Hacking my TiVo was one of the most short lived hacks I have ever done. It’s not because hacking a TiVo isn’t cool, it’s because my crappy replacement hard drive decided to die a week after installation, causing me to buy a new TiVo. During my short time learning about the TiVo scene, I learned that you can add a bigger hard drive to your TiVo, unlock more home media options, and several other cool software hacks. My favorite easter egg, Play-Select-Play-3-0-Play, is still embedded in my mind, and is one of the many other cool tricks I learned from the TiVo scene.
To do the majority of my TiVo hacking research, I turned to the TiVo Community. The community is loosely affiliated and recommended by TiVo as a great support forum. While it’s a great support forum, the community also covers modifying the TiVo as long as nothing illegal is done in the process. If you want to know everything about your TiVo and how you can make it do more, I would highly recommend the TiVo Community.
3 Comments
If your hard drive died, why’d you buy a new TiVo? All you need to do it put in your old stock hard drive, and boot off that.
Worst case scenario, if you didn’t have your old hard drive, you could restore from a backup image of your old hard drive (you did back up, didn’t you?) or you could purchase a disc with an image of your TiVo’s software using InstantCake from ptvupgrade.com.
Oh and generally in TiVo nomenclature, changing your hard drive is an “upgrade” not a “hack”. Generally hacks are what allows you to do things like copy unencrypted video off your TiVo, etc. This kind of stuff is generally frowned upon by the TiVo Community, and TiVo (the company).
What is the Play-Select-Play-3-0-Play easter egg then?
Well, the original TiVo hard drive died, so that’s why I replaced it with an upgraded drive. After I upgraded the drive, the new drive died also. I was just fed up with hard drives dying, so I bought a new unit. It was the same exact price as a new hard drive, so why wouldn’t I get a new unit?
When I mentioned hack, I was referring to all the things you can do to your TiVo, not just upgrade hard drives.
It allows you to push a button and skip 30 seconds, the typical length of a commercial.
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