Some general questions about Tivo

[mazochungo]

Hello everyone,


First of all, the true point is that I live in Spain and have little idea about what Tivo is.


As far as I discovered, Tivo is a Pay Per View TV system which combines a satellite/cable receiver and a digital video recorder in only one device.

In Europe, these devices are not common. Yes, some people have got receivers for satellite / cable / Digital Terrestrial Television, but none of them include video recording capabilities. The only devices for recording TV shows are VCRs and ('hard-disked' or not) DVD recorders.

DVD recorders are still expensive, while a used Tivo receiver is really cheap.


Since I'm interested in recording TV shows directly to a digital format (but on a hard disk; I've got no need of a later transfer of those shows to DVDs), I was considering some questions about those Tivos. I hope you can help me, so I decide whether or not to get one from eBay...



1) Would a Tivo system work without a subscription to those Pay Per View channels? By "work" I mean allowing one to record on its hard disk whatever it receives (such as the output of a videocamera, etc)?

2) In case the previous answer is "yes", would an American model still work in my country?

3) If the answer to questions 1 and/or 2 is "no", is there any procedure to make it work?? I'm talking of flashing its firmware or hacking it in some way...

4) I noticed that the Tivo has got an RF Aerial input and that it includes one or even two built-in tuners. What kind of tuners are they? I mean, would those tuners tune the UHF (that is, terrestrial) analogue channels that I can watch at home? UHF digital terrestrial channels are now becoming popular in Spain, but the digital signal I receive at home is really low (even the analogue signal is low...), so I can't watch them properly.

5) In the case those built-in tuners are only for digital terrestrial broadcasts or that they don't work in Europe for whatever reason (for example, in Spain we use the PAL-B video system, not the NTSC), I suppose that I will still be able to connect to the Tivo a videocamera, an VCR or any other external device by using RCA cables, right?

6) And my last question: if it is really posible to use the Tivo as a digital video recorder even if you have no subscription, what Timer functions does it have? Can you manually set it up so it automatically records a concrete show by entering the source (a TV station, an external tuner or VCR, etc), the date and the start / end times?


Thank you so much for your atention and sorry for writing such a long message...

Regards

[captain_video]

Standalone Tivo models will only work with NTSC broadcasts. DirecTivo models will only work with DirecTV (also NTSC). The standalone models require a monthly subscription to the Tivo service for them to function whereas the DirecTivo models require DirecTV service. Neither of these are available to you in Spain, therefore you will be unable to use any Tivo model in your country.

There are older series 1 Tivo models that will work as a dummy DVR with no program guide (i.e., no special Tivo functions are available and you'll need to record everything manually). I suppose you could use a PAL-to-NTSC converter with one of these models, assuming such a thing is available to you, and record PAL-B broadcasts but you'd have to set up each recording manually. They do have both cable TV (VHF) and off-the-air VHF/UHF tuning capabilities but they will not work on your TV system.

[Narf54321]

Hi. Welcome and I'll try to expand upon Captain_Video's response a bit.

As far as I discovered, Tivo is a Pay Per View TV system which combines a satellite/cable receiver and a digital video recorder in only one device.

Specifically, Tivo is a company which more or less "invented" the modern hard-drive based video recorder box. Tivo stands out from the more generic cable-TV operator DVR boxes in that the Tivo "user interface" is very easy and generally does what you expect.

There are two basic types of "Tivo", cable-TV (also known as standalone units) and DirecTV Satellite units. Over the years there have been a rather wide variety of different models, from different companies, but all run the same Tivo system software.

The underlying software on a Tivo machine also has lots of nice design features, such as "Season Pass" for your favorite shows and "Suggestions" which the machine records on its own volition based upon samples of other shows you've watched in the past.

The subscription service provides daily TV-Guide listings and on the Series-2 units allow some other special features.


1) Would a Tivo system work without a subscription to those Pay Per View channels? By "work" I mean allowing one to record on its hard disk whatever it receives (such as the output of a videocamera, etc)?


An old Series-1 standalone unit might allow some of that function. The Series-2 are pretty much paperweights (meaning "useless") without the subscription service. Te satellite units are probably even more useless because they don't have any internal video encoder needed with a camcorder device.

They's also be in NTSC (North American) TV format, which is doubtful to work with a European camcorder output. There are a few UK Series-1 Tivo units which *might* match up to your needs a bit better.


2) In case the previous answer is "yes", would an American model still work in my country?


You'd probably need a power converter for the 110v standard a Tivo expects, plus the NTSC vs. PAL issue mentioned above.


3) If the answer to questions 1 and/or 2 is "no", is there any procedure to make it work?? I'm talking of flashing its firmware or hacking it in some way...


A Series-1 standalone (Cable-TV) unit is easily "hacked". A Series-2 TCD240xxx model can also be software hacked. Newer models such as the standalone TCD540 model would need a difficult PROM replacement.

