TiVo Community Forums Archives - Software 3.0 News?

TiVoCommunity.com
(c)opyright 1995-2005 All rights reserved
indexcheckTC
This area is a static history of posts in the TiVo Community Forum Archive.
This archive history was made for the simple indexing of search sites like Google.

Pages:1

Software 3.0 News?
(Click here to view the original thread with full colors/images)

Posted by: GBaz

Any new news on 3.0 yet. I have not seen any in a while and would be intrestd to know when its coming. I thought somone said in march it would be out.

Sorry if this was recently covered but cant search 3.0

Posted by: GBaz

Noone has heard anything?

Posted by: Dan the TiVo Man

You can search 3.0, you need 3 characters to execute a search.
Doesn't sound like anyone knows about 3.0 for sure. Check out this thread for a small discussion about 3.0:
3.0 discussion

Posted by: r10880

quote:
Originally posted by GBaz
Any new news on 3.0 yet. I have not seen any in a while and would be intrestd to know when its coming. I thought somone said in march it would be out.

Sorry if this was recently covered but cant search 3.0

Just got off of the phone with Tivo. They rep told me that 3.0 will be out at the end of this month. He also hinted that guide updates will be handled much differently. He said something about the guide data coming from the discovery channel at 3:00am. Then when your Tivo makes its daily call, the decryption keys will be downloaded and then it will unlock the guide data the Tivo received via the Discovery channel.

-Pete

Posted by: Spence

I wonder how the updates will work for those who do not get the Discovery Channel?

Posted by: GBaz

Thanks for the info.

What if your record something else at 3 am. then you are sol.

Sounds like a good idea to me thoe, save them money on the dial up costs. They must pay the company that provides the lines by total time used each month. This method would cut it dramatically. I supose standard guide data dial ins would continue for people with out the Discovery chanel.

Future software updates may be done this way also....

Posted by: andyf

Think about it. If the guide data came exclusively from the Disc Channel download once a week, then on the day before the download your TiVo would only have about 4 days of data left and would be nagging the heck out of you. Not sure this is how it's going to work.

Posted by: bsnelson

quote:
Originally posted by r10880
Just got off of the phone with Tivo. They rep told me that 3.0 will be out at the end of this month. He also hinted that guide updates will be handled much differently. He said something about the guide data coming from the discovery channel at 3:00am. Then when your Tivo makes its daily call, the decryption keys will be downloaded and then it will unlock the guide data the Tivo received via the Discovery channel.

Sorry, bro, you missed April Fool's by about twelve hours..

Brad

Posted by: GBaz

quote:
Originally posted by andyf
Think about it. If the guide data came exclusively from the Disc Channel download once a week, then on the day before the download your TiVo would only have about 4 days of data left and would be nagging the heck out of you. Not sure this is how it's going to work.

Perhaps they have updated the nag as not to bother you until 2 days before. It would make sense that the data would go out every 2 days incase tivo was recording something else at that time. Perhaps all even number days. If tivo only had 1 day left it would check the date and if it saw it could not get data on that day it would make a call back to the mother ship.

Posted by: GBaz

Say anyone here any new news about drivers for turbo/tivo net being included with the 3.0 update?

Posted by: stormsweeper

quote:
Originally posted by GBaz
Say anyone here any new news about drivers for turbo/tivo net being included with the 3.0 update?

Nothing official, but it's basically been acknowledged by RB that 3.0 will have support for TiVoNet/TurboNet on both Series I and II hardware, PPP over serial support for Series I, and USB Ethernet for Series II. Presumably the drivers will be loaded via backdoor codes.

Posted by: mattnboise

quote:
Originally posted by Spence
I wonder how the updates will work for those who do not get the Discovery Channel?

For those that do not get the Discovery Channel or if there is paid programming TiVo will default to dial up.

Posted by: r10880

quote:
Originally posted by andyf
Think about it. If the guide data came exclusively from the Disc Channel download once a week, then on the day before the download your TiVo would only have about 4 days of data left and would be nagging the heck out of you. Not sure this is how it's going to work.

The rep never said anything about once a week updates. He said daily.

-Pete

Posted by: r10880

quote:
Originally posted by GBaz
Thanks for the info.

What if your record something else at 3 am. then you are sol.

I asked this very question. The answer is that it will get the update the next day. Also, I ask about not having the Discovery channel. He said that the Tivo would then use the phone line to grab updates.

