it just works.
The idea that anyone should ever pay for that data shows how retarded the media companies are in this country. You should want to tell us what's on your channel, you morons, so we can watch it. Because you are too flat-out bone stupid to do that, we have to pay other people to do it for us.
Can you imagine if other places worked this way? What if each bus had its own schedule that they didn't bother to make public, so we had 'bus guide' companies that would run around peacing the entire system together and changing us whenever it changed?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If you're using a TiVo, as a TiVo, without paying TiVo, you're 'stealing'.
No, you're not. If you paid $ for a piece of hardware, that's your hardware. Perhaps you mean attempting to access TiVo's schedule/listing service with an unofficial client, or otherwise outside the terms of its contract. Alternate, platform-neutral and OSS-friendly listings services do exist, try http://www.schedulesdirect.org/ [schedulesdirect.org] .
Re:Sorry, what you're asking for is too easy to ab (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, I admit right off that I am unfamiliar with TiVo aside from what I've heard mentioned on TV. I don't have a tivo, I don't plan on getting a tivo, I've never actually looked into it.
However, I was under the strong impression that TiVo was a DVR. How can one "crack" or "rip off" a DVR? What does a TiVo provide which would be something that, if one were able to re-flash a TiVo, "crackers" would be able to use to some disadvantage to TiVo? Is TiVo cracking something which is actually done? What benefits does it have? What makes it "bad" as opposed to just "bad for the company that wants you to keep using its software"?
Parent
Re:Sorry, what you're asking for is too easy to ab (Score:5, Interesting)
Typically it means buying the hardware at a discount and then modifying the software to use some sort of alternative TV Guide feed, instead of the TiVo paid subscription service.
You can argue the merits for or againt, but most Tivo fans with the necessary hardware and software experience want the TiVo company to succeed and will staunchly refuse to help you.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: "cracking" / "ripping off" -- Typically it means buying the hardware at a discount and then modifying the software to use some sort of alternative TV Guide feed, instead of the TiVo paid subscription service.
At least some TiVos (I have one; it's actually a Toshiba/TiVo joint-branded thing, also a DVD player, which I bought 4 or so years ago) were sold w/ lifetime service (lifetime of the device, not the purchaser ;)), rather than subscription.
timothy
Re: (Score:2)
so why not have discount hardware and subscription _agreement_ for some defined period of time ?
the only reasin against this that i can imagine is some law preventing such agreement clauses that disallow customer to cancel subscription but keep the device.
i don't own tivo and don't plan to get one (not had a tv at home since it broke 3 months ago), but applying such hardware limitations would surely make me less interested in one if i even was a target demographic.
Re:Sorry, what you're asking for is too easy to ab (Score:4, Informative)
so why not have discount hardware and subscription _agreement_ for some defined period of time ?
the only reasin against this that i can imagine is some law preventing such agreement clauses that disallow customer to cancel subscription but keep the device.
Er, this is how cell phones work in the US. You get a phone at deep discounts or even free and sign a multi-year contract. You cancel early you pay through the nose in 'cancellation fees' and the phone is yours to keep. Or you complete the contract and the phone is yours to keep. Nothing illegal about this sort of arrangement.
However, people don't generally LIKE these contracts and we should hardly cry foul when a company gives you discount hardware without the lock-in, and tries to rely on things like 'good customer service' and 'quality product' to keep its customers.
Parent
Re:Sorry, what you're asking for is too easy to ab (Score:4, Informative)
It's about the guide data. Tivo would sell a DVR for $199 but charge $5 a month so you could dial into their server monthly to download the guide (and some value added TVGuide stuff.) They also sold identical hardware for $350 that had a lifetime subscription. You could simply alter a few bits on the non-lifetime DVR and re-sale it for a profit as having a lifetime sub. (past tense, since I have no idea what tivo has done in the last 2 years) TIVO did deserve the hack though. They sold lifetime subscriptions for $150. Even on hardware with a service plan, the hardware failed (even under warranty) they would replace the hardware and refuse to update to lifetime subscription unless you paid another $150. This pissed off a programmer so much he went on a mission to avoid paying twice, succeded and shared it with all.
Parent
Re:Sorry, what you're asking for is too easy to ab (Score:5, Insightful)
I think maybe you didn't get what he was asking.
