[Openpvr-devel] Interesting Tivo links

[Brian J. M. <3d8...@in...>]

I had a short discussion with somebody in which he pointed out that
buying a Tivo is probably cheaper than buying enough "peecee" hardware
to do the same job.  He is probably right if you consider what is in a
Tivo.

Here are some pictures inside a Tivo and there is a hardware inventory
at the end to the detail of what chips are on their mainboard:

http://www.9thtee.com/insidetivo.htm

Notice that this includes both MPEG2 encoder and decoders!

It might be that an actual Tivo is _the_ right piece of hardware to
build an OpenPvr on.  But why would I want to change the software on a
Tivo if I already own one?

Openness.  Wouldn't you like to be able to take what your PVR records
and play it wherever you wish not just on your PVR?  Want to add
features to your PVR?

I wonder what the feasibility of using the Tivo hardware platform for
an OpenPVR would be?  It certainly would require some device driver
writing.  I do recall somebody told me once that Tivo have posted the
source to their kernel changes.  I doubt that includes device drivers
for thinks like the MPEG2 encoder and decoder chips or hardware
scaling chip, etc.

Here is another link I found on hacking Tivos although it is dealing
with hacking them within the boundaries of it's native software.
Adding more space for instance.

http://tivohack.sourceforge.net/otherdownloads.php3

b.

-- 
Brian J. Murrell