TiVo is coming to your iPod, PSP

[Redux]

Well, judging from what TiVo and Roxio have done for us, that was a complete and utter waste of time.Well, it may be that what was being worked on simply didn't pan out, and this Roxio thing was an emergency bailout plan. Obviously it didn't take years to create that, no more than a few days (I would hope). Perhaps the original project will continue and a real product will emerge at some point in the future.

[Dan203]

Well, it may be that what was being worked on simply didn't pan out, and this Roxio thing was an emergency bailout plan. Obviously it didn't take years to create that, no more than a few days (I would hope). Perhaps the original project will continue and a real product will emerge at some point in the future.

I recently started writing code professionally, and believe me even the simplest programs take more then a few days. Something like this probably took months.

Dan

[eschasi]

I recently started writing code professionally, and believe me even the simplest programs take more then a few days. Something like this probably took months.

DanI've got 30 years on ya, and can firmly say "It depends." :) But yes, from the description I've seen of the functionality, it was probably at least some months from starting work to when the product made it thru Quality Assurence.

[Redux]

it was probably at least some months from starting work to when the product made it thru Quality Assurence.Well, I was making the assumption that customers are going to be the alpha testers, but if this is in fact a mature product, sure, could have taken a little while. Week and a half, even two.

[ZeoTiVo]

I've got 30 years on ya, and can firmly say "It depends." :) But yes, from the description I've seen of the functionality, it was probably at least some months from starting work to when the product made it thru Quality Assurence.
you seem to be totally overlooking the DRM required by the legal environment. This is not a simple case of take this input - convert it this way and that way then apply some expertise in video playing or DVD burning to it to finish it off.

The main reason TiVo has always lagged the open source and hacker community is because they have to play in the DRM world and make sure they have done enough due dilligence to not get sued and that the product work across all their platforms in a customer supportable way.


they came close enough to bad tidings with the roxio partnership and the sudden appearence of open source TiVoDecoder. The anouncment on Zatz Not Funny noted that TiVo had to share DRM decryption detials with Roxio and I find it less than coincidental that the open source - reverse engineering of that DRM decryption appears in the wild around the same time.

[MickeS]

Well, I was making the assumption that customers are going to be the alpha testers, but if this is in fact a mature product, sure, could have taken a little while. Week and a half, even two.
Two weeks? What are you smoking? Hell, a code change of two lines takes that long to get through all the hoops.

[Dan203]

The anouncment on Zatz Not Funny noted that TiVo had to share DRM decryption detials with Roxio and I find it less than coincidental that the open source - reverse engineering of that DRM decryption appears in the wild around the same time.

TiVo has had a relationship with Sonic (now Roxio) for a couple of years now, and they had to give up details about their decryption scheme from day one. This is evidenced by the fact that the MyDVD software has access to the metadata, which I know for a fact requires full access to their decryption scheme to get at. So the release of the tivodecode program is purely conicidence.

Dan

[ZeoTiVo]

TiVo has had a relationship with Sonic (now Roxio) for a couple of years now, and they had to give up details about their decryption scheme from day one. This is evidenced by the fact that the MyDVD software has access to the metadata, which I know for a fact requires full access to their decryption scheme to get at. So the release of the tivodecode program is purely conicidence.

Dan
but on the windows desktop they could simply access the tivodesktop.dll when decryption was needed adn not really know the inside details.

with the Mac product the Roxio software engineers most likely had to code up the decryption within their own source code.

all speculation but TiVodecode is definitely a reverse engineering of the DLL from somewhere.

[gonzotek]

all speculation but TiVodecode is definitely a reverse engineering of the DLL from somewhere.Search google for "tivo wiki horkuu"(unquoted) There is a wiki that is a technical discussion by some fairly smart people, which pretty much explains the whole tivodecode story, from understanding the basic file headers all the way to the working decoder, over a period of many months. There's really no speculation about how the tivodecode app came about, its pretty well documented.

[ZeoTiVo]

Search google for "tivo wiki horkuu"(unquoted) There is a wiki that is a technical discussion by some fairly smart people, which pretty much explains the whole tivodecode story, from understanding the basic file headers all the way to the working decoder, over a period of many months. There's really no speculation about how the tivodecode app came about, its pretty well documented.
Thanks Gonzo. Guess I should read the HME forum more often.