TiVo Hacks (Paperback)

This book touts 100 "hacks" but once you get into it, you will discover that many of these "hacks" are really just steps - instructions if you will, and that many of them rely on other "hacks." For instance, the steps involved in removing the cover from your TiVo (a few screws) counts as a "hack." There are several more like this.

The book seems to have been forced into the O'Reilly Hacks format, and probably would have been better were it freed up a bit.

The description says its 288 pages, but in fact it really only has 239 pages of what they are calling "hacks" and with 100 hacks in the book, you can see that there is on average less than 2.5 pages of coverage per "hack." I'm not saying that each "hack" is only 2.5 pages, many are larger, but I think you can see that the coverage is light. I was very disappointed that many of the "hacks" were no more than a single page telling me to download and install a piece of code from the web.

The writing style is fine, but I did get the feeling the author might not be extremely knowledgable in the TiVo space. There were several places where he had the opportunity to mention some of the real "gotchas" when working with TiVo drives and the like, but came up short. With all the contributors, I wonder if he acted a bit more as editor than author.

So, if you are looking for something with a little more meat to it, look elsewhere.

It is the first two chapters that the vast majority of Tivo owners will find the most useful. The first chapter explores hacks that may be performed with the remote control. This includes such hacks as the indispensable "30-Second Skip" hack, the powerful "Enabling Advanced WishLists" hack, and the why-would-you-ever-want-to-do-this "Italicizing Everything" hack.

The second chapter carefully details how to add more hours to your Tivo. This section carefully walks the more intrepid souls through removing and installing the necessary hard drives, backing up your original drives, and making your new drives Tivo-friendly. "Tivo Hacks" carefully explains each task step-by-step, as well as detailing the tools and materials you will need. The book certainly makes what may seem a daunting procedure very doable.

Tivo is essentially a Linux box. The remaining chapters offer hacks which exploit this fact, and these are definitely for the more technically minded. Herein we find out how to work with Tivo's shell, how to install software on Tivo, how to get Tivo speaking to other computers, how to bring the Internet to Tivo, and many more things that expand the capabilities of your Tivo. The book concludes with a chapter on writing and compiling code for Tivo. As in the first two chapters, each hack is carefully explained and due caution is clearly noted where applicable. Example code for hacks is given in Perl, Tcl, and C.

The author does a fine job throughout in making each hack clear and understandable. If you fancy yourself a bit of a hacker, then after reading this book you should feel comfortable undertaking any of these hacks.

Is this book for you? Well, if you have a Series 2 Tivo, really only the first two chapters are of much interest. The Series 1 boxes are much more "hackable" than the newer Series 2 boxes, and as a result the majority of the rest of the hacks will not work on the Series 2. This book, certainly beyond the first chapter at least, requires a certain level of technical ability, and as such is not for your average Tivo owner. In other words, I probably wouldn't purchase a copy as a gift for Uncle Irwin and Aunt Martha to go along with their shiny new Tivo. On the other hand, if you fit the target audience and want to get the most out of your Tivo, particularly if you want to expand the number of hours in your Tivo, this book will certainly come in handy. While you can certainly find most of the information in this book on the Internet, there is definitely something to be said for having it all in one place so that you may easily flip through it and reference it.