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Hardware

Tivo Hacking A-OK - Says Tivo 95

Posted by Hemos from the keep-up-the-storage-work dept.
s|eeper writes: "C|Net just posted an article about Tivo publicly stating that at this time, they have no problem with people hacking their Tivos to add more disk space."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Tivo Hacking A-OK - Says Tivo More

Tivo Hacking A-OK - Says Tivo

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  • New PC system to replace TIVO (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Has anyone heard of a cron job with a tv card recorder? What is this new crap, if you use linux and know anything, you have a TIVO if you have a TV card.

    Also why are companies sunddenly under the impresion that even after I pay my money for goods they still have the write to tell me what to do with the stuff I just paid for? You don't go to wendy's and buy a sandwich and then have to pay them for the mustard to put on it. And they don't drive to you house and tell you that you can't share it with your friend or dog. Why to technical companies think they have the right to do this?
  • Why would TiVo care one way or the other. And even if they did care, what difference would that make?

    If I go buy one of their boxes, it's mine. That's what buying something means. If I want to smash it with hammer, that's my business and no one elses. And if I want to rip it's guts out and add a 34 terrabyte storage system, that's my business too.

    Even the idea that TiVo could yield some control over this at all is somewhat troublesome, either from a legal or technical standpoint (although I don't know if they could do either). As time goes on, we see more and more companies trying to yield more control over the use of their products after they're bought and sold. Remember DIVX?

    Smart appliances? Be very afraid. I fear the day will come that your toaster will report back to home base to say that you usually burn your toast, and because eating excessive ammounts of burnt foods can cause cancer, your insurance company won't pay for your treatment. (sorry, wandering a bit toward the edge of topic for this one)

    -S

  • Re:Hacking is GOOD for TiVo (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What if someone figures out how to hack a Tivo to download TV Guide listings off the web instead of their schedule service, effectively freeing the machine from monthly fees? That'd kill Tivo's business model.

    No it wouldn't. 99% of their users will not have the technical knowledge to hack their systems. You expect the common user to hook up the serial port and navigate a Linux shell? Even if there was a program that did everything automatically, you just had to plug in a cable, most users would still not do it.

  • Why would Tivo care anyway? Tivo makes their money on the subscriptions service and selling placement on their entertainment guide. As long as people don't expect tech support from Tivo for their modified boxes, Tivo probably would even encourage this sort of thing..

    Now Phillips and Sony may not care for this too much...
  • Doubtful, since Tivo doesn't actually sell the boxes...
  • In the beginning was the Code, and the Code was with the H4x0r, and the Code was the H4x0r. He was with the Haxor in the beginning.
  • If you ask me, the network ad people will just letter box a show and put ads in the blank space. Sort of like they do on some programs on the Discovery Channel.

    Laine Walker-Avina
    LaineW@technologist.com

  • REALLY?! A cron job and a TV card give me what TiVo has? I get updated TV listings? I can put in my preferences and have it record things I might like? I get the great user interface?! AMAZING! Try again.
  • > Or will they simply revert to subliminal mind control techniques? :)

    "I once met a subliminal advertising executive, but only for a second."

  • Advertising is already changing.

    I wish I had the link, but here's what happened during the World Series:

    Those banners on the wall weren't really there, or if they were there, they were different than what you say. They had a realtime substitution of other banners.

    Basically what you think you're seeing on television ISN'T what you're seeing. And it's there, in the show, so yea..

    Pretty subliminal to me, but I don't watch television, unless it's Blue's Clues with my son. :p

    Same thing with Friends - they had an episode where a thing of Oreos sat on the counter - they weren't there during filming, they were added post process.

    -- Talonius
  • Oh, come on. Give 'em a break. I mean, at least they didn't use hacker in the traditional media sense, i.e. $kr1p7 |<1dd13. Not only that, but I'm sure some of the, uh, more average readers are going to come away from this article confused ("Huh? Someone hacked TiVo? Damn computer geeks better not hack my TiVo... hmmm, maybe I should disconnect this phone line or something...")

    In fact, I laud them for this article. They even get extra points from me for not adding a footnote or something explaining the difference between a hacker and a god damn rootshell brat cracker.
  • God, please tell me I'm not the only person in the world that remembers this...blipverts!

    Remember the pilot episode of Max Headroom? Where they were testing out these little ultra-compressed two-second or so commercials they called "blipverts?" They worked, but they had a minor unpleasant side effect...namely, causing people to randomly explode.

    But then again, I think that if I see another damned Old Navy commercial, my brain will explode anyway, so I doubt anyone would notice the difference. ^_^

  • Re:More solid information? (Score:4)

    by Phil Wherry ( 122138 ) on Sunday August 06, 2000 @02:40AM (#876962) Homepage
    While the article doesn't provide a lot of information to actually support the idea that TiVo doesn't have a problem with upgrade hacking, the fact is that TiVo has been one of the most hacker-tolerant consumer electronics companies I've ever seen. A lot of the credit rests with Richard Bullwinkle, the company's Internet spokesman/evangelist. His recent comments on AVS Forum [avsforum.com] pretty clearly illustrate the attitude I'm talking about:
    Well, I'm sure many of you have been waiting for anything I might say about the "hacking" of TiVo, so let me put on my best Yoda voice, and see if I can spread some wisdom. First, let me give credit where credit is due. That was no easy task, and those guys are pretty stunning engineers to have gotten into the places they did in the first place.

    Second, let me give a bit of warning -- more as a friend than a corporate entity. PLEASE BE CAREFUL. TiVo's are not designed to be opened. Anyone who has ever been inside a computer knows that power supplies for user-upgradeable equipment should be covered. TiVo's is not, because it is not designed to be user-upgradeable . I'm not worried about this from a legal perspective, because that little sticker that says "Risk of Electric Shock -- Do Not Open" covers me pretty well in the eyes of the law , but it would break my heart to hear of someone who hurt themselves going inside their TiVo.