He isn't asking to "cheat Tivo" or use their service with the box when he is done......He's simply wanting to repurpose the hardware - the attitude that there is something wrong with this seems very out of place around here.
I could understand if he said he was trying to bypass paying for Tivo, or was somehow going to try to take advantage of the service in some way that isn't kosher; but no, that's not the deal - he just doesn't want to throw away what amounts to a computer...
I'm fairly interested in this as I have 2 series 2 tivos just laying around, they work fine and I would feel very wasteful just throwing them away......
- I upgraded to the series 3 (and I like it, and have been happy with the company as well as after I purchased a new HDTV I called them and told that I had owned 2 series 2's and wasn't about to pay $300 or more for an HD box, the deal they gave me was probably one of the best retention offers I've ever received from a company - not only did I get an HDbox for next to nothing, I got several months free and monthly fee reduction of over 40% for life)...
So I wouldn't ever advocate screwing them - but using perfectly good hardware for your own purposes (when it doesn't rip anyone off) rather than trashing it is something everyone should support - it's the sort of thinking I feel like a lot more people need to get with given the rampant consumerism and it's impact of the world and that people in it....
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is that repurposing a tivo would require the exact same skills, tools and methods as cheating tivo by stealing their service.
Then maybe TIVO shouldn't design their hardware so you have to hack it to use it in perfectly legitimate ways.
They call it Tivoization. (Score:5, Informative)
Everyone knows that you can't do anything with a tivo. It may be using open-source software, but the hardware checks the software's checksum, and if it doesn't match, it simply doesn't run the software. If you remember, this is a major reason (if not the only reason) why Richard Stallman got all upset and created GPL v3.
Re:They call it Tivoization. (Score:5, Informative)
It's not the only reason. The American software patent system is, fundamentally, insane unless you're a large corporation that can afford a suite of patents large enough to provide Mutual Assured Destruction for anyone who sues you. But the NVidia kernel drivers, Microsoft's McCarthy-like claim of "47 infringing patents" and the lack of software patents in Europe made software patents important to deal with.
Similar problems are inherent in Microsoft's Palladium digital rights management system, relabeled "Trusted Computing". The idea that it is for "protection" is naive and not based on looking at how the software works: it's designed to block software, and files, and _hardware_ from working with anything else but vendor authorized components.
Parent
Don't buy TIVO, or any other locked down device (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't "cheat" TIVO my arse. Aparently the defintion of cheat has become using something you own to do something you want to do. If they have a business model that subsides the hardware, why is that anyone else's problem?
Seriously, why do people buy a locked down piece of hardware, then wonder why they can't do anything that hasn't specifically been authorised with it? Your solution starts with not buying the damn product in the first place!!!
Stallman may be a crazy loon that I don't want representing me, but in this particular case he's absolutely right. You shouldn't be allowed to create an abomination like TIVO with open source.
Parent
Re:Don't buy TIVO, or any other locked down device (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously, why do people buy a locked down piece of hardware, then wonder why they can't do anything that hasn't specifically been authorised with it? Your solution starts with not buying the damn product in the first place!!!
I my case, it's because I heard Tivo used Linux, and they allowed hackers. Turns out, that's only on the series 1 machines, and some early series 2's. I got a series 2.5.
This is the case with any business that want's to rent hardware to do a specific purpose. Tivo just decided to avoid the hassles of actually renting it, so they "sell" you a locked down box.
Anyway, no-one's mentioned it yet, but you can desolder the boot prom, and substitute one that has the checksums bypassed.
Parent
The security cam recording might be easy (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The security cam recording might be easy (Score:5, Informative)
Now THAT is interesting. Great idea. The cool thing is that a series 2 can record 2 channels at the same time, so you could have 2 security cameras. You can also use Tivo Desktop to move the videos off to your PC if you wanted longer term storage.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Check it out, but From what I've read, the old TiVo's, the series 1's can do this type of recording like a VCR. The newer ones will shut down that feature.
I've also heard that if don't let the series 2 or higher TiVo phone home after you delete the account, you might be able to bypass that restriction.
Re:The security cam recording might be easy (Score:4, Informative)
My Series 2 Tivo can't. You need a dual tuner (DT) TiVo for that.
Parent
Re:The security cam recording might be easy (Score:5, Informative)
That's only true for the oldest, Series 1 TiVo's sold before a certain date. After that, TiVo requires service. No service, and no manual recording.
