TiVo Community Forums Archives - TiVoNET and Network Array Devices

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TiVoNET and Network Array Devices
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Posted by: RobertHayden

This is largely a theoretical discussion and is likely not practical...

Assuming you are using TivoNET and can get ethernet/IP connectivity into your Tivo...

Has anyone looked into setting up for Network Storage options in order to increase capacity. Linux has the ability to export an unformatted raw-disk partion to another device. That remote device then handles creating and managing the filesystem, but locally it looks like an attached disk.

The exporting computer has no access to the exported partition (unlike, say if it was exported as NFS or SAMBA). It simply says "/dev/sdc1 is available for hostname foo".

From a TiVo perspective, you could easiily add in "oodles" (a highly technical term) of additional space. To do it, however, you are going to need the TiVo to support network storage (via kernel!), as well as create the software/interfaces to allow people to easily add the storage (you'd likely need to telnet in and execute commands in shell to set it up)

With PCs and storage as cheap as they are, you could easily add in 600GB for around 600 or 700 dollars.

(NOTE: My DTivo seemed to get MUCH slower when I upped the capacity to 146 hours [80+80]. I'm just imagining how slow it might be if there was 700GB of space available.)

(NOTE 2: I'm not saying this is practical, only asking if anyone's messed with it and if so how well it works. I myself haven't even set up TiVoNET, as I don't have an ethernet drop close to my entertainment center and the phone call is local).

(NOTE 3: This is not an exercise is trying to extract video :-)

Posted by: Worf

Well, if it works as a raw block device on the TiVo side, it would probably work - IIRC there was such a thing, but can't remember where it led.

The only concern would be throughput - I think the TiVo records at "best" at 5-6Mbps, and since it reads at the same time, it'll saturate a TiVoNet (assuming you could get the full 10Mbps from TiVoNet - after all, it is a very limited ISA bus interface).

But it's worth a shot.

Posted by: embeem

I forsee a few problems:
1. network lag - people already report stuttering problems with the disks directly attached.

2. network outages - this will be seen as a removal of the disk and aside from promptly crashing the tivo will result in serious corruption if the tivo was then restarted while the network was down

3. the usual extraction legalese and backup sharing

Posted by: RobertHayden

Hmm. I didn't realize that the TivoNET was limited to 10mb/s. I figured some of the ISA cards could fo 100mb and get at least passable thruput.

It might be doable, and certainly an interesting experiment, but that's probably all it would be for now. The risk of total partition corruption is pretty damn high if the hosting machine was to fail.

Posted by: embeem

quote:
Originally posted by RobertHayden
Hmm. I didn't realize that the TivoNET was limited to 10mb/s. I figured some of the ISA cards could fo 100mb and get at least passable thruput.

Actually the tivonet cards don't even make it to 10Mbps despite using 10Mbps cards -- It's an issue with the "isa adapter" not actually being true isa (no dma and such).

Posted by: RobertHayden

Hehe. We'll chalk this up as a "bad idea" then. Wish I could say I was at least drinking when I had it. :D

Posted by: TheAmigo

That "no DMA" bit really hurts! My tivo can't play, record and stream 192Kbps audio over the network simultaneously, let alone video. If I hit pause, then it's ok with recording and a little bit of network streaming, but it's not much good if you can't play (since the TiVo is ALWAYS recording).

With a 100Mbps NIC that had DMA, it might be worth trying.

Posted by: embeem

quote:
Originally posted by TheAmigo
That "no DMA" bit really hurts! My tivo can't play, record and stream 192Kbps audio over the network simultaneously, let alone video. If I hit pause, then it's ok with recording and a little bit of network streaming, but it's not much good if you can't play (since the TiVo is ALWAYS recording).

With a 100Mbps NIC that had DMA, it might be worth trying.

Actually you can probably chalk that one up to the task scheduler, using a lower priority with setpri would probably fix it. (...not that I advocate any matter of network video transfers, tivo or not...)

Posted by: TheAmigo

Really? I would've thought that if it had enough CPU power, it wouldn't matter which had a higher priority. And conversely, if it doesn't have enough power, that changing the priority would select which process stutters. Is there something else that factors in?