# Imagine a HD Tivo supporting Freeview, Satellite & Cable



## healeydave (Jun 4, 2003)

Hi Guy's,

I haven't been around much as the ol' timers will be aware (you know who you are Carl etc..) 

I know Sanderton has moved on now, but I emailed him to catch up on what he's up to these days and I thought I'd post this to get other people's thoughts too.

Some of you will be aware of the Dreambox, its been around for several years in different guises. It basically a Receiver with a Linux engine (like the Tivo).

In the last few years, quite a few other Linux boxes have been released and things have moved on quite a bit!

The latest offerings will support any medium, making use of the DVB standards. They offer multiple slots so you can plug in which ever Tuner flavor you like. With 2 tuners slots that means you can add any combination of DVB tuners. 
e.g. DVB-S, DVB-T & DVB-C

For us in the UK, that would mean if you wanted the ability to record/view from two satellite sources (like Sky), you would drop two DVB-S tuners in. If you wanted to mix & match a Sky & Freeview solution, you would drop one DVB-S and one DVB-T tuner in, and so on....

Here is an example of one of the latest offerings with good HD specifications:

http://www.dgstation.co.kr/new/product_feature.php?model=cuberevo&menu=8

(P.S. I am not affiliated with them, so don't think this is sales pitch, in fact continue reading, they lack one thing)

The trouble is, whilst the boxes are pretty powerful, have a great specification and have so much potential, the software is still pretty sucky.

Being linux based, the manufacturers do allow third party software development to complement their own releases. The only trouble is, no-one, including the teams that write for the dreambox have never quite grasped the concept of the simplistic Tivo like interface.

If I thought I could find some developers that could semi duplicate a stable Tivo interface onto one of these boxes, it would be a winner hands down 

That CubeRevo with a Tivo interface would probably surpass everyone's expectations for a new HD Tivo. We all guessed if Tivo came back to market, they would probably produce a single medium product, like a freeview device.

Imagine if that CubeRevo was a Tivo, with the ability to support Virgin Cable, Sky & Freeview and in multiple combination's too!

I think that would be a near perfect solution...........If only.......


----------



## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

healeydave said:


> If I thought I could find some developers that could semi duplicate a stable Tivo interface onto one of these boxes, it would be a winner hands down


I was reading this thinking you'd already done just that...!


----------



## healeydave (Jun 4, 2003)

Unfortunately no. 

Perhaps if it happened a few years ago, when these forums were really busy, we could have put a development fund together. 

It would have only taken a small contribution back in those days based on how busy TivoUK was :-(


----------



## Davyburns (Jan 7, 2004)

So are you saying Sandertons involved in the development of this?


----------



## healeydave (Jun 4, 2003)

Davyburns said:


> So are you saying Sandertons involved in the development of this?


No, sorry to confuse although I wish he was 
I reckon he and Maxwells Daemon could throw something together, heheh.

I merely mentioned this in an email to Stuart (to see if he had seen or had any experience of these systems) and afterword's I thought I might as well post it on the board to get some other opinions.


----------



## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

healeydave said:


> I haven't been around much as the ol' timers will be aware (you know who you are Carl etc..)
> 
> I know Sanderton has moved on now, but I emailed him to catch up on what he's up to these days and I thought I'd post this to get other people's thoughts too.


Actually he's still around here but now goes by the name of TCM2007. However sadly he did take the last of his Tivos out of service a few months ago in favour of his now entirely Windows MCE and Xbox extender based PVR solution. But that hasn't stopped him continuing to post in the forum.



> For us in the UK, that would mean if you wanted the ability to record/view from two satellite sources (like Sky), you would drop two DVB-S tuners in. If you wanted to mix & match a Sky & Freeview solution, you would drop one DVB-S and one DVB-T tuner in, and so on....


It doesn't sound enough tuner slots to me. One could imagine people wanting up to four or even more tuners if they wanted to record things from say both FTA satellite and FTA DTT (allowing for issues with recording clashes).



> The trouble is, whilst the boxes are pretty powerful, have a great specification and have so much potential, the software is still pretty sucky.


Surely Tivo have already developed the required software to run on any PC with multiple tuners in conjunction with Nero. The only problem is they won't release it in the UK and/or provide EPG support for it in the UK.


