Engadget has discovered that the TiVo Series 3 has had the PROM chip hacked. If you're like me your probably thinking "what the hell is a PROM chip?"
Well PROM stands for Programmable Read Only Memory and the PROM chip is placed on the motherboard inside your TiVo and contains some pre-loaded basic intelligence. It is this intelligence that contains security to prevent your TiVo from being modified with third party software and hacks.
This PROM hack can be done in the following not-so-simple steps:
De-solder the PROM chip from the TiVo motherboard
If you haven't fried the chip continue...
Extract the code from the Chip
Edit the Hex
Burn a new PROM
Re-solder the new chip back to the motherboard
Hope you haven't fried the chip
As you can see this is not exactly the easiest hack to do and it is only the first step. The next stage is developing individual hacks to alter the functionality of the TiVo, such as enabling TiVo2Go.
If you're technically minded enough and want to learn more then head over to the DealDatabase forums for more info.
Now this is cool! Control electronic devices in your house from the comfort of your couch using a TiVo remote control. That means you can now annoy other family members by turning off their lights from the comfort of your couch!
Once you have Homeseer installed there seems to be no limit on what devices can be controlled. If its got a button, a setting, a switch or anything like that then its likely that you could control it from your TiVo.
Yesterday I mentioned Microsoft's propriety video format MS-DVR which is used for Windows Media Center recordings.
Previously you would need to convert the videos to a more standard format using something like DVRBox so you could edit them with ease. However Vista Movie Maker now comes with full support of MS-DVR files so editing out those adverts is now pretty easy.
DVR-MS is a proprietary Microsoft format that is used in Media Center Edition to record videos. Unfortunately this format can't be played on may other devices so you may want to be able to easily convert your DVR-MS video recordings to some other format..
DVRBox is free open source software that does just that converting your DVR-MS video files into other formats including Xvid and MPEG 4. Features include:
Editing of DVR-MS videos
Batch processing
Automatic crop detection
Scheduled compression
Outputs to MPEG-4 including XviD, x264
In development is manual cropping, directory scanning, profilesand iPod Support.
It is now possible to hack your Xbox 360 so you can add a larger hard drive, but it's just a shame that your Xbox will still think it is a 20GB hard drive.
The hack is done using a DOS based program that currently only works with Western Digital BEVS hard drives.
Although you can't use the space of the larger hard drives it will allow you to save money by not buying the $100 Xbox 360 hard drive and getting a cheaper Western Digital 40GB hard drive for $60.
You can then lay in hope that Microsoft updates the Xbox 360 to look for larger hard drives or alternatively someone creates a hack to make the Xbox do it.
Everyone likes to customize their PC with some pictures and themes, if its not a picture of some hot girl or a desert island on your desktop, it's a load of fishes swimming around on your screensaver.
The Snapstream community has created a nice set of skins for the BeyondTV PVR interface meaning your TV experience can now be that little more personalized too.
A selection of the skins available can be seen here including dolphin, desert island and pirate themes. Installing a skin is easy and requires simply replacing one file in the BeyondTV directory.
Anyone fancy making a PVR Wire theme? You know you want too!
If you want to record television shows directly onto your PC from cable it is possible for a number of channels. The FCC requires that all cable boxes have a firewire port allowing you to connect your PC and Cable Box together.
Unfortunately it's not as simple as connecting your PC and Cable Box with a firewire cable (pictured right) and starting to record. You'll need to install various software and drivers first.
Also it is unlikely that you will be able to record any premium channels as they will be encrypted. All regular broadcast channels must however be open, if they are not get on the phone to your cable operator and tell them to sort it out.
Uber Lounge has the full steps for recording cable TV in both SD and HD to your PC.
Back in December reports of problems with DirecTiVos began to appear explaining that the PVRs were being erratic in their ability to record shows. The PVRs would often fail to record shows altogether and mysteriously delete some recorded programs.
DirecTV then said that it had fixed the problem but DirecTiVo users still continued to have the same problems. Now DirecTV spokesperson Robert Mercer told TVPredictions.com yesterday that "a reboot will clean it up and the unit will start recording again."
So the age old trick of "turning it off and on" should hopefully put your DirecTiVo back on track.
We've given you tips time and timeagain on how to build your own PVR. You can go out and purchase some new parts, or you can dedicate an old computer to the task.
But the voyeur in me just can't get enough of these tutorials, because I love seeing how other folks' home-built PVRs stack up against mine.
Shawn Kent has written up a pretty simple tutorial on building a relatively inexpensive HTPC using parts from an old computer, a new case, hard drive, video card, and TV tuner.
The problem with tutorials like this is that they're getting outdated by the minute. Yes, it's true that you can build a home theater PC to handle standard definition content for just a few hundred dollars. But as the push towards high definition video and high definition television sets continue, these systems may not really suit your needs much longer. Adding a hi-def tuner doesn't cost much more, but you really need to reevaluate your choices in graphics cards, hard drive capacity and so forth if you're making the leap to a hi-def.