-Pete

Posted by: r10880

quote:
Originally posted by bsnelson
Sorry, bro, you missed April Fool's by about twelve hours..

Brad

I am not making what I posted up. I am only reporting what I was told.

-Pete

Posted by: r10880

quote:
Originally posted by GBaz
Say anyone here any new news about drivers for turbo/tivo net being included with the 3.0 update?

I asked about this too. He said that a backdoor will be part of the update, but will not be published.

-Pete

Posted by: GBaz

Well you better not record something at 3:00 am every night then.
If you did:
1) Tivo would dial in
2) The very the time of night that the guyide data is on to avoid this.

Posted by: stormsweeper

quote:
Originally posted by GBaz
Well you better not record something at 3:00 am every night then.
If you did:
1) Tivo would dial in
2) The very the time of night that the guyide data is on to avoid this.

My TiVo is usually recording Gargoyles then. Of course, I think I get the Pacific broadcast of DSC, so maybe my 5am slot would work.

I'm curious as to how they would manage to encode this stuff, though.

Posted by: GBaz

Well just last night I was watching Dateline I had recorded.
I was 30 second skiping throught the commercials and I saw a green oval with a thumb up in the upper right hand corner for an instand.
I thought I was going crazey.

I rewinded and sure enough. There was a green tumb that said somting like "press" Then it cycled to a yellow oval with TIVO Guy and said "to record"
So i did to see what would happen. Play back paused and the record screen for ER came up with the options.

The point is that they can encode data in a broadcast. Enoug to include show title and date atleast.
Very cool.
BTW I Have a SA

Posted by: stevel

The "TiVo guy" icon is a "TiVomatic" and is encoded in the VBI. Not enough bandwidth there for any signficant amount of data. TiVo has been experimenting for some time with a data download during Teleworld Paid Programming (the Saturday 4AM on DSC show). I'm guessing that they intend to use this technology as a way of reducing the dependency on phone calls (and incidentally lowering costs.)

Posted by: GBaz

how about the cc or text area of the single. Closed captioning carries alot of tata. the Text could also. And mot tv have cc1 ccr text1 and text2. If these can all be used at once it would certainly have enough space for programing guide data.

Posted by: ronsch

After turning backdoors on recently and using the appropriate code, I found several Teleworld recordings going all the way back to November. They included the Francis Ford Coppola interviews, Tivo Series 2 commercials, film clips of Oscar Best Picture nominees..etc

Posted by: HTH

quote:
Originally posted by r10880
He said something about the guide data coming from the discovery channel at 3:00am. Then when your Tivo makes its daily call, the decryption keys will be downloaded and then it will unlock the guide data the Tivo received via the Discovery channel.

So it will still be making a daily call to get the decryption keys for each day's worth of video data download. This just reduces how much time the TiVo will be on the phone, not the frequency at which calls are made.

This brings it to the same service model as DirecTiVos getting their guide data over the dish, only it uses the full bandwidth of the video signal to send CC-like data on all visible scanlines.

Is this sufficient security? As long as one could receive the paid program, it would seem one could acquire guide data without payment just by extracting the video decryption key from one TiVo and giving it to another (the same key must be able to decrypt the same signal provided to all TiVos). Unless TiVo is going to allow you to mirror SA subscriptions, whereupon your download would include decryption keys encrypted with each authorized TiVo's crypto-key, which are then shared by USB, serial, or LAN connection between the TiVos. That would eliminate the motivation for many people to do it themselves.

And the TiVos Could Be coDed To not accePt A decrypted video decryption key, requiring Sending encrypted keyS that muSt be decrypted with the Crypto chip first by the Authorized TiVo. Neat trick. Now where have I heard of that idea before?

Posted by: willmw

I wonder if it would be possible for a box with lifetime to not call in at all as long as it gets the data from Discovery Channel. Would make a lot of us with dead modem issues on a lifetime box VERY HAPPY!

Posted by: HTH

quote:
Originally posted by willmw
I wonder if it would be possible for a box with lifetime to not call in at all as long as it gets the data from Discovery Channel. Would make a lot of us with dead modem issues on a lifetime box VERY HAPPY!

Did you not read what I just said? You'll still need to make the daily call to get the daily decryption key for the daily program, and the key will probably be encrypted itself so that it can only be used with the unit given the key. To do what you describe would require you to crack your TiVo's crypto chip keys and be able to perform a crack of the data download within the lifetime of the enclosed data. If it takes you more than 2 weeks to crack the encryption, the effort won't be worth it.

