AltEPG

I now have the altEPG disk and am trying to learn about new stuff ..

I can get onto tivoweb and have looked around, but not attempted to do anything with it ..

Similarly I see mention of Telnet and hacks and Bash prompts .. seems all very glamourous

Is there one place I can learn about this new universe?

One thing I would like to learn to do, now that the potential saved recordings on a 1 gig disk is big, is sort my now-playing list by name which I think appears to be available in a hack

and what other goodies may be available/

I will soon be in the same boat as you. I'm waiting on a few bits to arrive and will then be installing a cachecard and AltEPG HDD and have never had my TiVo networked before so need to learn how to make use of it all. So if there is a simple hand holding guide for all the new features I would also appreciate the help.

Mark.

There's not really any simple guide to AltEPG. The closest we've got are the Announcements topics under the "Installation & Configuration" section of this forum (viewforum.php?f=16). These will tell you about AltEPG specific stuff. If you're seeking information about general TiVo hacking (telnet, bash etc) then I'd recommend the O'Reilly book "TiVo Hacks". Published in 2003 and out of print no doubt, but it still gives an excellent grounding all things TiVo. You can get an electronic copy here: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596005535.do, or you can pick up a used hard copy from amazon or ebay for a snip.

Regarding the hacks supplied with the AltEPG image, there isn't a published list as far as I know, so I will take this prompt to produce one. Watch this space.

There is a hack for sorting the now playing list ("sortnp"). This isn't included in the AltEPG image but if you've got a network card you can download it and install it. Put sortnp into google and you'll get some sites where you can download/install it from. Have a go at that and see how you get on.

Nice answer Millsb, thank you .. looking forward to the list ..

will follow-up on the sortnp .. not wanting to blow things up, is there any guidance for installing and using it ..

thanks again
edit

Just looked at http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/sh ... p?t=367247 .. lloks good .. that's the rest of today sorted ..

A lot of people in the past have had similar thoughts and started guides, but all that seems to happen is that it dilutes things and then the next person finds there are even more and more places to go and read . It can also make things worse! I remember the perfectly good, comprehensive and collaborative Hinsdale disc upgrade guide being re-written by multiple people on their own personal websites for no reason at all, each one slightly different and sometimes actually introducing mistakes, such as the missing "-l 32" flag. Anyone following those guides would then have a tivo image with the Ouija board alphabet video missing.

Myself, I just read and read and read.

You, today, have taught me something. Your link to the sortnp thread took me to http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/sh ... ost5874823 and then onwards to http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showt ... post117485
and I've been experimenting with a thinner font. (with variable results!). This is something I've always wanted to do, so thankyou! (NB: be very careful if you try this as a mistake can put you in a reboot loop!).

Followed up on sortnp .. I have (Ithink) got it (sortnp.tcl) into TiVo, in the /var/hack directory, but haven't yet found out how to make it hackle ..

Query .. I seem to have two hack directories .. 1 as above and the other as just /hack ( I think I must have created this one as it has todays date, but some of the files within are older) .. is this right ..?

/hack and /var/hack are aliases for the same directory, so that's all fine and normal. (OK, for the picky, /var/hack is a symbolic link to /hack, but the effect is the same). /hack has today's date because you've modified its contents.

If you're using altepg 1.0c then to get sortnp.tcl to start automatically you need to do the following:
(1) move it to a subdirectory of /hack (eg /hack/sortnp)
(2) create another file in that subdirectory, named "startup" and containing the following line:
/hack/sortnp/sortnp.tcl >/dev/null &
(3) ensure that file is executable
(4) reboot...

I could spell out the bash commands for doing that, but that would spoil the fun, wouldn't it?

millsb wrote:I could spell out the bash commands for doing that, but that would spoil the fun, wouldn't it?

Ah .. the mud is clearing ..

millsb wrote:/
I could spell out the bash commands for doing that, but that would spoil the fun, wouldn't it?

Thats my few remaining years sorted then

Cheers

Well, managed it in the end ..

sortnp seems a little flaky ..

dates in any 'sort' except by date don't make sense ..

if you open a folder, there seems no way of closing it except closing folders

the folder only ever indicates the number of files within at create time .. adding or deleting recordings do not change it

keying '8' seems to lock it

etc ..

but it is useful within its limitations ..

bandsp wrote:Well, managed it in the end ..

sortnp seems a little flaky ..

dates in any 'sort' except by date don't make sense ..

That's how the hack works. TiVo's UI sorts by date and that can never ever be changed. The hack works by changing the dates so that the programmes will appear in the order you choose, when TiVo's UI displays them as normal in date order . It's the only possible way it could be done.

mrtickle wrote:A lot of people in the past have had similar thoughts and started guides, but all that seems to happen is that it dilutes things and then the next person finds there are even more and more places to go and read . It can also make things worse! I remember the perfectly good, comprehensive and collaborative Hinsdale disc upgrade guide being re-written by multiple people on their own personal websites for no reason at all, each one slightly different and sometimes actually introducing mistakes, such as the missing "-l 32" flag. Anyone following those guides would then have a tivo image with the Ouija board alphabet video missing.

Myself, I just read and read and read.

You, today, have taught me something. Your link to the sortnp thread took me to http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/sh ... ost5874823 and then onwards to http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showt ... post117485
and I've been experimenting with a thinner font. (with variable results!). This is something I've always wanted to do, so thankyou! (NB: be very careful if you try this as a mistake can put you in a reboot loop!).

When I wrote the post above, I'd been trying the font (futura.ttf) used by the sortnp video on youtube. I'm now experimenting with a 75% width version of the original TiVo font, which has the advantage of including all the accented characters and the TiVo character (used by parental controls) and the tick and double-tick characters (used by some screens - guided setup test call?) Futura does not, which is why I stopped using it.

For comparison here's an 80% version (with the stars squashed to 90% instead of left at 100% as they were before).