Are there any TiVo users among us? I haven't purchased a TiVo yet, but I have an idea and wonder whether or not it has been implemented yet.

Since both the empeg and the TiVo live on the LAN, is it possible to control the empeg through the TiVo? Or at least to be able to control the empeg using the empeg remote while viewing the empeg through VNC on the TiVo (i.e. on the TV screen). Any thoughts?

- Errol

I'm a TiVo user, ask away.

I have 3 SA TiVo's all have been upgraded with larger hard drives w/TurboNet and TiVoWeb installed.

Here are the two good TiVo forums.
No talking about Video Extraction Here http://www.tivocommunity.com/
This forum is all about the Video Extraction http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/

Actually, i already did ask. Do you have a response to the questions I already posed?

Neither of those are currently possible.. you could theoretically get a VNC client running on the TiVo, but processing power on Series 1s is severely limited.

Perhaps looking in the 'Off Topic' forum would be enlightening.

Since hijack has an httpd daemon built in, if you can get a web browser onto the Tivo, you're all set.

Thatwas odd, I only saw half your post on my work computer.

I know some people have hacked the TiVo to control Satellite (big dishes) so setting it up to control the TiVo could be done. I think you could get a display of the Empeg on the TiVo but this would require some type of video input from the Empeg to the TiVo. It would need to have a pc next to the TiVo that was VNCed to the Empeg and a Video card that has S/Video or RCA outs and hook that up to the TiVo.

In reply to:

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think you could get a display of the Empeg on the TiVo but this would require some type of video input from the Empeg to the TiVo. It would need to have a pc next to the TiVo that was VNCed to the Empeg and a Video card that has S/Video or RCA outs and hook that up to the TiVo.

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You wouldn't need to go that far.

The Tivo has very good video graphic "overlay" capabilities so you could overlay any graphic image of the Empegs display on top of the current video image.

This would require some programming - in either C or TCL on the Tivo itself.

But you could write a small TCL "script" that ran in background, connected to your Empeg via Ethernet and requested the Empegs screen via http - which is what charcoalgray99's "addon" for the Empeg does now.

Then you could either:

Leave the image unscaled, in the corner of your Screen on your Tivo,
or you could then scale it up in size, so that a larger (and more "chunky" looking) image was shown.

This image could either be overlayed on the "live" TV picture (assuming you're watching something on TV), or it could bring up a "solid background" (e.g. black)behind itself, a bit like the TiVo "blue screen" whenever the TV signal is not available to the Tivo.

To see examples of whats possible look around the usual places for the Caller Id on your Tivo software that exists - there are several flavours of this software that I've seen, all do "on-screen/overlay" type imaging.

All the CallerID, stock prices, AIM clients, etc apps I know of are using the text-only overlay app for display.. I don't think anybody has a graphical overlay system in use (the source of the text one would be a good place to start).

The other problem is that afair the TiVo only supports one overlay at a time, so if it has to bring up the time bar or channel banner your overlay gets wiped out.

For key input you can pretty easily grab 4 or 7 keys from the TiVo and send HTTP requests to Hijack.

VNC doesn't require a lot of processing power.
I can get a VNC viewer for my mobile phone (Nokia 3410 with java2me)

Marius (Escort Cab + Mark II)

Yeah, but VNC for devices like my Treo have no security.