Excellent Hacks to the ReplayTV 4000 183
Hit the link below to find links to assorted hacks done to the extremely
cool ReplayTV 4000 PVR. Thanks to jptsetme for submitting links to hacks
like hard drive upgrades, software to download mpegs, edit the guide,
and systems under development to automate create of VCDs and DVDs
from Replay's. It's exciting seeing so much headway being made
so fast, and evidence that this is one heck of a machine.
"The Replay hackers at AVS forum have done an amazing job on the new ReplayTV 4000's. You can now do some very cool things with this new PVR.You can increase recording space (by either replacing the existing drive, or adding an additional one.) This has, of course, been done with Tivos and older Replays in the past. Not only has this hack been adapted for the Replay4000 model (including custom sized photo partitions and preserving existing shows), but Replay has also recently released new software that removes the previous 137G per drive limitation, so you can now turn any ReplayTV4000 into a 320G model with a couple of 160G drives and a PC (Linux, Win2k, XP, or with a Linux boot disk on an x86 box with a good enough BIOS to recognize the drive size.)
http://rtvpatch.sourceforge.net/
But, you might decide you don't need to open the box at all, since you can now offload your shows to your PC and then serve them back to the ReplayTV4000 with your PC masquerading as another ReplayTV4000 on your local network, giving you nearly limitless storage capacity. [Note: this does not use the internet sharing feature, which is so slow over typical broadband as to be practically unusable. This is streaming the show in realtime from your PC back to your Replay4000, using the same mechanism two Replays use to stream shows back and forth over your local network.]
ReplayPC (C/C++, Windows, Linux, Mac. A simple text mode utility for extracting mpg files from ReplayTV4000 PVRs via TCP/IP)
http://replaypc.sourceforge.net/
Replayer (Pure Java. Java GUI utility allows you to extract mpg files from your ReplayTV 4000 to your PC)
http://www.forbesfield.com/replayer.html
Replay Server (built on PHP for Apache. Allows you to serve downloaded shows to a ReplayTV (on your LAN only) from your PC as if your PC was a ReplayTV)
http://206.124.140.12/rtv/
SwapDV (J++, windoze only. Allows you to download shows from your ReplayTV 4000, serve downloaded shows as if your box was a ReplayTV 4000, and edit the "guide" provided by your PC. i.e. capabilities of both Replayer and Replay Server, but only for Windows.)
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&a mp;threadid=116035
A number of users are also working on burning shows to VCD, SVCD, XSVCD and DVD, with moderate success.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&a mp;threadid=115338
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&a mp;threadid=106437
Lastly, there has also been a hack developed to remove macrovision from the old Panasonic Showstoppers (effectively transforming them into ReplayTV3xxx machines.)
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&a mp;threadid=118170."
Why use a PVR? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Why use a PVR? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:Why use a PVR? (Score:2, Offtopic)
I have Watson for OS X (an awesome, awsome program) that, among other things, does just that. Enter your Zip code and cable system and Watson will spit out nicely formatted TV channel guides.
If the Watson guys can do it I assume it shouldn't be all that hard to parse it into a format you could use in conjunction with a PC based PVR.
Re:Why use a PVR? (Score:2)
It's more than just that. I have a TiVo and an All-In-Wonder Radeon. Both will download program information, but only the TiVo will scan the listings for stuff that it thinks you'll like and then record it. The software for the AIW Radeon lets you pick stuff to record from the listing, but that's as far as it goes. (Gemstar also has had trouble keeping the server running that provides the listings...with the download speeds I've gotten sometimes, you'd think they were using a VIC-20 and an acoustic coupler. AFAIK, TiVo has never had these problems.)
Re:Why use a PVR? (Score:1)
This is really simple to emulate. Every movie has like 100 topics. Each movie falls under certain topics with certain weights. From there, its a simple neural net.
The hard part? The person that has to put the "topic wieghts" on each movie + show.
Re:Why use a PVR? (Score:2)
Re:Why use a PVR? (Score:1)
Re:Why use a PVR? (Score:2)
only the TiVo will scan the listings for stuff that it thinks you'll like and then record it
I don't know, that's why the tv guide is in the toilet. What I'm waiting for is something that will truly replace my vhs vcr. I want to be able to record shows and then put the medium somewhere.
