PVR Wire

Engadget has discovered that the TiVo Series 3 has had the PROM chip hacked. If you're like me your probably thinking "what the hell is a PROM chip?"

Well PROM stands for Programmable Read Only Memory and the PROM chip is placed on the motherboard inside your TiVo and contains some pre-loaded basic intelligence. It is this intelligence that contains security to prevent your TiVo from being modified with third party software and hacks.

This PROM hack can be done in the following not-so-simple steps:

• De-solder the PROM chip from the TiVo motherboard
• If you haven't fried the chip continue...
• Extract the code from the Chip
• Edit the Hex
• Burn a new PROM
• Re-solder the new chip back to the motherboard
• Hope you haven't fried the chip

As you can see this is not exactly the easiest hack to do and it is only the first step. The next stage is developing individual hacks to alter the functionality of the TiVo, such as enabling TiVo2Go.

If you're technically minded enough and want to learn more then head over to the DealDatabase forums for more info.

[Via TiVo Lovers]

You've probably heard that the new HD-DVD format, which was reportedly un-crackable, has been hacked. Last week the anonymous hacker that goes by the name of muslix64 was interviewed by Slyck.com

This was an extremely interesting interview with muslix64 who sounded like a modest and intelligent character that was more interested in fair rights for the consumer than promoting piracy.

The reason that muslix64 started hacking the HD DVD protection was because he wasn't able to appropriately play back a HD DVD film that he purchased on a non-HDCP HD monitor.

Interestingly muslix64 also described that the hacking that DVD Jon did to crack the protection on DVDs some years ago, was actually technically more difficult than what he himself did with HD DVD.

It is now possible to hack your Xbox 360 so you can add a larger hard drive, but it's just a shame that your Xbox will still think it is a 20GB hard drive.

The hack is done using a DOS based program that currently only works with Western Digital BEVS hard drives.

Although you can't use the space of the larger hard drives it will allow you to save money by not buying the $100 Xbox 360 hard drive and getting a cheaper Western Digital 40GB hard drive for $60.

You can then lay in hope that Microsoft updates the Xbox 360 to look for larger hard drives or alternatively someone creates a hack to make the Xbox do it.

Everyone likes to customize their PC with some pictures and themes, if its not a picture of some hot girl or a desert island on your desktop, it's a load of fishes swimming around on your screensaver.

The Snapstream community has created a nice set of skins for the BeyondTV PVR interface meaning your TV experience can now be that little more personalized too.

A selection of the skins available can be seen here including dolphin, desert island and pirate themes. Installing a skin is easy and requires simply replacing one file in the BeyondTV directory.

Anyone fancy making a PVR Wire theme? You know you want too!

If you want to record television shows directly onto your PC from cable it is possible for a number of channels. The FCC requires that all cable boxes have a firewire port allowing you to connect your PC and Cable Box together.

Unfortunately it's not as simple as connecting your PC and Cable Box with a firewire cable (pictured right) and starting to record. You'll need to install various software and drivers first.

Also it is unlikely that you will be able to record any premium channels as they will be encrypted. All regular broadcast channels must however be open, if they are not get on the phone to your cable operator and tell them to sort it out.

Uber Lounge has the full steps for recording cable TV in both SD and HD to your PC.

Announced at the TiVo Community forum was a neat piece of Windows software called TiVo.net that allows you to use your TiVo as a media extender so you can play a variety of video formats from your PC.

A list of video formats and codecs that TiVo.net supports can be found here. The software works by converting the video on the fly to MPEG2 TiVo compatable video that can then whizz across your home network to your TV screen, via your TiVo.

TiVo.net is an open source project so others can get involved. It's early days for the software and if you experience any bugs it would be worth pointing them out to the developer.

[Via TiVo Lovers]

The Xbox 360 comes with some great features extending it beyond a Games Console to a DVD player and media extender connecting your PC to your TV via your home network.

For this reason it's quite nice to have the Xbox 360 remote control, but unfortunately this little convenience will set you back $30. That is unless you have a DirecTV remote control.

