[mythtv] Use a TiVo Series 3 as a tuner?

[Marco Nelissen]

>Andy Poling wrote:
>> The toughest part is figuring out where the writer is in the
>> ring buffer (presumably the myworld app's threads share this information in
>> memory).  In essence, I had to resort to looking for changing data in the ring
>> buffer chunks - that was the only reliable indicator of where the writer was
>> in the ring buffer.  It sounds hack-ish because it is... :-)
>>   
>I wrote a kernel module for a S1 a while back that monitored all disk 
>reads/writes and optionally streamed them out over UDP (cachecard "burst 
>mode").
>
>If you know the sector range of the ring buffer it would be possible to 
>tell the kernel module to automatically stream out all data written 
>within that range.
>
>The speed is fast as it doesn't go through the TiVo's network stack - 
>the code bounced the hard drive data directly to the network card driver 
>in kernel space.
>
>Could be interesting for a DirectTV S1. The quality of a SA S1 is pretty 
>bad.

For what it's worth: the vserver that the standard hack-scripts install
these days appears to provide access to the ringbuffers. At least, using
mplayer with tivo support I can just provide the URL for either ringbuffer
(this is a dual tuner series 2 directivo) and have it stream and play one
or even both at the same time. All that would be needed in addition to that
is a way to change the channels. On a single-tuner tivo that could just be
done with an IR blaster, but on a dual-tuner tivo you'd need to make sure
you're changing the channel on the right tuner.