The hacks to hook the pvr to my pc make the pvr a much more attractive buy. All I'd have to do is run some cabling to the computer when I wanted to store something permanently. But from the looks of the links, it's not quite there yet. Especially considering my vcr is working just fine. Now if I were to need to replace my vcr, it would be a different situation. The times I actually tape and archive stuff is rare. With cable, everything is always on again sometime, except for shows I know are doomed before they even air, viz. The Tick, Lonegunmen.
Re:Why use a PVR? (Score:2)
I added TiVoNET, so I hooked up the Cat 5 run that I had been using previously with a computer under the TV. That puts it on my LAN 24/7. It grabs guide data through the cable-modem connection, and I can use netcat and ExtractStream to (usually) get a TV show onto one of my computers for editing and reencoding.
It is a bit rough around the edges, but it usually works as long as you're not afraid of shell prompts and batch files (and if you're here, you probably aren't). There are some shows that I'd like to keep around (I'm currently archiving Enterprise), and SVCDs take up much less space than tapes. Editing and reencoding is the most time-consuming part, but that's nothing that faster hardware won't cure. (Somewhere, an Asus A7M266-D [asus.com] is calling to me...:-) )
Re:Why use a PVR? (Score:2)
Whoa, could you tell me more? You are just about to sell me a TiVo.
What quality does the TiVo capture at? Can it capture full 640x480 TV pictures? (Sometimes called 720x480, if you are talking about entire scan lines and not just the square-pixels viewable part.)
I have no problem with paying money to TiVo for their box. I have no problem paying monthly for TV listings. I have a problem with doing the above and then not having any way to burn my own DVDs; I know you can hook a VCR up to a TiVo but I'm not interested. I have been saying for years that I would buy a TiVo when I can put one on my home network and grab video for DVD burning. Maybe that day has come?
steveha
Re:Why use a PVR? (Score:2)
Acutally, I got email today from someone who saw my page on ripping TiVo video [dyndns.org] that suggests newer, easier-to-use software than what I described (plus I've been using different methods for my own rips lately)...but the page will give you some idea of what's involved and what you need.
Lately, I've been using ExtractStream and netcat to dump the audio and video streams to my Win2K box, as it's the one with the fastest processor and most storage. The webpage mentions using netmplex to combine the audio and video streams into an MPEG-2 program stream; this isn't necessary for my purposes and isn't even desirable as separate programs are needed to decode audio and video.
Best quality is 2/3 D1 (480x480) at 5.8 Mbps CBR MPEG-2 for video and 32 kHz stereo at 192 kbps MPEG-1 Layer 2 for audio. Lower-bitrate modes are available, but you don't really want to use them if you're interested in editing & archiving video. Note that the resolution is the same as SVCD, though you'd need to reduce the video bitrate and adjust the audio sample rate to burn an SVCD. To burn a VCD or DVD, some additional conversions would be necessary.
Re:Why use a PVR? (Score:1)
BUT, commercial PVRs are small, quiet, and look nice in your entertainment center dealy. this can be done also, with some ingenuity.
and anyway, a commercial product that is this cool and hardware heavy is begging to be hacked simply because WE CAN.
major props to the communitay!
Re:Why use a PVR? (Score:1)
Re:Why use a PVR? (Score:2)
Somehow I think the hardware cost of a do-it-yourself box will be more than repaid by the savings in subscriptions.
Oh, and can your Replay/TiVo/whatever play games, or record/play/serve-to-the-household-network CDs? DVDs? MP3s? A homegrown box can do whatever you want it to, not whatever they want it to.
Re:Why use a PVR? (Score:2, Interesting)
And of course you can select wich shows to record from a TV Guide.
It let's you encode in vcd compatible format.. so burning to cd is ez.
It even has a RF Remote control
No need for a PVR with this
Re:Why use a PVR? - look at SnapStream PVS (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Why use a PVR? - look at SnapStream PVS (Score:1)
It is interesting, to be sure, however. Something to consider...
Re:Why use a PVR? - look at SnapStream PVS (Score:2)
Download the free version and try it out.
-- iCEBaLM
Re:Why use a PVR? - look at SnapStream PVS (Score:3, Insightful)
ATI All-In-Wonder card (Score:2)
We are trying to do this, wanna help? (Score:5, Interesting)
http://davedina.apestaart.org [apestaart.org]
With a couple of friends we are trying to make a linux based home entertainment system. Eventually we want te be able to:
- play mp3's and serve them on our lan. (works)
- have a nifty audio database with webinterface (almost works)
- serve a webcam (works)
- play dvd's (works)
- rip dvd's (kinda works)
- play divx-cd's (works)
- watch tv (works) and decode pay-tv
- record from tv (works, but no automated TV-guide)
- serve recorded DVD's and TV-shows on lan (works)
- burn recorded stuff onto cd's
- play games (works)
- create a nice interface so we can control it with a normal and simpel remote.
