# How does MRV work?



## Doomster (Nov 6, 2003)

I've been lurking this forum trying to get as much info as possible about setting up MRV using the hacks posted by other people.

I have Series 2 DirecTivos (DTVs), not pure Tivos.

My question is this.

The DTVs marry a show to the motherboard of the DTV that you recorded the show on. Thus, you can't just move the program, which I assume is really a Linux file, from the HD on DTV1 to the HD on DTV2 because DTV2 will not recognize it because of encryption on the file.

From my limited understanding of MRV, you can move or copy a show from DTV1 to DTV2 and then watch it on DTV2 without any problems.

How does MRV get around the encryption of the show by DTV1?


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## Da Goon (Oct 22, 2006)

The patch needed to enable MRV between directivos also disables encryption. Thus, afterwards it doesn't matter how the show gets there (MRV or mfs_ftp) it will work in another patched tivo since it is no longer encrypted.


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## JWThiers (Apr 13, 2005)

One thing to keep in mind is that you can "pull" the content from the other tivo not "Push" the content. I didn't understand that when I started.


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## BTUx9 (Nov 13, 2003)

Da Goon said:


> The patch needed to enable MRV between directivos also disables encryption. Thus, afterwards it doesn't matter how the show gets there (MRV or mfs_ftp) it will work in another patched tivo since it is no longer encrypted.


But recordings that were made before the patch will still be encrypted, and yes, you can still xfer them via MRV.

When an encrypted show is transferred via MRV, a special key is generated, unique to the recieving tivo, that allows it to display the encrypted show (note that after using MRV to xfer an encrypted show, the show is still encrypted on the destination tivo, even if it is superpatched)

If more investigation were done into how that key is used, it could possibly lead to the ability to decrypt a ty/tmf on a PC, but since almost all hacked tivos are running without encryption, it's probably not a high priority


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## Doomster (Nov 6, 2003)

JWThiers said:


> One thing to keep in mind is that you can "pull" the content from the other tivo not "Push" the content. I didn't understand that when I started.


When you pull the content, do you do it via the Tivo interface? Or do you have to SSH into the destination DTV box and then pull it from the source DTV box?


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## BTUx9 (Nov 13, 2003)

tivo interface (of the destination tivo)


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