New BufferHack?

[Omikron]

Has anyone been successful in porting BufferHack over to the new software versions? I did some cursory checking via the search feature but came up dry.

Is there any interest in having this ported? Have previous attempts been made but subsequently met with failure?

[Jamie]

Has anyone been successful in porting BufferHack over to the new software versions? I did some cursory checking via the search feature but came up dry.

Is there any interest in having this ported? Have previous attempts been made but subsequently met with failure?The BRF changes are easy. I spent a little time looking for the tivoapp patches to correct the playbar display, and didn't succeed. The playbar handling code has changed enough that it doesn't appear to be a trivial port. With just the BRF changes, you get the larger buffer, but the playbar display and control is funky, IIRC.

It's been a few software versions since I looked at this. Shutterfriend (http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/member.php?u=37948) was anxious to get it working and spent some time looking too, but I don't think he got any farther than I did.

[Omikron]

Hmm...

I am sure with all of these wonderfully large hard drives now available, many people would welcome an updated hack.

What is the nature of the playbar funk you speak of?

[ScanMan]

What is the nature of the playbar funk you speak of?The playbar will not reflect the correct start/end time in sync with LiveTV. Thus, your playbar will be out of sync with realtime. I find it a bit annoying...

[ciper]

How did the old bufferhack work with dual tuner units? I assume there was no difference?

My THD is the first dual tuner unit I've owned. Previously I loved the 2 hour liveTV buffer provided by bufferhack and have my fingers crossed that someday it will be possibly again.

[pentium101]

CrashHD had posted this.Bufferhack works for 6.3f using the same data as for 6.3eset sys(6.3f)[list 0x0d6af2 0x0d690a 0x71 0x19e7e6 22029540 A9846DD76AEF86CEA6B3E69CE3758227598991A0]This was tested on 6.3f-01-2-521 on an R10. I believe other units, including the HR10, will be the same, but I cannot confirm this. I have added this into bufferhack 4.0c and applied it to my dvr80 running 6.3f. Everything seems to be working fine.

Is this the version that you were referring to?

[Jamie]

We're talking about the 8.x and 9.x software versions on standalone tivos.

[tivo4mevo]

Speaking of which, I never did determine whether the LiveCacheLength.brf that appeared in 8.x (and remains unchanged in 9.x) could likely be enabled with a patch. For those that aren't familiar with this brf, it appears to be a UI menu to adjust the buffer. From the brf:
�Choose your Live TV cache length. This determines how long the TiVo DVR can pause Live TV

Note: The longer the cache is, the less space the TiVo DVR will have to store your requested recordings

Short (30 minutes)
Medium (1 hour)
Long (1 hour, 30 minutes)


This might still be worth a look, though perhaps in due time, a future software release will expose it.

[Jamie]

Shutterfriend and I played around with that, but didn't have much success.

There's also pieces of a CallerID feature in there too that has never been enabled. I'm assuming these aren't enabled because they don't work yet, but you never know.

[tivo4mevo]

Good point. CallerID has its own spigot, fancy graphic for OSD, has been around since 7.x, and still isn't enabled.

[Omikron]

So no love for bufferhack under 9.x, eh? Drat.

[lgkahn]

bummer......

[bubba123321]

Jamie,
Could you please post your work so far on the Buffer hack. I'd like to give it a go and see if i can live with the playbar problems. I know i cant live with only 30min of live tv pause.
Thanks!,
Bubba

[shutterfriend]

Bubba,

I will try and get the information for you. It may take a little time to dig it up. Jamie and I were able to increase the buffer by modifying the .brf file and we were also able to at least change the live buffer playbar to be just the length of the livetv cache. In other words you could set the livetv buffer to say 2 hours and if you were on a channel for 43 minutes so far the playbar would show 0:00 to 0:43 to indicate the 43 minutes. After 2 hours of being on livetv on same channel the playbar would be 0:00 to 2:00.

Does that interest you. I can get you the code change for 9.3.

[lgkahn]

yes please post it.. that does n ot sound funky to me.. what is the exact issue

[Jamie]

Keep in mind that if you screw up your brf files, you can end up with a machine that won't boot. I wouldn't attempt this unless you really know what you are doing and know how to recover from a corrupted brf file in MFS.

Basically you want to pull the lib/resources/PvrConstants.brf document out of MFS. TuikHelper.tcl can help with that. Then you want to parse out the brf and identify where the buffer size is stored. There are several brf parsers floating around. The brf patches in the bufferhack4 script can be a guide, but beware that this file does sometimes change between releases, so I wouldn't count on the offset being the same. Next, hex edit the brf file to change the buffer size. Be sure you understand the funky encoding of integers in the brf format. Finally, reload it into MFS. Backup the old version first, so you can recover if there are problems. TuikHelper.tcl can help with that too. The new file won't take effect until you reboot.

If you screwed up, your tivo will be in a reboot loop. You'll need to restore the old version to get out of the loop. You can alter your init.d scripts to stop after mfsd is live, but before the rest of myworld is launched so you can run TuikHelper.tcl to restore it. Or restore it on the PC side with mfs_import.

The remaining work to do is to find the tivoapp patches that control the playbar length. It used to be hardcoded in the tivoapp code. It's possible now that it is somewhere in MFS. It's also possible that a tivoapp patch could enable the GUI for built in buffer size support, as described by tivo4mevo above.

[bubba123321]

Shutterfriend, That sounds great. Please post it.

Jamie, thanks for posting with detail. that combined with the code will give some ambitious coder a shot at moving us a step closer..

I regret that I am not quite good enough to be that person myself. I'll be happy if i can get it running as you describe with the expanding playbar. :)

thanks!
Bubba

[shutterfriend]

Bubba,

I will have to port it to 9.3 as I have not done that yet. I will try and get that for you this weekend.

[ciper]

Any news? Does 9.4 need a new port?

[tivo4mevo]

Update for 9.3/9.4 posted in the bufferhack support thread: link (http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showthread.php?p=298239#post298239)

[Jamie]

Thanks!

My S3 is happy running now with a 2 hour buffer. That playbar center patch was elusive. Looked for a 30 minutes constant in minutes or seconds, but not something obscure like that. Nice find.

[lgkahn]

thanks everyone 2 hour buffers now working on both my series 3's.. first time i went in the screen was ffd up thought something was wrong but now all seems ok..