Of course, we won't be discussing ways to do that here.

Posted by: willmw

Oh, yeah...I read what you wrote...
Just seems to me that a unit with lifetime could be given a dedicated key so that it didn't need to dialup every day to get a new one. The key could/should be tied to something in the hardware so it couldn't be transferred to other units, but would allow a lifetime box to decrypt the data just for that box.

Posted by: stahta01

quote:
Originally posted by willmw
Oh, yeah...I read what you wrote...
Just seems to me that a unit with lifetime could be given a dedicated key so that it didn't need to dialup every day to get a new one. The key could/should be tied to something in the hardware so it couldn't be transferred to other units, but would allow a lifetime box to decrypt the data just for that box.

Any key to fit the above would be easier to break than they would want to use.

Tim S

Posted by: GBaz

I wonder if the updates would be incremental of complete. If they are complete the tivo would have to figure out what data it needed and filter out the rest.
If it is incremental this will cause problems wit missing data if you miss a night or two.
Thus it must be complete data every night.

As of now i presume that during the call the tivo only gets the data it needs not all of it.

By sending all the data every night it would require a lot of bandwith.
Anyone have any idea at what rate they could send data and how much of it the full program guide takes up? Would they be able to fit it into 1 hour?

If we calculate this we could have some soret of verification that it is a least technically possible.

Posted by: HTH

quote:
Originally posted by GBaz
I wonder if the updates would be incremental of complete. If they are complete the tivo would have to figure out what data it needed and filter out the rest.

If it is incremental this will cause problems wit missing data if you miss a night or two.

Thus it must be complete data every night.

I expect that, if a video download was missed, it would fall back to doing a modem download.

I expect it's only one day's worth of data because it would have to include data for every channel in TiVo's supported area that carries the Discovery Channel, including all satellite channels and every broadcast channel. That requirement would take up a lot of bandwidth already for just one day's worth of data. I doubt they'd have the bandwidth for more than that.

Posted by: pauly666

quote:
Originally posted by HTH

I expect that, if a video download was missed, it would fall back to doing a modem download.

So for the people who don't want to have a 50 foot phone cable permanently on the floor, or who have too much interference to use the remote phone hook-up thingies, bascially, nothing changes and it's dial-up as usual...

Waste of man-power if you ask me...

Regarding the technology, the CC lines would not be how they do it. You only get 2 bytes of data per line, and 2 lines per frame (1 per field). So, 4 bytes per frame, or 120bytes per second is gonna take a looooooong time! Plus, what happens to the program that happens to be on at the time of the download? No CC or V-Chip info? I doubt it.

However, if they are using NABTS, that gives them much higher bandwidth, using lines 10-21 per field. ATVEF provides a structure to download data using the NABTS protocol. NABTS provides 33bytes of data per line, 12 lines per field, 2 fields = 792 bytes per frame, or 23,760 per second: much better!

Still, to cover all the different areas/channel line-ups thats a lot of data!

Posted by: Michael R

What TiVo Co. ought to do is elimate the phone dial up requirement altogether with a software tweak that would get the decryption key once a month via the Discovery Channel data feed. If the TiVo box didn't get a hit once a month it could just shut off the Guide.

Just think how many TiVo's could be sold to Mexico and Canada if they eliminated the phone line requirement. Just think how much money TiVo Co. would save by eliminating all inbound program guide POTS calls.:)

Posted by: Michael R

What's to prevent the cable or satellite company from charging TiVo Co. a fee for carrying the NABTS in the program feed?

quote:
Originally posted by pauly666

However, if they are using NABTS, that gives them much higher bandwidth, using lines 10-21 per field. ATVEF provides a structure to download data using the NABTS protocol. NABTS provides 33bytes of data per line, 12 lines per field, 2 fields = 792 bytes per frame, or 23,760 per second: much better!

Still, to cover all the different areas/channel line-ups thats a lot of data!

Posted by: GBaz

quote:
Originally posted by Michael R
What TiVo Co. ought to do is elimate the phone dial up requirement altogether with a software tweak that would get the decryption key once a month via the Discovery Channel data feed. If the TiVo box didn't get a hit once a month it could just shut off the Guide.

But there would be no way to verify that thie tivo has a subscription. Not only does it get the key when it would call in it would also verify account status.
THis may be possible on lifetime boxes but would lack any decent security.