----------



## healeydave (Jun 4, 2003)

Pete77 said:


> It doesn't sound enough tuner slots to me. One could imagine people wanting up to four or even more tuners if they wanted to record things from say both FTA satellite and FTA DTT (allowing for issues with recording clashes).


Don't be greedy, the only box with more tuner slots is the Dreambox 8000, I think it has 1 more (3 total) but they are scarce as hell and a ridiculous price!

You can still record two channels and watch a third on the same frequency with just 1 x tuner according to the spec of the lower end Cube Mini!



Pete77 said:


> Surely Tivo have already developed the required software to run on any PC with multiple tuners in conjunction with Nero. The only problem is they won't release it in the UK and/or provide EPG support for it in the UK.


I don't think its that easy to produce a working image even though the basic foundations already exist. I've been following the threads on other forums about different images released for these boxes. They are pretty problematic and unstable initially but these teams don't have the resources or the amount of people working on the project as a company would, so its understandable.

I'm sure it wouldn't take Tivo's s/w engineers long to re-produce their o/s on these boxes.

The biggest hurdle for them was getting a manufacturer to make a box to their specification, always a problem when you don't do the manufacturing yourself. The h/w manufacturer wants a commitment to a certain number of units to warrant production lines etc.

These boxes are being made irrespectively, so Tivo could easily negotiate re-badging and probably an excellent deal, even if it required some minor alterations from a "service keying" point of view!

Like I said, these boxes are a perfect spec for Tivo, not only in the UK but this product could be used across the board for their other territories too!


----------



## JonMace (Mar 2, 2002)

The biggest problem is the CAMs SKY and Virgin will not release a legal version


----------



## healeydave (Jun 4, 2003)

JonMace said:


> The biggest problem is the CAMs SKY and Virgin will not release a legal version


Hmmm, from a Tivo point of view then, they would market it as a Freeview solution but from our point of view, we could add the other services ourselves like we did with Tivoweb, endpad etc.

That's not something that bothers the teams that write new front end interfaces for these things of-course.


----------



## JonMace (Mar 2, 2002)

I honestly don't think its a starter, with sky you would still need a STB as the card needs to be in it a least once overy 2 weeks to update, with Virgin there system is so hacked that it would not be a problem but would be illegal, and with N3 coming out soon prob would not work full stop


----------



## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

JonMace said:


> I honestly don't think its a starter, with sky you would still need a STB as the card needs to be in it a least once overy 2 weeks to update


And you have to transfer the satellite lead across to achieve this so knocking out recording on the other device over the half day or whatever while this happens.


----------



## healeydave (Jun 4, 2003)

JonMace said:


> I honestly don't think its a starter, with sky you would still need a STB as the card needs to be in it a least once overy 2 weeks to update, with Virgin there system is so hacked that it would not be a problem but would be illegal, and with N3 coming out soon prob would not work full stop


Whats N3?

The new white sky cards may change things, but the current yellow & blue cards don't need to be put back into a sky receiver anymore the other receivers are capable of receiving the updates just as well as the sky boxes!

I think your over looking the fact that over the next few years, a decent HD receiver supporting the Free-to-air services from Freesat and Freeview is a valuable addition.

Does Cable have free-to-air services?
If cable does too, then this type of receiver could be marketed legitimately covering all the free-to-air services and what people do afterwards in relation to extending the functionality to pay services is up to them but in many peoples minds a desirable bonus much like people liked Tivo for its "hack add-on's flexability".


----------



## JonMace (Mar 2, 2002)

healeydave said:


> Whats N3?


Nagra 3, Virgins current security stsem is N1, which is what the Dreambox's that you were talking about can enulate, N3 is rumoured to be coming out soon to stop all that


----------



## AMc (Mar 22, 2002)

Healydave said:


> Does Cable have free-to-air services?


IIRC Virgin T&C say that only their equipment can be connected to their network - violate that and they cut you off in the street.
IIRC Milton Keynes has/had a free to view analogue cable network but I could be way out.

Personally I think a Freesat/Freeview box would have some mileage, but obviously the absence of a subscription is the key selling point for this type of equipment so Tivo would have to sell Lifetime only boxes or recoup revenue with video on demand over broadband etc.