And while Windows Vista promises CableCard compliance, allowing you to receive cable HDTV signals (most PC-based HDTV tuners only handle over-the-air signals), there's still no support for advanced features like video-on-demand. In other words, building a home theater PC today means making compromises. To be perfectly honest, I'd only suggest doing it if you don't plan to buy a HDTV for another few years. Otherwise, it might make more sense to get the cable company PVR (especially if it's a Comcast/Cox Motorola box that will soon run TiVo software), and wait another year or two for PVR technology to catch up with TV technology.
One of the most popular adjustments I have seen people make to their homebrew PVR's is the addition of a second tuner. Sure once you get your system up and running it seems great – until you realize that the broadcast companies don't always adhere to your personal schedule.
With that in mind, one the easiest fixes to this problem is to put a dual tuner card into your system right from the get go. I've always been a fan of the Hauppauge tuner cards – they tend to be pretty solid for the price, and as luck would have they also manufacture a dual tuner card, the WinTV-PVR-500.
Virtual-Hideout has gone forth and put this card through their tests and they let us know what they find in their two page review. Once you read the review you can decide for yourself whether the cost of the card (about $170) is worth it for the quality and ease of use of a single tuner card.
File this under "who thought this was a good idea?"
High-end home theater PC case makers Silverstone has decided to do away with that whole putting an LCD in the front of an HTPC case trend, and instead put a little window for you to watch your hard drive spin. I guess it gives you something to watch when you're wife's monopolizing your PC to watch period dramas.
Anyway, XtremeComputing put the Silverstone CW01-WD through the paces, and for the most part, they like what they saw. There's room for 6 hard drives and 2 5.25-inch bays, and the case includes a 52-in-1 memory card reader. The only real problem is that it takes a very long screwdriver to remove the hard drive cage at the front of the case. That, and when you're done, you've got a case with a visible hard drive in the front, (although the XtremeComputing reviewer seemed to think this was a good thing).
Thinking of building a home theater PC, but you don't really want to put your tower case next to your LCD TV? Well, there's a growing number of HTPC cases out there for building machines that look more like audio/video equipment than computers. And then there's the Origen S21T.
This case has a 12.1-inch motorized touch screen on the front with support for resolutions up to 1920x1080. That's right, while most cases with an LCD display top out around 7-inches, which means you'd have to be standing in front of the display to make use of them, this case almost makes the TV or monitor its plugged into irrelevant.
You also get an attractive case. That touch screen slides out to reveal a media bay, USB hub, and audio and firewire ports. Theres' three fans in there, 2 intake and 1 exhaust, but they're all of the low-volume variety. Oh yeah, and you can cram up to 10 hard drives in there.
So you've bought the most expensive video game console currently on the market, and installed Linux on it. Now what?
Well, how about turning your PS3 into a full-blown PVR? All you need is Linux, MythTV, and a Plextor ConvertX PX-TV402U, a pretty nifty little box that has a TV tuner, a variety of video inputs for handling cable and satellite broadcasts, and support for MPEG-1/2/4 and DivX compression.
The upside: you've got a PS3 running MythTV and serving as a complete PVR. The downside: if you want to make sure you never miss a recording, you have to keep your MythTV running all the time, meaning you can't play PS3 games.
And you could probably put together a cheaper DIY PVR to run MythTV if you really wanted to. But all that aside, color me impressed.
The project, like so many others, is borne of personal frustration. Dixon's current TV tuner works just fine with Windows XP Media Center Edition, but is not supported by Vista.
So here's how it works. He's setting up topics in his user forums. Right now, there's just a TV Card topic. If you've got a TV card that does or does not work with Vista, write about it. Eventually he'll expand to other PVR related hardware components.
Okay, I don't have a lot of experience performing TiVo hacks, so don't expect step by step instructions here, but kennybain over at the TiVo Community Forum poses an interesting question: do you really need a Slingbox to watch TiVo recordings remotely?
The answer is, kind of. Kennybain applied the "Zipper" hack to his TiVo and installed TiVoTool on his PowerBook. This allowed him to download and stream shows from his TiVo. And then he went and opened up some ports on his router allowing him to access his recordings from sites outside of his home network. He was even able to watch live TV, although it wasn't a particularly smooth stream.
There's a few problems:
It's not secure.
You can't change channels on live TV.
It's really not secure.
But this does raise the question... if all it takes is a couple of software hacks to allow users to remotely access and stream their TiVo recordings, isn't this something TiVo could implement if it wanted to? Sure, TiVo recently started selling Slingboxes at the TiVo store, but wouldn't it create a richer, fuller user experience to just build placeshifting into the TiVo box? As TiVo continues to add broadband features, unlike my colleague Chris Tew, I wouldn't be surprised if the company's working on something like this already. But given the rate of progress at TiVo, I wouldn't expect to see it anytime soon.
Engadget has discovered that the TiVo Series 3 has had the PROM chip hacked. If you're like me your probably thinking "what the hell is a PROM chip?"
It is now possible to 
If you want to record television shows directly onto your PC from cable it is possible for a number of channels. The FCC requires that all cable boxes have a firewire port allowing you to connect your PC and Cable Box together.
Back in December reports of problems with DirecTiVos began to appear explaining that the PVRs were being erratic in their ability to record shows. The PVRs would often fail to record shows altogether and mysteriously delete some recorded programs. 