    Third, make backups. We already know of one thing that is going to affect you guys with the release of 2.0, and we would feel bad if we made your TiVo useless after we changed the software somehow, but we of course would take no financial responsibility for that. We want to keep you happy TiVo customers, but we will not risk relationships with partners or do any special testing to make sure hacked boxes work. The thing we will do that will affect you, that we already know about, is the same thing that makes 2x30 GB machines 60 hours instead of 72. In short, we have never created a box over 30 hours, and any receivers over 30 hours that are out there when we release our new software will have about 12 hours taken away. Any programs within that space will be deleted. Consider this fair warning.

    Finally, please be cool about this. We have already taken down AVS with floods about the subject. You don't want to anger people and force them to take action about this.

    By the way, as far as hacking goes, don't interfere with the TiVo service. Anyone who tries to steal it, copy it, or modify the way it works in a negative way will receive instant ramifications from TiVo. I don't mean to be a heavy, but that is what puts food on my family's table.

    How is that for straight shooting? If you have questions, I will try to answer them here.

    Cheers,
    Richard Bullwinkle
    TiVolutionary

  • Hill comments that the ability to record TV shows via a PC and harddrive or CD-R "would cause some issues with the motion picture industry." Now I know that the MPAA and others have an ongoing history of trying to squash new technology, but why should the ability to record a TV show or movie with your PC be any different than recording with a VCR?

  • The down side is this: People see this as an invitation to go the next step -- rip the TiVo code off the machine and build their own boxes(which TiVo probably won't care about, 'cause they're selling the service, not the box), the associated OEM's manufacturing the actual boxes see sales drop, get pissed off, and start suing (1) TiVo and (2) consumers, just because they have deep pockets.
  • Perhaps they will force the manufacturers to put in code that, upon hitting a commercial break, diables any fast-forwarding until the commercial break is over. This would be relatively easy to do if commercial codes were somehow encoded somewhere in an unused portion of the video signal.

    I suppose this isn't impossible, if the "this is a commercial" signal were put in the vertical retrace area along with closed captioning and stuff, but then it would be easier for people to make VCRs that pause when they see that signal!

    On the other hand, if they stuck in the signal for random 30 second intervals in the middle of TV shows, then the equipment would have to think twice about pausing recording. But that would only be a problem with tape-based systems. A disc-based system like Tivo can just back up when it detects a "commercial" of more than 2 minutes. Or it could let you decide for yourself (after all, humans are very good at deciding what is and is not a commercial) and use a "30 second skip" button. Which is what it does.
  • What exactly is a 'dick full'?

    I admire a well turned vulgar phrase as much as the next guy, but this is really a stretch.

  • TiVo's Hollywood Investors are not going to like this one bit.

    Why would they care one way or the other? Their "Hollywood Investors" certainly aren't making money from hardware sales. If anything, the more people that upgrade their small 14-hour units to 50+ hour units, the more people that have available space for Hollywood's ads and movie trailers, things that are planned in the near future for the larger-capacity units. The only people I could see having a problem with these hacked units would be the hardware makers themselves, Philips and Sony. But since they're getting percentages of subscription money from Tivo, the bulk of their revenue flow isn't dependent on hardware sales.

  • You have to understand where the business is going and who controls it. The trend is for proprietary digitally encrypted signals and decoding at the device. This is the way the big networks and the movie companies want it. DVI is the plug/protocol they plan on using.


    This gives a lot of leverage to the media content providers, if they don't like a feature that JVC or TiVo adds to a product because it can hurt ad revenue then they can stop giving them access to the data. If ad revenue is significant enough.


    It shifts the revenue stream for the media content providers, they can cut a profit from device manufacturers who want to show their movies and shows and will pay licenses to decrypt data, they can cut a profit from services who distribute their shows (satallite companies, cable companies, blockbuster, internet?) then they can cut a profit from subscriptions and then their is ad revenue. In this picture they have other sources and ads aren't 100% important, they also have leverage so they can pit the ad people against the TV manufacturers.


    I'm working in this business on a product kind of like TiVo and there are tons of cool things you can do for the user, TV shows have ratings encoded, ads do not, you can easily write code to switch channels or PIP focus or pause the recording when a commercial comes on. We aren't doing that, in fact you didn't hear me suggest that it was technically possible.. MPEG files need to be protected too, if you don't protect them then you run the risk of having the movie studios and networks cut you off. The TiVO hack everyone wants (raw MPEG access and an ethernet port) will be the one the ends TiVO as we know it. Most likely scenario would be that the big players who have supported them will drop them. (Sony, don't think for a second that Sony needs TiVO, Sony is using them to quickly enter the market)


    The foundation isn't in effect yet so the movie studios, networks, and powers that be (is this BOWLOLAM and not BOWLOMAG: Big org with lots of lawyers and money, not money and guns) can't really do anything to TiVO yet since they are somewhat independant of the process, in theory they could refuse to let them decrypt their data or worse (possibly sue them since they aren't protecting the copyrights?) in the near future if TiVO added commercial skipping features such that ad companies got pissed.


    I predict that there will be no technology which will be popular and useful that will remove ads from the data stream any time in the near future. Skipping them with a WebTV or TiVO box that does digital recording will be kosher until the ad companies can detect a loss and then ad costs will go down, subscription costs will rise a little, and they'll just put more tricky stuff in like atvef triggers that kind of push the ad at the user. Ads are internet anyways, you can't even go to slashdot or linux.com without seeing ads, the mainstream corporate sites are filled with them and ads may eventually pull out of TV and go more into interactive TV and internet where they can target market that much better.


    Also with the huge mega conglomerates taking over and invading, you have to question the value of ads on TV. Does IBM or Redhat get really anything from putting ads on MSNBC? Over the last few years some of the better news organizations (*cough*, ABC, *cough*) have shown that they aren't above the wishes of their owners (*cough* disney, *cough*) I can't remember seeing a Westinghouse ad on NBC(GE) anytime over the last 20 years or so. I think that medium is already shut off to certain groups of companies and products. It's better to get cokes can and BMWs visibly on screen with logo shown and perhaps a few words of dialog containing your trademark in the next James Bond movie than it is to place an ad on your competitor's network.