Posted by: pauly666

quote:
Originally posted by Michael R
What's to prevent the cable or satellite company from charging TiVo Co. a fee for carrying the NABTS in the program feed?

Good point.

Also, I just thought of something else - not all cable/satellite boxes will output/pass through the NABTS data, since there is no FCC requirement to do so (they must output line 21 though, for CC and V-Chip). So TiVo can't be using NABTS - which means they have to be using line 21 data carriage only. Man, 120bytes per second (at absolute best; probably only around 40bytes per second in reality once you account for CC and V-Chip!!!). How big is 2 weeks worth of guide data???

This just is not gonna work...

Posted by: GBaz

perhaps they dont brodcast any program related cc during that time so that would free up all of cc. and since its encriped even if you watch it it wont make any sence to read...
Perhaps they use compression.

Posted by: HTH

quote:
Originally posted by Michael R
What TiVo Co. ought to do is elimate the phone dial up requirement altogether with a software tweak that would get the decryption key once a month via the Discovery Channel data feed.

How mind-numbingly stupid it would be to send the data in encrypted form and at the same time broadcast a copy of the decryption key! You might as well be sending it unencrypted in the first place!

Posted by: HTH

quote:
Originally posted by pauly666
Regarding the technology, the CC lines would not be how they do it. You only get 2 bytes of data per line, and 2 lines per frame (1 per field). So, 4 bytes per frame, or 120bytes per second is gonna take a looooooong time! Plus, what happens to the program that happens to be on at the time of the download? No CC or V-Chip info? I doubt it.

However, if they are using NABTS, that gives them much higher bandwidth, using lines 10-21 per field. ATVEF provides a structure to download data using the NABTS protocol. NABTS provides 33bytes of data per line, 12 lines per field, 2 fields = 792 bytes per frame, or 23,760 per second: much better!

They're already using 480 scanlines per frame! Why would they use less lines only in an area of the video that may be stripped? (Okay, not a full 480, since they have their ticker in the middle of the screen, but it's certainly more than 24 lines per frame.)

Posted by: pauly666

quote:
Originally posted by HTH

They're already using 480 scanlines per frame! Why would they use less lines only in an area of the video that may be stripped? (Okay, not a full 480, since they have their ticker in the middle of the screen, but it's certainly more than 24 lines per frame.)

Err, what are you talking about? You can't send data during active video because there's... ummm... video there! You think the Discovery Channel are going to stop their programming for an hour each day so TiVo guide updates can happen?

Posted by: mrmike

quote:
Originally posted by pauly666

Err, what are you talking about? You can't send data during active video because there's... ummm... video there! You think the Discovery Channel are going to stop their programming for an hour each day so TiVo guide updates can happen?

That's Paid Programming time on DSC, so yes if TiVo pays for it (and they do).

-MM

Posted by: HTH

http://my.athenet.net/~saturn/tivocast1.jpg

http://my.athenet.net/~saturn/tivocast2.jpg

The closed captioning from the above example reads:

quote:
This pattern is part of the
regular broadcast. Do not
adjust your television.
The date of this broadcast
is December 17, 2001.
Timor non suffocabit res novas

Obviously the date changes. The center only used color that one day. Thank Saturn49 for the images.

A search for TiVo Test Pattern comes up with previous discussion on this topic. Early speculation in the old TiVo Takes forum is lost.

Like CC, it encodes only 16 bits per scanline, allowing it to use the hardware's existing CC decoding capabilities on the whole image.

Posted by: pauly666

WOW! Erm...... WOW! ;)

This is like the force tunes that satellite boxes do to get software upgrades... I wonder if it was suggested to TiVo by DirecTV?

I suppose paying for an hour long slot at 3am is cheaper than paying for the few people that have to use 800 numbers cause they have no local access number? Are there really that many people who have to use the 800 number?

I don't see how this is going to save money for TiVo. All the people who have local access numbers aren't costing TiVo any money when they dial up. The main cost will be coming from those using 800 numbers. But everyone is still going to have to dial in to get the access codes, so how is this cheaper for TiVo?

Posted by: HTH

Right now the timeslot is only 30 minutes, and sometimes starts as much as 2 minutes late.

It also means that the duration of calls to the 800 numbers will be shorter. Even 800 number owners pay by the minute.

