PVRs Down Under?

mgkimsal2 asks: "My in-laws are leaving tomorrow for Australia and they've become quite fond of our Tivo. They asked if there was any way to get Tivo in Australia, but I'm turning up a blank. It seems that some people are hacking it to work over there, but it's not commercially available. Are there other PVRs commercially available in Australia? Similarly, are there any cool PVR products in other countries we've not seen in the US yet?"

Holland

[jo-do-cus]

I'm not really into this kind of tv/vcr/pvr thing, but u havent heard of anything like it in the Netherlands yet...

What about PC cards?

[psyconaut]

There's various PC cards that give you sort of a poorman's Tivo....but not very appliance like, especially as they require a PC! ;-)

Anyone got any idea if I can hack a Tivo to work okay in Canada?

-psyco

the far east?

[LSD-OBS]

You can bet that countries like Japan and Korea have gadgets which perform similar functions. They've got so many things we've never even heard of this side of the world - which is one of the reasons I intend to move there!

Problem is you probably won't turn up much online since the web pages and such will be in local languages.

I'd like to hear what information anybody has who's been living in those parts for a while.

UK PVR

[NeonSpirit]

There are a number on non TiVo PVR's available in the UK a selelection of which can be found at pvruk [pvruk.co.uk]. As some of these are non-subscription may be candidates.

Re:don't bother coming

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

the natives never use capital letters

Re:don't bother coming

[hether]

I interpreted the post to mean that they live in Australia and that they are that they are going back. So its not like they are coming as tourists with the sole intention of watching tv once they get there. They just want to know how they can get a cool feature that they saw in the states.

Re:don't bother coming

[mgkimsal2]

For the record, they lived in the UK, and are moving the Australia, and had a few weeks stopover at our place in Michigan. If it was an easy thing to get in Australia, they'd get it. It doesn't seem like it's easy or even possible to do there.

TV Schedules?

[costas]

Are there any PVRs out there that can be pointed to a custom TV-schedule? I live in Greece, and I could probably get a UK PVR to work over there (same voltage, both PAL, just change the plug), but the issue is TV schedules... Can any of the non-TiVO PVRs be customized in this way?

Re:TV Schedules?

[funky womble]

I don't know about the schedules, but you may have to watch out for sound too - apparently UK TVs in Spain get picture but no sound, so I wonder if this may be a problem in other countries too.

uh huh

[johnjones]

they come on the same carrier signal so if you can get it then you get sound

is this what some saleman told you ?

regards

John Jones

Re:uh huh

[funky womble]

Nope, first-hand experience. I was staying with a friend in Lanzarote who has an English tv with no sound (unless connected by SCART to a locally purchased video).

The UK (PAL I) uses a 6MHz offset for audio, the continental European countries using PAL (B/G/H) are at 5,5MHz. I suppose it might be possible to modify the tuner though.

S.American PAL is different again (Uruguay/Paraguay/Argentina has one standard, Brasil has another for 60Hz). Where it's used in Asia it's often with European frequencies/offsets.

It's fairly similar to the US NTSC, except the phase changes each line, which means the colours don't fsck up so badly.

A few pointers here [telsat.com] and here [216.239.39.100].

PVRs are not widespread...

[Rob Parkhill]

The very first PVR available in Canada was only released a few months ago, and it is tied to a specific satellite TV system. I would be very surprised if TiVo had a system that worked in Australia.

The annoying part is that all it would take to make a TiVo fully functional up here are the show listings. We use the exact same TV standards as the US. We even get some of the same channels. Yet after all these years, there still isn't TiVo or Replay support for Canada.

Buh.

tridge is australian

[koogydelbbog]

first thing that came to mind was that tridge is australian and did a lot of tivo hacking. a quick google search later (tivo australia) turned up a linux.conf.au link, a pdf about adding ethernet to a tivo and why that's useful for australians.

http://marc.merlins.org/linux/linux.conf.au_2001 /D ay4/tivo_hacking.pdf

(Result 2 of about 7,610. Search took 0.05 seconds.)

andy

Re:tridge is australian

[mgkimsal2]

That's great but not what I asked. Excellent that tridge is hacking a tivo - where did he buy it? The local appliance store in Sydney? Or was it imported. Yes, I did the obligatory 0.05 second search - doesn't mean it answered my question. Nothing mentions whether or not you can actually GET a tivo in australia - tivo.com certainly don't mention it, and yahoo.com.au has nothing on tivo. My inlaws (in their 70's) aren't going to be hacking an imported tivo - they don't like it that much.