----------



## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

AMc said:


> IIRC Virgin T&C say that only their equipment can be connected to their network - violate that and they cut you off in the street.


The people happily using Eurovox boxes to watch non subscription Virgin Media channels would clearly beg to differ with you on that point.

See www.digital-kaos.co.uk/forums/f71/can-virgin-m-ia-detect-i-am-using-eurovox-6002/


----------



## DeadKenny (Nov 9, 2002)

They can beg as much as they want. The rules are clear from Virgin. It's their private network, and anything unauthorised is just that.

As much as I always hated them when I was with them and they were known as NTL, I have to partially agree.

Problem is their network at the consumer end is generally a shared coax solution much like old thin Ethernet. It suffers greatly from poor quality and unterminated connections, as I learnt from years of struggling to get a decent signal, often blamed by engineers on my neighbours. I can see the point about ensuring only authorised equipment is connected to a degree. Although their point is more about potential theft.

Anyway, regardless of no detectable return signal, because of the shared nature of the network, it is possible for engineers to diagnose signal issues due to connected devices.


Anyway, as said, it's all a non starter. Both Sky and Virgin are closed systems who do not approve of any of this, and in the case of Sky you need a Sky box anyway. It will only ever exist as a hackers solution.

What we need is a proper legal marketable solution that can be sold to thousands. Sky and Virgin are not an option here. Concentrate on Freeview and Freesat.


----------



## healeydave (Jun 4, 2003)

DeadKenny said:


> What we need is a proper legal marketable solution that can be sold to thousands.


We got side-tracked, my original question was only to find out if there was a free-to-air service on cable like the other mediums. As cable services have never existed in my area, I know little about it but it appears the answer is no. It doesn't really change the situation much, Freeview & Freesat are still a valuable arena and the fact that the boxes can support the DVB-C standard as well may come into play in the future, who knows.

Concentrating of a proper legal solution is always the route to go anyway. With Freeview & Freesat, there's never been a better opportunity present before.



DeadKenny said:


> Sky and Virgin are not an option here. Concentrate on Freeview and Freesat.


The fact that these boxes are technically able to extend their usage to the pay tv services (e.g. sky & Virgin) would just remain a bonus to the people that want to hack their boxes.


----------



## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

DeadKenny said:


> Anyway, as said, it's all a non starter. Both Sky and Virgin are closed systems who do not approve of any of this, and in the case of Sky you need a Sky box anyway. It will only ever exist as a hackers solution.
> 
> What we need is a proper legal marketable solution that can be sold to thousands. Sky and Virgin are not an option here. Concentrate on Freeview and Freesat.


Sky is just about to replace all its Blue yellow house cards with a new white viewing card under its five year replacement agreement with NDS (to stop hacking). This has already had a year's delay due to the excuse of the launch of BBC/ITV Freesat. I don't know if they claimed that loads of old Sky Freesatters would no longer want to replace their NDS/Sky FTV cards or what exactly but unless people switch away completely to a BBC/ITV Freesat box any existing Sky Freesatter still need a working FTV NDS Sky card to go on getting Five, Sky Three, Five USA, FIVER and Setanta News. Also your BBC1, BBC2 and ITV1 channels on 101, 102 and 103 won't be correctly regionalised (even though that's only by country on BBC2) unless you have a working FTV Sky viewing card.

Anyhow the net upshot of all this is that those using a Dragon CAM to make Sky HD work with Windows MCE or other non Sky PVRs are going to be blown out of the water and the only way to record a Sky box on another device will once again be to use the non HD SCART feed until somebody manages to reverse engineer NDS's new encryption algorithms. This is always going to be the problem without an offical approved Sky CAM solution for other PVRs.

See www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=31614169&posted=1#post31614169 for more information.


----------



## healeydave (Jun 4, 2003)

Pete77 said:


> wot pete said.............


All the more reason to get a decent tivo'esk Hig Def Free-to-air system out there with a decent EPG and at least season pass technology.

A lot of the core channels already now work without any viewing card in and have done for some time. Sky's attempts to try and screw with people who are using their equipment for free-to-air services just adds fuel to the requirements for these people to divorce themselves from the Sky platform and get a decent free-to-air receiver without being under the thumb of Sky!


