Jackbooted DirecTV thugs haven't yet kicked in my front door, so I guess it's safe to tell: a few weeks ago, I hacked my DirecTV TiVo unit. As it turns out, the DirecTV TiVos are the easiest of all TiVos to hack, because there exists a reasonably foolproof method called "The Zipper" for doing so. I had opened up other TiVos to replace hard drives, and I'm comfortable with opening up computers and swapping hard drives, so for me, the hardest part of running The Zipper was having to borrow a friend's PC in order to actually do the hacking. (It's not set up to work with a Mac.)

Now my DirecTV TiVo has the "Music & Photos" functionality of a standalone TiVo, but there's much more. It displays caller ID information on-screen so I don't have to look at the display on my phone, which usually entails getting up. It does "soft padding" -- automatically adding one minute to the beginning and two minutes to the end of every recording, unless there's a conflict. I can make a Telnet or an HTTP connection to my TiVo and do all kinds of stuff, including reading the log generated by the soft padding routine, which looks like this...

Tuesday 19:27:00 : Rise and shine!
Tuesday 19:27:01 : Processing current recording(s):
Tuesday 19:27:01 : * Jeopardy! on [387 ABCW] until 19:30 (Season Pass)
Tuesday 19:27:06 : Both tuners available; using requested padding (120 seconds)
Tuesday 19:27:07 : Adding 120 seconds end padding
Tuesday 19:27:17 : Processing next recording(s):
Tuesday 19:27:17 : * Family Guy on [296 TOON] from 20:30 to 21:00 (Suggestion)
Tuesday 19:27:17 : Not time to add start padding yet
Tuesday 19:27:17 : * Scrubs on [383 NBCW] from 21:00 to 21:30 (Season Pass)
Tuesday 19:27:17 : Not time to add start padding yet
Tuesday 19:27:17 : Next end padding setting due 20:57
Tuesday 19:27:17 : Next start padding setting due 20:27
Tuesday 19:27:17 : Next wake up will be 19:57
Tuesday 19:27:17 : Back to sleep...
Tuesday 19:27:17 : Checking every minute for kill signal...............................

I can now transfer recordings to my TiVo from my computer, in just about any video type -- for example, if I were to use BitTorrent to download an episode of the Australian version of "Deal or No Deal," I would probably prefer to watch it on my TV rather than on my computer. The big drawback is that it takes at least twice as long to transfer video as it does to watch it, partly due to my slow computer (the video has to be transcoded into TiVo's MPEG-2 format if it's not already) and partly due to the fact that I don't have a particularly fast wireless connection between the computer and the TiVo on opposite sides of my apartment.

Also, as has been demonstrated on baseballrelated.com recently, I can also transfer recordings from my TiVo to my computer, although without a DVD burner, this is mainly only useful for capturing screenshots. I first tested this ability with the greatest episode of "Charmed" ever. Paige (played by Rose McGowan) has only recently learned that she's a witch as a result of having been brought in to replace Prue (played by Shannen Doherty, who everyone involved with the show hated). At her office, some guy (played by some guy) has been annoying her and the other women, but instead of filing a formal sexual harrassment complaint, she casts a spell on him in order to cause women to sexually harrass him. In the "Charmed" universe (played by a Los Angeles studio backlot, which looks like San Francisco if you squint), casting spells for personal gain is bad and can cause them to backfire on you -- in this case, greatly increasing the size of Paige's breasts (played by balloons under Rose McGowan's shirt). Eventually, Phoebe (played by Alyssa Milano) remembers that her contract says she's supposed to have the largest breasts on the show, and the balloons are deflated.



I know the screenshot doesn't look that good, but this was my first attempt -- I've since figured out what to do for better quality. Anyway, from this point, we go on to have four more seasons of Rose McGowan not getting as much screen time as I'd like her to have, culminating in the current (and last) season, in which the blonde daughter from "8 Simple Rules" (played by the blonde daughter from "8 Simple Rules") has been brought in solely to annoy me, as a college student who has only recently learned that she's a witch -- and this despite the fact that it's been pretty well established that, in the "Charmed" universe, brunettes are good witches and blondes are evil witches (for example, there was an episode in which three evil witches were played by Jenny McCarthy, the blonde from "Cleopatra 2525," and a former pink Power Ranger), so this better be leading up to a big good-versus-evil confrontation. I mean, bigger than the good-versus-evil confrontation that they have in just about every episode.

In conclusion, I wish I had hacked my TiVo sooner, and I wish I had never gotten sucked into watching "Charmed" in the first place.