  • just pre-records all his favorite shows, and then zips thru the ads with the 30 second-skip button
    How long will it be before clicking/skipping through Tivo advertisements is a matter of relying on a protocol of, say, other Tivo users networked and having their ad skipping points measured, then averaged for the best result.

    IOW, advertisers are tricky SOB's. I know that I get tired of manually skipping through ads, only to pause when the ad barrage sems to be over, only to be tricked and start skipping ads again. Yet after two or three of these episodes I start to get overly aggressive and I zip through ad and into the 1st or 2nd minute of a program alike. =(

    So, in the system I picture, this measuring would be an averaging of the best/most accurate ad skippers and perhaps with a bow to Nielsen Ratings' like families, historically exceptionally accurate ad skippers (anonymously of course) can have their patterns given extraordinary weight in splining the the resulting advertisement-skipping average.

    This is a long way of saying: I have a Tivo, I am sick of ads, I want to connect my Tivo to the Net, pipe my ad skipping patterns/usage to others out there like me, and collectively provide myself or others with an auto setting as a result that will let me/you sit there and set the thing on automatic-skip-ads automagically. =)

    Good, bad? What do you think?

    Me pican las bolas, man!
    Gracias

  • Why would Hollywood care? What laws are being borken by recording tv shows?
  • I think the real problem, from the MPAA standpoint, is that technology is changing so fast that they are loosing control of the industry and its revenue.

    The MPAA will continue to fight all forms of new technology until one of two things happen: either the MPAA will find an electronic distribution technology that both they and the consumer find acceptable, or they are driven out of buisness by new technology.

    I know this seems pessimistic, but unless the MPAA changes there tactics, I see no other alternatives.
  • Perhaps they will force the manufacturers to put in code that, upon hitting a commercial break, diables any fast-forwarding until the commercial break is over. This would be relatively easy to do if commercial codes were somehow encoded somewhere in an unused portion of the video signal.

    This is exactly why we have countries other than the US. I don't consider it beyond the realm of possibility that the misguided government of the US would write such a law. Technology is advancing very fast right now; the government simply cannot keep up. The oppressive presence of the legal system in the US guarantees the victory of special interests in virtually every circumstance.

  • Home grown boxes with ripped codes probably will come next, but I don't think there will be enough of them to cut into sales measurably. In fact, they'll probably promote product awareness (face it, there are legions of average-Americans who barely know about DVD - they don't even know Tivo/ReplayTV exist) and consumer envy enough to generate even more sales of retail boxes.

    ....

  • Actually, something tells me that if Bill Gates DID fart on Linus' face, that would be news. I bet most of the major media outlets would take it as well.

    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • Perhaps if you keep crying and sobbing about it, an ocean of your tears will sweep across the world and wipe said article off of the Slashdot homepage. But somehow, I doubt it.

    -SpeakerEnder

    -SpeakerEnder

  • Well, with the exception that the Tivo isn't an internet appliance and the WebTV isn't a digital video recorder. :)
  • -Accept modified units but charge out-of-warrantee repair fees. This works fine until someone puts a Mazda turbo on the Studebaker engine and posts results to the net. Suddenly, Ford has to send all mechanics to Studebaker AND Mazda school (and narrows hiring choices to mechanics who know Ford, Studebaker, and Mazda, which are very scarce in Silicon Valley and want premium cash & stock options) and negotiate parts deals with Mazda

    Things may have changed, but isn't Ford the majority owner of Mazda anyway? I know that many parts are interchangable between the two makers (esp. Ranger/B Series)

  • "Why would TiVo be concerned what you do with your box once you buy it?" Maybe you should ask the same question of Netpliance [netpliance.com]. The article on cnet refers to an earlier article describing Netpliance's efforts to thwart hardware hackers who'd convert their i-openers into ordinary PCs. I think it's a good thing that TiVo is keeping a more open mind about this. (I suppose it also helps that TiVo isn't the actual hardware manufacturer. Maybe they'd take a different view if they were in the hardware business instead of the software-and-service business. Then again, if they're using Linux as the foundation of their system, maybe their view is sufficiently enlightened that even if they were producing the hardware, they still really couldn't care less if people hacked their boxes to add more storage.) As long as people don't crack their system to get the programming-guide service for free, TiVo ought to be happy.

    _/_
    / v \
    (IIGS( Scott Alfter (remove Voyager's hull # to send mail)
    \_^_/

  • We should be careful trying to figure out what a business model consists of by simply looking at what a consumer pays. After all, for $199 (the price of 18 months of the service), you can obtain a lifetime subscription to the service (which, by the way, brings the prices up to ReplayTV's prices which include the free subscription).

    Both TiVo and ReplayTV offer placement on their 'recommendations' and 'themes' areas to media companies in order to point people toward their programs. I have ReplayTV and when you go to the "Sitcom" theme (a bad move in ANY case), you will find things weighted towards NBC. Fortunately, you don't HAVE to watch what the themes recommend and I have used the things three times in the last six months I've owned the box.

    TiVo would not go out of business if people stopped paying for the subscriptions. TiVo MIGHT go out of business if the "big boys" of the industry decide that they are facilitating copyright infringement and send 100 of their beautifully attired mouthpieces to bury them in paperwork with a lawsuit.

    I doubt that the TiVo management appreciates ANY of the hacking being done on their devices. Each step taken in that direction potentially costs them money, particularly the question of upgrades. $300 for a hard drive and installation? I certainly would never pay that much or let my family/friends pay that much, so TiVO probably really wants that money. Turn it into an MP3 player? That's money that Sony, Phillips and other hardware manufacturers may lose when they market their own component-grade MP3 hard-drive solutions.

    I think we should wait until a more clearly "official" word comes from TiVo before we start sending the kudos flying too fast.