But even TiVo doesn't run the 800 numbers. They pay UUNET for hosting the dialup access for the units, and they may be metered by time and/or bandwidth, and is accrued even for local calls. The less dialup access used, the less it costs TiVo.

Posted by: pauly666

quote:
Originally posted by HTH
The less dialup access used, the less it costs TiVo.

Has it come to the point that the cost of (say) 10,000 users of an 800 number is more expensive than a 30 minute slot on TV (albeit at 3am)?

Am I waaaay out on the number of people using the 800 number? I wonder what the break even point would be - anyone have any ideas on how much the 30 minute slot on DSC would cost?

Posted by: Thork

quote:
Originally posted by GBaz
Well just last night I was watching Dateline I had recorded.
I was 30 second skiping throught the commercials and I saw a green oval with a thumb up in the upper right hand corner for an instand.
I thought I was going crazey.

How do you do a 30 sec skip? I haven't seen this feature, is it only available on certain units, or is it a hack? (I have the Philips 14 hr TiVo.)

Thanks,
Thor

Posted by: gleffler

30-second skip is activated by a backdoor. Look in Otto's thread "Almost Complete Codes List" for how to get it to work.

/gleffler

Posted by: Thork

Worked like a charm, hope they don't remove this feature in future releases!

Thanks,
Thor

Posted by: ILoveMyTiVo

quote:
Originally posted by pauly666

Has it come to the point that the cost of (say) 10,000 users of an 800 number is more expensive than a 30 minute slot on TV (albeit at 3am)?

Am I waaaay out on the number of people using the 800 number? I wonder what the break even point would be - anyone have any ideas on how much the 30 minute slot on DSC would cost?

You missed the point that they DO pay for calls for everybody. They are paying UUNET which you are basically calling to get internet access so it can contact TiVo. This is a huge expense, and every practically upgrade they shorten phone calls to save them more money. (You know that TiVo is still not profitable overall, right?)

Posted by: GBaz

Teleworld discussion http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-v...&threadid=45116

But it is now called Advanced Paid Programing

Posted by: GBaz

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-v...ng&pagenumber=3

TiVolutionary states:

quote:

We had some post production and broadcast problems, and we're going to try one more time Sunday morning. Cross your fingers.

Series 2 boxes won't get it this time. That release is coming soon.

I don't think DIRECTV boxes will get it either. Again, that release will come soon -- probably very soon.

And there are probably some other circumstances that would mess it up, like no Discovery channel, or no phone calls, etc.

It's not a perfect system, but we're working on it!

So here we have a hint that 3.0 is coming soon.

We also know that the Advanced Paid Programing is still flawed as of mid march. So would tivo be going to a new system of guide data transmision this month if it still does not work and they have to make multiple attempts to send the same thing? I doubt it.

Also in the thread many people state that they did not get it because their local cable company would broadcast someting inplace of the discovery chanels paid programing. This would mean that these people would have to default back to dial-up. I wonder how many people would have to do this. If it is half of the subscribers need to it may not pay in the long run to have changed the data transmision.

Posted by: WinBear

Isn't this going to put a lot more processing on the local TiVo? They are going to have to broadcast the guide data for ALL channels whether you get them or not. The local TiVo then has to pick out the data that matches it's lineup. How would line up changes be handled?

Posted by: GBaz

It sure will. Especially with compression and decryption.
I would imaging that each lineup is give a unique ID of some sort. The Id would be at the begining of the data and there would be marker at the end. Tivo would just look for the id and endmarker and toss out the rest of the data.
OR each lineup is sent as a distinct file with its own name. Tivo would capture all files. Then look for the propper one and ignore the rest. That way all it has to do is decript and decopress the relevent file.

Posted by: HTH

Decoding takes place in real time, changing the video into text. Decryption (it is spelled with a "y") and decompression would occur, but that happens now when you download the data over the modem anyway, so that's nothing new, only difference is the amount of data.

And, come to think of it, they might not have to put every channel's data in the video download. Just the national cable channels would relieve a lot of load on the dialup bandwidth, and would be useful to more people. Broadcast channels would be far less data to deal with over the modem.

Only question remains is if you use Discovery Channel's feeds to provide different data to each half of the nation or data for both east and west coast feeds in one program? Are there enough people with dual feeds for enough channels to justify putting them all in one video download?

Posted by: Saturn

quote:
Originally posted by HTH

Obviously the date changes. The center only used color that one day. Thank Saturn49 for the images.

You're welcome! I saw this thread and was going to post links to them myself...but you beat me to it.

