Washington Post: Breaking It Open, Making It Better

“…Two products in particular have become popular with hackers
lately: the ReplayTV and TiVo “personal video recorders.” These
VCR-like machines save and play back television programming using
hard drives rather than videotape. By adding a larger hard drive to
a Replay or TiVo, a hacker can double or even quadruple the number
of shows their PVR can record – a $250 drive can boost an older
Replay box’s capacity from 20 hours to 80. Some hackers go even
further with tricks like adding an Ethernet card for networking to
a computer or enabling PAL-format video output for use in other
countries.”

“The TiVo is particularly popular among hackers, in part
because it uses the Linux operating system that many technically
inclined computer users run on their own PCs. ReplayTV is more
difficult to hack because it uses a proprietary operating
system.“

“The number of people who have modified their PVRs is not known.
Hacking is “pretty much limited to a small group of technophiles
who like tinkering,” said Steve Shannon, vice president of
marketing at ReplayTV. “I could probably count them on one
hand.”

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