TivoZA - I see you have 2 Series 2 TiVo's, how is the experimenting going. How are you using them?

Hi, sorry for taking so long to respond. I'm busy testing the PAL -> NTSC converter which arrived today so will let you know how that plus the other alternatives compare. Will probably be able to give you an answer tomorrow.

Hi Tivo,

Any updates for this?

http://minnie.tuhs.org/twiki/bin/view/FAQ/TiVoSeries2InAustralia

If you look at the url above the OZ community had problems. How have you been able to overcome the problems they appear to have had?

Well to start off let me first state that both my series 2 units are working but I use them for testing only at the moment as my TiVo series 1 provides a better solution for now.

The main problem with using a TiVo series 2 is the fact that it requires NTSC input. The Australians have made some progress on developing the necessary PAL modules, the recording of shows is now possible on a series 2 but unfortunately the playback of recordings still needs some work. When playing back a recording using the latest PAL modules the video is a bit jumpy and the bottom quarter of the picture is cut off leaving you with a slightly stretched image. This is due to the fact that NTSC has a vertical resolution of 480 pixels while PAL has a vertical resolution of 576 pixels.

My current solution to the PAL vs. NTSC problem is to make use of a hardware converter that takes the PAL output from my DSTV decoder and then converts the signal into NTSC for the TiVo. I am making use of the converter listed as "Gadget 1" on the ThreeDoubleYou site. The "Gadget 1" converter is actually two converters. The first converter accepts PAL RCA or s-video input and then converts this to a VGA output so it could be used on a computer monitor. The second converter then takes VGA input and converts that to NTSC RCA or s-video output. So basically the DSTV PAL RCA output is fed through the first converter, the VGA output from that is fed into the second converter and then the NTSC s-video output from that is fed into the TiVo's input connector. The TiVo is happy to accept this as input and the picture quality is reasonable, the first converter does allow for adjustments to be made to the brightness, contrast, etc but the quality isn't quite as good as that produced by the TiVo series 1 solution. This does however provide you with a working NTSC input for the TiVo Note that the TiVo will still output a NTSC signal so in order to view the output you require a multi-format TV that supports both PAL & NTSC, most new TV's support this.

The only other hardware that you will require is a transformer. Most TiVo series 2 units need an electrical input of 110V at 50Hz, in South Africa we use 220V at 60Hz. Many electrical stores sell these transformers and they cost around R30.

The next problem was how to get the TiVo to connect to the emulator and fetch the guide data. There are two ways of doing this, the first option is to hack your TiVo and configure it to make its request through emuProxyZA which handles calling the emulator instead of TiVo Inc. The second option is to fool the TiVo into making its request through a PC running emuProxyZA which would then handle connecting to the emulator, this option allows you to get an unhacked series 2 working which is useful in the case of the TCD540 unit which requires a chip replacement before it can run hacks. I did manage to hack my TCD240 unit and get it to connect to my emulator directly but I have been playing mostly with the second option as it is a more generic solution to the problem.

To fool the TiVo into making its calls through a local PC you need to route the request your TiVo makes to TiVo Inc to a local PC and then handle them from there, this is done by running a loopback adapter (simple network driver) on your PC and then binding emuProxyZA to the adapters IP address. The routing of the addresses is handled either by your router or by running a DHCP server with your PC configured as the gateway, your TiVo then connects to emuProxyZA which passes the calls on to the emulator and everything continues as normal.

The last real problem was to get the time set correctly as the TiVo does not allow you to specify a time zone outside of the 5 standard American time zones. Although the Australians have developed a solution to the time zone problem, similar to that for a series 1 unit, this does not work when running an unhacked TiVo and frankly my method is easier anyhow Basically what I have done is to once again use emuProxyZA, this time intercepting the calls between your TiVo and the NTP time servers. In this case emuProxyZA will allow the TiVo to request a time and emuProxyZA will then request a time from an NTP server, emuProxyZA then adjusts the returned time by any amount you specify in one of the parameters and this will allow your TiVo to report the accurate time.

One of the other listed problems was that drives greater than 137GB (i.e. LBA48) weren't supported. I have managed to get LBA48 support on my TiVo but if using the latest TiVo software, version 7.2.1, LBA48 support is there by default.