There are a lot of issues to work out with this kind of data broadcast: time zones, what to broadcast...etc etc. And I leave all that stuff up to the minds of the TiVo developers - no doubt they have already addressed those issues in countless design meetings. Not to mention the issues with broadcast quality, the impact of MPEG compression on the data, framerate, amount of time to decode/decrypt, etc etc etc.

I somehow imagine that decoding video into data on a 50Mhz processor with 16MB of RAM (any Series 1 SA box) is going to be quite a chore, taking on the order of hours for a 30 minute broadcast. But, since TiVo appears to still be testing and implementing it, I imagine they'll pull it off.

I just hope TiVo hasn't thrown all their resources into this - there's quite a few very good enhancement suggestions that we have yet to see implemented.

Posted by: HTH

Time zones aren't much of a problem when they already flag coastal feeds with the abbreviations and using UTC internally anyway. And MPEG compression shouldn't enter into it, just as it doesn't for closed caption support. All the decoding is done with the video hardware in real time.

quote:
Originally posted by HTH
Can [the tivovbi software] be used to decode the data in the Teleworld Paid Program?

quote:
Originally posted by embeem
Technically yes (for a standalone) since it's essentially a full frame of vbi data, but it would require a signifigant amount of work to grab the data. The closed captioning is separated out from the signal by the 7114 just before the video hits the mpeg encoder, so you'd need to mess with the fpga7114 module to decode the full frame as data not video and there'd be some changes to tivovbi to accept the modified input.

The real headache comes from the fact that you'd need to do this all live since that's the only time the signal would be going though the 7114 along with the fact that storing it as mpeg introduces alot of artifacts that would corrupt the data. The only time you'd have to test this would be durring the occasional paid program so you'd only have up to 25 minutes or so to correctly reconfigure the 7114 to capture the data (there's also the possibility that doing so would cause the 7114 to stop feeding video data..).

I've taken still images from the live signal before with a video capture card and was able to recover fragments of data but not enough to figure out the format of the decoded data -- I'll have to figure out a better method of capture for the next time they send one of those.

Posted by: tivohaydon

I would imagine that MPEG doesn't effect CC data because it's outside of the picture area. Not because MPEG doesn't introduce enough artifacts.

Posted by: Worf

I believe the CC data is stored outside of the video stream - VBI data is so common that it's mostly expected that it will be treated specially.

Also, the patterns they use are specially designed to withstand MPEG compression. Supposedly, TiVo filed a patent on using such patterns and analyzing the MPEG bitstream directly to extract data (i.e., the patterns are special enough that through MPEG compression, the data can be extracted without decoding the MPEG stream).

Posted by: tjdmobile

As far as the UUNET connection cost...why not have Tivo programmers emulate ONE feature of the Ultimate TV system - custom dial-up settings. I have a 56k connection at home, which dials in to the very same phone number that my Tivo uses. Tivo should have an area where I can enter my username and password, and enter the phone number to call. This way, Tivo wouldn't have to provide an account on the web for folks to use.

I know it seems really simple, but how many Tivo owners out there don't have access to their own dial-up Internet account (or broadband with TivoNet for that matter)? For those who don't require Tivo to provide internet accounts, charge $8.95 for access (after all, Ultimate gives you 2 hours of internet time for their $9.99), and for those who don't have / want to provide their own account, charge $14.99 per month. This would encourage folks to take the financial load off Tivo.

Just a thought...

Posted by: GBaz

Looking at the pictures previousl posted the pattern seems to be distinct and that mpg compression should not effect it too much. the pattern is in blocks which is how mpeg compression works so i would guess it would not seffer to much

Posted by: HTH

quote:
Originally posted by Worf
Also, the patterns they use are specially designed to withstand MPEG compression. Supposedly, TiVo filed a patent on using such patterns and analyzing the MPEG bitstream directly to extract data (i.e., the patterns are special enough that through MPEG compression, the data can be extracted without decoding the MPEG stream).

More than that, they can extract the data before it even becomes MPEG encoded, using the 7114.

Posted by: trojanrabbit

I had a video editor (Videonics?) whose operating software was stored on a VHS cassette (damn thing forgot everything if the power went off). You initially played the tape and it looked somewhat like this, except it looked like the whole screen used very small blocks (I'm sure this was before CC). There were multiple copies of the program on the tape.