The instructions below explain how you can use your DirecTV remote control to control your Xbox 360. There are little details on what restrictions it has but it appears that it will only allow you to skip chapters on a DVD, view the main menu and use secondary select.

1. Switch the DirecTV remote to AV-1. Point the remote away from your receiver. Press and hold the select and mute buttons until the light above the AV-1 switch blinks twice.
2. Press 991, then press 2. Now press Power.
3. Press Ch. Up 35-40 times, pausing between each press. The light above AV-1 should go on every time you press it.
4. When your Xbox 360 turns on, immediately press Select.
   

This Xbox 360 hack was done with the RC-32 DirecTV remote control.

[Via Gaming Bits]

We've mentioned TiVoServer here before on PVR Wire, but we've never really gone into any great depth as to its functions, foibles and fun-filled features.

However, Dan Farber and Larry Dignan (also featuring David Berlind!) of ZDNet have taken a stab at this technology for your Mac, Linux box or PC which allows you to share TiVo content with other TiVos around your house.

Of course, there's a few issues over DRM (which can obviously be worked around), but this sort of open-source software could spell the beginning of the end of the locked-down tyrants behind iTunes (and TiVo), who don't really want you to do anything with your own content, except pay them to watch it.

We've covered most of these hacks in one form or another, but Satellite Sweeper has compiled a pretty nice list of 23 TiVo hacks. I'll leave the explanations to Satellite Sweeper, but if you're interested in doing any of the following, you should check out the article.

1. Save your videos on a computer as MPEG files, and then burn them to DVD.
2. Add a larger hard drive.
3. Keep your existing hard drive, but add a second.
4. Backup and restore your TiVo settings.
5. Access your TiVo over the web.
6. Move files to and from your PC.
7. Download internet video files directly to your TiVo (no PC required).
8. Automatically start programs (hacks) when TiVo reboots.
9. Give your TiVo a static IP address.
10. Change the way your Now Playing list sorts recordings.
11. Enable a 30-second skip button on your TiVo remote control.
12. Enable remote control shortcuts for Series1 TiVo units.
13. Create a personal TiVo screen with weather, stock quotes, and sports scores.
14. Stream video from your TiVo to other machines on your home network.
15. Add caller ID to your TiVo.
16. Rename recorded programs.
17. Undelete recordings.
18. Enable advanced wish lists, (looking up programs with two actors, or a combination of actors, titles, etc).
19. Check your own personal viewing statistics.
20. Disable the Live TV button.
21. Browse Flickr from TiVo.
22. Add functions to DirecTiVo units.
23. Eliminate background in TiVo menus, allowing you to see the video in the background.

Some of these hacks will only work on specific TiVo unites, but many will work whether you have a Series1, Series2, Series3, or DirecTiVo unit.

So you've bought the most expensive video game console currently on the market, and installed Linux on it. Now what?

Well, how about turning your PS3 into a full-blown PVR? All you need is Linux, MythTV, and a Plextor ConvertX PX-TV402U, a pretty nifty little box that has a TV tuner, a variety of video inputs for handling cable and satellite broadcasts, and support for MPEG-1/2/4 and DivX compression.

You'll need some Linux drivers for that PX-TV402U, and a couple of patches to help the driver work on the PS3.

The upside: you've got a PS3 running MythTV and serving as a complete PVR. The downside: if you want to make sure you never miss a recording, you have to keep your MythTV running all the time, meaning you can't play PS3 games.

And you could probably put together a cheaper DIY PVR to run MythTV if you really wanted to. But all that aside, color me impressed.

Had you been holding out hope that Apple would include PVR functions in the AppleTV? Well it turns out, you don't need no stinking AppleTV to transfer (some) HD content straight from your cable box to your Mac.

The whole setup is a bit clunky, as you have to hook up your cable box to your Mac using a firewire cord, assuming your cable box has a firewire port. And then once you capture the content on your Mac, it turns out that many programs will be unviewable, due to encryption.

