# The Mysteries of the HME Protocol Specification



## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

(And by that I mean the file hme-protocol.html, as found in TiVo's Java SDK. I refer to the version in 1.4.1 here.) Not only are some things undocumented, but more interestingly, it documents some things that aren't.

One is "HME Receiver Compliance", a link to a document that doesn't exist (or at least, isn't in the package). If it did, presumably it would give some additional details for people who wanted to implement HME _receivers_ -- i.e., the Tivo side -- on non-Tivo hardware. I'd love to see that.

But the most intriguing is this section:



> 4.3.3.1 Video specific keys
> The following keys are optionally sent for *video resources* in addition to the common keys specified above: ...


Also in that section:



> A Trio Mind globally unique channel identifier for the channel displayed at the current position in the video buffer.


I can't find anything relevant for "Trio Mind" on Google.


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## s2kdave (Jan 28, 2005)

very interesting. One thing I've been itching to figure out is the parameters to transitionForward such that you can jump to another part of tivo like schedule a recording. I'm almost certain this is how swivel search jumps to schedule a recording and then ends back in swivel search. It's probably some tivo like url with parameter for the part. I noticed this in the simulator source code:


```
// check for fake URLs
if (url.startsWith("livetv:") || url.startsWith("loopset:") || url.startsWith("recording:")) {
```


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

Interesting s2kdave. I know that TiVo Inc. also has a way to make HME apps appear seemingly anywhere in the menus, not just in Music, Photos and More. But I'm not too optimistic on being able to take advantage of it.


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## s2kdave (Jan 28, 2005)

I'm almost positive those menus are driven by database data on the MFS filesystem which are put there by tivo when it connects back to home base. So I doubt there is much we can do of putting new menu items outside of what is auto detected by tivo for HME apps (without hacking your tivo).


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## s2kdave (Jan 28, 2005)

At one point I tried to figure out where the swivel search app was hosted. I found the ip, but not the full url and found that it is SSL encrypting it using keys for both client and server. So it would be a major pain trying to figure it out and would probably require some hacking on your tivo box. You probably have to restart the tivo box and listen for the SSL handshake to get the seed key in order to do a man in the middle way to listen in on the SSL traffic.

I wish they would just tell us how instead.

David


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## jbcooley (May 13, 2007)

wmcbrine said:


> I can't find anything relevant for "Trio Mind" on Google.


It's there now  To bad it points to this post.


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## gonzotek (Sep 24, 2004)

A codeword for Tribune Media UID, perhaps? Or maybe Trio Mind is TiVo's term for the superset of Tribune Media UIDs and the UIDs for Amazon and TiVoCast, et al.


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