1. 30 Second Skip

ReplayTV offered the consumer friendly Commercial Advance feature, which probably contributed to their court woes and ultimate demise. Fortunately, TiVo provides a “secret” (shh, don’t tell) code for enabling a 30 second skip. Press the ->| button 4-5 times to quickly bypass most commercial interludes. It’s not quite as cool as Replay’s feature, but hey TiVo is still selling hardware.

TiVo Platforms:

• Series1, Series2, Series3/HD, DirecTV

Directions:

• Play a TiVo recording
• On your remote hit Select, Play, Select, 3, 0, Select
• Live life commercial free

2. Expand Storage

One of the easiest ways to increase the value of your TiVo is to enlarge your recording capacity by upgrading your internal hard drive with something a bit more roomy. You could do it yourself, but most folks will be most comfortable buying a prepped drive. You won’t find any bargains, but you’ll save yourself some time and energy.

TiVo Platforms:

• Series1, Series2, Series3/HD, DirecTV

Directions:

• Visit DVRUpgrade
• Find your TiVo model, select your capacity, enter your credit card info
• Record every episode of Stargate and Stargate Atlantis

(more…)

HDTiVo has discovered a method to download Amazon Unbox videos to multiple TiVos simultaneously (using XP and IE7). No telling why you’d want to do this (unless you have kids) since the license and content are transferable, but like many hacks that isn’t the point.

After clicking the download button on the downloads page with the list of your unbox videos, you get a thumbnail page with a drop down box to choose the device and click another download button.

After doing that, a confirm page comes up (for me in a new tab) which I close. I am left with the prior thumbnail page that still has the drop down box. I can then choose another device to download to and click download…

… repeat as many times as you like.

Over the last couple of months, there have been reports of HD-DVD and Blu-ray copy protection being defeated and bypassed. I can’t say I’m an expert in this area and I haven’t slogged through the public AACS documents. While it’s unclear if these methods (and keys) are temporary “solutions” or if they will permanently bypass AACS, one hacker describes his methodology for teasing out the data:

This gave me an idea: what I wanted to do is “record” all changes in this part of memory during startup of the movie. Hopefully I would catch something interesting. In the end I did something a little more efficient: I used the hd dvd vuk extractor and adapted it to slow down the software player (while scanning its memory continuously) and at the very moment the Media Key (which I now knew: my bottom-up approach really paid off here) was detected it halted the player. I then made a memdump with WinHex. I now had the feeling I had something. And I did. Not surprisingly the very first C-value was a hit. I then checked if everything was correct, asked for confirmation and here we are.

As with the recent hacker community replacement for Mac TiVoToGo vaporware, an inspired customer has stepped forward with a solution before the vendor could/would. Andy, over at the Sling Community Forum, has documented how he got the Slingplayer working on Linux. Like other Windows ports, he uses WINE to make it happen… but with a couple of secret ingredients: Windows Media Player 9 and various “Slingplayer Dependencies” which he kindly zipped up for us. Thanks, Andy!

A periodic roundup of relevant news…

• Hands on with the Loop motion controlled remote : Gizmodo
• Orb adds mobile YouTube search: PVRWire
• Mods to quiet your (my) Xbox 360: Extreme Tech
• Portable Audiovox XM receiver discovered: Orbitcast
• Sony PSP GPS accessory hits the market: Engadget

Want TiVoToGo on your Mac?
Nearly two years after being released, TiVo, Inc may have failed to deliver but the hacker community has heeded our call. As of 12/05/06 the solution requires a little elbow grease and some command line action, but the difficulty level is reasonable until a polished app arrives in the near future — perhaps integrated into Galleon.

So what makes this hack special?
TiVoToGo was originally released as a service accessed through the TiVo Desktop software — PC only. Files transfered from a Series2 TiVo unit are saved to the computer in a .tivo format. This .tivo file is actually an encrypted MPEG-2. While we quickly figured out how to remove TiVo’s gunk protection on Windows to free the MPEG, Mac and Linux users have been left out. Over the last year or so a dedicated group of hackers has been reverse engineering TiVo’s decryption mechanism which has now born fruit in the form of TiVo Decode. Utilizing your personal Media Access Key (MAK), TiVo Decode quickly removes TiVo’s protection as it converts the .tivo file to a .mpeg on multiple OSes without requiring any TiVo software.

What do I need to get started?
You’ll obviously need to download TiVo Decode. As of this writing, version 0.1.3 is out and now handles audio from DVD-burning TiVo units. Once you download the package, you can use StuffIt, or equivalent, to decompress the files. The software doesn’t come compiled, so you’ll need Xcode to assist. Xcode can be located on your OS X install discs and/or in an install directory on your Mac (search for it). Once you’ve located the install package, go ahead and get it on your system. Using a Terminal window, you’ll want to find the TiVo Decode directory and type: make. All done? Good!

(Update: A compiled PPC version is now available on SourceForge allowing you to forgo the Xcode steps. Additionally, a compiled Intel version with Automator workflow has been created.)