We can still use some help. If you're interested go to our site, read the faq and download what we already have.
Re:We are trying to do this, wanna help? (Score:3, Informative)
record from tv (works, but no automated TV-guide)
I know there is a perl script ruuning around that downloads TV listings from the TV guide website. Perhaps you could write another script which, once the listing is downloaded, it would grep for the shows you wanted, then setup an at job to record at the proper time. If you wanted to, I imagine it would not be too difficult to slap a Tk front end on it to make it easy to use.
Re:We are trying to do this, wanna help? (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.media-box.org is pretty interesting project. If you are using windows.
At this point it's more stable, usable then our project.
ReplayTV Hardware license issues (Score:2)
-CTH
Re:I use a PVR because it's economical... (Score:2)
Won't work without Direct TV. Or were you able to buy a lifetime subscription to DirectTV for only $250? If so, please tell the rest of us how to get the same deal
Fantastic (Score:2)
Re:Fantastic (Score:1)
Now, I'm not too sure what compression keeps HDTV quality. Anyone out there with that number? That could give an estimate of hours you could record...assuming the I/O system could handle the speed.
Re:Fantastic (Score:5, Informative)
Uncompressed NTSC video (720x480) would use about 237mbit/second (720x480x24x29.97 (drop frame)), but we don't record that uncompressed. Instead we compress it before we transmit or store it digitally and in the case of DSS/Tivo combo boxes the units store the compressed stream exactly as it is received. IIRC most HDTV programs are broadcast using a 18Mbit/sec stream. This isn't exactly tiny but in a day of 160GB harddrives its manageable. In fact DV uses a M-JPEG like codec that consumes about 25Mbit/sec for standard NTSC video and current consumer PC technologies are up to the task of handling it. Storing an exact copy of a HDTV broadcast is quite acheivable given current consumer level equipment.
So the problem is political rather than technological. Media companies view the move to HDTV and digital video in general as their chance to correct the "mistakes" they made with previous copiable formats. These companies do not want their content to fall under the previous fair use controls and they are draging their feet while they frantically search for a way to control every aspect of their content even if it impinges on the consumers fair use ability. This is evident in the vast array of manuevers going on behind the scenes to get DRM in place before the consumer HDTV explosion happens.
Late in the game, hardware manufacturers jumped to using encrypted streams over IEEE1394 (Firewire/i.Link) to the display device. So if you purchased a HDTV decoder 1-2 years ago there is the possibility/probability you may not be able to use whatever the standard format of choice for recording content is without buying a new decoder or additional hardware.
The simple fact is that the powerhouses behind the scenes don't want us timeshifting their prescious HDTV content until they can control every aspect of how we use it.
Re:Fantastic (Score:1)
It's probably at least a year away.
Re:Fantastic (Score:1)
On Linux, it is possible to capture OTA DTV/HDTV using just a WinTV-D. Heroine's libmpeg3 can parse and decode MPEG-2 transport streams, but good luck getting ATSC signals out of that arrangement. However, Teralogic is the company behind the MPEG-2 coder chip used in the above 3 products--their Janus platform. They have a different, but similar chipset called Cougar designed for set-tops that they have ported to Linux and call the Cougar-L platform. Perhaps someday we will see support for Janus on Linux.
Finally, the non-PC way to do it is to use a standard settop receiver like the RCA DTC-100, a modification from http://www.169time.com/ that adds firewire ports, and a D-VHS deck. Now, for Linux, I am aware of some Linu1394 developers that are exploring the creation of a D-VHS driver. The concern here is that JVC appears to hold a patent on this format.
AccessDTV HDTV PVR (Score:2)
It's lousy for analog TV, won't record analog at all and I never did get audio working for analog, but it's the card to get for digital TV.
Can you imagine.... (Score:3, Funny)
Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of MPAA Nazis descending upon this?
