can it be done?

[Contra]

i want to use my Showstopper with completly different software like Beyond tv
and let it hook up to the enternet through the phone line or possibe through my cable connection can this be done

basically what i am saying is i want to abandone the replay service completly

[lizard_boy]

no

[Creech]

and if it were possible, quite likely "sue-able" given the terms of using the machine to begin with.

[Contra]

huh i dont see why it is my machine and i wouldnt be using their software or accessing their service

[icecow]

[QUOTE=Contra]huh i dont see why it is my machine and i wouldnt be using their software or accessing their service[/QUOTE]

I agree with you totally.

However, the legal system is thorny and hypocritical. You agreed the crappy End User License Agreement (EULA) when you bought the thing, and it states that you can't modify stuff, which is bullship.

Long ago when IBM sold their products at almost no profit (loss leader model) and made up the profit by selling periphieals e.g. keyboards for outrageous sums.. Hitatchi jumped in and started selling ibm periphiels. They went to court and hitatchi won. The judge said IBM can't do that bullship.

You'd think that would settle it for some of these new products, but nooOOOoo.

Reverse engineering a product has always been a right as well. You can take any hardware and put your own software on it. The DMCA as complicated that. MS started putting encrypted software on their XBOXs and claiming anyone who messed with the software was breaking the DMCA laws. The thing is you have to crack the software just to remove it from thehardware! More Bullship.

as far as I know ou can write your own os for a replaytv and use it.

bullship, bullship

[BaysideBas]

wouldn't that be bullchip, bullchip?

[oldyellow]

[QUOTE=icecow]The DMCA as complicated that. MS started putting encrypted software on their XBOXs and claiming anyone who messed with the software was breaking the DMCA laws. The thing is you have to crack the software just to remove it from thehardware! More Bullship.[/QUOTE]

<Naive mode>
how is that? You have to crack their software in order to to pull the harddrive, reformat it, and put your on OS/software on it?
</Naive mode>

[drlava]

i think we need a rom image that doesn't to a crypt check on ptv.bin. then, sure, write your own os.bin.. have at it. afaik, the EULA is for software only. you don't need to crack their software to take your rom out and burn a new one, and format the hdd with your own software. Although it would be rediculously hard to build an OS for these boxes without looking at their software as an example.

[Jeff D]

Since the OSes on most of these DVRs are commerical packages that wouldn't be needed. The trick would be knowing how to use the hardware without knowing anything about the specifics of the hardware. How are you suppose to access a part of chip if you can't even figure out where it's mapped into memory or the such. Sure some of this can be done with RE, but it's not easy...

But, I think the OS isn't the hard part as that's pretty basic stuff on most of these things. The stuff that interfaces with the OS is a different story. Sure there may be some hardware specific stuff, but maybe not. I haven't ever looked that deeply at the OS.

[icecow]

[QUOTE=oldyellow]<Naive mode>
how is that? You have to crack their software in order to to pull the harddrive, reformat it, and put your on OS/software on it?
</Naive mode>[/QUOTE]

The xbox hardware is designed to look at software based encryption before it will boot up. MS argues there is no way to load linux on the hardware without circumventing software encryption violating the DMCA. The wording in the DMCA is broad, and there is some crap in there that is overreaching. The only way to test and try the law is for people to start suing each other; the court starts splitting hairs. I'd think the court would side with the hackers. The hackers don't have the $$ to take it in to court and MS does but has no incentive. Everyone is under a shadow until. Time drifts by.

an example of overeaching:
Anyone is permited to reverse-engineer to make things interoperable. Yet the DMCA says?! you must ask permision first? If that's true it's overeaching. If it's false (or merely an interpretation) it's FUD.

Here's a good article from 2003 if you have the time:
http://news.com.com/2008-1082-996787.html

I havent been following the XBOX story. There might be some news I don't know about.

[icecow]

I'm not an engineer. But I routinely made gunpowder from salt peter, charcoal, and sulfer, smoke bombs from salt peter and sugar, fried the wings of flys in mid flight by igniting an aresol can with a lighter traded for a handcrank generator, took it apart, and put it back together, shocked snails (test to see if they would recede in their shell), hooked the generator up to a toilet seat with two strips of adhesive aluminum tape (sister's boyfrient once broke in and tried to pin me down and use it on me, i escaped), programmed crappy Basic programs on a mainframe (and many of my own), and slide on rope from tree to tree by hanging from a square of doubled over thick cloth with candle wax melted in groove, shot pomegranit seeds from BB guns, and shot down card houses with projectile shooting model tanks (lost projectiles and used short lenghts of spagetti (endlessly sustainable amunition). I used to build card houses on the vibrating football field thing and cause earthquakes by flipping the switch, it was a one min show.

And to your relief that all happened by the time I hit 11.

I can't imagine how the world would be without reverse engineering.




Read the 'From the Publisher' part too.

http://hackingthexbox.com/images/scarysmall.gif