So using the above solutions I was able to get my two series 2 units working, the TCD240 unit was running software version 4.0.1b and the TCD540 unit was running software version 5.3.

However, the series 2 with the software versions listed above will not give you all of the "Home Media Option" features that make the series 2 worth getting. To make full use of Galleon you need to be running software version 7.2.1. Galleon provides the ability to stream movies, play mp3/itunes music, view photos, check the weather, view internet pages, etc and it is really the main benefit of going the series 2 route.

As such I am now currently working on getting my units up and running with TiVo software version 7.2.1. This is not as easy as you may think as TiVo seems to have made this version of the software far stricter on the use of the slice files and they are currently not working 100%.

I hope that answers all the questions about using a TiVo series 2 in South Africa (or anywhere else outside of North America for that matter). The basic answer is yes it is possible to use a series 2 but at present you can't use the latest software which is the only real justification for using a series 2. I will however endeavour to get my series 2 units to run software version 7.2.1 as the features offered by Galleon make the TiVo a significantly more powerful device then the already amazing machine that it is

Thanks for the technical explanation, I understand now the issues you are facing.

It is unfortunate that you have to convert NTSC to VGA and back to PAL as I am sure some quality is compromised

I have ordered a series one and will hopefully receive it in about 3 months time, I ordered it via sea. After I receive it I shall start the process of converting it

Thanks for the effort with the TIVO's, I'm looking forward to getting mine up and running. Do you have any advice about hard drives?

I went through both your site and also the OZ site and could not find advice on one issue. If I network my TIVO to my pc and then to my ADSL surely I'm making the TIVO available to the whole world? I could not see any hack which wanted a password in order to, via the NET, setup program times eg. If I'm in the office and want to program it from work ( assuming I know my IP address at home first).

Wynd wrote:

Thanks for the effort with the TIVO's, I'm looking forward to getting mine up and running. Do you have any advice about hard drives?

My personal preference is Western Digital drives, I have found them pretty reliable and they support AAM (Automatic acoustics management) which allows them to run quietly which is quite important when having a device in your lounge. Samsung and Maxtor drives also support AAM and I have heard some good reports about both, keep in mind Seagate has just bough out Maxtor though. Seagate drives claim they are so quite they don't need to support AAM, they used to actually support it but they violated the patent and have since had to remove support so don't expect them to be as quite.

Wynd wrote:

I went through both your site and also the OZ site and could not find advice on one issue. If I network my TIVO to my pc and then to my ADSL surely I'm making the TIVO available to the whole world? I could not see any hack which wanted a password in order to, via the NET, setup program times eg. If I'm in the office and want to program it from work ( assuming I know my IP address at home first).

I need to create a guide with more details on how this is best done but for now you can specify a username and password for TiVoWeb as explained how to do in the 1st post of the "Streaming video via TiVoWebPlus" topic.

To enable your TiVo to be accessible from the outside world you will also need to enable port forwarding on your router, basically you need to either route incoming calls on port 80 to your TiVo or remap another port from your router to go to port 80 on your TiVo. If your router doesn't support remapping ports you can also change the port on which TiVoWebPlus runs in the same config file where you set up the user name and password.

I see in the Dual View specs that NTSC is listed as one of the output specs. I'll have another look as to how that can be activated.

steve-rsa wrote:

I see in the Dual View specs that NTSC is listed as one of the output specs. I'll have another look as to how that can be activated.

It would be great if it's possible for the decoder to output in NTSC format but I suspect that this would require a custom firmware installed on the decoder.

Another issue is that even with the decoder outputting in NTSC format, it's unlikely to resize the picture so you may still get the bottom 96 pixels cut-off as is the case with other multi format decoders (e.g. Manhattan Plaza ST 120). Even with the pixels cut-off, it's still the best option for the Series 2 for now as the PAL -> NTSC converters don't offer a high enough quality and the Series 2 Palmod suffers jerkiness as well as having the bottom 96 pixels cut-off.

I have the Toshiba RS-TX60 that has 160G Hard Disk
I have it setup and working pulling American Channel Info. Is there anyone in the Pretoria area that can help me to get the system converted so that I can get SA Channel info? I have a PAL to NTSC converter that converts the signal from the multichoice DSTV box, and my TV is NTSC compatible, so do I need to convert everything to PAL or can I just do a change for the programming?