PVR Wire

1. TivoToGo files were cracked eons ago with a app that has a regular win GUI.

Posted at 10:24PM on Dec 3rd 2006 by Darien

2. Darien,

Not the same thing. There have been ways to extract the MPEG contents of the .tivo files on Windows, using loopholes in DirectShow. But that only worked on Windows, and it used the standard TiVo Desktop DLL to do the decryption, it just grabs the MPEG frames during playback and saves them.

This code actually decrypts the files without relying on the TiVo DLL, and it works on non-Windows platforms. That's a big deal.

Though, honestly, I expect TiVo will change things in an update to defeat this crack. It is an arms race.

Posted at 10:48PM on Dec 3rd 2006 by MegaZone

3. Ah ok, thanks for the explanation MZ.

Posted at 8:04AM on Dec 4th 2006 by Darien

4. It's only an arms race if they have people to fight back. Sounds like much of the guts of TiVoToGo and HME, including security, were created by the long-departed Arthur Van Hoff. Do they have any Java security whizzes on staff?

Posted at 9:51AM on Dec 4th 2006 by Dave Zatz

5. At first I was thinking the same as Darien, that this doesn't do anything that DirectShow Dump doesn't do but I realized what MegaZone pointed out, DSD still relies on the TiVo .DLL and only runs on Windows.

I'm not sure how or even if TiVo is going to react to this one, not sure what they could do without breaking the existing functionality of everyone who is currently using the TiVo Desktop software to watch TiVo shows or burn them to DVD.

Being that this doesn't really change anything for someone who might want to put a TiVo recorded show on the P2P networks I can't see this as being much of a deal for TiVo unless the content providers pitch a fit.

Of course one has to remember that the real purpose of DRM isn't to prevent piracy, any DRM scheme that would actually be halfway effective at stemming piracy would be so unwieldy hard to use that most consumers would be incapable of using it. DRM exists to make it harder for people to exercise their fair use rights. However, TiVo was dragged to the DRM party somewhat grudgingly by the content producers so they may have an entirely different outlook.

Posted at 11:19AM on Dec 4th 2006 by Robert Aitchison

6. direct show dump from etivo takes a few seconds to remove the tivo crap from tivo files.

and it has been around forever.

Posted at 3:55PM on Dec 4th 2006 by Digitalbrian

7. Who cares? Does anyone still have Tivo anyway? Seems like every local cable company now has a DVR (and HDDVR at that....) and with DirectTV and Dish being out there for awhile..... What's the use of this anyway... hack something people use.

Posted at 4:08PM on Dec 4th 2006 by John Edwards

8. Dan,

That requires hacking the TiVo itself. Which isn't so easy on recent boxes - they require hardware mods to run hacks.

This software doesn't require any hacks - it works with any standard Series2 TiVo.

Posted at 6:53PM on Dec 4th 2006 by MegaZone

9. BTW, this ended up on Digg: http://www.digg.com/hardware/TiVoToGo_DRM_cracked

Posted at 9:13PM on Dec 4th 2006 by MegaZone

10. probably wouldn't matter if any of those "local cable company" DVRs were any good. also since none of them have open operating systems and very few of them even have active ports, i doubt, no matter how many people are using them, that anyone will waste their time to unlocking a pos. i don't know about anyone else but i'm looking forward to taking my hd programming with my from networked tivo s3.

Posted at 3:58PM on Dec 5th 2006 by nicholi57

11. I hope this is major egg on TiVo's pathetic face. They've been promising TTG for the Mac community for 2-3 years now. They've broken promises in terms of a release date, and have actually had their customer service reps LIE to customers who call in inquiring about TTG for Mac OS X.

May their stock tank even more.

Posted at 7:51AM on Dec 6th 2006 by Kevin

12. I just purchased Tivo to iPod video converter! Should be cool soft! Check http://www.movietaxi.biz/

Posted at 8:07PM on Dec 10th 2006 by Keneth.Carr

13. I have been trying to burn the output to DVD and iDVD wont recognize the files. VLC works fine, but nothing else appears to.

Any thought on how to resolve this???

Posted at 3:45PM on Dec 22nd 2006 by Ron

14. Really I have been exporting and streaming movies off my Tivo to my Mac for a few weeks now but was under the impression this has been around a while see: http://danslagle.com/blog/?p=232

Posted at 6:22PM on Nov 11th 2007 by Dan