Caveat Hacker | Tivo Hacks. 100 Industrial-strength Tips Tools 2003

You've not doubt noticed the "Do not open or you will void your warranty" sticker emblazoned across the back of your TiVo box. Well, that is true. If you open your box, you will not be able to send your TiVo into TiVo, Inc. if a problem develops.

If this is of little concern to you, you can stomach the possible consequences, or your TiVo is more than a year old and out of warranty anyway, then open her right up! There is simply no way around it for the lion's share of hacks in this book. If you're going to add a new hard drive, add networking to a Series 1 TiVo, or get a command-line prompt going, you are going to need to pull that box apart and put it back together again.

So, how hard is it really? If you are already pretty comfortable poking around inside a PC, then you should have no problem as a lot of those skills apply to what you will need to do. If not, don't worry, you're probably a quick study.

On the hardware end, about the only oddity is the need for a Torx-10 screwdriver ”available at most fully stocked hardware stores ”to unscrew those star- patterned screws and pop off the case. On the software end, the only price of admission is a basic working knowledge of, or willingness to learn, a little about the Unix operating system that is TiVo's brain.

All that said, let me add a few caveats before you dive in:

TiVo sports a massive power supply that, even when unplugged, could deliver a nasty shock .
The edges of the case are mighty sharp, so mind your head, shoulders, knees, and toes.
Back up your TiVo before and between hacks. We put in substantial time and effort to make sure the directions we give are pretty clear, but that doesn't mean mistakes can't happen.

Backing up is for wimps, you say? I can't emphasize enough how important it is. You do not want to end up with a $400 lemon if something goes wrong. Although you probably could find somebody out there that can give you software to restore your TiVo if something goes wrong, why should you go through all that hassle to find someone to help? Just think of backing up as an insurance policy and take the few minutes to make one of your own when we say so, and save the living on the edge for surfing or rock climbing.
Hacks that you install may or may not be permanent. Your TiVo calls home to the TiVo service once a day and, during that time, TiVo might send an operating system update for the box that has a good chance of undoing whatever hacks you have installed. This is little more than a minor irritation, but just be warned that you might have to reinstall your hacks every once in a while. All that hard work, down the drain.

You may think that one way of preventing this is to stop operating system updates from installing, but you might be missing some rather useful fixes, updates, and new features. When I bought my first TiVo, it did not have a Season Pass Manager until it magically showed up in one of the system updates one morning.

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