The system stored your editing information in like fashion on another VHS cassette. When you started to create your edited tape, you just kept on feeding your originals, the system controlled another VCR through an IR blaster.

Posted by: ADent

There was a pitch by one of the TiVo founders at one of the university's and the powerpoint was made available.

It showed that for a 'small' number of TiVo like boxes it was cheaper to call in, but there were additional costs for each new subscriber.

But as you scaled to a 'large' number it was cheaper to broadcast the data. And the broadcast model was flat, same costs for 1,000, 10,000, or 10,000,000 subscribers.

In other words this has been part of the plan since the begining.

Posted by: bspahn

There is a presentation by Jim Barton at Berkeley from just about a year ago here that is pretty interesting.

Posted by: GBaz

Is it just me or does that sire not work right. I cant get the presentation to play or the slide show to work. It might be that my work blocks it.

Posted by: Rcrew

I just hit it with real player. Worked fine.

Rob

Posted by: ADent

quote:
Originally posted by bspahn
There is a presentation by Jim Barton at Berkeley from just about a year ago here that is pretty interesting.

That's what I was thinking of - page 9.

Posted by: gleffler

Yeah, I remember that there used to be a PCI card you could for backing up your computer to VHS tape. It was a PCI card with an RCA out, and you would just record the signals from the card onto a tape. Each tape held something like 4GB, IIRC (although that could be totally wrong.)

/gleffler

Posted by: GBaz

Seems to be blocked form work. Ill have to look at it at homw.
gleffler I remember hearing about that but I did not realize that they ever actually made it. Was that on SP mode? $ gigs would have taken 2 hours. Wow.

Posted by: mishagray

This method of sending digital data was one of the patents that Tivo recently got.

It basically is a way of encoding digital data into a video signal that will be immune from MPEG2 (and other MPEG2 like) compression agorithms. This allows them to record the data using the current Tivo record function, and then parse the data out afterwards. It also makes the data immune from any sort of MPEG2 compression that may happen during transmission. This is happening more and more as studios move to HDTV transmissions (which are MPEG2 encoded).

By using record, it can parse the data in the background as a low level process.

Posted by: jblake

quote:
as studios move to HDTV transmissions (which are MPEG2 encoded).

and standard def. digital transmission, which is mpeg 2 encoded. if it were HD digital, then there would probably be enough clarity for it to work

Posted by: pauly666

The screen shots make it look like Closed Caption data format - the bars on the left look like the CC sine wave run in, and it looks like you get 2 bytes per line. If this is the case, the video decoder (Philips 7114) could be decoding it and placing it as ancilliary data in the 656 digital video stream. The MPEG encoder would then just place CC data into Picture User Data, to be easily extracted.

Posted by: embeem

quote:
Originally posted by pauly666
The screen shots make it look like Closed Caption data format - the bars on the left look like the CC sine wave run in, and it looks like you get 2 bytes per line. If this is the case, the video decoder (Philips 7114) could be decoding it and placing it as ancilliary data in the 656 digital video stream. The MPEG encoder would then just place CC data into Picture User Data, to be easily extracted.

hate to burst your bubble but that was already discussed ages ago

Posted by: MighTiVo

quote:
Originally posted by HTH

More than that, they can extract the data before it even becomes MPEG encoded, using the 7114.

Not if you have a stand alone connected to Dish, DirectTV, or digital cable.

Posted by: HTH

quote:
Originally posted by MighTiVo
Not if you have a stand alone connected to Dish, DirectTV, or digital cable.

And just why the hell not? If closed captions can work with all those sources, which are decoded by the 7114, then why can't this data in the visual portion of the image be decoded by the 7114 just as easily as if it was an RF source?

Posted by: rickertk

I think it was just a semantic point - since with any of those three
sources, it's already been converted to MPEG and back again by the
time it gets into the Tivo.
You could of course get the data before the Tivo converted it
again to MPEG...

Keith

Posted by: HTH

quote:
Originally posted by rickertk
I think it was just a semantic point - since with any of those three sources, it's already been converted to MPEG and back again by the time it gets into the Tivo.

Ow, you're right. Damn, first Otto corrects my relativistic mass-energy equation, and now I'm caught by a subtle point of logic. I must be off my game today. :eek:

Posted by: GBaz

Here is some speculation on what addons will and will not work in 3.0 Including disk upgrades and the sort.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-v...&threadid=54088

Posted by: pauly666

quote:
Originally posted by embeem

hate to burst your bubble but that was already discussed ages ago

Oh well, nevermind.... at least I'm right though! ;)

Posted by: Ein Jabroni

Why does everyone assume it would be that much data?

