As in toast.

Deceased.

See www.twitter.com/ianknox for anything personal I might otherwise put up here.

I bought a Popcorn Hour A-110 media streaming device to go with my new TV and I thought I’d write up my initial impressions of the unit. I wish it was all roses but sadly it’s not.

Here’s my wish list for a set top box and how well it worked with the PCH:

• Video playback from an internal HD for many video formats
  Check!
  The PCH played back nearly everything I threw at it (although I haven’t installed a HD yet I was able to use a USB stick). The one glaring exception to this is it flat out doesn’t do Adobe’s FLV format. The decoder chip (A Sigma SMP8635) doesn’t support FLV natively and the processor in the PCH isn’t nearly powerful enough to decode the FLV on it’s own. It’s possible that there will be a firmware upgrade for the Sigma chip that will allow this, but highly unlikely.

• Streaming support over the interwebs
  Semi-check!
  The PCH has support for a number of streaming media providers (You Tube, Veoh*, Apple Movie Trailers, and a bunch more) but it does not support the two most important ones for me, namely Hulu and Netflix. I had originally thought that these were supported but it turns out the Playon software you can buy that will allow this requires that it runs on your desktop as a streaming server. The whole idea behind this project was to eliminate the need for my desktop to handle my media so this was a disappointment. There is hope however that Netflix may be supported in future firmware releases given that the hardware is capable (the the ROKU Netflix streaming box uses the same decoder chip). As of right now there is no remedy for those that want to watch Hulu other than an outright HTPC.

• Serve as a HD PVR/DVR
  Fail!
  I knew going in that there was no support for this. While there is basic functionality for watching TV with a HDHomerun tuner there’s no time-shifting, recording, or scheduling in place yet. There is a distinct possibility that this will be available at some point since the TIVX series of media streamer boxes do PVR and use the same Sigma chip; I’m fairly sure this is somewhat low on the PCH list of priorities though.

• Not piss me off
  Fail!
  I had immediate issues with the unit that made the process frustrating.
  • The Network Browser was unable to access my SMB shares on my windows desktop. I spent a good 1/2 an hour trying different things but ultimately gave in and installed myiHome, PCH’s super-basic UPNP server. I’m sure I could get it to work with some more screwing around but this falls in the this-should-just-work category.
  • It’s menus are not very pretty and not very intuitive. Luckily for the PCH you can completely customize them… but again more time spent screwing around (and in this case writing code) to get a decent result.
  • They provide really poor documentation and support. The PCH operates on software created by Syabas called Networked Media Tank (NMT) The NMT web page is primarily a forum that’s very hard to search and contains a huge amount of incorrect or incomplete information. On top of that it’s very hard to search. There is also a wiki but it is very weak on content.
  • The remote control provides a serious problem that is most likely the deal breaker for me. It has a conflict with my TV. Whenever you press the left navigation arrow my TV switches input to the OTA antenna and return key increases the volume on the set. I do have an off-brand TV so this is probably not going to be an issue for most folks, but this is more or less unacceptable for me since I can’t operate with the set switching sources all the time.

So most likely I’ll be returning/craigs-listing this unit**. I could live with nearly all of it’s shortcomings for the simple fact that it does what it’s supposed to –play media– really darn well, but the problem with the remote control is simply too much to deal with. I’m not sure about the next step, perhaps a Tivx box.

Vee-shall-see.

Bleh, so darn close!

* Veoh support is very spotty and (of course) it doesn’t work with data from affiliate sites like Hulu.
** after further research looks like craigslist– the ebayer I bought it from doesn’t take returns.

If you’d like to see the books I have on my bookshelf just check out my LibraryThing public listing.  Of course I just signed up a few hours ago so it’s just got what I could remember I have off of the top of my head, I’ll be busting out the CueCat soon!.

I also embedded a little searching widget in the sidebar of my blog so you can search my library from here.  At some point when I have time for projects I’d like to build a simple loaning application that would allow me to track who I’ve loaned my books to so I can get them back– I imagine it would be fairly straightforward coding wise.

P.S.  If the person who I lent His Dark Materials to is reading this, please bring it back when you’re done.

Thanks rob, you are the man!

Theatre work:

• I split with the Tantalus Theatre Group. I think their work is awesome and very important, but it just wasn’t where I wanted my acting career to go right now.
• I’ve been taking acting classes in the Meisner program at Act One Studios. It’s been great, it feels really awesome to get back into a classroom and be able to work without the pressures of eventually turning what you’re doing into a production.
• I’ve been doing a lot more auditions– sadly it’s a slow time of year for that but still, I’m getting out there.

