Hobbyists share notes on souping up TV recorders

August 25, 2004

By CRAYTON HARRISON / The Dallas Morning News

Brad Nelson has seven TiVo recorders connected to the only TV in his house.

Juan Garcia / DMN Using seven TiVos, Brad Nelson records almost every National Hockey League game that is broadcast. He designed software that tells him which games to watch.

Each TiVo can record two programs simultaneously. That means that during hockey season, Mr. Nelson can set the TiVos to record practically every game on TV.

The software engineer designed a program at home that examines the National Hockey League box scores of the night, compiling statistics such as ejections for fights, hat tricks and high scores to determine which of his recorded games he should watch.

Then he and his wife, a big hockey fan, have immediate access to the night's best games.

Mr. Nelson is a self-described TiVo hacker, part of a creative bunch of technology buffs who modify the television recorders to meet their viewing needs. TiVo hacking has grown over the last few years, with Internet forums and other Web sites connecting enthusiasts across the country.

"It's really kind of a geek fest extraordinaire," says Mr. Nelson, 38. "The people are kind of an interesting cross-section of society. You certainly get your share of 20s- and 30s-aged males. There's probably some more in their late teens, based on their posting style. But you also get the occasional girls and occasionally people who are older."

When Mr. Nelson calls his hobby "hacking," he's not implying anything sinister. The simplest TiVo hack is an expansion of the device's hard drive, which allows a user to store more television programs.

The hard-drive technique is simple. TiVo enthusiasts have developed computer programs that can initialize a hard drive so it will be recognized by the device. Hook the drive up to your computer, run the program, connect the hard drive to the TiVo and you're basically done.

TiVo doesn't officially endorse any of this, and messing with the device voids the warranty in most cases. But TiVo employees post regularly on at least one of the sites that Mr. Nelson frequents, www.tivocommunity.com.

Other hacks go into trickier territory. TiVo itself has met with resistance from the Motion Picture Association of America for its plans to allow users to distribute copyright-protected, recorded programs among a limited number of devices.

But TiVo hackers have figured out ways to network their TiVos and distribute programs that have no copyright coding to their computers.

"It's something that the MPAA and people like that don't really dig, but they haven't come after anybody yet," Mr. Nelson said. "There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of people getting too upset about it. You have to be fairly seriously into the hacking scene to figure out how to do it."

There is one hack that Mr. Nelson won't go near: programming one of the TiVo devices capable of receiving DirecTV satellite signals to get free TV. The message boards he frequents stay away from the subject.

"That's verboten," Mr. Nelson says. "When you hear people talk about TiVo hacking, 99.9 percent of the time they're not talking about service theft."

In fact, Mr. Nelson's favorite TiVo-hacking message boards aren't really so much about the devices anymore. He visits nowadays mainly to catch up with friends or to help newbies figure out the simple hacks.

Over the years, the forums have evolved from an exchange of technical knowledge into a community, Mr. Nelson says. Dallas-area enthusiasts have had TiVo-hacking parties, ordering a few pizzas, toting in TiVos and hacking them assembly line-style.

Message board frequenters once pooled their money to buy a television, lifetime TiVo service and a TiVo with an expanded hard drive for a fellow poster who had fallen on hard times, Mr. Nelson says.

"That was a pretty amazing show of caring among a lot of geeks," he says.

There's just one problem. With all the time he spends tweaking his devices and chatting with friends, Mr. Nelson is missing his shows.