I just got one of these yesterday and thought I'd share my experience with it. It's a DVR my cable company will include with digital cable service for a $12/mo fee. I've been thinking about getting a Tivo or ReplayTV, but getting the unit for basically the cost of a Tivo subscription seemed decent to me. It will record HDTV shows, but since I don't have a HDTV, I could not take advantage of this feature.

In short, the good: Integrates with my cable seamlessly, guide search works well, nice set of inputs/outputs on the unit, features match other DVR units (pause tv, record subscriptions, fast ff, etc), records original mpg stream without decoding/re-encoding, firewire output would allow recording on a PC

The bad: ad boxes to the left of the guide waste screen space, cannot upgrade hd space (I'm renting the unit), menus could be designed a bit better, cannot watch one channel/record another (although there is an rumored automatic firmware upgrade that will fix this).

I wish it was hackable, but it's probably for the best that it's not! I don't need yet another project to work on.

Yeah, I'm waiting for Comcrap to pull their fingers out from where the sun doesn't shine and actually make this available. I'm a bit pissed off that the cable operators are doing everything in their power to keep control of this rather than partnering with Tivo/ReplayTV because I'm sure that a multi-tuner box would have otherwise been available months ago. But hey. whats new?

For everyone wondering about this, more information is available from Motorola. The box itself looks fairly decent - both SPDIF and coax AC3 outputs, component, DVI and S-video outputs, 80GB HD, HDTV capable. It remains to be seen (for most of us ) how good the software is.

Who provides the EPG?

TV Guide does. It's ok, not as clean looking as Tivo, but it does the job. Ideally you won't be spending much of your time in the guide anyway, I prefer to look up showtimes and stuff I want to see on the internet first.

Tivo or ReplayTV, but getting the unit for basically the cost of a Tivo subscription seemed decent to me.

But always remember, with the TiVo, as with the empeg, it's not the hardware that makes it extraordinary, it's the software.

To me, the TiVo software seems near perfect in the way it makes certain that I don't ever miss seeing anything I want to see, and at the same time provides me with lots of programming I didn't ask for but that turns out to be interesting. It knows what I like. As Tony would say, it's FM. (The "M" stands for Magic...)

The only feature I can even think of that I wish I had would be the ability to start a program late, and end a program early in the season passes. (I can start them early and end them late, but not the other way around.)

Why would I do that? [rant] Has anybody else noticed the idiotic thing that NBC has started doing with their top rated programs? Instead of scheduling them to start on the hour, they schedule them a minute before. So rather than 9:00pm to 10:00pm, they air 8:59pm to 9:59pm. Oh, this is so clever of them -- they think I'm so stupid that if I start a minute sooner I'll get hooked on their show and not see what else might be starting on the other channels.

What this really means (since I only watch TiVo and not live television) is that their 9 pm program now has to beat out not only the other channels' 9pm programs, but the other channels' 8pm programs as well before I'll watch NBC, because the other channels' 8pm programs don't end until after NBC's 9pm program has started. It pisses me off so much that I now automatically move any NBC hh:59 program to the end of my Season Pass priority list. In the two months since this ludicrous practice began, I have seen perhaps two NBC hh:59 programs. There is more programming that I like on TV than I can possibly find time to watch, so it's NBC's loss, not mine.

The true irony is... NBC is the parent company of TiVo and this new scheduling practice of theirs can only hurt their viewership among TiVo owners. [/rant]

tanstaafl.

The even better part is that they expand their scheduled timeslots to fit the shows, but then they run over anyway.

The only feature I can even think of that I wish I had would be the ability to start a program late, and end a program early in the season passes. (I can start them early and end them late, but not the other way around.)

IIRC, there's a hack to change the available choices for padding shows. Using this hack with negative numbers gives you what you want. Sorry, I don't have a link.

--John

The only feature I can even think of that I wish I had would be the ability to start a program late, and end a program early in the season passes. (I can start them early and end them late, but not the other way around.)

IIRC, there's a hack to change the available choices for padding shows. Using this hack with negative numbers gives you what you want. Sorry, I don't have a link.

There's some more info here.

--John

NBC is the parent company of TiVo and this new scheduling practice of theirs can only hurt their viewership among TiVo owners.

Uhh... what now? TiVo is an independent company; NBC is an investor, but so are 20 other companies (Cox, Comcast, DirecTV, Phillips, Sony, AOL, Disney, CBS, Discovery, Showtime, etc).

