Hacking the Tivo [With CDROM]

by William von Hagen

Book Overview

TiVo is the world's most popular digital video recorder, working along the same lines as a regular VCR, but saving information to a hard drive rather than a cassette. This book shows how to upgrade... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1592004814
• ISBN13: 9781592004812
• Release Date: July 2004
• Publisher: Course Technology
• Length: 542 Pages
• Weight: 2.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 7.3" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Great book - told me what I wanted to know and more!

I'd seen reviews of multiple books about TiVo, but I have a Series 2, so this was the only book that covered it. It was great! Within a few hours, I'd upgraded my Series 2 to 200+ hours of recording time, and it was easy. Hacking the Series 2s isn't covered in any other TiVo book, and I bought the Keegan book at a bookstore, but it was no help. Von Hagen's books could be a little better organized, but it worked for me. I recommend it highly!

Definative resource for the Series 2

This is a great reference for hacking the Series2 TiVo, and the only book out that covers the methods for getting to a command prompt on it. This is significantly more difficult than on the Series1, and it's nice to see a book that covers it.That said, if you have a Series1 then Jeff Kegan's "Hacking TiVo" is probably a better choice.

If you have a series 2...

Then this is the book for you. Covers everything from drive upgrades to Monte, at a good pace (I'm a linux veteran, so I could have done without some of the slower-paced linux introductory stuff, but this book isn't aimed at someone who knows very much about any computer system, which is a good thing). The descriptions and step-by-step are very thorough, for the most part (although I do feel lucky that my tivo had the backdoor code on the same partition listed in the example in the book, or I might have been severely S.O.L. with regard to changing it as described) and the author talks you through in a very light, amenable fashion.The CD itself is extremely valuable, as it is the only one I have so far encountered that contains all the tools I've read are required (or desired :) to fully hack and upgrade your unit. And it couldn't be easier: if you have a Series 2 tivo, hit enter when prompted (you're also covered if you have one of the 2 different kinds of Series 1 tivos :); linux boots up and you're ready to go. The only thing I would have liked from the linux distro--and I realize it needs to cram a lot of stuff on a CD--would have been man pages for the utils included (come on, you can gzip -v9 the man pages and they are super small!), as it would have helped me tremendously to see all the options and commandline switches for mfstools in detail.I was, before reading this book, somewhat hesitant to open my tivo & make it more the way I wanted; now, I can't wait to get a bigger A drive and go for a monte!

2nd Edition is a Great book

I have recently had the opportunity to read Bill von Hagen's updated (2nd Edition) book "Hacking the Tivo 2nd Edition". I read the original (1st edition) some time ago (09-18-2003) which is an eternity in internet time. There has been a lot change since then TiVo wise. Overall impression: Bill has done an excellent job bringing the book up to date with modern hacking techniques and tools. Overall this book would make a GREAT book for newbies and an excellent reference book for experienced users. It contains a wealth of data/information that is very useful and is presented in a clear concise easy to read format. If you are a newbie this book will save you a lot of searching though threads for the single post that makes sense. Likes: Bill continues his excellent writing style. The flow of this book, like the first, is real good. Embeem who has a known history was the Technical Reviewer for the 1st edition and Musclenerd was listed as the Technical reviewer of this edition so I can say that I would trust its content. The book is interspersed throughout the book with many "Tips". I like this format. I found quite a few of these to be very good and thought provoking. There were a lot of questions that I never thought to ask but are good to know like "where did the TiVo come from?" This book answers many of the "not asked" questions. It is relatively Up to date considering the "internet age" we are living in. Bill devotes and entire chapter on "Extracting, Inserting, and Playing Tivo Recordings" something that I don't think any other book does. He presents subjects like mfs_ftp, tytool, tystudio, mplayer, etc. This is great information. Dislikes: Like the first edition I can't say there was much I didn't like about this book.

A Useful and Entertaining Book

I thought that this was a great book. I'm not exactly a novice, but I learned a good amount from reading it. I liked how it was organized, though it seemed oriented to newbies. Chapters in the book were coherent and led from one to the other well. Chapters are:1. Know Your TiVo2. TiVo Tips and Tricks3. Exploring Your TiVo Hardware4. The Hacker's Toolchest of TiVo Tools5. Backing Up and Restoring TiVo Data6. Expanding Your TiVo's Storage Capacity7. Connecting the Universe To Your TiVo8. Working With Your TiVo from Windows and Macintosh Systems9. Linux and the TiVo10. Getting and Installing New Software For Your TiVo11. Other TiVo Hacking ResourcesThe best thing about this book was that it gave me info that wasn't just oriented to the old Series 1 Tivos, but to the new ones (Series, which I own). It was up to date, funny, and useful. Well worth the money.Also, the CD was great, saving me hours of download time. It has tons of cool software, and it's already set up to install and use. The CD also works on all kinds of TiVos, which was good for me since I have a Series 1 and a Series 2.