Re:Can you imagine.... (Score:2)
Re:Can you imagine.... (Score:3, Funny)
Phone Home (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Phone Home (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Phone Home (Score:3, Insightful)
Who buys the PVR's? Geeks and early adopters ie the people with money or desire to get the coolest gadgets. But then the average household is left out of ratings system. So instead of Americas Funniest Home Videos taking the ratings Cowboy Bebop takes the ratings. (I know they don't run opposite each other it's just an example of the two different kinds of viewers.) Eithor way the outcome is skewed.
When the average viewer can afford a PVR or has no choice but get one cause the video cassette makers went the way of the Vinyl Recordplayer, then maybe Replay TV or Tivo could be a better Neilson Box.
Until then TV is pretty much going to suck 90% no matter what they put on it. The scam is that the ratings system today only pleases those who volunteer to be watched. And those sheep enjoy 'Touched by an Angel'
Re:Phone Home (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Phone Home (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Phone Home (Score:2)
ReplayTV has no monthly fee.
They claim that the data they collect is anonymous too.
Re:Phone Home (Score:2)
If they got this sort of information just from people who had PVR's or who volunteered you would have a statistical problem. It is difficult to draw generalizations from self-selecting samples. The people making TV shows don't care what you watch, they care what the majority of your demographic watches. If you have fringe tastes no one is interested and you get screwed. It isn't an accident, it's by design.
Networktastic! (Score:1, Offtopic)
Wow, imagine a ReplayTV cluster of, er... Beowulf nodes...
Sorry, I appear to have wandered into the wrong joke.
Why not simply use your PC? (Score:3, Interesting)
There are several products out there which allow you to use your PC as a TVR and record directly to VCD. Just one example: Hauppauge WinTV-PVR [hauppauge.com] (no affiliation, yadda, yadda).
Anyone tried this product or others like it? Experiences: Good, bad, indifferent?
Re:Why not simply use your PC? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Why not simply use your PC? (Score:1)
PVR's are awesome, every single person who ever tried them loved them to the death... But you need to try it in order to understand it
Re:Why not simply use your PC? (Score:5, Funny)
Go and download Nupple-video [tuwien.ac.at] and follow his tips on there to heppily converth the Nupplevideo output to mpeg2 files then buy yourself a nice Hollywood+ mpeg playback card. Now add crontab, mplayer, and spice it with the at daemon to make it easier, bake at 350 with your favorite Linux distro (I choose Slackware 8.0 for it's low fat high quality ingredients) and you have a basic PVR that will gladly play it's video onto your Television without any silly content viewing protection, statistic collection and selling, or government spyware... that eye on the Tivo... I know it's watching me!
it's nothing like a tivo, no FF rewind, pause, or all theo other fluff, but you can make a nice web control panel , point, click, watch Invader Zim!
no it's not easy, no it wont be pretty, no it's not DVD quality with 6.1 surround.. but who cares. it's free, open, and cooler than a Tivo.
Re:Why not simply use your PC? (Score:2)
I use my setup soley as a recorder, and don't playback on the device itself.
A) record to a drive that is NFS exported, and use a video player that you can trick into playing incompleete files on disk. Try this with gtv aviplay plaympeg or the other simple players, and you'll see as much video as was recorded when you started the player process, but no more. I havn't played with this in awhile since B worked off the bat.
B) start recording to an mpeg file on the tv server. On the client: mkfifo file.mpg;wget --quiet --output-document=file.mpg ftp://name.of.server/name.of.mpg & plaympeg file.mpg
Choice B is what I'm currently using since how I'm trying A isn't working out... Also B seems to be less cpu intensive on the poor little tv server. This leaves a few things lacking like watching tv while I'm not recording it, and channel switching involves scripts I was too lazy to make into cgis...
dumpster dived cyrix: $0.00
ati aiw 128: $70.00 (two years old)
salvaged nic: $0.00
salvaged simms: $0.00
8 gig "BigFoot" HD: $65.00 (3-4 years old)
considering I only paid for two peices, and those many years ago, I'd say this is a FAR cheaper PVR and more fun
maybe I should get it a k6 300 though...
Re:Why not simply use your PC? (Score:2)
download the Linux Ir remote software package and bind keys to make mplayer do it's functions.
The parent post was marked funny.. but it's real, works great. and I use it instead of the tivo I am currently hacking to allow non tivo company guide updates.
it is quite nice to have a completely open PVR platform to work from.