  • How will advertising change? (Score:4)

    by boss soul ( 155885 ) on Saturday August 05, 2000 @06:24PM (#876980) Homepage
    It seems like if they allow people to add HD space at their own discretion, this stands as yet another selling point for this product. Considering this, I wonder...

    If TIVO, and products like it, become more and more popular, will the very nature of advertising on television change as a result?

    My friend owns one of those TIVO thingies, and it seems like he never watches any commercials at all... he just pre-records all his favorate shows, and then zips thru the ads with the 30 second-skip button. If it gets to the point where most viewers are using a service that allows them to do this, how will the networks change the format of ads in order to compensate? Will they place them during the shows themselves, or in the form of product placement?

    Or will they simply revert to subliminal mind control techniques? :)
  • It's just not the same. To get a PC/Linux box that will do what TiVo will do, you need to:

    Spend more than 1200 dollars.

    Write software.

    Devise an Algorithm to do personalization.

    Invent a new GUI for it.

    Buy and interface an IR remote control.

    Do a bunch of other crap you really don't want to do! I'll spend my $399 and $129 for lifetime service, thanks.

  • An interesting troll.

    -Elendale (Would have been believable except for the exclamation points)

    Karma burn coming
    As i meta-troll again

  • I hacked my TiVo 99 hours of Simpsons Burns says: Excellent
    1. Obviously TiVo has no legal means to keep people from modifying a device they own. What I think this may lead to is companies like TiVo will no longer sell devices to be used with their proprietary services, only lease them.
    2. From the story: "For the past month, Hill has offered his BlessTiVo instructions, which help people modify the Linux-based TiVo unit to recognize a second drive." I suspect TiVo would have had to modify some GPL software to produce this unit. Have they open-sourced these modifications? More to the point: if a company rents out equipment with GPL-modified equipment (rather than sells it), would they need to release the code modifications? As I understand the GPL, the code only needs to be supplied to the eventual owners or licensees of the software. In this case, the service subscribers might not be considered licensees.
  • Usually, they are fairly timely. Generally, the start time is stated time + N*30secs for additional commercials. Most programs also have a break after the theme song. It's very rare to have it start before the stated time.

    The main exception to this is the network channels that carry live sporting events will often keep the sporting event on if it runs overtime, even if it means clobbering the better shows that come on later :)
  • geez. I would really be impressed if every word was a different link...
  • But there are some problems that I see right off the bat that need correcting - and they can be. But are they already?

    The main problem, as I see it, is where to get the program information. There are places like Click TV [clicktv.com] that give really good program guides, but I would think the commercial outfits would get mighty pissed if I wrote something that repackaged their program guide. Is there a open TV listing system, like the Free CDDB is to CDDB?
  • Now I can download all of South Park and keep them onhand. =)

    I wish the article would have pointed out how much storage was usually added. Oh well. Off to the site.


    MunITioN
  • I can see it now.... "b4ck in da day, me and my homies used to hack our TiVo's to increase it to 500 megs, JUST so we could keep all our facials pics." "y0 y0 dude true dat man, I mean, back when we waz king, it was all about the pron man, but now a days all the kidz be gots the wrong idea man, misusing the TiVo h4x for evil purposes, like beastiality!" "w3rd man w3 could reck doz foos tho, we be bust out those mad girl orgasm pics, then they'd know wh4t was up" "true true dude""we still are the kings tho, we wiiii fin' m0re xpl0itz to repr3sent the pr0n kiddi3 society, and keep our respect up, and cuz im runnIng out of room for my ebony pr0n" "4nd if you think of stepping on 0ur pr0n territory man, you going to get a face full of 20 inch oriental k0ckz man" "s0 back off all U w4nna be pr0n kidz, cuz you aint nothing like the original facial crew" "w0rd"

  • More solid information? (Score:3)

    by Cardinal ( 311 ) on Saturday August 05, 2000 @05:51PM (#876990)
    Is it just me, or did C-Net build this story around a quote and an inference from a single Tivo representative (Rebecca Baer)?

    I'm glad Mr. Hill has no problem with people hacking Tivos, but he isn't a Tivo rep.

    So.. Is there a better source on Tivo's perspective on the matter? After all, recent C-Net stories haven't exactly been fountains of indisputable and reliable information... :)
  • In the UK on two of our channels (itv and channel4) we have what are called cue dots in the corner of the screen which indicate that adverts are about to start... this could perhaps be used to chop adverts out all together.

    The other factor you could use to acknowledge advertising is that it is generally slightly louder than the original program. It will also usually have a higher range of frequencies since high frequencies carry more energy - making you pay more attention to the add (supposibly :)
  • This gives a lot of leverage to the media content providers, if they don't like a feature that JVC or TiVo adds to a product because it can hurt ad revenue then they can stop giving them access to the data. If ad revenue is significant enough.

    How could they possibly stop TiVo from accessing television shows (that's what you mean by "the data", right)? Even if they started delivering shows in some proprietary, encyrpted, digital format they would still need to broadcast in the existing format for backward compatibility because of the enormous installed user base. Changing entirely to a different format would make practically all TV's out there useless, and that just wouldn't fly with consumers.

  • I'm sure that when widescreen digital tv's come down in price and start becoming popular here in a few years that you would get an appropriate tv tuner card just so you can watch all your old 4:3 tv shows, but of course you're going to have to stretch them to fit in the full 16:9 space, otherwise you would have wasted space, I mean really! Who cares if the picture is distorted as long as you are using your whole tv screen!
    You miss action when you switch from widescreen to pan-scan, this is almost as stupid as a friend of mine who bought a dvd player for his tv and wanted all of his movies in 4:3.. geez

  • TiVo's Hollywood Investors (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    are not going to like this one bit. TiVo's tune will change 180 degrees by the end of the next business day.
  • I think recording on a computer puts you in the same boat as mp3's recorded to computers. I recall something stupid like the RIAA saying that computers are not home recording devices (someone please expand and/or correct me on this). I'm guessing that the networks would have no problem trying to use the same ploy.

