hacking tivo

[nakulak]

does anyone know how to make a Directv DVR work on regular cable ? (or a site that explains it ?) I cut off my directv cause the trees are too big, now I have this useless box - does it just need a new eeprom or bios ? can I flash it or buy a new bootstrap loader ? or is this something I just need to remove the hard drive from and smash ?

thx in advance if anyone can help

[kill_me{FWD}]

nak your talking about a video card?
then you'll find maybe here some help
http://www.videohelp.com/

[nakulak]

thanks anyway killme. its a tivo box for satellite dish that I thought might be convertable to cable tv, but not sure (they are linux boxes but I know nothing about guts - needs a new bios image maybe ?) (hey, that's a pretty good site tho)

anyway, found some of the info I was looking for. if anyone else is interested, here are two good links
http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showthread.php?p=192565#post192565
http://www.weethet.nl/english/tivo_dtv2_os4hackrid.php#assumptions

it appears that while you can buy (legally) new drive images to upgrade the drives in the tivos, and there are tools to make the tivos remotely accessible from theinternet as well as connecting them to internet via the usb (although you need a usb->ethernet adapter), in order to convert a directv tivo to a regular tivo you need to flash the eprom manually (cannot be flashed in the box), which also means you need the correct flash image (haven't found that yet), and also you need to make sure everything you do is appropriate to the box that you have (somewhat complicated lol), but if you do put in a new/reprogrammed prom and drive image for linux, update the kernal, add a couple of proggies, there's lots of cool things you can do , like stream video to your network, the internet, or your pc, program the box remotely, etc.

[kill_me{FWD}]

hey nak, promised you to look on the usenet and see what i'll find.

look here: alt.video.ptv.tivo

[nakulak]

thanks killme. After I opened up the box I realized that even the mobo on the directv version probably isnt compatible anyway, cause the rf modulators would have to be swapped out anyway since the sat signal is supposedly a digital modulated signal, and so I'm not even sure the sat box can even be used anyway. I think its cheaper just to buy a new standard tivo box, so thats what I did. If I can't figure out a way to use the sat box I can still use the 40gig drive for something, or maybe sell it on ebay for 10 bucks lol.

thx for the link

nak