Tivo trouble

I just got to my parents' house and I'm trying to set up my Series 1 standalone to control one of their satellite receivers. I had everything set up to go, but at the last minute, I realized that the serial connection was not correct. The label above the 15 pin connector says something like "Wide Band Data." What does that mean?

Anyway, naturally, the 9 pin serial cable that came with the Tivo won't work. Is this what the adapter that came with it is for? If so, can I get this adapter anywhere, as long as the connections are correct? I lost the original. Thanks for your help.

By the way, my TurboNet is coming tomorrow. I can't wait to try this!

On most directv boxes that I've seen, the serial port is marked "Low Speed Data." Often times it is a modular RJ12-like connector. I am not sure what cables are bundled with a SA Tivo.

On one of my dad's DirecTV boxes, it actually has both high and low. The low appears to be 9 pins, but the high is 15. The one I need to connect to only has the 15 one. I'm just hoping that I can simply buy the appropriate adapter at CompUSA or something and it will work.

On one of my dad's DirecTV boxes, it actually has both high and low. The low appears to be 9 pins, but the high is 15. The one I need to connect to only has the 15 one. I'm just hoping that I can simply buy the appropriate adapter at CompUSA or something and it will work.

I think you're working on the exact same setup I have. You can attach it to the 9-pin connector, but it'll work quite unreliably. The TiVo shipped with an adapter. I'd try giving them a call and seeing if they can send you out a replacement (if you can't find it). There might also be someone online who has a schematic of the adapter.

Thanks. I just went to CompUSA and they didn't have any adapters like this. Thanks for the advice, but My dad wants a new receiver there anyway. This one is 8 years old now, and it's been doing some funky stuff with the local channels we get over the satellite.

I assume that it's a proprietary TiVo adapter. (Or, really, a proprietary Sony adapter; it's a Sony receiver, right?) By ``find'', I meant in your closet, not at the store.

I've given up on it. I've got other plans for how to work it out.

See, our setup is a little different. Our primary receiver is in our basement, hooked up to a distribution box that broadcasts the Sat receiver on channel 18 to the TVs in my house. That one has both a "Low" and "High" speed transfer connection on the back, one of which is 9 pins. I'm hoping I can get a new RF receiver to replace that one, and move the old one so that the Tivo can use it.

I'm just hoping that the other box's "Low Speed Data" port is what I'm supposed to be connecting to. I went to Best Buy today, and none of the new receivers have serial connections.

Hey, what tool do I use for the screws on the Tivo?

My (US) SA Tivos require the use of a Torx screwdriver bit.

You buy just the bits that fit in those hexagonal shaped interchangeable bit screwdrivers.

Or you buy a Torx screwdriver of the right size.

I use the former type and the bit I use is marked "T10H" .

According to Tigers MFS 2.0 howto, you need a Torx #10 screwdriver.

Well, it doesn't matter anymore. I completely stripped one of the screws, and it took a hell of a lot to get out with sme needle nosed pliers and eventually a big wrench.

Time to go to the hardware store and pick up some replacement screws. These ones sucked.

Bitt, you have telnet and FTP set up, right? I'm using the instructions here to set this stuff up.

My question is this: are these decent instructions? Also, the very end says "Because 3.0 requires DHCP in order for your Tivo™ to get an IP address it is possible for the IP to change day to day, you will need to figure out what the Tivo's IP address is, and then simply telnet to it" Of course, it doesn't say how to actually find the IP address.

What you do is determine from the "DHCP Server" on your [home] network, what ip address it gave your Tivo.

e.g. if your DSL router also provides DHCP, then it should have somewhere in its configuration menus etc where it can show you what DHCP addresses are in use allocated by it and by what "hostnames" they are e.g. Tivo may show up as "tivo" in the DHCP Server list with a particular IP address.

If you don't have a DHCP server in your home network, then you'll need to set one up/(enable it on your router) or the Tivo can't get an IP address and thus can't use the network.

Then once you know the ip address you can use that to telnet in to your Tivo.

Once you know the hostname for the tivo that the Tivo registers in DHCP when it gets an IP address. You should be able to use that name in all future telnet sessions instead of the IP address provided you have DNS also running on your DHCP server [or your DHCP and DNS servers know about each other].

Thanks! Currently, the network I'm on has a normal Linksys router. I thnk I may be able to get the info you're talking about, although I'm not totally sure how.

The problem will be when I get the Tivo to its other home in September. There, the network has no DHCP server, or at least none that I know of. How do I set up something like that? All I have is a cable modem hooked up to a computer with ICS running. I guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Thanks for your help. I'll post how it all turns out.

All I have is a cable modem hooked up to a computer with ICS running.

ICS is a DHCP server, if I recall correctly.

So, how do I go through ICS to get the name and/or IP address of the Tivo box that's connected to the machine.

Even on my current network, I have the Tivo hooked up to my machine, which is connected (wirelessly) to the Linksys router. I assumed the router was doing the DHCP stuff, but perhaps it's the ICS.