That said, if you've got some free time on your hands and want to see how many of your cable channels are unencrypted, have at it. Motivated has a complete set of instructions, or if you want to be lazy, you can check out iRecord, which does most of the work for you.

You know all that controversy over whether BackupHDDVD actually did anything, like you know, rip encrypted HD DVD movies? Well, it looks like it works, because at least one HD DVD rip appears to have shown up on BitTorrent trackers.

The HD DVD version of Serenity is apparently a 19.6GB file in EVO format, that can be played using programs like PowerDVD and WinDVD with HD DVD playback.

Of course, at 19.6GB, it will take a pretty long time to download this movie on most internet connections. It would probably be worth spending the $20 to pick this title up on Amazon.

I'm actually much more impressed that the appearance of Serenity online would seem to indicate that the HD DVD encryption scheme actually has been cracked, and users who want to make backups of videos they've purchased for home use may be able to use software to do so.

Earlier this month I reported that HD DVDs had been sort of cracked. By "sort of cracked" I mean you could backup/copy a HD DVD providing you had access to the hard-coded "Volume Unique Keys", but how you would get hold of these keys was pretty much unknown.

However, now members of the Doom9 forum have tracked down the elusive key in memory and have already started leaking keys for a few HD titles including Serenity, King Kong and 12 Monkeys.

The cracking battle is not over yet due to a little part of the HD DVD protection system called Key Revocation. Key revocation procedures ensure that devices manufactured by any vendors who violate the license agreement could be relatively easily blocked from receiving HD data.

At this point it's not very clear what this will mean in reality and how it will effect HD DVD players and their users, some playback issues with the ripped HD movies have already been reported.

Okay, I don't have a lot of experience performing TiVo hacks, so don't expect step by step instructions here, but kennybain over at the TiVo Community Forum poses an interesting question: do you really need a Slingbox to watch TiVo recordings remotely?

The answer is, kind of. Kennybain applied the "Zipper" hack to his TiVo and installed TiVoTool on his PowerBook. This allowed him to download and stream shows from his TiVo. And then he went and opened up some ports on his router allowing him to access his recordings from sites outside of his home network. He was even able to watch live TV, although it wasn't a particularly smooth stream.

There's a few problems:

1. It's not secure.
2. You can't change channels on live TV.
3. It's really not secure.

But this does raise the question... if all it takes is a couple of software hacks to allow users to remotely access and stream their TiVo recordings, isn't this something TiVo could implement if it wanted to? Sure, TiVo recently started selling Slingboxes at the TiVo store, but wouldn't it create a richer, fuller user experience to just build placeshifting into the TiVo box? As TiVo continues to add broadband features, unlike my colleague Chris Tew, I wouldn't be surprised if the company's working on something like this already. But given the rate of progress at TiVo, I wouldn't expect to see it anytime soon.

One of the big topics at this year's CES is 'digital connections', ie. accessing media on different platforms and moving it around without the need for complex systems, setups or hard work.

As things move on, year-on-year, a big aspect of the digital home will not only be moving digital media around the home, but using your PC (or similar device) to control various other devices around your home.

But is it currently possible to set up a system on a wireless home network so that you can view your photos, videos and listen to your music from anywhere in the house -- on a budget of less than $1000, using components bought from high street stores?

Unfortunately, the answer is mostly no. Maybe $10,000 would be more like it.

However, with an 802.11n router, a few cheap upgrades to the various wireless devices around the house, and $500 worth of network storage -- and hook it all up to your current setup (presuming you have more than one PC) and you could be well on your way to a makeshift home entertainment system.

Unfortunately, this NY Times-based article doesn't really give any solutions as such -- more suggestions -- but I'd like PVR Wire's readers to give us an example of the setup you have at home (along with the rough costs) to give people an alternative to the expensive products being released this week in Las Vegas.

List your devices, model numbers, cost -- and how you went about setting things up in the comments section.