Hacking the Tivo – HME developer contest
Haven’t been looked much lately at developing directly on TiVo hardware vs trying ideas out on MythTV-style PVR platforms while experimenting with video, media servers, and TV-centric information appliances. A while back it looked like you could hack things into the TiVo, but it seemed that the main advantage of the TiVo was that it worked out of the box and it was relatively cheap compared to building your own, i.e. it was an actual product, not a development platform. Building a system from parts, i.e. MythTV on Linux or Windows Media PC, isn’t an end-user-friendly activity, but can give you Unix-like flexibility where everything is possible, but you may need to do it all yourself.
Saw an article about TiVo’s latest plug for developing applications on the TiVo, I should go take another look.
TiVo’s HME Developer Challenge is part of that effort. Consumers with broadband-connected TiVo recorders are still a small number–about 300,000–and so far only about 60 applications are available on the Internet. The deadline for contest submissions is May 1, and the winners will be announced at the JavaOne conference in late June.
“There’s a lot of interest around hacking TiVo boxes…this was a way to help people see TiVo as a platform,” said Arthur van Hoff, former principal engineer at TiVo responsible for the HME project. Van Hoff has even created a program allowing him to control his home-lighting system from his TiVo.
Ho,
I recently read that TiVO is a Linux box. Assuming this is correct, do you know if anyone has attempted to or accomplished installing MythTV on a TiVO box?
I see this as an opportunity to buy an old 20 or 30 GB TiVO, increase the hard drive to a 250GB, install MythTV, and have the ultimate PVR.
This assumes that the Linux hardware drivers are already installed, since TiVO is a Linux box.
Just a thought,
William Bryant