The HR20 is not a TiVo, and I seriously doubt it could be hacked like one

TechLore Blog

HR10-250, Samsung SIR-S4120R, SIR-S4080R, 2 Philips DSR704s (one connected to a Slingbox A/V). One box used the "Zipper"; rest used PTVnet to enable networking features.

Sure...my toaster oven could be hacked to be controlled from a remote computer.

TechLore Blog

HR10-250, Samsung SIR-S4120R, SIR-S4080R, 2 Philips DSR704s (one connected to a Slingbox A/V). One box used the "Zipper"; rest used PTVnet to enable networking features.

I noticed a new option on my setup menu today called Network.  It has a setup area that allows manual entry of networking info and a test button that confirms connection to the internet. 

This was not there when I hooked it up 2 weeks ago so it must have just come in a software update.

 I wonder what they are planning.

I'm in Oregon and we got the software update on 12/19/06.  The update unlocked the RJ45 port as well as the off-air antenna.  After hooking up the network, I can see the HR20 as well as it's IP, but nothing more.  In the small print on DirectTV's website they have added this:

†††The Viiv feature is able to pull most formats of music and photos from your PC and play them through the model HR20 DIRECTV Plus HD DVR. Requires Ethernet cable from the HR20 connected to consumer's home network along with Viiv-enabled PC and router. Viiv installation not included with DIRECTV service.

I have been told 3rd hand that some folks are accessing the HR20 over their home networks and are able to move files (media) around...as of yet I haven't been able to reproduce.

Six

I've networked mine, it's pretty easy. There's one file and two registry entries needed + you must

have a VIIV compliant CPU, which is basically any dual core Intel CPU with certain Intel chipsets, i.e.

965, 975 , etc. Once the pc is "upgraded" it will show up on the HR20's menu. You can then access

any music or photos from the pc in your Home Theatre. The file you need is IntelDH.dll. Don't

remember the registry entries but I could find them if anyone is interested.

Bill Reed
CompuNET
19 Bentana Way
Rockville, MD 20850

I would like to be able to do stuff on the HR20 like TivoWeb lets me do on my DTivo.  I don't have any particular desire to use it for displaying media since I have a computer in my home theater already for that.

But it would be nice to be able to schedule shows or clean up todo lists, etc. 

This was why I ended up with the HR20.  If the Tivo3 could handle DirecTV I would have gotten one of those instead.  I am not unhappy with my HR20 purchase but I know and love Tivo.

I also hooked up a SATAII RAID array to the HR-20 USB port. When the unit is plugged back in to power it comes up normally but switches to the external drive. So any recordings you have on the internal drive are lost but the increase in space is well worth it. 5 - 750's gives you 3 TB in a RAID5.

Bill Reed
CompuNET
19 Bentana Way
Rockville, MD 20850

Sorry I was so long getting back to you but had to go out of town on business. When you unplug an external drive or array you will simply go back to the internal drive, though it will be wiped of any recordings you had previously made. I have heard that the external array/drive can be moved to a different HR20 and the recordings on it will be available but as I only have one HR20 I cannot confirm this.

Bill

Bill Reed
CompuNET
19 Bentana Way
Rockville, MD 20850

bllreed said:

Sorry I was so long getting back to you but had to go out of town on business. When you unplug an external drive or array you will simply go back to the internal drive, though it will be wiped of any recordings you had previously made. I have heard that the external array/drive can be moved to a different HR20 and the recordings on it will be available but as I only have one HR20 I cannot confirm this.

Bill

 

It reformats the internal drive if you unplug the external and switch back to it? What a stupid design. What happens if you plug that external array back in again? It gets reformatted too? even though it doesnt need to be and you lose everything on it? Also what enclosure did you use? People at satguys have said that the biggest Esata enclosure they could find was for 2 disks.

I have not tried this, but the info on dbstalk.com indicates that:

1. When you plug in an esata drive to the USB port on the HR20 it uses the esata drive instead of the internal drive (i.e. You do not have access to any recordings you have already made on the internal drive).

2. If you pull the power cord from the HR20. power down your esata drive and then unplug it from the HR20, when you power up the HR20 again, it switches back to the internal drive and you can watch the shows recorded before you attached the esata drive.

3. If you attach the esata drive again, you can no longer watch shows on the internal drive again, but you do not lose the shows previously recorded on the esata drive.

5. The esata drive can not be attached you a computer and allow you to move files from and to your computer. I suspect that this is when your computer is running some version of Windows, since Windows changes the boot track of any drive attached to it. You might be able to transfer shows if your are running Linux on your computer.

6. You cannot move the esata drive to another HR20 and watch the shows on that box, since when the drive is attached to a box for the first time it writes a specific ID, unique to each HR20 to the esata drive. Whenever it is attached to a HR20, the ID is checked and if it does not match, the drive is re-formatted.

I could be wrong about some of this, since I have also been experimenting with an esata drive connected to a Tivo S3 and I could easily have gotten the behaviour mixed up between the two boxes.

The one thing I an sure about with the S3, is when you use an esata drive with it, it uses both the internal and external esata drive, unlike the HR20.

In all the above, whenever I refer to an esata drive, I mean one in an external case.

BrueS, thanks for the info. I have tried to copy files from the HR20 SATA drive by removing the cables and then connecting them to the PC. When the PC boots it doesn't see the drive because most likely the drive failed to spin. This may be due to propriety firmware runtime event. I then plugged the SATA back into the HR20, let it spin, then reconnected the data cable to the PC. Viola, the SATA showed on my PC when I rebooted it. Once in Wondows the drive was not seen. I used the computer management console in Windows (XP) to view it. It showed that the drive was unassigned and have three partitions of different sizes. The largest, I assumed contained the recorded media files. The problem was that Windows showed all space allocated was available-100% free, thus zero data used. Yes, the drive was blank--apparently unformatted. Enough of this, time to ship this and other D* units back.