But I guess I still need some way of seeing what address is being given to the Tivo.

ps-this hacking stuff is a PITA, although so far it's been my messed up computer giving me the difficulty. When I have my CDROM on IDE 2, it is impossible to make the Tivo drive the secondary master. I tried every possible config, and nothing worked. So I'm going back through the instructions without using the CDROM. Unfortunately, that means I can't make a backup of my drive

Questions:

1. What is the make and model of Linksys router?

2. What does your network topology look like?

3. If the Linksys router has the capability of being a DHCP server and NAT, why are you bothering to run ICS?

If the router is really the device I think it is (a true NAT/Firewall box), then you're doing overkill by running ICS on a Windows box; the router does that job just fine. And by the way, ICS running on most versions of Windows is a completely POS and nothing but trouble most of the time.

Anyway, if the Linksys router is really one of those NAT/Fireall boxes, then it should have a web browser interface that allows you to set its configuration and such. Not sure if it has a screen that'll show DHCP leases or not. Maybe we can look that up once we know which one it is.

/me goes off to see if ICS has a "leases" screen or not... Might need to know which version of ICS on which Windows OS you're running...

I was under the impression that I needed ICS to get the Tivo to be able to access the internet. My Tivo is connected to my computer, then my computer is connected to the router.

The router should make no difference between your computer and the Tivo - it should route traffic from either out to the Internet, but the Tivo should then be plugged into the router, not the 2nd ethernet card on the computer. In this case it is your router that holds the IP-number that your ISP assigns to you and the IP-number of your computers network card is an internal one (static or given you by the router through DHCP) and the router NATs it for you. It will do just the same for the Tivo.

If you had, for instance, a simple (non-router) ADSL modem (or POTS modem) attached to the computer (to the 1st network card) and the Tivo attached to the 2nd card, then you'd need ICS. In this case the first network card holds the IP from your ISP and the second card an internal IP-number. You then need ICS to do the NATing of any internal adresses.

/Michael

a) the Tivo will NOT be located anywhere near the router
b) the Tivo WILL be located near my computer
c) connecting to my computer and running ICS is the only way I know of to get the Tivo on the network

So now, I suppose, I need to figure out whether ICS or the router is giving my Tivo an address. I would assume it would be ICS.

I'm unsure of this but doesn't ICS not truely use DHCP but rather sees automatically assigned IP address, ie 169.254.x.x? So if his computers NIC has a 192.168.x.x that would be a problem. I may be wrong on this. But in setting up ICS how do you specify the address range?

What we're all missing here is:

I have the Tivo hooked up to my machine, which is connected (wirelessly) to the Linksys router

Which means that you probably have no desire to run a cable from the tivo to the router, which is what everyone is sugesting because that' the normal "right" way to do things.

If we have cable/dsl modem -> router -> windows pc with ICS -> tivo, it should work(i think. multiple levels of NAT might complicate things to the point that ics gets confused). The windows PC will be assigning your tivo an address, and as far as I know you won't be able to "see" what that IP address is. You will know the IP address range, and can easily scan the suspected addresses with a few pings.

You might just want to buy a wireless bridge for it. Though that would be more expensive and the above should work.

Matthew

Thanks for the advice. I was able to log into the router's DHCP listing and, as suspected, it did not list the Tivo.

What should the settings be for the LAN connection in "Network and Dial-up Connections" be? Should it obtain the IP address automatically? and if so, how about the DNS?
*edit* nevermind. I screwed it up. I changed those settings and now I can't connect. *editedit* it's working again. guess I can't change those settings

Sorry, I don't know much about networking. What is a wireless bridge?

*edit again*
After half a day on the knowledge base, I can't find anything on ICS and DHCP. At least not anything linking the two. This whole thing might be easier if the Tivo community forum wasn't down since about 5 days ago.

Getting late here and I didn't see what Windows version your using with a quick scan of the thread, but here's a link.
There looks to be a couple of other interesting articles in this list.

Edit: I'm not all that up to speed on the wireless stuff, but IIRC its a device that is radio in one end and ethernet in the other. So you could hook it with a short ethernet wire to teh Tivo and then have it talk wirelessly to the router direct, just like the computer, and not have to go through the computer and ICS.

/Michael

That makes a lot of sense. I'll look into that. I was easily able to get into DHCP for the router, and I'm just making this all way more difficult

To answer your question, I'm using Win2K, which seems to make ICS a lot less noticeable than Win98. On the Win98 box I have it running on, ICS puts it's self in the task tray and runs from there. On Win2K it's pretty transparent. From what I've read it works a bit differently as well.

Anyway, I'm going to look into the bridge option.

*edit*
Does anyone know of a wireless bridge that will work with the BEFW11S4 v2?

Does anyone know of a wireless bridge that will work with the BEFW11S4 v2?

In theory, any one that supports 802.11b. The WET11 for sure, I have a one connected to a BEFW11S4 for my Tivo's, and it works great.

Thanks. I'm going to have to decide whether I want to spend that much money for this, so I'll be thinking about it. Thanks for all your help guys!

