For those of you interested in networking your Series2 DirecTV units, we've finally got a product for you. If you already know what we are talking about or you just want to go right to the product page for ordering, just go here.

The basic idea is this:

• replace the drive or drives in your TiVo with a newer and bigger one
• plug in a USB 2.0 Ethernet adapter
• boot your TiVo and it comes up on the network with a DHCP IP address
• do cool things

So, what do we mean by cool things? Well, first and foremost, your unit will now have an IP address on your home network. And yes, folks, that means you have to have a home network. If you don't know what that is already, there's not much we can do to help you here - go get yourself a Linksys router, or something comparable, and build yourself a network. Turn on DHCP (at least temporarily) and then you'll be ready to get your TiVo up and running in a way that your computer can talk to it.

You'll also need a compatible USB 2.0 Ethernet adapter. Examples are, the Netgear FA120 which is hard to find now, but after December 22nd, 2006 we now have updated drivers supporting the Linksys USB200M and the Trendnet TU2-ET100 available here.

For those interested in wireless connectivity, use of a bridging device or gaming adapter may also be added, such as the Buffalo 802.11G converter.

So what have we installed that can make your unit more useful to you? Well, here is a start:

[list]
[*]TiVoWebPlus 1.3.1
[*]telnet/ftp
[*]Busybox Linux Utils
[*]Other miscelleneous and useful tools
[/list]

TiVoWebPlus 1.3.1

TiVoWeb is a killer-app for your TiVo. Once your TiVo is up and running on your network, TiVoWeb is most likely to be your primary interface into your TiVo from any other location than in front of your TiVo. And most importantly, you can access TiVoWeb and interact with your TiVo when someone else is already in front of your TV. What can you do with TiVoWeb? Well, pretty much anything you can do with a remote, and a whole lot more. Just a few of the features include the ability to schedule recordings, browse, sort, mass delete, and edit descriptions of the content listed in your "Now Playing" list, schedule and reprioritize season passes, send messages, drive your TiVo with a spitting image of the TiVo remote control on your screen, and the list goes on and on and on. Even more interesting is that there are a variety of TiVoWeb modules that have been developed by other folks that can also be installed and used through the web interface.

TiVoWeb and TiVoWebPlus are not products we've developed at PTVupgrade. They are free software packages released under the GPL, and we've incorporated them, made a few customizations, and also added a few popular modules that we think folks will find useful.

Here is a link to the TiVoWebPlus home page where you can find some technical details about TiVoWebPlus and TiVoWeb. If you want to see some screen shots of TiVoWebPlus, check out this link.

telnet and ftp

The cornerstones of networked computers are telnet and ftp. If you don't know what these are, then you probably don't need to. In short, telnet will allow you to remotely access your TiVo because it really is a Linux computer. The shell you will have access to is called BASH. FTP is a simple application for allowing you to move files to/from your TiVo. These are standard UNIX/Linux utilities and you can use google to find out more about them.

BusyBox

BusyBox is a toolkit of Linux utilities that have been "ported" to run on your TiVo DVR. For those that are into the whole UNIX/Linux thing, and want to remotely access their TiVo and do geeky things, BusyBox provides a whole bunch of neat tools, most of which will work on your TiVo. Here is a link to the BusyBox web site.

Other Useful Tools

We've included some other popular little goodies, all of which live in the /ptvupgrade directory.

RoadMap

Having a networked TiVo is a wonderful thing. Many many more things coming, but let's crawl before we walk. We'll be offering a variety of downloadable utilities you'll be able to easily install and configure on your networked unit. We'll also offer remote installation services, as we currently do for Series1 units networked with TurboNet and CacheCard. Stay tuned for more details and surprises.

A Note to our Followers

Although many of the software products we distribute are not developed by us, they are freely available and we redistribute these tools in accordance with the terms under which they are licensed. We appreciate the efforts of the many folks who have taken time to create useful tools for modifying your TiVo, and made contributions to the TiVo upgrade community.

With that said: installing, integrating and configuring these tools is no small matter - we feel we provide a valuable service to our customers and those not technical or too busy to pursue these endeavors on their own. We recognized the value of such services over six years ago when DVRupgrade was founded, and we believe that today, more than ever, people want a service such as ours.