    An even better question is why should the ability to record a TV show to a Tivo be any different than recording to a PC?
  • First off, the company could care less that someone is hacking their box. They make some money from the boxes and licensing, but the monthly fees are where it's at. ISPs, banks, computer manufacturers, etc. They all know that selling a product once isn't enough anymore to put the kids through college. Attention spans are too short and there are too many gadgets coming out to guarantee a repeat customer, so they have to keep people coming back, in the form of monthly service contracts. Commitments. Screw with the monthlies (ie, the program guides) and you'll have a ton of brick legal department to deal with.

    Now, having said that, the TiVo people are very willing to either officially or unofficially condone hacking on their boxes. They can't necessarily support the hacks, but what they're really saying is "We know it's happening, and unlike Netpliance we are not going to start shipping TiVo boxes with gooed insides and other changes to try to prevent these hacks. However, we can't be spending the time to make sure our upcoming OS releases will allow your hacks to keep working, but we're not doing it on purpose." What isn't there to get? It's not rocket surgery.

    As far as the potential for the TiVo; since it's running Linux, I'd love to see a way to transfer recorded shows to another box and store it on CD etc. I'd like to set up my PC to take those Simpsons and X-Files episodes and burn them to a VCD, or whatever. Television episodes are freely available online already (I missed the first season finale of Futurama, so I went on IRC and was able to download it and view it. Picture sucked, but I got the majority of the experience) and this will make it even easier.
  • I think a closer parallel would be:
    You buy a Ford, rip out the engine and replace it with a Studebaker engine with more HP. A few months later, something goes wrong so you return to the shop expecting a warrantee repair. The mechanic's a nice guy and a bit of a Studebaker hacker, so he fixes it anyhow (or maybe he tries and fails), but you posted how to replace the engine on the net and now there's a line of 50 Fords with Studebaker engines all suffering some problem hoping for a repair. This mean's Ford has several options:
    -Agree to fix Studebaker engines, which means working a deal with Studebaker for parts (which wont be nearly as cheap as Ford parts) and sending all the mechanics to Studebaker school. Not cheap in the short run, not cheap in the long run.
    -Ignore these customers and state "We don't fix modified Fords" to stop people sending modified units back, incurring the wrath of the customer base.
    -Accept modified units but charge out-of-warrantee repair fees. This works fine until someone puts a Mazda turbo on the Studebaker engine and posts results to the net. Suddenly, Ford has to send all mechanics to Studebaker AND Mazda school (and narrows hiring choices to mechanics who know Ford, Studebaker, and Mazda, which are very scarce in Silicon Valley and want premium cash & stock options) and negotiate parts deals with Mazda. This becomes a never-ending cycle and results in high repair fees and Ford spending a lot more energy on repairs and a lot less on making new cars (which again incurs the wrath of the customer base because Ford "isn't spending enough energy innovating").
    Or worse yet, Ford comes out with a free chip upgrade that adds tons of HP and drives fuel economy down more than any upgrade that the hackers have been doing, but doesn't work with the now-wimpy Studebaker engines, so now everyone is in a huff because Ford's not supporting the innovators (or as most customers will say "screwing over the hackers") and they're left with weaker machines than if they'd just left the hood down in the first place.

  • Geek hacks TiVo, adds features, makes it better, makes it GPL. TiVo likes mods, adds them to next version, everybody benefits. I'm waiting for my RAIDed, mp3 playing, networkable, quake playing TiVo. Seeya WebTV!
  • I am glad to see that some people are willing to be reasonable. It is true that those who decide to experiment and tinker with the world around them, can indeed live in harmony with those who choose not to.

    Let's hope that this attitude continues when someone finds away to store their now decrypted DVD files [thanks to DeCSS] on their modified TIVO box [with the extra 80Gig IDE hard drive].

    Isn't technology great?

    all persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental. - Kurt Vonnegut
  • because it's nice to finally have someone say "go for it"
  • Oh grow up, these hackers aren't hurting anything or anyone. There not making there own TiVo's and they are still paying the TiVo monthly subscription. They are just trying to improve there property
  • This is really stretching the definetion.
  • When I tried to do a search to find out about TiVo on MSNBC, I got these results.

    AOL's epic aim: to slay Microsoft
    http://www.msnbc.com/news/280218.asp
    The golden fleece that America Online, Sun Microsystems and Netscape are chasing is nothing less than developing the dominant computing platform -- one that makes Microsoft's Windows irrelevant.

    Harvard, MIT fight Microsoft over research about Netscape
    http://www.msnbc.com/news/200480.asp
    Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology are fighting a demand from Microsoft for two professors' research on Netscape. Separately, Microsoft released some evidence it will use in the antitrust case, revealing a likely legal strategy.

    Microsoft says it violated no antitrust laws
    http://www.msnbc.com/news/359094.asp
    Microsoft on Tuesday said that despite a court's finding that it holds monopoly power, the evidence presented against it during the government's antitrust case doesn't add up to illegal behavior. By Brock N. Meeks

    Microsoft hopes to use book to show it won browser battle fairly
    http://www.msnbc.com/news/204337.asp
    A forthcoming book by a couple of literary unknowns is about to get extraordinary publicity in the Microsoft Corp. antitrust trial

    How pathetic is this, that they're obviously trying to put pro-MS articles in non relevant search results? ughhh I can't find anything on the web without getting a dick full of prop-o-ganda!
  • The problem there was that people were buying the iOpener units for the sole purpose of hacking them, thereby causing Netpliance to lose money on the deal (I got the impression that they were not making a profit on the actual units, but rather on the service). If you add a bigger hard drive to the TiVo, you still need to pay for their service, and they still make money.

    It would be a very bad PR move for TiVo to forbid hacking in their contracts. I'm glad they don't seem to mind - I'm interested in getting one for myself at some point.