Re:Why not simply use your PC? (Score:1)
Re:Why not simply use your PC? (Score:2)
Start by reading this page, its
a general link page on v4l, that lists the best set of resources on the subject.
http://www.exploits.org/v4l/
And this page about the tv wonder itself (scroll to the bottom to see which linux drivers it uses)
http://lhd.zdnet.com/db/dispproduct.php3?DISP?9
You will see the tv wonder series uses the bttv chipset.
Then read these page, which is the home of the DRIVERS for the card you have. Guess what, configure your kernel right, and the'll be in there already!
http://bttv-v4l2.sourceforge.net/
http://bytesex.org/bttv/
also you might wanna read this if you still have problems
http://gatos.sourceforge.net/livid-gatos/2001-A
Follow it all up by reading the xawtv homepage.
http://bytesex.org/xawtv/
Re:Why not simply use your PC? (Score:1)
1) Picture quality is exceptional. My DirecTiVo pulls the MPEG2 steream directly off the satellite and records it to the HD. No decompress/recompress cycle is necessary. The picture quality is exactly the same as watching the satellite signal directly. Plus, I can record 2 channels at once while waching a third program. Try that with your PC.
2) TiVo has ease-of-use that is orders of magnitude simpler than using a PC-based solution. My non computer educated friends, people who can't even use a simple text editor, people who don't know what a network is -- those people can sit down and use my TiVo, not only to watch stuff it's already recorded, but to pick new things too. It's very easy.
3) A PC in my living room isn't going to happen. That's pretty much the way 95% of people feel as well.
4) By the time you buy the TiVo and the lifetime subscription, you've spent $350-ish U.S. dollars. How much will a decent PC with TV capture card cost? More than that. You're paying for the monthly satellite or cable feed either way.
No contest. I'll take my TiVo or equivalent over the PC-based solutions.
Because it's cheaper and better (Score:2)
If you're thinking of using the PC you already have, consider what performance will be like when it's recording. And it will be recording 24/7 if it's to have any resemblance to the usefulness of a PVR.
My Wishlist Hack - Canada (Score:5, Interesting)
In all seriousness, this is the machine (more so than the TIVO) that seems to be the perfect machine to "fake" guide support on. Unlike the TIVO which dials up and grabs guides from TIVO, the ReplayTV can use your broadband connection. If someone could figure out the host (ideally the hostname) that it connects to, we could trick it into going to a substitute host, grabbing the listing there.
Yeah, I'm simplifying it slightly. For one, who knows what format the data is in. And whether it uses some sort of encryption. However, unlike TIVO, ReplayTV doesn't sell subscriptions, so they'd have no financial interest in protecting the guide format.
(By the way, if anyone can confirm this, my theory about the lack of TIVO and ReplayTV support in Canada is that it's due to the rather strict Canadian privacy laws, and rules around Canadian Content.)
Re:My Wishlist Hack - Canada (Score:3, Informative)
Does that help?
Re:My Wishlist Hack - Canada (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My Wishlist Hack - Canada (Score:1)
-- Steve.
Re:My Wishlist Hack - Canada (Score:1, Flamebait)
It's also why when you're watching cable, occasionally NBC turns into CTV.. It's the cable company forcing (pirating) US stations into being compliant with CanCon.
Fscking Nazi bastards.
Cheers,
Backov
Re:My Wishlist Hack - Canada (Score:1)
Re:My Wishlist Hack - Canada (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:My Wishlist Hack - Canada (Score:3, Informative)
See http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&
Why no Canadia (Score:2)
Bell Express Vu satellite TV service already works just fine though I expect they're just piping through the listings they've already got. Of course that's also only a listing of just what they offer and not trying to track what the various broadcast markets have along with the numerous cable services and their numerous tiers & packages.
Eventually the Canadian market will get served. All of the suppliers have stated this; it's just that they're focusing on filling out their large US markets along with the very-experienced-with-paying-for-TV UK. Doubtless when they can put some capitol into further expansion, get some more experience operating outside of their native land, become familiar with multilingual services, then they'll make their respective grabs for the Canadian market.
By the way apparently serving these numerous local listings is not a trivial problem. Bell's own Sympatico ISP/Portal dropped the listings they offered when their supplier TVGrid.Com went bust, hasn't replaced them yet. I believe TV Guide Canada still offers listings but that's about it. Anyone know who serves the newspapers for their guides?
As to the US I know TiVo is supplied by Tribune but TiVo has also stated that they've built their system so they can change providers based on services and costs, there's no lock-in. This is promising as should a Canadian provider negotiate a contract with TiVo or Replay or any other PVR system and these businesses make the dual-language jump then things should go quickly.
