Customer Reviews

Hacking the TiVo

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Im a big TiVo fan, and was really excited when I started hearing about the whole hacking thing, and was looking forward to the 3 books coming out (this one, the TiVo Hacks book, and the upcoming Hacking TiVo book - which I cant wait to get my hands on.)

When I went through this one I was usually left with more questions than answers. The author is a hardcore UNIX guy, and he, unfortunately, expects that you are too. Im certainly not a newbie, but I am not a UNIX administrator either.

Many times he gets ahead of himself, and describes a hack that involves doing something he hasnt covered yet, which was really frustrating - having to flip back and forth to try to figure it all out.

It is also a little out of date, or just wrong about certain hardware hacks like the TurboNet card for instance, and I was very disappointed that some of the stuff that is supposed to be on the CD isnt there. Having all the software in one place and being able to install it on your TiVo easily is what is really what a good TiVo Cd is about. There are some places on the internet that sell TiVo boot CDs that are better than the one that comes with this book in my opinion.

Ill keep looking for the best TiVo hacking book - so should you.

Poorly put together book. Just one example concerns adding a TurboNet ethernet board to a Tivo Series One. I did this myself last year with no book - only info from the Internet. This book claims you have no choice but to hack the software to accomodate TurboNet when in fact, TurboNet drivers are already built into the latest Tivo software. Also fails to cover using the board with standard "off the shelf" wireless ethernet bridges. I'm not impressed at all. Way too convoluted.

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!

This book is poorly organized. It has you flipping all through the book and leaving you frustrated as where to begin. I am not a novice. I am a computer programmer with win2000, xp and linux machines and still couldn't figure out where the 3.x tivo kernel is for the 2 Kernel monte method of getting a command prompt on the series 2. This is required to get anything to work on that system. It mentions nothing about mounting specific partitiions (4,7,9) in order to get your drive mounted to your machine. This book needed some serious usability testing from people who haven't hacked a series 2 before. I guess it will make for some good paper for my fireplace. Wait until something better comes out or find better info for free on the internet (which I had to do to get everything working).

Most, if not all, of the information in the book could be found free on http://www.tivocommunity.com. If you find the information in Tivo Community difficult to understand you probably shouldn't be hacking your Tivo, and this book isn't worth $20.

CAUTION!!! Just finished upgrading the hard drive on my Series 1 TiVo. This book was full of errors and outdated information. Had I not bought Jeff Keegan's "Hacking TiVo" book at the same time as this book, I would have a TiVo boat anchor by now. Luckily, I am the cautious type and read both books before I started. I don't think the author, William von Hagen even proof read his work before it was published. Besides giving wrong information on setting up larger disk caches etc. the book was littered with lots of small typos such as MB instead of GB etc.
I did give this book an extra star for the user friendly language and explinations and the larger sized type. Jeff Keegan's book is a lot more technical, has less detailed explinations and smaller type.

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.

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!

If you are the type of person who builds PCs from scratch parts and you are also a Linux expert, this book is for you. Anyone else should take a long look before they buy it.

If you have a series2 Tivo read the bulleted points on page 223. Beware that one of the required items is very, very difficult to obtain.

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.