    -John

  • this story does NOT say tivo endorses this (Score:3)

    by happystink ( 204158 ) on Saturday August 05, 2000 @07:37PM (#877005)
    The quote from Tivo is just saying that people WILL do this. They are not saying it's okay with them. I don't even really get that inference. The SINGLE QUOTE in question is so so so neutral.

    It's annoying when posters don't read the story, but when slashdot editors don't, it's just sad.

    sig:

  • Re:two things (Score:3)

    by iCEBaLM ( 34905 ) on Saturday August 05, 2000 @07:38PM (#877006)
    More to the point: if a company rents out equipment with GPL-modified equipment (rather than sells it), would they need to release the code modifications?

    Yes, read the GPL, it says it in plain black and white that if you distribute GPL derrived works you must also offer source. Renting is a form of distribution for a set amount of time.

    -- iCEBaLM
  • It's called a PC, and you already have one on your desk. :-)
  • Maybe I am not a big enough geek, but I don't see why this is /. worthy. Assume for the moment that TiVo did have an anti-hacking rule... ok, don't buy TiVos... there's no reason to buy one and then bitch about it. Oh well....

  • Re:New PC system to replace TIVO (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Depends what you're using it for. A cron job can download TV listings for you (lots of web sites offer free listings). It won't try to guess what you like, but you'd be able to transfer your files to CD-R, which is a feature the Tivo doesn't have. It probably wouldn't be too hard to code up a program that keeps track of user preferences and predicts stuff for you (once you got a lot of people using it).

    It definately wouldn't be aimed at the same audience, but if you're the type of person bringing up consoles on your Tivo, it might work for you.

  • From the article:

    "She added that her company has not received requests from its hardware partners to try to make it more difficult to modify the device.

    Sounds like they don't have a problem with it to me.

  • No, no, NO!!!! Guys like TRoLL are not what legends are made of. You want legends, look up osm and Trollmastah's old posts.

  • Don't you think they get a percentage of the profits from the sales of Sony/Philips units?

    -------
  • From a legal standpoint, renting is a contractual relationship where the "ownership" is retained by the lessor but "access" (in a modified form) is provided to the lessee. Distribution as normally interpreted is more a third party shifting the good in question through space (or time). Now the question people are asking is to what extent a GPL license affects bundled hardware or services. IANAL but reading the GPL, I would speculate that it only refers to peer software. This can be observed with the fact that the code of gcc is not GPL, and business models such as on-line GIMP studio processing does not GPL the pictures. IMHO, the nearest analogy of renting is that of accessing a gcc compiler through a web interface. You are "renting" CPU-disk time as a service, not "distributng" gcc per se. As part of the terms of service, you could say that breaking the seal abrogates your obligation of support as it is then not the service you were contracted to supply, a la if you vandalise a flat, the landlord can request an eviction notice.

    As GPL becomes more prevalent, a lot of business practices (and legal precendences) have to be reexamined. GNU provides software according to its perception of the world, simplistic and dogmatic as it may appear to suits. OSS, BSD, MPL etc provide variations to account for a different view of reality. You can pick and choose as to what your beliefs are. Areas of potential conflict are
    - what is "internal" to a company (when you have joint ventures, strategic relationships, etc)
    - what does "distribution" and "linking" precisely mean
    - amount of bundling allowed with hardware/services

    These issues will obviously be debated until a common set of practices evolve. I am reminded of an old analogy ...

    Philosophy - why do we fsck?
    Science - what is fsck?
    Engineering - how to fsck better?
    Economics - when can we fsck?
    Marketing - who can fsck?
    Law - who can't fsck?

    Laws are pain in the neck, especially when they are set in stone to bias the playing field in favor of incumbent interests.

    LL
  • Yes, but only the REALLY REALLY sedentary people exploded. Wait a mintute... at this point, that could apply to half the american population.

  • What skip button? The remote control does have fast forward and reverse controls, of course, but I don't see any 30 second skip button (time to read the manual, I suppose).
  • The download format of TiVo's guide data download is not open. It is proprietary. If someone were to crack this and start offering a competing server for TiVo's existing clients, TiVo would surely respond with increased security; subscription revenue is the only way they get a return on writing the client software.

    In the US, programs usually start on time, although there are notable exceptions. Version 2.0 of the TiVo software will allow you to specify an automatic pre and post padding to recordings of programs, i.e. always start recording X-Files one minute early and end one minute late.

    The networks don't give TiVo any information about advertisements, but TiVo really doesn't need this information. It records the ads and then allows you to fast-forward through them at up to 60x. When you exit FF, it does an automatic skip-back to compensate for your reaction time, usually leaving you within a few seconds of where you wanted to be.

    Stripping ads automatically poses two problems. (1) Ad stripping isn't 100% accurate, so you'd likely miss some of your program; (2) the networks would sue them.

    /jab

    Moderator - TiVo Community Help Center at http://www.tivocommunity.com
  • Of course Tivo says its okay to hack their machines... that way, they can SELL YOU A NEW ONE WHEN YOU VOID THE WARRANTY!

    Hell, they'd probably help you break it open!
  • While that may be a motivation for Philips and Sony, TiVo has no such incentive. They don't care whether you replace your unit with another one or not. All they care about is whether you maintain your subscription. I imagine that the primary reason it is hard to add a drive is that they simply didn't spend any time making it easy since it isn't supposed to be user-upgradeable. The exposed power supply in the unit would raise interesting legal liabilities if there were an officially sanctioned means to allow end-user upgrades. /jab Moderator - TiVo Community Forum Help Center at http://www.tivocommunity.com

  • Why is this news? (Score:5)

    by Skim123 ( 3322 ) on Saturday August 05, 2000 @05:58PM (#877019) Homepage
    Buy a TiVo, you are paying your own money... you decide to tinker with it... why would the TiVo folks have any say in the matter? Don't you buy a TiVo? You aren't renting it, correct? I don't see why TiVo would have any stance on this. It would be like Ford saying, "We don't have any problem with people changing their own oil filters." That being said, why again is this news?
  • Does reinstating apartheid involve TiVo somehow?
  • Tivo might be better than webTV because it CAN be hacked.
  • That is false. TiVo makes no money on hardware sales. That would be Philips and Sony.