----------



## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

Pete77 said:


> Anyhow the net upshot of all this is that those using a Dragon CAM to make Sky HD work with Windows MCE or other non Sky PVRs are going to be blown out of the water


Why do you say that? Surely the card will work the same way as always - it's a real paid-for card in a DragonCAM. It will appear to the card reader to do the same thing cards have always done (it must do, or it wouldn't work with a Sky box), but it's internal workings to achieve that will have changed.


----------



## healeydave (Jun 4, 2003)

TCM2007 said:


> Why do you say that? Surely the card will work the same way as always - it's a real paid-for card in a DragonCAM. It will appear to the card reader to do the same thing cards have always done (it must do, or it wouldn't work with a Sky box), but it's internal workings to achieve that will have changed.


For sure, they can do what they want to add more security to the card itself, but kind of a fruitless task when you consider NDS was still one of the most secure paytv systems around.

When it comes to the ECM packets being transmitted from the card to the main logic board in the receivers, there's not a lot that can be messed with there in my opinion unless they send out new hardware to everyone.

There's a limited amount they can do through software updates to the receiver over the air, but the receivers hardware is pretty much cast in stone until new hardware happens.


----------



## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

healeydave said:


> All the more reason to get a decent tivo'esk Hig Def Free-to-air system out there with a decent EPG and at least season pass technology.


Presumably www.freesat.co.uk and Humax will already claim that the Humax Freesat PVR already does all that. After all it does have Series Links broadly comparable with Sky and Freeview + and a 7 day EPG and can record BBC HD and ITV HD.

The issue for me with buying a Humax Freesat PVR is that you can then never receive pay channels when you need to (eg Dakar rally or Le Mans on Eurosport in my case plus also picking up a few new episodes of Air Crash Investigation from National Geographic during the same subscription period) and much more importantly you can't get Channel 4 HD. To my mind BBC/ITV Freesat remains dead in the water until such time as Channel 4 manages to extract themselves from their HD encryption deal with Sky (presumably either a lawyer or senior C4 executive was severly negligent or reckless on their behalf over that HD contract with Sky and the costs of buying themselves out of it must be massive given that all the rest of the C4 stable on satellite is now FTA, unless of course the BBC and ITV won't let C4 HD appear on their Freesat service because they want people to watch their HD channels).


----------



## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

TCM2007 said:


> Why do you say that? Surely the card will work the same way as always - it's a real paid-for card in a DragonCAM. It will appear to the card reader to do the same thing cards have always done (it must do, or it wouldn't work with a Sky box), but it's internal workings to achieve that will have changed.


Surely the Dragon CAM system then has to also understand what is output from the card reader and emulate part of Sky's firmware to do so?

Well certainly this poster on digital spy thinks so. Perhaps you can clarify who is actually right. Surely the issue of the new Sky cards actually goes hand in hand with a further revision to the firmware that these boxes run in respect of encrypted channels?

See http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showpost.php?p=31591520&postcount=245



> From what I've gathered online, NDS want all the providers using their system to change the cards every five years regardless of the level of compromise to the encryption system.
> 
> The main purpose it to discourage hackers of investigating the system, since any advances made will render useless with the new cards with the modified "a la carte" encryption.
> 
> ...


----------



## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

I don't know who's right, but remember the DragonCAM emulates the Sky STB to the Sky card, not the other way around, and the Sky STB hasn't chnaged. I guess all will become clear then the old cards are disabled.


----------



## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

TCM2007 said:


> I don't know who's right, but remember the DragonCAM emulates the Sky STB to the Sky card, not the other way around, and the Sky STB hasn't chnaged. I guess all will become clear then the old cards are disabled.


But don't forget that the Dragon CAM seems unable to write to the card since it is unable to extend the period of its validity originally authorised in the card reader in the Sky box.


----------



## kitschcamp (May 18, 2001)

TCM2007 said:


> Why do you say that? Surely the card will work the same way as always - it's a real paid-for card in a DragonCAM. It will appear to the card reader to do the same thing cards have always done (it must do, or it wouldn't work with a Sky box), but it's internal workings to achieve that will have changed.


Viasat in Sweden, for example, use NDS, but the newer cards. They don't work in Dragon Cam.


