PVR Wire

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.

You know, when we first heard rumors that Netflix was going to offer video downloads, possibly even partnering with TiVo, it sounded pretty exciting. But that was in 2005.

Now everybody and his grandmother has a video download store. Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, AOL etc. Still, Netflix has been an innovator in movie delivery and product recommendations, so when I heard today that they would be launching a limited trial of their service, I was still excited.

And then I found out that the company has a DVD catalog of over 70,000 titles, and what are they making available online? Older movies that don't get rented very often, like Amadeus, Chinatown, and The Bridge on the River Kwai. That's right, Netflix is competing with basic cable here. All told, about a thousand movies should be available online at launch, so I'm hoping there's some better ones in the mix somewhere.

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.

A while back, TiVo started giving you something to look at while fast-forwarding through commercials -- more commercials.

Apparently the ads are getting more sophisticated, now showing advertisements for the same product that is on-screen during the commercial. In theory, these ads are less obtrusive than the older ones, since they're only on-screen for a limited time, but if you bought a TiVo so that you'd never have to pay attention to a commercial again, they are a bit annoying.

The ads only pop up when you're fast-forwarding, so you can always get around them using the ole 30-second skip hack.

So first TiVo goes and outsources TiVoToGo for Mac to Roxio, and then Roxio leaves out one of the promised features, a TiVo theme on DVDs you burn from TiVoToGo recordings.

Well, it turns out that since TiVoToGo is built into Toast Titanium 8, and since Roxio figures that a fairly small number of Toast users will really be using the TiVo functions, they left the TiVo theme out of the official release. That seems a bit silly. Why bother building TiVoToGo functions into your product and then leave out a theme that only takes up a few megabytes?

Anyway, Dave Zatz posts a link to download the TiVo theme. All you have to do is download the file, unzip it, save tivo.psd to the Toast DVD Menu Styles folder, and you're done. Zatz also points out that since the file is a psd file, you could probably use Photoshop to edit the theme to your liking

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.

Ian Dixon, producer of The Media Center Show podcast is embarking on the task of creating a resource for anyone putting together a media center PC based on Windows Vista.

The project, like so many others, is borne of personal frustration. Dixon's current TV tuner works just fine with Windows XP Media Center Edition, but is not supported by Vista.

So here's how it works. He's setting up topics in his user forums. Right now, there's just a TV Card topic. If you've got a TV card that does or does not work with Vista, write about it. Eventually he'll expand to other PVR related hardware components.

Ah, it;s the classic story. Big company buys smaller company and rebrands its product. Then big company decides it doesn't need the smaller company's product and shunts it off to the side, bringing forth something completely different instead.

Okay, maybe not so classic, but it's starting to look like that's Yahoo's plan for PVR software. The search giant purchased Meedio last year, and almost immediately rebranded Meedio's PVR software as Yahoo! Go TV with a new purple interface. There were a some nice features, including easy access to online video content.

Now it looks like Yahoo's decided to go a different route, showing off its My Channel software at CES. Dave Zatz snapped a few photos, and it really doesn't look like it's based on the Go TV platform. It's possible that it's just a new user interface, but it's also possible that Yahoo's written two completely different programs designed to do the same thing. It's been known to happen.

Anyway, seeing as how you can't even get to the Go TV website anymore, it looks like if Yahoo plans to move forward with PC-based PVR software, you can expect to call it My Channel, rather than Go TV.

In Paul Thurrott's latest Windows Weekly podcast, he talks about a pre-CES briefing he had with some Microsoft bigwigs. And apparently they told him that Microsoft will indeed be updating the Xbox 360 by the end of the year, adding a larger hard drive, and some new hardware to take enable IPTV.

At CES, it was starting to look like Microsoft was going to add IPTV to existing Xobox 360 units without the need to upgrade any hardware. But that would essentially leave current users with a PVR that only has a 20GB hard drive. And that's just silly.

The big question is whether the IPTV functions will only work on new-model Xbox 360s, or if Microsoft will offer upgrades for existing users. I'm gonna bet on the latter, as Microsoft has already shown they're willing to sell add-ons, such as the external HD-DVD drive.
[via EngadgetHD]

I'll admit it. When I first heard about Windows Vista's new Sideshow capabilities, I wasn't that impressed. Great, so you can access some PC functions without turning your computer on. That's fine for notebook users who don't want to take the time to boot up their system, but if you've got a PC-based PVR your system's probably on all the time anyway, and you can access it with your remote control almost as quickly as you could press a button on a Sideshow device.

And then I started to see pictures of Sideshow-enabled remote controls. And I'm a convert. Having complete access to the program guide on your remote control? Brilliant. Sure, on-screen program guides have gotten better and better, but if you've ever tried to browse through program descriptions to set up new recordings while your spouse is sitting next to you and trying to watch TV, you'll get the appeal of being able to do everything from the remote control.

CE Pro's got a nice gallery of various Sideshow enabled devices, many of which were on display at CES last week.

Still bummed that Steve Jobs didn't deign to throw a TV tuner and PVR software into the Apple TV? Well, Elgato wants you to know that you can still use their EyeTV products to make your Mac into a PVR.

According to Elgato's FAQ, EyeTV can export recordings in Apple TV-friendly formats like H.264 or MPEG-4, which it already does if you export shows to iTuens for transfer to an iPod. Now, the list of recordings in iTunes will be available to Apple TV. It looks like EyeTV's MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 recordings are not Apple TV-compatible, meaning you'll always need to do some file conversion before watching your videos, although the process can be automated.

EyeTV exports programs at 640 x 480 and 320 x 240 resolutions, but Elgato says it's looking into enabling 720p recordings, since the Apple TV will support HD.

So for the price of an Apple TV and an EyeTV tuner, you've got yourself a Mac-based PVR, as long as you don't need to watch TV live. Granted, you'd still have that PVR without the Apple TV, but now you can easily display your recordings on your television set in the living room, no matter where in the house your computer is.

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.

CES may be over and done with, but every day we still find some bit of CES-related news that we missed. There was just that much cool stuff on display.

Case in point: This Teo HTPC from Fujitsu. It's got a rather industrial looking design, but it'd obviously look better in your living room than a tower PC. It's got a Core 2 Duo processor, 1GB of RAM, a 400GB hard drive, 802.11a/b/g dual TV tuners, and runs Windows Vista. There's a flash card reader, and DVI/HDMI outputs.

No word on pricing yet, but the Teo should be available in Japan within the next few weeks.

Wondering what Microsoft's new Windows Live for TV looks like, but you haven't been able to try it out because you're not running Windows Vista? Here, have a video, courtesy of Ron Trackey, one of the developers:




Basically, he demonstrates the 10 foot interface for Windows Live services, quickly flipping through several contacts, reading a blog entry, looking at photos, and even downloading one.

The interface looks pretty zippy for the most part, although every now and again the transition from one screen to the next looks a little slow. This could either be due to lag in his system, or YouTube buffering.

You can also use the system to quickly find friends and start instant message or voice chats. Overall, it looks pretty useful... if your friends are using Windows Live.