Re:My Wishlist Hack - Canada (Score:2)
The Replay units are nice, but... (Score:5, Informative)
freebsd guy
Re:The Replay units are nice, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is innaccurate. In fact, if you follow the instructions above, you are stealing TiVo service. TiVo requires a subscription, either 9.95/monthly or 249/product lifetime. The sole purpose of 2.5xtreme (this has been debated, but no one is going to change my mine) is to facilitate the theft of TiVo service and of DirecTV.
What's your point? (Score:1)
2.5xtreme is there to unlock the crippleware called Tivo. If you bothered to read its documentation, you would find that all it does is remove the silly "can't record until you pay" restriction built into the Tivo. Again - letting you take full advantage of the hardware you spent your hard-earned parents' money on.
2.5xtreme has nothing to do with stealing DirecTV service. Typically stealing DTV service requires you to buy several hundred dollars of equipment and hook up a dedicated computer to fake an access card. It's hardly cost-effective and it isn't possible to steal a single channel with the xtreme software.
freebsd guy
Re:What's your point? (Score:2)
(for the record i'm currently a DTV and TIVO customer and pay for all my service, even though the $10/month i pay tivo is bullshit. Like the points given above, i'm paying $10/month just to keep the box functioning)
Re:What's your point? (Score:3, Informative)
TiVo takes the guide data and indexes it into a format that allows for you to find and record shows quickly and easily. It allows you to tell TiVo to record 24 on Fox every week, and it does it. The guide data comes from DirecTV, but the massive sorting and indexing is done by TiVo. This is what you pay for. To use TiVo, you are required to have a subcription, bar none. If you are using the service without paying for it, you are stealing.
It is true that xtreme does not, in and of itself, steal DirecTV. However, if someone where trying to steal DirecTV on a DirecTiVo, it is a component, since it allows the daily calls to be disabled.
Re:What's your point? (Score:2)
Tivo the machine vs Tivo the company (Score:2)
You pay that because it's the only revenue model they could make work. And that's OK, but let's not kid ourselves about what we get for our money.
Re:What's your point? (Score:2)
That's an extreme case. I should have worded my first post differently. 2.5xtreme is used almost exclusively to steal service. I don't think it should be banned, but there's no denying it has very few uses that are legitimate.
Re:What's your point? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:What's your point? (Score:2)
That's all I plan to use it for. I've already paid the lifetime subscription fee for my DTivo (so I couldn't use it to steal TiVo service even if I wanted to) and I'm happy to pay DirecTV every month for the channels I receive. I have no interest whatsoever in extracting shows to give or sell to other people. I just want to stop accumulating videotapes and start accumulating DVD-Rs instead.
Re:What's your point? (Score:2)
Aren't you leaving out the fact that you got your box cheaper than it costs to manufacture?
What's that got to do with anything? I didn't force them to do it, so it's just a good opportunity for me.
Re:The Replay units are nice, but... (Score:2)
every site that had that 170meg ISO is now gone, kaput, erased by Tivo.
and there's the question to if it ever really worked. so few had it that there isn't a good consensus that it ever really worked.
Re:The Replay units are nice, but... (Score:1)
I'm intrigued as to how it does this. What signals in the US have EPG information encoded in them? What formats? How does this work with terrestrial analog signals?
With Digital Video Broadcast (DVB), the Euro and Rest of Non-N.American world this information is encoded as System Information (SI).
So if you only wanted to watch digital satellite there is a route for Tivo to acquire the schedule.
I guess the same would be true with DirecTV?
However aren't Tivo selling a subscription service for the guide?
Freedom in where you acquire your EPG information is from me where the issue is with these PVRs. I want to be able to select a particular guide that has a POV that I like. Imagine a cross between a EPG and a weblog.
Re:The Replay units are nice, but... (Score:1, Informative)
APG provides the guide data to all DirecTV boxes, not just TiVo. UltimateTV is doing the same thing. This is one of the requirements for making a DirecTV box.
As for the TiVo service, guide data is just one of the pieces. Software updates and box cost are also included. Remember, they are selling the boxes below cost. You could always buy lifetime and be done with it.
Hope this helps
Offtopic damnit (Score:2)
Re:The Replay units are nice, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's see, you're advocating that people by a Tivo (which makes profit from the subscription, not the sale of the box) and then install a hack that lets them use it w/o subbing? I don't think it's Replay that's going to go bankrupt.