Re:tridge is australian

[koogydelbbog]

sorry, i read that as tivo *the service* rather than tivo *the hardware*.

but given that he hacked it from ntsc to pal then i'm guessing it was an american one.

> My inlaws (in their 70's) aren't going to be hacking an imported tivo.

why not? 8)

ask on the tivo forums, someone there will be capable and willing i don't doubt.

andy

Japan has a sort-of tivo

[TwoStep]

Sony licensed the TiVo software, and has something sort of like TiVo but without the guide data in Japan. I think it is basically a little more than a digital VCR, which is too bad. I think the main problem with overseas markets is the guide data (what is on all the different channels), which can be difficult to get right (as anyone with a TiVo or Replay knows)

Twostep

Use your PC

[an_mo]

A recent story [slashdot.org] on slashdot provides a few suggestions on how to use your pc to do that. Should work in australia too.

Tridge rocks.

[notyou]

Yah, seems that Tridge and his pals were the original Tivo hackers. They did amazing stuff - replacing NTSC tuners with PAL tuners, reverse-engineering the diagnostic edge-connector and getting an ISA 10MB card to work on it.

It's all referenced here: http://marc.merlins.org/linux/linux.conf.au_2001/D ay4/InsideTivo.html [merlins.org]

It's also all pretty hairy stuff. Decendants of Tridge and co. have since released a 100MB card that plugs *directly* into the TiVo. It's pretty sweet, and doesn't require an EE degree to build.

However your in-laws would still have the problem of the PAL tuner and the guide data.

Tridge has a palkit that is supposed to help you replace the tuner.

http://tivo.samba.org/download/tridge/ [samba.org]
(Lots of other goodies there too.)

But as for the guide data -- maybe you could beg him? Or have your in-laws deliver a pizza? (Old Samba joke.)

Tridge and Tivo

[skware]

I'm a fellow resident of Canberra, where Tridge (Andrew Tridgell) happens to reside when he is not jetsetting around the world with Quantum. At the last meeting of CLUG (Canberra Linux Users Group) someone brought along a UK Tivo to have a play around with. The hacking process was relatively simple and involved no breaking of the seal of the box. Basically you need a custom cable (9 pin serial to 3 pin standard stereo audio jack), and to hit enter a few times within 1 second of bootup. Then you pretty much follow a few of the instructions that can be found somewhere on samba.org (another post mentioned exactly where), and you reboot and get a linux shell. Tridge has reverse engineered the Tivo guide format and has scripts to convert on of the online tv-guides for aussie tv to Tivo format, but does not wish these scripts to be released in the public domain as it would most probably impact the subscription model in the states, leading to possible legal hassles for Tridge. In thory you could use this link to update the Tivo guide data every couple of days, but the even cooler method is to install a network card onto the box. Apparently all new Tivo's come with Tridge's drivers for the custom bus bridge so you should be able to just plug it in and start playing with it on the network. UK models have one other niggle, 5.5MHz vs 6MHz spread between voice and data, but as far as I remember this was changeable in the debug menus that first come up when you boot the Tivo. Moving away from Tivo, I do recall seeing ads for a PVR made by LG Electronics on TV recently, though I've not used or seen them, but they sound like a more consumer orientated solution, if nowhere as powerful as a Tivo. Anyway, it's probaly worth checking out samba.org and maybe clug.org.au (I think this site is currently being redev'd, but I can't remember the link for the propsed new site which might have more details about Tivo stuff, there should be a link in the mailing list archives though).

Aussie instructions are here...

[TivoAussie]

www.trufit.com.au/tivo All you need to do! The lot, guide data, everything Cheers