And, as I recall, it'll also nag you about the lack of service every time you go into the menus.
Parent
Re:The security cam recording might be easy (Score:5, Informative)
This is only true of certain very specific models. It's called something like "Tivo Basic". Most Series 2, DirectTV Tivo (aka DirecTivo) and all Series 3 and Tivo HD do not function in this way. Most Tivos will only support watching and pausing live TV without Tivo service.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
On top of that, if you had a TiVo box that had TiVo Basic service and upgraded it to full service, there's no way to go back to Basic, so once you got a HD box to replace it with (like I did), the old box is worthless without the service.
Some possibilities (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.debian.org/ports/mipsel/ [debian.org]
* An older thread on video sharing hacking with TIVO boxes
http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showthread.php?t=25139 [dealdatabase.com]
* Knoppix MythTV
http://www.mysettopbox.tv/ [mysettopbox.tv]
Re:Some possibilities (Score:5, Informative)
* Knoppix MythTV
http://www.mysettopbox.tv/ [mysettopbox.tv]
As the creator of KnoppMyth (now LinHES), I can tell you that KnoppMyth doesn't work on a TiVO (neither does LinHES).
Warm regards,
Cecil
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Some possibilities (Score:4, Funny)
I saw a post on Slashdot that said it did though!
Parent
TiVo has IP all over the place (Score:2, Insightful)
"and don't want the slightest taint of their intellectual property"
The software is not the only intellectual property. To get about from the evil IP you would have to sell the box on ebay/craigslist/whatever and buy something else instead.
Re: (Score:2)
Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure there is intellectual Property on the hardware. Just has every AMD cpu based system that you buy contains AMD ip, but that is not a reason to stop one from using it for something other than the original designer intended. He bought the hardware, he is entitled to use it for whatever he wants, and is in no way required to go to that huge on-line fencing operation to get rid of it.
Perhaps just the opposite attitude would be more appropriate. Since Tivo basically cheated the intent of the GPL by taking their software and building a system that avoided giving back to the community, even to the point of deliberately making their hardware difficult to re-purpose after it reaches its normal end of life, I think the smart thing for an on-line community rich in open source tradition would be to change its slogan from "Don't cheat Tivo" to "They cheated us, go ahead and cheat Tivo if you can keep it legal".
Parent
check this site (Score:3, Informative)
Open Use that Cheats No One (Score:5, Funny)
A lot like any old computer hardware you can prop open a shed door for airflow or hands free operation while you use both hands to carry in more obsolete crap.
Upon a bit of reflection, once you have collected enough obsolete crap, you could use some brick mortar and obsolete computers to build a new obsolete materials shed. This should free up your shop to refurbish obsolete crap that you keep planning on, but don't have the room on your bench with which to diddle.
If you load these old machines with old OpenMosix enabled kernels and ethernet you can crunch numbers and have a heated shop. The only drawback to this, besides blacking out your neighborhood and sending your electric meter dials spinning like a centerfuge is the need to then build another obsolete materials shed.
Name it V'GER (Score:3, Funny)
Re-program it, and send it back to earth to seek out the maker.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Why have two carbon units entered T'VO?
Don't bother. (Score:2)
If your Tivo has lifetime service then the best use of it is to sell it (working or not) on eBay and recoup your lifetime service cost.
Otherwise, you're looking at a doorstop. The Tivo (series 1 and 2) are woefully underpowered by today's standards. You're better off buying any reasonably expandable PC made in the past 4 years, add on MythTV and some video capture cards with hardware acceleration.
Only one site for Tivo Series 1 hacks... (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=46
Ebay (Score:2, Interesting)
Scanning Ebay's completed auctions, it looks like that's where my Tivo1 with lifetime subscription is going. It's far too much hassle to try finding some use for it, when I can just pocket $50-100. Now, where did I put that thing??
The drama queen (Score:3, Informative)
Sell it and be done with it.
Best way to start (Score:2)
Figure out if there's a JTAG or serial header you can use on the MB and go from there. It's pretty much the only way you would get anything meaningful done.
Also, the older Tivo's are probably the only ones that would be useful, since they can record analog sources. The digital ones are laced with DRM hardware that would probably make things hell.
Re:yes! (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know. Most TiVos only have a few ports. I think the biggest is ethernet, but that's probably too small for most people.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
'nuff said.
That sounds as useful as "don't snitch."