My PVR Blogs
Sunday, September 04, 2005
Update!
Well, it has been a long time since I last posted here. There are a couple things that I've been doing:
- First, I really don't like my Mitsubishi WD55411 55" HDTV for use as a HTPC display. For one thing, it only supports up to 1080i (which means the best desktop I can get is a 1920x540 display). This also has the poor side effect of needing me to run a custom display setting, and is analog RGB, which has pincushion and window size problems. And good luck getting a lot of newer control panels and dialog boxes to fit on a 540 vertical display. After upgrading my MAME Cabinet to a 1280x768 LCD display over DVI, I'm amazed at just how much better the digital interface is, and how nice having at LEAST 768 lines of desktop is. Now, I really want to buy one of the new 1080p DLP displays out from Mitsubishi or Samsung (I know...the dreaded giant...but they sure make nice stuff). Unfortunately, the Mits units don't support >720p over the HDMI interface (same with Samsung) and have no other PC interface. At least the Sammy has support for an RGB (back to analog, though...sigh) that will support 1920x1024 display. So, NEITHER supports digital 1080p input, so you are screwed in the future if there is a 1080p HDMI source!
- Next, my DirecTV 40-hour Tivo that I had hacked with a 160GB HDD, turned off encryption, enabled network support, extraction to PC for video editing and burning to DVD, scheduling over the web, and many other enhancements, finally went T.U. The drive was ALWAYS very noisy compared to the 40GB, and I'm not sure if the drive is bad or if a sector just went bad and needs to be reinstalled. Anyway, I put the old back up drive back in, and got the update to the new 6.2 Tivo software (much faster menus and folder support), and have been reading all the latest ways to hack it again. Got a 200GB Maxtor for $79 at Staples and am in the middle of hacking it again from 6.2. Should be able to enable HMO (Home Media Option) and MRV (Multi Room Viewing).
Here is the best way to do the hack:- BACKUP your drive or COPY to new mirror drive before doing the hack with MFSBACKUP/MFSRESTORE. In my case, this involves getting the LBA48 Linux boot CD with enhancements from PTV Upgrade. I connected original drive to Primary Slave (/dev/hdb) and new 200GB drive to Primary Master (/dev/hda). Then once you boot the LBA48 Boot Disk (BE SURE NOT TO BOOT INTO WINDOWS XP/NT/2000 or Windows will attach some data to your new virgin drives and make it UNUSEABLE for TIVO), you can check some stats on the old drive with:
# mfsinfo /dev/hdb
And then upgrade/copy the drive image in one step with:
# mfsbackup -aqo - /dev/hdb | mfsrestore -xpi - /dev/hda - Follow Gunnyman's UnGuide to hack 6.2. This assumes you already have a 6.2 kernel to start with and you've backed up stuff
- BACKUP your drive or COPY to new mirror drive before doing the hack with MFSBACKUP/MFSRESTORE. In my case, this involves getting the LBA48 Linux boot CD with enhancements from PTV Upgrade. I connected original drive to Primary Slave (/dev/hdb) and new 200GB drive to Primary Master (/dev/hda). Then once you boot the LBA48 Boot Disk (BE SURE NOT TO BOOT INTO WINDOWS XP/NT/2000 or Windows will attach some data to your new virgin drives and make it UNUSEABLE for TIVO), you can check some stats on the old drive with:
- I also just got a Hughes HR10-250 hidef 250-hour DirecTV DVR for $199 (after $100 mail in rebate). I LOVE it for the main area TV, but it has the old 3.5 OS on it and doesn't sound like DirecTV is going to upgrade it. But most people have managed to hack it to work, so I'm planning to upgrade this unit as well to enable the HMO/MRV and all the other stuff. Saw an add for a 250GB Maxtor for $79 from CompUSA.
