That’s fine, but they’ve lost me as a customer because of it. Yeah, I’m just one person, but I won’t be updating any of my boxes since Tivo is now the broken promise company. I will probably continue to pay my $6.95 vasselage until the box dies or until Apple provides me a financially viable video on demand service.

At least the hackers care enough to make things work.

Also, to do the software hacks on the more recent models of TiVo requires doing a hardware prom mod. That puts the hacking out of reach for even more people.

Having working TTG code will allow 3rd parties to develop new applications that work for any TiVo S2 user.

http://www.geocities.com/kyoutekia/

Apple keeps iterating and making hackers work on it over and over, raising the bar each time. The protection hasn’t been broken since the 6.x update (well, DVDJon claims to have something) so it takes more and more work to rip anything.

TiVo can certainly improve their DRM, making it harder to crack. It is an arms race, any DRM system that is left unchanged for long enough will probably be cracked.

The question is, is it worth it? They may just decide to drop TTG on the S3 for good and leave the DRM as-is. But if it hurts expansion of the business, say it scares of TiVoCast partners, etc, then they are probably best off trying to patch it.

If they change DRM, that new one is going to be treated the same as the old. I have the same fear as our anonymous friend, actually. Like I said, the barn door is open and the horse is long gone. Get a new horse, close the door, and it will just happen again. The only ‘sure’ way to make sure a horse doesn’t escape from that barn again is to burn the barn down, and nobody wants to see that.

Until TiVo does something to block this.

I had a DRM sripping application for Windows well before the likes of DirectShow Dump, etc, came out. But the author gave it to me in confidence with the understanding that I wouldn’t redistribute it. I still use it because it is nicer than DirectShow Dump, but it does pretty much the same thing.

Erm… I can say, with absolute certainty, that the detail given on that page was sufficient (for someone minimally skilled in related arts) to make a decoder several months ago.

The discussion is via wiki, the whole thing was not posted in one go. Several months elapsed between JimFowler’s last comment and someone being brave enough to publically post something that could potentially result in a takedown notice or IP litigation.

How easy is it?

Downloaded from the TiVo via the web interface (though I’ll probably start using Galleon), decrypted it via tivodecode, and I’m able to watch it in VLC. QT doesn’t like the files though.

I was able to use iSquint to convert it to an MPEG4, and now my iPod is playing Robot Chicken

I do suspect, however, that if the cable-card-enabled S3 units don’t already block downloads of anything that was transmitted encrypted, they will soon…

I remember asking them about Linux at CES when TTG was first announced, when it was still going to be a dongle system, and they didn’t plan on supporting Linux back then.

And the only thing surprising to me as well is that it took so long. Though I suspect the extraction hacks possible on Windows for a long time now reduced the motivation for some.

I believe TiVo too – but they’ve been ‘working on it’ for a couple of years. I saw what I was told was working Alpha software at CES2006. I’ll be going to CES2007 in a month, and it isn’t out yet. By this point they could’ve written their own decryption and playback engine from scratch. After a few missed promised dates, at this point I’ll believe it when it is available to download.

DRM is a lost cause really, there are many ways to attack DRM and all the major DRM systems have been cracked to one degree or another. AACS from Blu-ray & HD DVD haven’t been busted yet, but they’re fairly new.

The thing is, you could have TTG on the S3 and just not allow some shows to be transferred if that’s what the content provider wants. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.

Now TiVo files have been cracked for a very similar reason. Other platforms came a-knockin’, nobody answered.

I agree this is certainly not going to help the S3, but I must admit my only shock in relation to this news is it took this long.

As you note, any DRM system is a target. But any DRM system that says “only you may enter…you, you, and you can bugger off” is pretty much wearing steak underpants and dancing in front of a legion of starved pitbulls.

For what it is worth, I do believe TiVo when they say they were working on it. (Mac support). However, the barn door is wide open, the horse is long gone, and the point is now moot. My hope now is that TTG isn’t pulled entirely.