----------



## healeydave (Jun 4, 2003)

Pete77 said:


> But don't forget that the Dragon CAM seems unable to write to the card since it is unable to extend the period of its validity originally authorised in the card reader in the Sky box.





kitschcamp said:


> Viasat in Sweden, for example, use NDS, but the newer cards. They don't work in Dragon Cam.


I believe that is just down to the coders not completing the Emulation process properly, it seems that once they get the basic emulation up and running, e.g. the communication sufficient to pass the control messages to clear the picture, they stop there and forget that with NDS it requires to pass a keep-alive signal every couple of months.

I'm no expert and freely admit I could be completely wrong here, but I am basing that on the fact that the Emulation software on the Dreambox is fully capable of running the existing sky cards including updates without the need to remove them and put them back in a genuine sky box. That was a requirement in the early days, so clearly they refined the emulation.

However, Sky don't send out new cards lightly, so I wouldn't be surprised if the white card is to address some of these advances!

They certainly don't send them out every 5 years, in my experience, its always been to address security issues. They were nearly brought to their knee's in the early nineties because of having to send out new cards from being hacked. The addition of the asic to the 10 or 11 cards (can't remember which now) was their saving grace and put a stop to the simple hacking methods of their system back then.

My gut feeling is that a new issue was always on the cards (pardon the pun) after Murdoch's chief hacker lost his job last year.

Related Story:
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2008/05/tarnovsky

NDS Group probably hopes he doesn't bear grudges


----------



## JonMace (Mar 2, 2002)

I would have thought that, the new cards are being sent out to stop card sharing, although NDS has not been hacked card sharing is rife


----------



## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

TCM2007 said:


> I don't know who's right


Which is as close as one ever gets with TCM to the use of the phrase "it appears i was wrong"


----------



## healeydave (Jun 4, 2003)

Here's a quick look at the CubeRevo for those that are interested:


----------



## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

Pete77 said:


> Which is as close as one ever gets with TCM to the use of the phrase "it appears i was wrong"


I have admitted many times that I'm wrong. Not often when arguing with you, for obvious reasons.


----------



## healeydave (Jun 4, 2003)

Okay, so here is where I'm at.

I have added IR Codes to my Tivo so it will control the CubeRevo HD PVR.
I have passed these codes on to Gary to see if he wants to add it as a supported box.

It might seem a bit strange having the SD Tivo controlling the HD CubeRevo but quite simply I had so much grief (whilst I was testing out the CubeRevo) whenever the family wanted to change channel only to find I'd had left the CubeRevo still connected, it was clear they were never going to be happy without that familiar much loved Tivo interface 

I have re-mapped the CubeRevo to a Sky compatible channel list so Tivo can control it.
So I am now in a position where-by my recordings through Tivo will of-course still be SD but if I want to watch HD material, I can switch to HDMI.

This actually suits our house-hold fine currently because our recording habits wouldn't pick up much HD content anyway.
Sport is the only material I am benefiting from having HD at the moment and this is only ever watched live!


----------



## JonMace (Mar 2, 2002)

Why don't you just put MCE or Vista on it?


----------



## healeydave (Jun 4, 2003)

Hmmm, lets see....

1.Because I Hate Microsoft with a Passion
2.I thought Windows was getting progressively worse over the years but Vista is just awful
3.Because I Hate Microsoft with a Passion
4.With this setup now, I can do everything including stream from my mass storage
5.Did I mention I hate Microsoft with a Passion?


----------



## ericd121 (Dec 12, 2002)

healeydave said:


> Here's a quick look at the CubeRevo for those that are interested:


Computer says "No."

"This video is private." quoth YouTube.


----------



## CarlWalters (Oct 17, 2001)

My computer says no too


----------



## cyril (Sep 5, 2001)

Well let's hope we get a UK TiVo series 4!

http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/04/20/tivo.series.4.surveyed/


----------



## alunj (Oct 9, 2000)

Pete77 said:


> But don't forget that the Dragon CAM seems unable to write to the card since it is unable to extend the period of its validity originally authorised in the card reader in the Sky box.


yes but ccamd can rewite the card , i have been using one in a dm7000 for well over 6 months now and the entitlement extends each month as it should


----------

