Press Release
August 25, 2003
"TiVo Hacks": Good News for TiVo Addicts and Other TiVo Fans
Sebastopol, CA--Google the phrase, "TiVo changed my life," and you'll
come up with, well, enough references to make you wonder what the
commotion is all about. Unless you're a TiVo owner, that is, and then
you know. TiVo owners often speak about this appliance with a degree of
emotion that the uninitiated find baffling. TiVo, likened to a
"tapeless VCR," achieves things that no VCR can even contemplate. But
it may come as news to many TiVo owners that there's more to TiVo than
even the biggest fan might expect. TiVo Hacks by Raffi Krikorian
(O'Reilly, US $24.95) shows users of all levels how to get even more
satisfaction out of their TiVos.
Why hack your TiVo? As Raffi Krikorian explains, the TiVo has proven
eminently hackable, to the point that there are communities of TiVo
hackers springing up all over the Internet. "You can think of the TiVo
as a carefully tweaked desktop computer with a television tuner card,"
Krikorian says. "Everything the TiVo does, save the channel tuning and
video encoding, is done in software. Everything you see on the screen,
all the interactivity through the remote, and the recording scheduling
is all defined in code."
Just as TiVo offers viewers personalized control of their TVs, "TiVo
Hacks" gives users personalized control of their TiVos. The book
includes various types of hacks: hardware hacks, which require you to
pop the top off your TiVo and fiddle with the innards, and software
hacks, which require a little less manual dexterity but no less a sense
of adventure. And for the faint of heart, there are also remote control
hacks that they can do from the comfort of their favorite armchair.
The high-powered tips and tools in "TiVo Hacks" explain how to:
Use your remote control to activate the 30-second skip to blaze
through commercials, enable advanced wishlists, push fast-forward to
the limit, and open the backdoor to further hacks Upgrade your TiVo's hard drive for all the recording time you want Log in to the TiVo command line for access to programming data Display caller-ID on your television, present digital slide shows, and
play MP3s Use TiVo on your home network to schedule recordings, access lists of
recorded shows, and display your preferred programming on your web site Write your own TiVo programs in Tcl and C Access TiVo's Media Filesystem for programmatic access to show
details--actors, directors, Thumbs-Up ratings, and more
Additional Resources:
TiVo Hacks
Raffi Krikorian
ISBN 0-596-00553-9, 226 pages, $24.95 US, $38.95 CA, 17.50 UK
order@oreilly.com
1-800-998-9938; 1-707-827-7000
About O'Reilly
O'Reilly Media spreads the knowledge of innovators through its books, online services, magazines, and conferences. Since 1978, O'Reilly Media has been a chronicler and catalyst of cutting-edge development, homing in on the technology trends that really matter and spurring their adoption by amplifying "faint signals" from the alpha geeks who are creating the future. An active participant in the technology community, the company has a long history of advocacy, meme-making, and evangelism.
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