AltEPG

Hi

Previously whilst we had "service theft" issues surrounding any non official (i.e US Tivo) being used/hacked in the UK. Do we have the same limitations today ?

Is there anyone who has managed to mod a later unit to work in the UK ?

Was it down to a PAL/NTSC conversion problem ?

Well at least one obstacle has been removed - the TiVo Service Number that is used to get your data slices in each daily call. Unless it was a "02300060..." (ie a Thompson Scenium TiVo) model the servers could just refuse to issue guide data even if you'd done all the work of hacking into your later series unit, making all the PAL mods, etc. You'd lose RGB scart and widescreen switching of course.

However there would be more obstacles to take its place - for a start the guide data for later software versions than our 2.5.5 would have to be slightly differently formatted (just going by all the code branches in TiVoweb alone), doubling or tripling the workload of providing data. It's not impossible - probably yet another item on the "some time in the future maybe" list

the thought of a twin tuner tivo working in the UK is too much for me to handle

I think the S2 (& later) insists on the Daily Call being encrypted - without TiVo Inc's encryption key it won't be possible to replicate this

I did a little reading up on the db of deals a while back about this very topic. It wasn't very clear but I got the idea that it was possible but it involved removing a surface mounted chip and replacing it with a suitable socket. Then a chip with modified firmware could be installed that would fool the Tivo OS into booting. I got the feeling you had to figure out a lot of it yourself as the people who'd done it didn't want to attract attention from Tivo.

Seems to me if it was to be attempted the Aussie Tivo HD would be the best candidate. Their Freeview standard is fairly close to ours so it may be possible to source a pin-compatible replacement which would mean the Tivo OS would probably be able to control it.