In my impatience for TiVo To Go, I recently bought TiVo Hacks by Raffi Krikorianedstly useful hacks, like pretty much all of the books in the O’Reilly ____ Hacks series. I say mostly… who wants to make all of the text on your TiVo interface in italics (seriously, hack no. 9).
I’d say that of all the books out there for hacking your TiVo, this is probably the most concise and up-to-date. Of course, there’s part of the problem. If you have Series 2 TiVo, you trade off for nicer features with the inability to do many of the more popular hacks for the TiVo. You can’t use FTP to get your video off of your TiVo with a Series 2 becuase the video is scrambled on it. Okay, you can FTP it, but what’s the point? Anyway, none of this is the author’s fault, and he goes iinto some detail to explain exactly what models can do what.
The greatest hack, in my opinion, for any TiVo is going to be adding more hard drive space. You’re really not going to improve on the features of the UI by adding a screen clock and the whole web-surfing thing sounds fun until you remember that surfing with just a TiVo remote is going to suck (that’s why you have a laptop). Adding/replacing hard disks is the killer hack, and this book tells you pretty much all you need to know. Of course, all you may need to know is to just buy a kit from Bill Regnery. However, this book still goes a long way and I’d recommend it to anyone who owns a TiVo and is curious about what’s inside the box and how to make it do some cool tricks.