Hacking the TiVo

Anyone that has had a TiVo knows that it's the best thing ever. I don't watch a lot of TV to begin with, but it allows me watch the shows that I want when I want. If you don't have one, go get one. I'm not kidding, they're that good.

I used to have a stand alone TiVo when I had basic cable. Shortly after I purchased it, TiVo released version 4.0 which added the "Home Media Option". It allows you to use your DSL connection to download updates as well as play MP3s or view photos over the network. Folders were added to the Now Playing list, which simplified organization for a large playlist. The only problem with the SA TiVo is that it can only record one channel at a time.

When I bought my house, I opted for DirecTV since they offer a TiVo tuner that can record 2 channels at once as well as play a program from the hard disk. The biggest disappointment with the DirecTivo was the small recording capacity (35 hours). Another let down was that it ran the version 3.1.1 software. This version didn't support networking, HMO or folders and felt like a step backwards.

The capacity issue was a simple fix. Following the Hinsdale HOWTO, I replaced the stock drive with a 160gb drive, bringing up the total capacity to about 140 hours.

Recently TiVo and DirecTV released version 6.2. This adds folders to the Now Playing list, and has networking and HMO code, though it's disabled. The kernel also supports LBA48 which will enable the use of a drive larger than 137gb.

Since I already increased the size of the drive in my TiVo, I can't do it again and keep my recordings, which sucks. Since I now have a 400gb drive left over from my failed XBox experiment, I'd love to put it into the TiVo and wind up with 400 hours of capacity. I don't want to lose my recordings, since we still have season 4 of 24 and season 3 of The Shield to watch.

I knew that it was possible to hack the system in such a way that allowed me to copy from the TiVo to the computer and then back to the TiVo later.

After doing some research on the various forums, I can across Gunnyman's "UnGuide" which served as a good resource for enabling the basic networking, HMO and TivoWebPlus hacks. It also disables the CSO encryption so that new recordings can be played back on the computer or on other TiVos. This was a good start, since it allowed me to setup the network and telnet into the TiVo.

The next step was to enable mfs_ftp, followed by installing the Series 2 binaries and new mfs_stream. Then, because 6.2 lacks some system calls from the SA TiVos, you also have to replace the tzoffset.tcl script. At this point, mfs_ftp will run and I can pull shows off.

Next was to get TyTools running. It's almost simple, just download the package and install the tserver binary on the TiVo. Of course, the included tserver doesn't work. A little searching turned up a this collection of binaries that has a newer tserver that works properly.

(Now several days later ...)

I got the decryption part working and have managed to download several shows and make some DVD files. Yay!

I might put more notes on how I got the kernel Monte working later, maybe not.