Tivo Hacks. 100 Industrial-strength Tips Tools 2003

The following people contributed their hacks, writing, and inspiration to this book:

• Cory Doctorow (www.craphound.com) is coeditor of the popular weblog Boing Boing (www.boingboing.net) and works as a staffer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (www.eff.org). He is an award-winning science fiction author, and his first novel , Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom , can be purchased in stores everywhere or downloaded free from www.craphound.com/down.

• Rael Dornfest (http://www.raelity.org/) assesses, experiments, programs, writes , and edits for O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. He has edited, coauthored, and contributed to various O'Reilly books. He is program chair for the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. In his copious free time, Rael develops bits and bobs of freeware, including the Blosxom (http://www. blosxom .com) weblog application, and maintains his raelity bytes weblog.

• Josha Foust

• Greg Gardner is a software engineer who lives in San Francisco, California. He started hacking TiVos while working on a project for his company, which involved delivering digital video and photos to consumer devices. When he's not working or hacking his TiVo, Greg enjoys playing ice hockey, golfing, and traveling.

• Tobias Hoellrich, from Munich (Germany), has worked as an IT professional for the last 15 years. He spent the last 9 years at Adobe Systems in Amsterdam (The Netherlands) and San Jose (California). Since 2002, he has worked out of his home in Santa Fe (New Mexico), where he lives with his wife, Candice, and his two dogs. Aside from work, Tobias is an enthusiastic amateur photographer who has received recognition at local galleries in Santa Fe.

• Steve Jenkins (http://www.stevejenkins.com/) is an avid home theater junkie and TiVo hacker. He has an MBA from Brigham Young University and was the founder of two early Internet companies: WinFiles.com (formerly Windows95.com) shareware web site and VServers web hosting, both of which he sold in 1999. His most recent venture is CheatCodes.com, a popular online source for video game cheats, hints, and walk-throughs . When he's not wiring his hot tub so he can check the water temperature from a Web browser, Steve enjoys driving Ferraris, volunteer teaching, and, of course, tinkering with his TiVo.

• LJ lives in West Sussex, England. By day, he's an(other) IT guy. For fun, he writes TiVoWeb modules to prove both that it can be done and that his brain still works. So far, he's managed not to fry his TiVo or his brain. His latest TiVoWeb modules can be found at www.ljay.org.uk.

• Douglas Mayle (http://www.mayle.org/douglas), from Somerset, New Jersey, has worked in networking, security, and development for the last 11 years. He spent 8 years in Boston, using his experience to help start an online chocolate company, and later consulting independently. In the beginning of 2003, he moved to the south coast of France, where he now works for Metrix Systems on the internals of their systems management suite. He has spoken at Comdex and spends what little free time he has trying find new ways to use software in unexpected places.

• "Otto"

• Bill Regnery

• Glenn R. Souther (BS Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology; MBA Quantitative Finance, Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University) is most recently employed as a Vice President in Emerging Markets Research at J.P Morgan.

• Drew Streib

• Jeff Shapiro and Michael Adberg are the guys behind WeaKnees.com (http://www.weaknees.com), an online resource center and Internet retailer for all things TiVo. Before dedicating themselves to helping TiVo addicts, Michael was a computer consultant and Jeff a (gasp) lawyer (although, in fairness, Jeff has a geek grounding that goes back to the AppleCat 212). Both Jeff and Michael graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, and Jeff also graduated from the University of Chicago Law School. Now, Jeff and Michael spend 95% of their time building and upgrading TiVos, and they spend the other 5% trying to convince friends and family that they have real jobs.

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, to my family, friends, and to Kelly Dobson: thank you all for believing in me and giving me the emotional support to make it through writing this book. And Kelly, thank you for being there, being my rock, and reminding me that taking a nap for a few hours is preferable to staying up all night.

TiVo, Inc., thanks for such a great box. If I didn't own one, my studies would go better, but I'm still glad I have one. I'm sure you hear this all the time, but if you ever need a spokesperson or a beta tester, I'm here.

And, speaking of beta testing, Todd Larason, thank you for beta testing this work and keeping me on the straight and narrow.

Thank you to the communities at tivocommunity.com , dealdatabase.com , and alt.org . It's been fun hanging out. Thanks for all the ideas, the help, and the code. Also, to my unnamed TiVo friend: thank you.

Many thanks to Tim O'Reilly and everybody at O'Reilly who even considered this a worthwhile topic to write a book on.

And lastly, more thanks than I could ever express to Rael Dornfest. Rael, you've been a great friend, a great manager, a great editor, and just an amazing person to work with. Thank you for pushing me to get this done. Thank you for all your help. Let's do it again sometime.