Again, its not so much an issue of software as it is the power and TV-format requirements moving from the U.S. to Europe. Many TV sets work at both 50hz PAL and 60hz NTSC, so you might be able to get an output from Tivo to the TV, but the camcorder would still be very tricky.




4) I noticed that the Tivo has got an RF Aerial input and that it includes one or even two built-in tuners. What kind of tuners are they? I mean, would those tuners tune the UHF (that is, terrestrial) analogue channels that I can watch at home? UHF digital terrestrial channels are now becoming popular in Spain, but the digital signal I receive at home is really low (even the analogue signal is low...), so I can't watch them properly.


The standalone units can pull from antenna, but the tuners and internal software are designed for North American broadcasts. Again, the DirecTV satellite units are built only to dump the raw satellite feed to disc, they don't have any video encoder ability.


5) In the case those built-in tuners are only for digital terrestrial broadcasts or that they don't work in Europe for whatever reason (for example, in Spain we use the PAL-B video system, not the NTSC), I suppose that I will still be able to connect to the Tivo a videocamera, an VCR or any other external device by using RCA cables, right?



You might be able to get a Series-1 UK unit, but I don't know how close their video standards are to Spain.




6) And my last question: if it is really posible to use the Tivo as a digital video recorder even if you have no subscription, what Timer functions does it have? Can you manually set it up so it automatically records a concrete show by entering the source (a TV station, an external tuner or VCR, etc), the date and the start / end times?


A Series-1 without a subscription only has very basic VCR-like timer recordings. A Series-2 without a subscription is pretty much a metal brick.

[fantmn]

I would suggest you look at MythTV. It is an open source based PVR solution that uses PC based TV tuners and records to disk. Google MythTV and also mythtv knoppix. Here is one link (http://www.pvrwire.com/2006/01/23/all-the-mythtv-links-you-can-shake-a-cable-at/)to an article I found and one more here (http://www.bitbenderforums.com/~ralpha6/knoppmyth/knoppmythtv.htm).

[mazochungo]

Hello again.

Thank you very much for all your detailed explanations; they've been a great help for me. And I'll have a look at the MythTV links, because it sounds very nice.


The fact is that I do have a couple of cheap PC-based capturing cards, but they're not so easy-to-use as they seem...

1) They are not 'standalone' devices; you've got to start your PC whenever you want to record something and, of course, it's not recommended to use the machine for other tasks while you're recording something.

2) Maybe because they are cheap cards, I've experienced some problems when capturing certain shows / tapes. Some old noisy video tapes cause my Pinnacle card to insert, every two seconds or less, an incorrect frame (that is, a frame which was already captured some seconds before) in the recording. So when you play it back, the motion in the capture has got some kind of shaking effect...

3) You have no (or few) Timer capabilities with a PC-based video capturer and, again, your computer must be on while you the show you're interested in is being aired.

4) In some other cases, my capture resulted to have no audio/video synchrony, or no audio (because Windows or any other software had changed the default audio input for my captures) and caused me more than a headache...


I know that my solution (and many people have recommended it to me) is a DVD recording set with a built-in hard disk. But they are still expensive (and I don't really need to record on DVD disks most of my recordings). That's why those Tivos look so cheap and nice for me...!

In addition, I suppose it's easy to connect your Tivo's hard disk to your PC, so you can move those recordings to your PC or to a DVD disk, am I right?

By the way, which format do those standalone Tivos encode the broadcasts to before they are stored in the hard disk?? I suppose it is Mpeg2, isn't it?


Again, thank you very much for your help!
Regards

[Narf54321]

I know that my solution (and many people have recommended it to me) is a DVD recording set with a built-in hard disk. But they are still expensive (and I don't really need to record on DVD disks most of my recordings). That's why those Tivos look so cheap and nice for me...!


If the Tivo doesn't understand your local broadcast transmissions, then its a waste of your money. Also, since Tivo doesn't operate in your area there would be no guide data available 9If that matters to you). There's some forums in Australia where they've hacked Tivo units to read their own guide data, you might try looking into that.

In addition, I suppose it's easy to connect your Tivo's hard disk to your PC, so you can move those recordings to your PC or to a DVD disk, am I right?


Ha! No! Tivo uses a proprietary partition setup called MFS which is difficult to work with. Its very difficult to extract video recordings direct from the hard drive (Even for those folks here who actually know how to do it, you'd have to identify and pull each FSID of each show and put them back together manually).

If you can get a Tivo hacked, you can use something like TivoWebPlus or possibly MFS_FTP to download over an ethernet link while the Tivo is running.

By the way, which format do those standalone Tivos encode the broadcasts to before they are stored in the hard disk?? I suppose it is Mpeg2, isn't it?

Yes, its a variant of MPEG2 (NTSC) at 480x480 (typically). Once downloaded from a Tivo, we call them .ty files. There is some "extra" information in the streams which generally need to be removed (TyTools) before they can be used as regular MPEG2.