Lastly, you’ll want to find out your MAK (which you probably shouldn’t share). Go to tivo.com/manage, sign in, and verify Transfers ALLOWED is set for the relevant TiVo units (Series2 stand alone boxes onlt). If they’re not, click on the DVR Preferences text link on the left column and enable them. Back on the Overview screen, click the Media Access Key link on the upper right side to retrieve your MAK.

How do I download my TiVo shows?
On your home LAN, using the web browser of your choice surf on over to httpS://[tivo-IP-here]. (You can find your TiVo’s IP via the Settings menu or via your home router software.) Safari users shouldn’t need to look up their TiVo’s (possibly-changing) IP address: In preferences, enable Bonjour under bookmarks, then select the TiVo from Bonjour in bookmarks, and finally change the URL address from http to httpS. With either method, to sign on, use tivo for your username and the password is your personal MAK. Browse around and download the shows you’re interested in working with. Alternately, you can install and configure Galleon to choose and/or schedule various show downloads.

How do I remove TiVo’s gunk?
Fire up a terminal window, we’re going to build a command line string. First we have to call TiVo Decode if it’s not in your path. In my case:
tivodecode-0.1.2/objects.dir/tivodecode

Next we need to specify our MAK which is the decryption key:
-m ##########

Then we need to tell the app to output (-o) the file and give it a path and name:
-o distraction.mpg

Lastly, we must point to the path and source TiVo file:
distraction.tivo

So my final command looks like this:
tivodecode-0.1.2/objects.dir/tivodecode -m ########## -o distraction.mpg distraction.tivo

In just a minute or two, you’ll have a free and clear MPEG-2 to play with. Enjoy!

How do I watch shows on my Mac and iPod?
If you plan to watch your TiVo-ed shows on your Mac, you’ll need an appropriate player. Despite Quicktime offering an MPEG-2 plugin (for a fee), it does not handle this particular flavor of MPEG. Both VLC and MPlayer are excellent free video playing applications which will handle the converted TiVo files.

If you plan to use your TiVo content on a video-capable iPod or in QuickTime you will want to convert the resultant MPEG-2 files into MPEG-4. iSquint and ffmpegX are free and will do you just fine.

Check out a few convert-for-iPod automation scripts here.

How do I get shows onto DVD?
There are two ways to move your de-gunked shows onto DVD. The first method is something you’d use for simple archiving purposes, for later reuse on a computer. Just burn to CD or DVD the way you would handle any other sort of data using OS X built-in functionality. But what you really want to know is how to burn your content onto DVD for playback in a set-top box. As with QuickTime, iDVD and iMovie are not capable of handling this particular sort of MPEG-2, so you’ll need to use another tool to author your DVD or you’ll need to convert the video to something more Mac friendly. Roxio’s Titanium Toast is fully capable of creating set-top box supported DVDs from the extracted MPEG-2 files. In conjunction with Apple’s Disk Utility, the free ffmpegX can be used to convert and create your DVD.

Linux users: If you’re a Linux user, you can pretty much follow these guidelines (swapping out *nix-specific software) to enjoy your TiVo shows away from your TiVo.

Remember… Skateboarding is not a crime, but sharing video could be.

I haven’t been following the Wiki lately, but it looks like TiVoToGo encryption has been cracked and a barebones (as in command line) conversion app is out. What does this mean? You don’t need TiVo Desktop software or a PC (!) to decrypt and playback TiVo shows. Had TiVo released Mac (and Linux) decryption and playback tools of their own, this may have been avoided… Snooze, you lose. As Megazone notes, a GUI is needed and is probably forthcoming. I haven’t yet tried this on Mac or Linux platforms, but stay tuned… (I’m not even sure if the C program has been compiled for OS X yet.)

In the grander scheme of things, should this get a decent amount of press, it’s a black eye for TiVo… Which could dissuade potential content providers from partnering and/or dissuade CableLabs from supporting multi-room viewing and TiVoToGo features on the Series3, despite protected media (TiVoCast, Macrovision flagged stuff) not being available for TTG transfers. Image is everything.

UPDATE: I can verify this works on Mac OS X. And it works fast! I’ll have the first draft of a step-by-step guide up tomorrow for those who need a little hand holding (as I did). Secondly, if you have a DVD-burning TiVo your output files (of 0.1.2) will not playback audio. However, the developer has provided me a patch which corrects that issue. I assume he’ll integrate it into the app or provide a separate download shortly. Lastly, I can’t imagine we’re more than a few days away from a Mac front-end — all it would need to know is where the program lives, where the .tivo file lives, and what you want to name the output file. Someone should be able to whip this up in an hour or so. Along those lines, I begged Leon to come out of retirement and integrate this functionality into Galleon.

UPDATE 2: I’ve posted a brief guide to get Mac users on track. We’ll probably only need this for a few days, until someone more clever than I automates this and/or creates a GUI front-end.

(Thanks, half.italian!)