I bought the WET11 at CompUSA. They had a pretty good deal at $130-$30 rebate.

Unfortunately, the plan fell though on using the 9-pin serial cable.

REQUEST FOR HELP!
Is there a kind, Tivo-owning member here who is willing to loan me their other serial cable? There is another cable that comes with the Tivo box. One end is like a normal minijack, the other is like an RJ11 jack. The new sat receiver we got has this type of input, but I left my own cable at a friend's house in Williamsburg, and I won't be back there for a few months. I would be grateful if someone would ship me their cable (I'll pay for shipping, of course), and I'll ship it back when I get mine.

I have a cable like that in my junk cable pile, but I'm not 100% sure that it's the one from the TiVo. If no one else gets back to you, I'll be happy to send it along.

Thanks! I'll let you know

Thanks for your offer, Bitt, but I decided that I might as well get one from the Tivo store anyway. I may have lost mine.

Thanks for everyone's help! I completed every hack on the newbie guide, and I can telnet and FTP into my Tivo, as well as use TivoWeb and TyTool. I'm currently downloading a video to my PC.

I ended up getting the wireless bridge, which I'll probably put into my other network when I get back.

The last thing I need to do is to try to find some screws to replace the ones I stripped taking them out. I'd like to replace them with normal phillips head screws, but if that's not possible, I'll stick with torx screws. Unfortunately Home Depot and anywhere else I went didn't have them. Anyone know where I can find them?

Thanks again for all the help I received here. I love this board and I love Tivo!

Looks like Tivo hacking is about to become less of an "underground" thing.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596005539

O'Reilly will probably cover the subject well.

I might have to get that when it comes out.

I also may need some help from someone who knows about TyTool. For some reason, I'm not getting complete videos from it. It seems like I'm getting the first 2 minutes of every program I try to download. What's more, it takes FOREVER to get those two minutes! I think it took about an hour and a half to download what I thought was a 30 minute episode, and it turned out to just be the first 2 minutes!

What could be going on here?

I'm having the same problem! Let us (especially me) know if you figure out why it's happening.

- Jon

Okay, I'm glad/sad that someone else is having this problem. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll get any response from the Tivo board, since my last two simple questions went completely unanswered. Web searches are not helping me either.

Well, Jon. I've got a couple possibilities.

1) the computer I'm downloading to and the Tivo I'm downloading from are both connected to my network wirelessly, and appear to be averaging about 11mbps, which should still be faster than it is
2) I uninstalled Tytools and went entirely with TyStudio. As far as I can see, it's much better. I downloaded a ".ty" file from the Tivo, and it got all of it, although I think it was still pretty slow.

So, for now I'd suggest TyStudio. It's definitely a step up from that TyTools installation instructions page, because it adds it's self to the start up process, instead of having to telnet in all the time and starting the program up. There's also an indexing process to speed up editing directly on the Tivo.

You can actually play streams directly off the Tivo now. Look here for all the details and the files necessary.

- Trevor

I have been using Tystudio for my downloading and movie file making and that's the program that I've been getting 2 minutes worth of video from a 30 minute program from...

- Jon

How are you telling TyStudio to do it? I told it to download the .ty file to my computer first, then open it. This way I got the whole video but it was still slow. I'm going to try one more time to connect the Tivo directly to my PC to tell if that makes it faster.

I'm also downloading the .ty file to my PC and then telling TyStudio to create a DVD video file from that. I come out with about 2 minutes of program with that method...

- Jon

What size is the file on your PC? I'm getting files that are about 500MB/30 minutes, so that sounds about right. Plus, when I view them in the TyStudio editing window, I can slide the slider to the end of the program, so I'm sure it got the whole thing. I also seem to be getting the files a bit faster now, at about 2 minutes of download for every minute of show.

I think I got it to work. First, I downloaded the 1 hour .ty file I wanted (bjork and sigur ros on HBO's Reverb).

The .ty file is 1,400,064 KB long.

I tried to edit out the short HBO junk in the beginning and set an end tag. When I then processed the file, I only got a few seconds in the beginning oi the show. Subsequent tries seemed to error out. I deleted the junk mpg file that was created and re-started Tytools.

Next, I didn't add any tags and just tried to process the whole file as an SVCD with 48,000 as the audio setting. The resulting file is 1,399,334 KB and seems to be the whole show. Wahoo!

Now, how to I burn a mpg to a CD so that it will play on my DVD player??? Can I do it with Nero?

- Jon

You'll have to split that file to write to two CDs as they're 7-800MB max. I don't do a lot with this kind of thing, but there's good information at http://www.dvdrhelp.com/ (formerly vcdhelp.com).

-Zeke

Hmm, interesting. I haven't tried the MPEG2 conversion of my .ty streams yet, so I guess I'd better make sure they result in full videos!

The one and only thing I don't like about TyStudio is that you can only download one file at a time. It's designed to always edit files, and not for batch downloading/processing. I liked normal TyTools because you could select a bunch of files to download.