The Tivo has a 30 second commercial skip feature too
That's not "commercial skip", that's instant 30-second fast-forward. The 4000 skips commercials without the user having to press anything - and for me it works bang-on 19 out of 20 times.
And you forgot to mention those neat extract-and-stream hacks (getting back to the original subject). If you want to extract video from a Tivo you have to pull the hard drive and mount it on a Linux machine.
Re:The Replay units are nice, but... (Score:4, Informative)
Wrong. There is a backdoor code (given by the original poster) that enables 30-second skip. I've tried it; it works. I found high-speed scanning at medium speed works better for me, though...there's no correction for overshoot with 30-second skip.
Where the original poster was wrong was in saying that TiVo gets its guide info over-the-air. Since there's no TV station that provides this service, that's impossible. TiVo phones home for its guide info, just as ReplayTV presumably does.
Re:The Replay units are nice, but... (Score:2)
Re:The Replay units are nice, but... (Score:2)
Oh, and he was right about DirecTivo+2.5xtreme getting guide data off the air. Normal DirecTivo's don't (I don't think) but 2.5xtreme has a hack to make it possible. Still, things like showcases, etc. won't work. Since I dont have a DirecTivo, I can't say for sure.
~GoRK
exciting to see Taco use apostrophe correctly (Score:2, Funny)
Warning: Explicit Depiction of Cmdr Taco's Burrito (Score:1, Funny)
Exclusive footage [jokeemail.com] of how Cmdr Taco will create these "little burritos".
Re:Warning: Explicit Depiction of Cmdr Taco's Burr (Score:1)
The irony... (Score:2)
Ah, then there is sharing of the shows (URL). (Score:5, Informative)
Lest us not forget the site that lets all of us ReplayTV 4000 users find new 'friends' to share shows with. With over 100 members and 1200 shows, its not a bad place to start to find that lost episode of The Tick.
Planet Replay [planetreplay.com]
Re:Ah, then there is sharing of the shows (URL). (Score:1)
Of course if you had a TiVo you wouldn't have missed that episode of The Tick to begin with. >;)
Internet Sharing (Score:4, Interesting)
Now:
Me: Dude, I missed Futurama last night! Can you capture it, encode it, and then put it on your server so I can grab it?
Friend: "I guess..."
The Future:
Me: "Dude, I missed Futurama last night!"
Friend: "No problem... " hits a couple of buttons.. "You'll have it in an hour."
Re:Internet Sharing (Score:2, Funny)
The Future:
Me: "Dude, I missed Futurama last night!"
Friend: "You're on drugs. Futurama was cancled remember!"
Re:Internet Sharing (Score:3, Informative)
Lando [lando.co.uk] already did that for you.
One more piece of hardware for Rob to break? (Score:3, Funny)
don't forget about what ReplayTV did .. (Score:2, Informative)
My biggest gripe with my 3030 is that it doesn't keep track of shows its already recorded. If you setup a horror movie theme channel it will record the same damn movies over and over unless they are already recorded and on the harddrive. I mean how many freaking times does the thing need to record 'Boltneck'
Hacking non-linux based devices (Score:1, Flamebait)
But how good is it? (Score:1)
One question, what's the quality like on these thingsa? Is the picture the same? Worse? Sound?
DishNetwork PVR hack? (Score:1)
Obtaining a channel guide (Score:2)
Some open-source TV schedule acquisition software would thus be useful.
Can I load my own program schedule into it? (Score:2)
It seems like with these units, you don't actually have to pay a subscription fee, so I would much rather have this than a Tivo (which I would be happy to subscribe to if they sold service to Canadians).
But I am still left without a program guide, since they don't have local lineups for Canada. Is there some way for me to copy my own program schedule to the unit? That way, I could write scripts to get schedule info from tvguide.ca and update the PVR with them.
Re:Been Done? (Score:1)
ReplayTV is a really nice machine and they dont relie on selling data to networks/pepsi/bigcorp to make a profit so makeing the best machine possible is what drives them.
(like it should be and not gathering stats on super bowls adverts and showing me more britney)
if you want a PVR I would advise buy a replay and not a sucky TiVo
(hey we can all have opinions)
regards
john jones
Re:whats a (Score:2)
Re:Homemade PVR (Score:3, Informative)
we're trying to do this
although far from finished you can download what we already have at:
http://davedina.apestaart.org [apestaart.org]