South Africa

[Sinbad]

Hi folks!
I got my tivo while I was living in the UK. I've since moved to South Africa and I'd love to get it working here...

What are the chances of my "piggybacking" off all your hard work with OzTivo and possibly creating a ZATivo service? Would you folks be willing to share your knowledge and hard work involved in setting up a service my Tivo can connect to for local program guide info, etc?
I'm not sure what would be needed but I'd imagine it's a custom image with connection info for my web server, and then obviously some work on the webserver itself to provide EPG info etc. Any info would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!
Steven

[petestrash]

I would suggest that you join http://forums.tivocanada.com/ for help in the emulator side of things.

When you join make sure you use your local ISP's email address and state that you are from South Africa in the subject line or it will not be processed.

Be patient this can take weeks.

Feel free to use our UK image for your TiVo this would be a good start as most common hacks are already included.

Peter

[Sinbad]

I would suggest that you join http://forums.tivocanada.com/ for help in the emulator side of things.

When you join make sure you use your local ISP's email address and state that you are from South Africa in the subject line or it will not be processed.

Be patient this can take weeks.

Feel free to use our UK image for your TiVo this would be a good start as most common hacks are already included.

Peter

Thanks for this. I've downloaded the boot cd ISO no problem, but am having a problem getting the UK image. The download always seems to stop after about 12mb. I've tried several times now (no I'm not using a proxy server). Could someone from that side please check things out to make sure everything's ok with that file and the webserver? I just get timeouts when trying to resume the transfer...

I figure from the emulator side it should be fairly easy to tweak. The trick I fancy is going to be getting my webserver to present program guide information in a format that tivo understands. Is there a spec anywhere that I can look at?

Thanks
Steven

[petestrash]

No problems here the full 264MB downloaded at 58K/s http://minnie.tuhs.org/TiVo/files/images/pvr10uk.255.oztivo_emulator.release1.3beta.

Are you trying to download the ISO or the image.

You might try a download accelerator like getright.

All the emulator file specs are shown at the tivo canada forums. But until they are sure you're not from the US you won't get access.

While you are waiting, you could try writing the fetchers for the guide data.

Peter

[Sinbad]

Cool beans! Got the image down and have successfully restored it onto my drive :)

Now, need to get networking working (going to be using ppp over serial for now)...
I have a working serial cable (able to break into the secret bootup menu). I read in the instructions though that I need a version 3 image for this to work. I have a UK Thomson PVR - I thought only 2.5.5 image worked on this machine - is this the case?

Also, I'm battling to mount the boot partitions once i've booted with the bootcd I dowloaded off minnie. From what I can make out, the bootcd has byteswapping enabled on all disks by default. When I try mount /dev/hdc4 /mnt/4 (secondary master), it comes back with a whole whack of error messages about various types of filesystems not being recognised on hdc4.
Am I doing something stupid?
When the bootmessages scroll past, I see 14 partitions on /dev/hdc so I know it's reading the partition table properly - but why can't I mount my boot partition? *sob*

Thanks in advance!
Steven

[petestrash]

I don't have a UK TiVo and haven't used the OzTiVo boot disk recently, but with the bootdisk I use I type 'vmlnodma hdc=bswap' at the boot prompt.

There are issues with having both DMA and byteswapping enabled in MFS tools.

if the standard 'mount /dev/hdc4 /mnt/tivo' doesn't work still, try this.

hdparm -d0 /dev/hdc
reread hdc
mount -t ext2 /dev/hdc4 /mnt/tivo

Peter.

PS the latest OzTiVo image for US TiVos will also work on your UK TiVo. the software is much more up to date and the now showing menus will load much faster. There is a small problem with ppp over serial not working, but its easy to fix once you have the image loaded. the fix is here http://minnie.tuhs.org/twiki/bin/view/Install/KnownIssuesCurrentImageRelease

[Sinbad]

I GOT IT WORKING! ;)
I downloaded a different boot image (from the turbonet install site) and that mounted the drives no problem. Quick investigation into the boot scripts showed that ppp should have been running... So. Unplug from lame winXP box, plug serial into freebsd box, and now my tivo can see the internet! *beams*
The help is much appreciated...
So I should upgrade to the latest version... damn, just as I got this one going *grin*
Any particular image I should use (there's the HDRX and the SVR ones...)

Thanks for your help :) I really appreciate it... Now if only tivocanada would hurry up so I can work on the emulator ;)

[petestrash]

Using WinXP for PPP works fine for one of my tivos, but glad you got it going.

Use the HDRX version, the SVR version will not work with your remote.

tivocanada cleared their backlog last week. Are you sure your emails are not sourced from a US IP? maybe send one to yourself to check.

If the IP is ok, you might try re applying and leave a message on the yahoo group at the same time telling Darren that your from SA.

Peter

[Sinbad]

I only applied to them today :) Didn't want to bother unless I knew I could get the tivo talking to the net ok :D

My ISP is in the UK... Hope they don't have too much of an issue with that :)

S

[petestrash]

chances are that you still won't be allowed in with a UK ISP, because of concerns with service theft in places where service is available.

You should really use your local SA ISP.

Peter.

[Sinbad]

chances are that you still won't be allowed in with a UK ISP, because of concerns with service theft in places where service is available.

You should really use your local SA ISP.

Peter.
Ugh. If worst comes to worst I will i guess. Do they at least reply to say your application is rejected?

[petestrash]

No, no reply and your request is just ignored along with the hundreds of others who try to sneak in. :D

Peter

[Sinbad]

Bah! Stards! ;)
I've reregistered with my work email addie which IS in south africa... *holds thumbs*
Meanwhile, I've found a nice XML version of our programme guide... our satellite provider doesn't like giving out the info... *mumble*
Just need the emulator now!!

How much work is involved in setting up an emulator (ballpark?) I'm still totally in the dark on that side.

Thanks again :)

Steven


ps, if I don't have any luck, what are the chances of adding another region to the OzTivo emulator with the south african channels/info on it? :D *pushes luck*

[petestrash]

Bah! Stards!

Not really, we would like TiVo to stay in business so the user community remains strong and people still focus on improvements and upgrades.


How much work is involved in setting up an emulator (ballpark?) I'm still totally in the dark on that side.

Getting the basics up and running isn't too bad, and it's reasonably documented. I haven't played with that area for a long time, you might want to pop over to the NZ area of forums, they also run their own emulator which was setup much more recently.


ps, if I don't have any luck, what are the chances of adding another region to the OzTivo emulator with the south african channels/info on it? *pushes luck*

You shouldn't have a problem once you are verified, each Canadian runs their own emulator.

We would not be able to help you in the near future, as we are doing a major change in the way our guide data is formed and slices will now be built 7 times a week instead twice a week. I think the next month or so will be spent plugging holes and refining the process to keep several hundred TiVo's happy.

Peter

[Sinbad]

Not really, we would like TiVo to stay in business so the user community remains strong and people still focus on improvements and upgrades.

Don't get me wrong! I fully understand the need not to tread on tivo inc's toes! :) They've given us a wonderful device here, and I was extremely happy with the service I paid for in UK. Was just muttering about the "ignore with no recourse to explain self" thing ;)

Glad it's simple and well documented... *waits in anticipation* :)

Thanks once again for all the tips!

S