Personal stuff:

• I finished my second Chicago Marathon. The weather was so hot (90+ degrees, fucking global warming) that they actually canceled the marathon 1/2 way through so I was forced to walk the last 8-10 miles. I’m not sure I’m interested in doing a third one after that experience, but we’ll see.
• I completed by new bike project which involved a lot of work but it’s finally finished. A Fukaya Japanese track bike with nearly full Suntour Superbe Pro components. It’s freaking sweet, pity it’s too nice to ride in the crappy weather we’ve been having lately, but hey that’s why I have three bikes.
• I’m single again. It always sucks when a relationship ends and I miss her a lot some days, but I think ultimately it’s for the best. *sigh*
• I opened an IRA account for retirement. Christ I feel like such an adult.
• I’ll be back in NC visiting the family Dec 19-23. This means I’ll actually be hanging out by my self on X-mas day, which will feel weird I’m sure, but it was the only way I could see my brother whom I haven’t set eyes on in two years.

Geek stuff:

• I moved this blog to my home computer when I left Tantalus (I had been piggy-backing with their hosting account). Some time soon I’ll go buy my own cheap-o hosting but for now I’ll have to live with it as is. The bastards at RCN block port 80 so this is being served on 81, hence the odd looking URL above– But hey at least it works.
• I’m really in love with the EEEPC from ASUS. If I had a spare 400 bucks floating around I’d be all over it. Who knows, maybe for my birthday. Maybe by then the 8g model with a 7 inch screen and the same size case will be out.
• I just ordered a new phone. My trusty old Sony Ericsson T637 is dying the rapid death of battery failure so I decided to go with a Blackberry Pearl (in red) with an unlimited data plan. I will be on teh internets AT ALL TIMES! (yes I’m a geek, deal with it)
• I’ve pretty much completely phased out Windows on my desktop computers in favor of Ubuntu. It’s still not perfect, but as linux on the desktop goes, it’s the best I’ve used so far.

Well that’s all the news that leaps to mind right away– I’ll update this post later if I realize that I forgot something.

Some time soon I plan to move to my own hosting account elsewhere, but for now this will have to do the trick.

I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m in gadget love.

The only question remaining? Why the heck aren’t I out using it?

Matt is right.
While I do relish the idea of telling people off for being examples of why I hate MySpace, the greater political good is a far more lofty goal. Who knows if it will do any good, but if it gets one extra vote somewhere then it’s worth every bit of bandwidth it takes.

Cut to a few days ago. I was checking the web stats for my blog (which I haven’t been particularly good at updating over the summer months) and I noticed a had some very odd sites linking to mine– people I don’t know about on topics I don’t care about. After a little digging it turns out the reason is that they are direct linking/in-line linking my Snakes On a Plane picture. Now in case you don’t know what it means here’s the brief version. There were using pictures hosted by my web server for their websites– more from wikipedia
This pissed me off pretty well. If you’re going to take someone else’s artwork (and yes I use the term VERY loosely) and post it on your site at LEAST have the decency to

A: host it yourself and

B: ask permission first.

So I replaced the image with this:

This made me a feel a bit happier and it was taking up a LOT less bandwidth since the new one is much smaller than the original.

Cut to this afternoon. I was taking a closer look at the past few months web statistics and discovered the extent the linkage had gone, and how much it was still going.

Holy Crap! Over 7 GBs of data in August! 800,000 people viewed it! I never suspected that it was so widely linked. After doing some more digging it seems it’s still in very wide circulation, the numbers are decreasing but we’re still talking hundreds of thousands of people looking at this image I control over the next few months. The number one culprit?

MySpace.

Now I really hate MySpace. It’s an unattractive, annoying, pit of Internet stupidness. Yes I DO have a profile there but only for the purpose of keeping up with a few friends who are otherwise difficult to reach/keep up with.

So here’s the dilemma– I have the ability to replace that image again with whatever I want. It can be crass, ugly, gross, insulting, or whatever I want it to be! I can even advertise a good cause or my own website. My revenge on MySpace for being a eyesore on the face of the Internet is at hand!

What should I do? If anyone has brilliant idea’s please leave them here as a comment– but for right now I’m going to ponder the possibilities and giggle happily.

