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But on the plus side: TiVoToGo Hacks Already Abound

It turns out that, along with TiVoToGo, another thing added by the upgrade to version 7.1 of the operating system is a built-in webserver. From the looks of things, the functionality it offers is limited to browsing the Now Playing list (screenshot) and downloading recordings off the box (which are still encrypted with the TiVo's media access key); there's also an XML feed of the Now Playing information, and someone's already written a tool to parse it with PHP. (Of course, given that online, remote scheduling can be done via Tivo Central Online, that's a feature that's not really needed onboard the box itself.)  I'm sure that there are other goodies hidden in there, just waiting for someone with command-line access to their TiVo to discover them.

Another positive development is that the TiVo Community is already going over the video/DVD format with a fine-toothed comb even though the update is only a couple weeks old. While Sonic did release the DVD burning program, it seems folks figured out one way of converting the files to a standard DVD format and burning with anything. This post explains how the video codec interacts with Windows, and how any DirecShow aware editor may be able to access the video files.

What's cool about both the webserver and file conversion news is that I'm happy to see TiVo adopting features and functionality seen in the "hacker underground" tools like TiVoWebPlus, which offer quite a number of features that I've long wished TiVo would adopt in their OS.

Of course, there is some debate on the boards over what is and isn't legal, and what folks should and shouldn't be sharing (PVRblog authors are debating the same issues, which is unfortunate). The TiVo Community site has always seemed to support the TiVo corporation and banned talk of video extraction or service theft. I suspect if this chatter becomes a problem, they'll make these topics off-limits as well.

It must be difficult for TiVo, on the one hand they need to keep pleasing the content companies and I wouldn't be surprised if eventually they end this kind of discussion or any block simple extraction tools that come out of it. But on the other hand you have to consider the same folks figuring out ways to get unencumbered video out of their devices are also their biggest fans and customers. Someone in a thread mentioned how their DVD burning TiVo won't be getting the update for a few months (there was a major bug revealed in beta testing that only applied to a certain configuration of TiVo) so they were going out to buy a new standalone TiVo, just to play with these new features. Signature lines at the TiVo Community often mention owning 2 or 3 TiVos. These aren't just customers, they're fanatics, and to close off their discussion would be unfortunate.

Compared to other major feature upgrades to TiVo, the amount of enthusiasm for TTG is high, and I suspect after another couple weeks of all these people poking and prodding their devices, we'll see some simple one-click ways to get video off your TiVo, convert to MPEG, and edit out commercials.

update: looks like someone produced a tool that does the conversion in five minutes.

by Jason January 20, 2005 in TiVo

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