Rating: 
Summary: Indispensable - with another book
Review: It seems essential to correct misinformation in a number of the prior reviews - I myself was mislead by those incorrect statements as I shopped for a book on hacking the Tivo. I hope others who come shopping after this will be able to understand correctly.Yes, this book is circumspect in what it discusses for Series 2 Tivo's - that seems to eventuate from what the author perceives as propriety. But despite that, all the background - in this book that overall is presented with great clarity - helps the Series 2 owner to understand the task of hacking the machine. And many of the items presented as being for Series 1 can also be used for Series 2. To say anything else is misleading to later shoppers. This book is a great boon to the Series 2 owner. At the same time a second book - Hacking the Tivo by William von Hagen - details some of the rest of the Series 2 story. In particular you learn in complete detail the key step necessary for a Series 2 machine, that is to 'gain access' or in other words to get a bash prompt. The book also devotes space to possibilities with Mac OS X. This book too shows care and attention. Both of these books have their - great - strengths. I gather from reviews of the second book there may also be a few errata in it, which hopefully will not be too difficult to run to earth. But together these two books make a terrific matched pair. I bought both together (fortunately, despite confusion in the reviews - no, I haven't yet had the chance to look at the others out there, beyond these two). I strongly encourage anyone who is serious about the topic - hacking their Tivo - to consider buying this complementary pair together.
Rating: 
Summary: Hands on review
Review: Just finished upgrading the hard drive on my Series 1 TiVo. Had I not bought Jeff Keegan's "Hacking TiVo" book, I would have a TiVo boat anchor by now. I bought William von Hagen's "Hacking the TiVo" book at the same time as this book. Hagen's book was full of errors and outdated information. Luckily, I am the cautious type and read both books before I started. I don't think William even proof read his work before it was published. Besides giving wrong information on setting up larger disk caches etc. the book was littered with lots of small typos such as mixing up MB with GB etc. I subtracted one star from this book because I feel that the type is too small and the explanations could have been even more detailed and through with more examples such as von Hagen's book. Otherwise, I am very happy with it.
Rating: 
Summary: Obsolete
Review: Most of the information contained in this book is useless unless you own a model 1 tivo. General information, such as the disk partition structure is absent. Techniques for circumnavigating the bios kernel checking are also not mentioned. In short, save your money and get more current information on the web.
Rating: 
Summary: Just sent mine back
Review: Nice that it is not called Hacking Tivo Series 1. Waste of time. Everything for 2 is up on the net. Don't bother. Misleading of the author, misleading from Amazon.
Rating:
Summary: Series 1 only; and this is a NEW book
Review: No offense to Jeff Keegan, who has written a most entertaining book, but issuing a book in October 2003 that pertains almost exclusively to Series 1 TiVo's (and only stand alone units, at that) is a work of odd timing to say the least. Series 1 tivo's have not been available for some time. While he says many of the hacks in the book will work with Series 2 units, you have to go to www.tivocommunity.com to find out how. I have known about tivocommunity.com for quite a while, and didn't need to spend 20-some odd bucks to be sent there for info on how to hack my Series 2 DirecTiVo units. The enclosed CD is mostly useless to those of us not willing to get down and dirty with programming the TiVo. In addition, many of the programming requires your PC hard drives be formatted in FAT 32, not NTFS, and almost all current hard drives are NTFS in Win 2000/XP. Once again, Keegan gives advice that is already out of date. Having said all this, I still give the book 2 stars. It is a fun book to read, and SOME of the non-invasive hacks work with Series 2 units. Unfortunately for those of us who bought the book (or fortunately for those of you who have yet to buy the book), most of these are available free at http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=122090 . Now, if I could only figure out how to get into Backdoor mode on my Philips DSR7000's I might be able to have some real fun!