    /jab
  • Isn't it somewhat disheartening that a company has to come out and publicly give their blessing for people to tinker with what they own? Yes, I know Tivo couldn't stop people from hacking up their products even if they were so inclined, but this should be implicit. If you bought it, you own it and can do whatever the hell you want to it and no company anywhere or anytime should be able to say anything about it except that you've voided the warranty.
  • Nice article. Only says hack|er eight times.

    Hackers don't upset TiVo--yet
    If you build it, they will hack.
    The latest company to face hacking is TiVo,...
    Hacking has become a big issue for makers of devices...
    hackers found a way to turn Netpliance's I-opener...
    Unlike the well-publicized Netpliance hack...
    There are people out there that will hack into anything...
    While the current hacking apparently is not of much concern to TiVo...

    Hmmm, the article doesn't use the word innovate.

    Multi-tasking here, SNL just reran Nick Burns, The Company Computer Guy. Move...

  • Re:Hacking is GOOD for TiVo (Score:3)

    by tsangc ( 177574 ) on Saturday August 05, 2000 @06:44PM (#877025)
    Geek hacks TiVo, adds features, makes it better, makes it GPL. TiVo likes mods, adds them to next version, everybody benefits. I'm waiting for my RAIDed, mp3 playing, networkable, quake playing TiVo. Seeya WebTV!

    Has anyone ever considered some features as not beneficial to Tivo? As Open Source advocates, most folks here think any feature is a good feature. But that's not the case in all situations, especially not if you're trying to run a business.

    What if someone figures out how to hack a Tivo to download TV Guide listings off the web instead of their schedule service, effectively freeing the machine from monthly fees? That'd kill Tivo's business model. So no, hacking is not always good.

    A lot of folks here don't realize that companies don't just sell hardware anymore-in Netpliance and Tivo's case, the hardware platform is just the entry-the software and more importantly, service, is the key part of their business.

    --Calum

  • Who cares? Why do you waste my bandwidth?
  • There are quite a few reasons why it is important that TiVo is ok with their clients adding their own drives. TiVo makes money if you send your TiVo unit in to have it upgraded. They do not get any payment from you throwing a 30GB Quantum drive of your own in it. They could easily come out with a patch of some sort that would make it more difficult (but not impossible) to add storage by hacking your TiVo. This is a good business decision on their part because they get the subscription fees, and they make money off of the original unit anyway. Heck, they are probably selling considerably more TiVos because of all of the press about the TiVo hack and everyone wanting to get a TiVo so that they can hack it. The only way this would be bad for them is if their business partners do not agree that this is the correct course of action on this issue. The major business partner that could be expected to object would be Quantum (the supplier of the legit TiVo drives), but since Quantum drives are the most common drives to be used in hacking the TiVo units, they will probably not complain. Overall, the TiVo hack seems to be good for just about everybody, except for the folks that permanently ruin their TiVos by messing up the hack, of course.
  • I'm seeing a disturbing trend in America lately, and that is the amount of ill will, rancor, and all-out hatred that is being directed at successful and profitable corporations.

    A good solid attempt at a troll. Pay attention, kids, this is how it should be done.

  • Leave it to Tivo to take all the fun out of it...

    Seriously, does anyone else feel like half the point was in feeling like you were doing something 'wrong'?

    =P

  • Ahh yes, Edison Carter. About every month, there's always 1 slashdot story that a Max Headroom episode covered 14 years ago.
  • Of course people can modify it as they please, the only question is whether Tivo will still allow those units to contact its service.
  • A cursory glance at their website reveals that they distribute the source to the kernel they are running, which is modified. However the real bread-and-butter of the TiVo (their proprietary filesystem and, most importantly, their client software) is closed and will be forever and ever. You seem to be hinting at a GPL violation but if you read the GPL license more closely you'll see that they are in total compliance.

    --
  • If TIVO, and products like it, become more and more popular, will the very nature of advertising on television change as a result?

    Rest assurred that if even a single dollar is lost because of this, the advertisers will likely spend a few bucks and lobby hardcore to make such digital recording devices illegal, citing DMCA, copyright legalities, and in general going on a napster-like witch hunt. That is, if the MPAA doesn't get there first when they realize that soon TiVo hackers will be able to back up entire TV shows and movies to CD and friends' harddrives.

    Perhaps they will force the manufacturers to put in code that, upon hitting a commercial break, diables any fast-forwarding until the commercial break is over. This would be relatively easy to do if commercial codes were somehow encoded somewhere in an unused portion of the video signal.

    Actually, there would be little preventing Sony or Phillips from creating a protocol to capture and record comercials seporately and forcing people to watch them. Or maybe they would rather be able to insert their own advertisements. It would be interesting to see the legal implecations of this: if you record a 30 minute show, but instead of allowing you to fast forward through the original 8 minutes of commercials that came with the broadcast, you are forced to watch a different 8 minutes of commercials that Sony/Phillips wants you to see. Oh yeah, the broadcasters (or more likely the broadcasters' salespeople) would be pissed!

    Or maybe like you said, TV producers will start placing ads inline with the TV programs, which has already started to a certain extent. One of the cable channels (Discovery Channel I think) will sometimes squish the screen up about 80% for about 30 seconds, and place an message at the bottom saying "see our web site..." or "coming up after this show...". A few other channels (TBS or USA I think) also do something like this by superimposing a similar self-promoting small transparent message in the bottom right corner of the screen for a half minute or so. Sure, it's not a paid advertisment... yet.