A two-week chunk of dish data is about 1.2M. That has what? Series data, episode data and lineup date. Given that has basically all the network series are in there, all the pay networks and their lineups, and the cable channels are there it only leaves you to add local programs and PPVs. Given there are already what 100 local channels in there and the 100 Dish PPVs seems like one day's data would be < 100k.
So if the local stuff got picked up by the phone call you have a much shorter phone call and whatever you fit in the broadcast is great....

/EJ

Posted by: GBaz

1.2 meg is that it? IF that is all it is then broadcasting data is simple. Each cable lineup needs only 1.2 meg space they cound broadcats 30 in a single show. Just send different broadcasts for different regions and your set

Posted by: eatonjb

you know there is one more thing that you have to think about in MPEG2 compression.

Yes it does compress the image that you are seeing, but it does not compress everything,. For exaple looking at the TeleWeb brodcast (or whatever it was called) I dont think it's going to be compressed all that much since it is too random to be compressed.. just a quick example , ever take a Zip file and then compress it again.. 99.99% of the time it does not get compressed.. it is compressed at 0%.

so I am not sure if the compression will affect the data stream all that much..

looks like a lot of garbage that changes too radicaly.

Just a thought.

Eaton

Posted by: HTH

Uh, unless it's already been compressed. And encrypted. Then the seemingly randomness would make sense, no?

Posted by: stevel

The data stream in Teleworld Paid Programming is designed to survive MPEG encoding, which deals in 8x8 pixel blocks.

Posted by: GBaz

Thus the small block size

Posted by: GBaz

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-v...&threadid=54620

RB confirms

Just to clarify, our 3.0 release, due very soon, will support broadband connection to the TiVo Service via several USB Ethernet dongles for Series 2 units, and TiVoNet and TurboNet cards for Series 1 units.

No new features will be availabled by the broadband conection in 3.0. Just TiVo service.

I will post a list of supported devices for Series 2 USB connection soon.

And most important:

This is not supported or documented by TiVo. Do not call Customer Care about broadband connections. We will support each other here for this first implementation.

Cheers,
-RB

Posted by: ttb

TiVo Begins 3.0 Software Rollout
By Nate Mook, BetaNews
April 17th, 2002, 1:40 AM

TiVo has begun the initial rollout of its next software upgrade, code-named Firebolt. Version 3.0 is not a drastic update, primarily designed to sync the code base between older models and the new Series2 TiVo, but does provide many behind the scenes improvements. Most notable additions include improved suggestions and the ability to download program data directly from a cable broadcast without using the phone line.

For the hacker community, Firebolt includes ethernet drivers, allowing TiVo to download programming data from the Internet using a special backdoor key.

In beta for the last couple of months, version 3.0 will be rolled out in standard TiVo fashion. A small random group of subscribers will transparently receive the update followed by a slightly larger group. If everything goes well, 3.0 will then be made available to all subscribers.

TiVo also announced Tuesday that its Series2 digital video recorders were available through an exclusive engagement with BestBuy. 60-hour Series2 units will retail for $399.99, less expensive than devices from competitors Sonicblue and UltimateTV.

Posted by: m750

just a note I spotted a series 2 in my local bb this weekend. So they are out there...
Woohoo!

Posted by: Tiger

While I agree that screenshot was of data designed to survive MPEG encoding, it is NOT the patent people are quoting.

The patent people are quoting that TiVo has is what they use to mark the begining and end of clips on the paid programming. It looks completely different. It is a black screen, actually. Then the data is encoded in the chroma signal in a way that the compressed mpeg will be easily scanned for the data.

Posted by: avg99

I just recv'd the 3.?? software upgrade yet to see whats up with though!:)

Posted by: GBaz

quote:
Originally posted by avg99
I just recv'd the 3.?? software upgrade yet to see whats up with though!:)

Nice!

Posted by: mlipshaw

Read lots of different posts and am a little confused...

I have an original Phillips HDR312 (30 hours) upgraded with a 120gb B Drive - now 155 hours.

Does my unit, with version 3.0 software, now support PPP over serial? Does that mean that I could connect it to a serial port on one of my PC's and start getting Broadband program data??

Thanks!

________________________
Mark

Phillips HDR312 - 155 hours