Their database of movies both new and old seems pretty extensive and it’s already helped me track down a few movies where I could remember basic plot points but not the title or any of the actors.  The only thing stopping Google from being the one-stop-shop for movie stuff would be links to Netflix and Fandango (or movietickets.com) for each title.
Way to go Google!

(I suppose I should point out that according to the Googleblog this feature has been around since February, I just never noticed it before.)

Oh… By the way, does anyone want to see any of these soon?

• The War Tapes
• A Scanner Darkly
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
• Clerks II

Popcorn’s on me!

An hour or so later:

It’s really pretty impressive when you think about it– for about $50 you get:

• 200 Mhz Mips processor (easily and safely OC’d to at least 240Mhz)
• 8 Mbs Ram
• 32 Mbs Flash
• 8 easily accessible GPIO lines
• Built in Ethernet and 802.llg wifi
• 2 Built in RS232 serial ports (easily converted to USB 1 with cheap cell phone cable and some soldering)

Which if you were to buy elsewhere would easily run you $200.

So what else can it do? Well I’m considering this mod that would allow me to increase storage with a SD card reader, but frankly I’m jsut thrilled that I get to mess about with iptables and real linux routing stuff. While the interface on my other wifi router (some cheap-o Netgear) allowed port forwarding this is way more useful in the long run.

While it would be fantastic to eventually serve all of my web pages from it, I don’t think the 8mbs of ram are up to the task of running a MySql server. Although I suppose I could modify Wordpress to operate with SQLite…

Hmm…

For the last several years the domain ianknox.com was owned by another Ian Knox. In fact he ran a “School of Motoring” in Dumbarton Scotland (I know it’s just the American in me but I can’t help chuckling every time I hear the term motoring used in earnest).

Of course, I have never met Ian Knox of Dumbarton Scotland, but how can someone with my own name who runs a school of motoring be all bad?

Sadly, I believe that he may have gone out of business since his website has now officially expired from the web and is no more. At the very least he decided the website wasn’t doing it’s job advertising. If you want to see what his site did look like check out this link (hooray for archive.org).

Of course there is always a silver lining… ianknox.com now belongs to me. I prefer .net and I’ve gotten used to it but within 24 hours you can get here by visiting www.ianknox.com or www.ianknox.net I’ll also forward all the e-mail addresses.

If anyone who knows Ian Knox of Dumbarton Scotland stumbles across this page leave a comment and let me know how he’s doing! I can’t help feel a little connected to my namesake from across the pond.

!!Disclaimer!!
This is just how I did it. It’s probably not the best way and it might not work for you.
If it doesn’t work or cause your Tivo to change into a smoldering pile of ashes don’t blame me!

The setup:

40 hour series one Tivo
120GB replacement HD
#10 torx screwdriver
spare computer to plug drives into
TurboNet card (in my case already installed)
Hacking Tivo Second Edition and companion CD
MFSTools 2.0 CD
Hinsdale drive replacement instructions
FAT32 Hardrive (anything over 1gb should be fine)

The Hard Drive Upgrade:

To do the drive upgrade I followed the directions on the Hinsdale page. The only exception was that with the current version of MFSTools I don’t think you need the gunlock software to fix a locked drive. I’m not 100% sure about this but when I booted the CD it mentioned something about unlocking drives so it may be built in now.

The most important thing to keep in mind during this step is to keep track of which drive is which, use this table as reference:

Primary Master = HDA
Primary Slave = HDB
Secondary Master = HDC
Secondary Slave = HDD

If you’re not sure which drive is plugged in where, pull up the system bios and it should show you, if all the drives don’t show up monkey with your jumpers, the software can’t address a HD that the BIOS won’t recognize!

I also skipped the test step after restoring the original image, it’s not really necessary (although probably a good idea).

Installing the hacks:

1. Boot the CD that came with Hacking the Tivo Second Edition, or really any usable Linux boot disk will do.
2. Mount the Tivo Drive:

mount /dev/hdc4 /mnt

< -- pretty sure on this, I don’t have the reference material handy. Remember your drive name may be different.
3. Make a directory for your hacks, I choose /var/hack since it seems to be the most popular spot to put them. Of course this is currently /mnt/var/hack/ since we’re not booting from the Tivo drive.
4. Untar the hack file from the Hacking The Tivo CD to /var/hack.
Now all the goodies are ready and waiting to be used!