Rating:
Summary: Title should be "Hacking Series1 TiVo"
Review: Nothing on the front or back cover gives you a hint of the little nuggets inside like "...Series2 units remain ineligible for most of the hacks in this book." or "Series2 units are ... difficult to hack..." or "Series1 units ... [are] not made anymore, so you'll have to buy one someplace like Ebay..." or "...support ... for the USB Ethernet adapters does not exist for Series2 DirecTiVo." or "Series1 DirecTiVos and Series2 TiVos ... scramble the video. ...I won't be describing any methods of defeating the video scrambling..." If you have a standalone Series1, and are either an accomplished or at least very bold computer tinkerer, this book is excellent. To the rest of us - and please recall that the Series1 had been long obsolete as of the publication date - it is largely worthless. One exception is that the disk upgrade section does appear to be useful to all TiVo and DirecTiVo owners. I suppose that is ia very significant exception, which is why I gave 2 stars instead of 1. If all you want to do is upgrade your storage, that chapter alone is worth the price of admission. The book is very well written and laid out. Keegan deserves kudos for presenting difficult material in a comfortable, easy to read and even entertaining format that is useful to a broad spectrum of readers. It would be a shoe-in for a 5-star rating if the cover was more honest about the limitations and focus on obsolete TiVo hardware and software.
Rating:
Summary: Title should be "Hacking Series1 TiVo"
Review: Nothing on the front or back cover gives you a hint of the little nuggets inside like "...Series2 units remain ineligible for most of the hacks in this book." or "Series2 units are ... difficult to hack..." or "Series1 units ... [are] not made anymore, so you'll have to buy one someplace like Ebay..." or "...support ... for the USB Ethernet adapters does not exist for Series2 DirecTiVo." or "Series1 DirecTiVos and Series2 TiVos ... scramble the video. ...I won't be describing any methods of defeating the video scrambling..." If you have a standalone Series1, and are either an accomplished or at least very bold computer tinkerer, this book is excellent. To the rest of us - and please recall that the Series1 had been long obsolete as of the publication date - it is largely worthless. One exception is that the disk upgrade section does appear to be useful to all TiVo and DirecTiVo owners. I suppose that is ia very significant exception, which is why I gave 2 stars instead of 1. If all you want to do is upgrade your storage, that chapter alone is worth the price of admission. The book is very well written and laid out. Keegan deserves kudos for presenting difficult material in a comfortable, easy to read and even entertaining format that is useful to a broad spectrum of readers. It would be a shoe-in for a 5-star rating if the cover was more honest about the limitations and focus on obsolete TiVo hardware and software.
Rating:
Summary: Series 2 Owners - These hacks WILL work!
Review: Now just to set the record straight once and for all - these hacks WILL work on Series 2. But, you Series 2 owners will have to do a little extra work to access your device. If you are serious about doing that, you will find it - its out there. Once you do that, most of the hacks work on Series 2. To be very specific, Chapters 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15 are all useful to Series 2 users (with 1,2,3,14 useful right away, and 6,7,11,12,13,15 useful after you do the little extra work for Series 2. And if you happen to be one of us who have a Series 1 TiVo this book is going to blow your mind! Heck, the chapters on upgrading your hard disk space (which works with either Series 1 or 2 WITHOUT any extra work) is worth the price of the book alone, not to mention the CD ROM which contains the tools you need INCLUDING several Series 2 binaries. You can easily spend $10 on a much lesser CD on the web.
Rating:
Summary: Series 2 -- DON'T BOTHER!
Review: Seriously, the only thing this book offers you is Hard Drive replacement instructions. That's not the fault of the author, it's just the way it is. I guess there aren't many hacks for Series 2. I think the author still thinks all the old hacks are still pretty neat, but for someone fairly recent to TiVo (such as myself), it's really just a history lesson I can do without. Most of the hacks described in the book are available to Series two owners anyways (e.g. Home Media Option). What Keegan finally admits ON PAGE 18, is that, "Series 2 units remain ineligible for most of the hacks in this book." -- I sure wish it said that on the cover.
Rating:
Summary: Not much help for newer TiVo machines.
Review: The book is great for older model TiVo machines. Type 2 TiVo machines, which are all that are being sold now, are not really dealt with in this book. Save yourself some money and just look up TiVo hacking on the internet if you have a type 2 TiVo.
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