    One also has to wonder if Sony/Phillips have any code in TiVo to display advertisments in bit image form, either when it boots, during a show, between commercial breaks, or whatever. (gdb anyone?)
  • I really dont think they should make it so hard to add a second drive or upgrade the existing drive. I guess they do this to make an average user buy an upgraded unit just for more space.
  • Ignore these customers and state "We don't fix modified Fords" to stop people sending modified units back, incurring the wrath of the customer base

    But if the warranty expressedly states, "Modifying the engine will void the warranty," then this is exactly what Ford should do. Those upset users should be upset at themselves for breaking their own car. Sheesh. This isn't a problem with other things in life... Correct me if I'm wrong, but Apple voids the warranty if you crack the case and tinker with it (and you are not one of their certified technicians). I've never seen a C!Net article reading, "Apple gives the OK to tinker with Apples, but the warranty will be voided," and I've never seen a /. article on said unseen C!Net article.

  • Maybe slightly off topic, but I just read the FAQ [tivo.com] and now I am confused about this product. I live in the Netherlands so I cannot have access to this product myself, but maybe someone in the know can satisfy my curiosity about some points:
    • So the machine gets the new information every night over a modem. Is the download-format of this information open? Could you get the information from somebody else, or could you use the information in other ('open') hard- or software?
    • Since it only gets the information once a day, how does it know exactly when a program starts? In the Netherlands, the TV guide times should be taken as a guideline, there is basically a 5 minute area around this time as to when the program actually starts, are the US networks more timely?
    • And how about the ads, do networks really give the times to TiVo as to when their commercials start and end?? I could not imagine they would give away this information that would cost them money?
    • In the Netherlands there is a system called PDC, which allows VCRs to know when programs start later or earlier, e.g. to adjust for when an unscheduled news-bulletin happens; the PDC-signal is sent along with the normal television signal. Do the TiVo-machines make use of these kind of extra information-signals?

    Thanks in advance to anyone taking out the time to answer me.

  • This is why I like Kuro5hin.org [kuro5hin.org] so much... There the users decide if a story gets posted or not... If only it was back up... :-(
  • Can I download a recording of someone actually good playing Quake, and then play it back and pass it off as me?
  • I'd be pissed if Ford voided my whole warranty because I made a change to a specific part of the car... If I change the engine and then take it in for bodywork, the warranty should still apply. But if they don't support the engine, that's no problem with me, I wouldn't switch engines without being able to fix it or having a mechanic who would. And it's not a Ford part, I wouldn't expect otherwise.

    Actually, there are consumer protection laws in a lot of places about what warranties can be voided because of... For instance, a clause saying you can't open your PC without voiding the warranty... it's not valid. Your PC is consumer repairable, that's the way PCs are, so they can't void your warranty for using it the way you're supposed to. It'd be like Ford voiding the whole warranty because you repainted.

    For a TiVo, which isn't a user-modifiable part (the power supply isn't shielded, etc) I can see them voiding the whole hardware warranty.

    But I'd sue them if they wrote a patch in the next software release to test for certain drive serial #s only and die on modified units...
  • They do provide with a service (which you must pay for) after you purchase the TiVo unit.

    AFAIK, the TiVo is fairly useless without that service, so: if they suspend the service for hacking your TiVo to add a second hard drive, there's really not much use in hacking it *and* the /. community has another evil corporation to hate for removing the user's right to tamper with their unit.

    Thus the view that this story is /. news.

    Oxryly
  • What I'm waiting for, as soon as their proprietary storage format is documented is people to start posting timings for various networks commercials...

    On The Simpsons, on FOX, tonight, the commercials start at exactly 134,293ms into the show, and continue until 218,134ms... Then a program on the TiVo could transfer these timing codes from the PC via the serial cable and actually strip the commercials out, making for a smaller recorded show.

    It's pretty simply to remove chunks on an MPEG file, requiring at most a new keyframe for each cut... Not rocket science.

  • Re:Well, DUH! (Score:3)

    by ncc74656 ( 45571 ) <scott@alfter.us> on Saturday August 05, 2000 @06:10PM (#877042) Homepage Journal
    Speaking of warranties and that sticker, I just snagged a TiVo (the 14-hour Philips model) a little bit ago (someone in the other recent TiVo thread mentioned that these were $200 after rebate at a certain electronics retailer [circuitcity.com]). The back of the box has one of those "warranty void if removed" stickers on it. I thought it was going to be like those stickers I used to see on Packard Bells and such that left behind a silvery "VOID" when you removed it. However, the sticker actually came off pretty cleanly. If you open the case slowly enough, you can remove the sticker in one piece and put it back if you have to take the box in for service. Nothing will look amiss. You could probably even stick the sticker on some wax paper to keep it fresh, so that if you're constantly monkeying with the box, you won't have to continuallly remove/replace the sticker. I don't have a second drive to install in it right now (the drive that's in the TiVo is bigger than any of the drives in any of my computers :-) ), but I wanted to make a "virginal" backup of what's on the drive...the TiVo hacking FAQ sez this is a good idea if the thought of running afoul of warranties doesn't scare you too much, as it'll be the smallest backup possible.

    _/_
    / v \
    (IIGS( Scott Alfter (remove Voyager's hull # to send mail)
    \_^_/

  • Copied from http://www.tivo.com/what/how.html { Purchase a personal video recorder and sign up to receive the TiVo Service. } So the idea is that they provide an on-going service to those who buy there machine, and I guess some companies might be worried that the modified hardware will do something they don't want with the hardware(Like Tivo could be if someone hacked their proprietary format)

  • Good news, but is it surprising? (Score:3)

    by Transition Cat ( 115549 ) on Saturday August 05, 2000 @06:12PM (#877044)
    I mean, why would Tivo be opposed to this?
    • These small minority of Tivo owners are voiding their warranties (good news to Tivo since they won't have to fix the unit even if it would have broken on its own).
    • The modified units are still being used for their intended purposes.
    • Any quasi-illegal hacks and improvements designed by d0m357|c h4x0r5 such as making the Tivo an mp3 box can be reverse engineered later by Tivo themselves without any patent violations or R&D costs.
    • Where's the downside?

    ....

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