Uhh... what now? TiVo is an independent company

Really?

I was under the (no doubt mistaken) impression that they were an NBC subsidiary.

I wonder why when I view the "Now Playing" list NBC is the only network that has their logos next to their programs? Did they make some special deal or something? That's one of the reasons I thought they owned TiVo.

Live and learn...

tanstaafl.

There's some more info here.


Yes, indeed.

I have the correct software version (3.0 something or other) in my TiVo, I have downloaded the script file, and have copied the instructions for installing it:



It's simple to install:

rename to padhack.tcl
Upload the script to your tivo (I used /var/hack)
chmod 777 padhack.tcl
./padhack.tcl
reboot



and just to prove how dumb I really am... I don't understand them.

How do I go about uploading the script to my TiVo?

Where he references /var/hack, I am guessing he means create a directory called /var/hack (if it doesn't already exist) and somehow put the padhack.tcl script there.

chmod 777 probably means set the permissions to make padhack.tcl executable?

If that's the case, ./padhack.tcl would only run if /var/hack were my current active working directory, right? So I would need a cd /var/hack somewhere along the way. (Hey -- it's been more than 10 years since I have done *anything* in a Unix environment, so don't think too badly of me...)

If I try this (assuming I figure out how to load the script into my TiVo) is there a chance I could mess up my TiVo and make it not work any longer? If I did that, is there a way to fix it?

I'm sure you would never suspect this except for my telling you, but I am not very experienced when it comes to TiVo hacking.

tanstaafl.

And, worth noting, they DIDN'T invest in Replay because Replay had a commercial skip feature so they had no hesitation to sue the pants off of SonicBlue while allowing Tivo to stick around (and why Tivo will never do anything to piss them off).

I have to admit, I can't stand watching cable at people's houses because of those damn ads on the left side of the guide! I mean, you're paying for a service AND before forced to give up screen space for ADS? Yikes!

Do you have an option to buy this unit from your cable company? After a few years, 12 a month could add up.

No option to buy.

Yes, the ads annoy me too, but I just ignore them.

I do like the fact that it is an "all in one" option... no IR dongles!

I wonder why when I view the "Now Playing" list NBC is the only network that has their logos next to their programs? Did they make some special deal or something? That's one of the reasons I thought they owned TiVo.

NBC is one of the few networks that show that, but not the only; Discovery is the only other one I can remember off hand, but there's others. It's probably just people that advertise with them.

and just to prove how dumb I really am... I don't understand them.

Not really--they weren't exactly user-friendly instructions. In particular, he's assuming that you have already arranged to get shell access on your TiVo. Which is, alas, not a trivial task. See, e.g., www.tivofaq.com/hack/faq.html FAQ #4.6 for more info.

How do I go about uploading the script to my TiVo?

If you're using something like HyperTerm to access the TiVo, you could just "cat > padhack.tcl" and then send the file.

Where he references /var/hack, I am guessing he means create a directory called /var/hack (if it doesn't already exist) and somehow put the padhack.tcl script there.

Yes, though it doesn't actually make any difference where you put it.

chmod 777 probably means set the permissions to make padhack.tcl executable?

Yes.

If that's the case, ./padhack.tcl would only run if /var/hack were my current active working directory, right? So I would need a cd /var/hack somewhere along the way.

Yes.

If I try this (assuming I figure out how to load the script into my TiVo) is there a chance I could mess up my TiVo and make it not work any longer?

Yes.

If I did that, is there a way to fix it?

Restore your backup. You did make a backup didn't you?

Truth is, it's probably not a good first-time TiVo hack. The instructions are vague and assume some prior hacking as well as a bit of *nix familiarity.

--John

Truth is, it's probably not a good first-time TiVo hack

No kidding!

After looking at that FAQ, I think I'll just keep on boycotting the NBC hh:59 files.

I thought it would be something simple like connecting a serial cable to the TiVo (even though there are no serial port connections on it that I can find!) but instead, apparently I am supposed to take the damn thing apart, remove the hard drive, take my computer apart, install the TiVo hard drive in my computer, then I guess install and learn how to use a Linux operating system in my computer, try and figure out which partition is the master and which is the backup and then figure out how to edit something or other (vi, anyone?) and no way in hell am I going to try that!

Thanks, but no thanks!

tanstaafl.