The Hacks 1- Telnet:

1. Follow steps 1 and 2 from the section above.

2. Either use a text editor from the boot disk or just echo to add the following line to your /mnt/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit
The syntax for using echo is:

echo "/var/hack/bin/tnlited.sh &" >> /mnt/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit

Yes you could start the telnet daemon directly (tnlited 23 /bin/bash -login) but the nifty little shell script will restart the daemon if it manages to crash.

3. /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit MUST be system readable! I just chmod’d it to 777 every time, this is uber important or it won’t boot and you’ll have to stick it back in the PC and tinker.

4. Do a shutdown and stick your Tivo drive back in the Tivo and boot it up. Don’t bother screwing it down quite yet in case you borked something.

5. Test it out! Telnet to your Tivo’s IP address and you should get a command line.

Notes: The default shell is pretty shitty, it echoes two lines with each return which is odd and it doesn’t support several very useful features such as ls and ps. The CD from the book includes a copy of BusyBox which is a fantastic all-in-one shell tool. Included in the tar was a series of Symbolic links for the tools it contains all pointing to BusyBox. If you want to enable those I suggest changing you bash shell to include /var/hack and /var/hack/bin in the path.

You do this my creating a file called .profile in the root directory that contains the following line:

PATH=$PATH:/var/hack:/var/hack/bin

The next time you log in via telnet you’ll have a much more operable shell.

The Hacks 2- FTP:

1. Telnet in to your tivo.

2. Start the FTP daemon:

/var/hack/bin/tivoftpd

3. Test it out! FTP to your tivo with a blank username and password (I recommend Filezilla).

Notes: If you want to start FTP with each restart of the machine you have to add it to the rc.sysinit.

If you use ftp to transfer files be aware that it’s friggin slow and it doesn’t support a lot of stuff (file renames/permission changes, etc) AND it is likely to bork file permissions so set them manually from the command line, or at least double check them.

The Hacks 3- Tyserver:

1. Download the latest TyServer/Tytool package from The Deal Database Forum. Yes you will have to register and yes it’s weird using software distributed on a message board, but it’s totally legit. I promise.

2. FTP the contents of the TSERVER_series1 folder to somewhere on your Tivo. I made a new directory for hacks I installed (/var/hacks/ians_hacks/) but you can put it wherever.

3. CD to the directory where you put the tserver and NowShowing.tcl files.

4. Start the tserver from the command line.

4. Test it out! Run the TyTool9r18.exe (or similar) on your PC and enter the IP address and try to connect to it.

Notes: Tyserver needs to know the location of the NowShowing.tcl file so use a line like this in rc.sysinit:

/var/hacks/bin/ty_server/tserver -s /var/hacks/bin/ty_server/NowShowing.tcl &

This is necessary because each line in rc.sysinit is run as if it was executed from the root directory.

The Hacks 4- TivoWebPlus:

1. Download the latest TivoWebPlus Binary. Get the tarball NOT the zip file.

2. Un-tar it

tar xzvf binaryfilename.tar

be sure to do this one directory above where you want it to be since the tar file will make its own directory.

3. Edit the tivoweb.cfg file, add a password and a username and possibly change the port if you alreayd use port 80 on your real world IP address and you want it accessible from anywhere.

4. Start it with

/var/path/to/file/tivoweb &

from the command line.

5. Test it out by surfing with a web browser to whatever IP yout tivo currently has (optionally appending it with xx where xxx is the port you switched the server to run on. If it works add it to your /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit

Even More Stuff:

1. For the love of god, don’t put the Tivo back together until you are done hacking it completely just in case you screw something up and you need to mount it with a CD to edit stuff again.

2. If you want to change anything on the system partition (such as stuff in /etc) you’ll need to remount as R/W with this command:

mount -o rw,remount /

You will need this for editing of the rc.sysinit. When you are done be sure to remount it again as read only:

mount -o ro,remount /

3. When editing files on your windows machine be sure to use a text editor that supports Unix line endings like Textpad or ultraedit.

4. Every hack you start from rc.sysinit MUST be followed by the ‘&’ character. This makes the program start in the background, otherwise nothing else will run until that line has executed.

5. Here are the final lines from my rc.sysinit as a reference.

#Hacks added by Ian
#start telnet server using the shell script
/var/hack/bin/tnlited.sh &

#Start tivoftpd
/var/hack/bin/tivoftpd &

#Start tytool
/var/hack/bin/ty_server/tserver -s /var/hack/bin/ty_server/NowShowing.tcl &

#Start TivowebPlus
/var/hack/bin/tivoweb-tcl/tivoweb &