My Dangerous Idea - A technical question, not a legal question

[son_of_mogh_worf@h...]

--- In ExtractStream@y..., sharkey@a... wrote:
> But then, tell me, why should Tivo sell loss leader units to 
internationals
> in the first place? What's wrong with saying "you have to be in 
North
> America to buy a Tivo at a loss leader price (with a required 
service
> contract); if you want to buy them internationally you'll have to 
pay full
> price for the Tivo up front?" 

Simple. TiVo doesn't sell to everywhere in North America! I assume you 
meant the U.S....

> > > Becuase the hardware doesn't lend itself to that. A VCR is a 
very limited
> > 
> > That you don't know for sure since you don't have the specs.
> 
> I'm willing to bet good money that my VCR doesn't contain a general 
purpose
> programable CPU in it. Few companies go to the extent of filing off 
the
> chip ID numbers of the parts they use. Commodity hardware is 
actually fairly
> simple to duplicate if you have the facilities. There's rarely more 
than
> a few custom chips in each device, and an engineer can usually guess 
what
> they're supposed to do based on how they're connected to the other
> components.

I don't know about you, but I don't know many VCR manufacturers that 
actually go and design their own CPU and such. Most VCRs use a 
*microcontroller*, basically a general purpose CPU+RAM+ROM+other 
useful things in a chip. So yes, it's a commodity part. Yes, it's a 
general purpose CPU. No, the firmware is embedded into the chip 
itself, and often enough, can't be extracted without popping the top. 
(Either programmed at VCR factory, or mask-programmed). But it's 
programmable (it's extremely complicated to duplicate what a modern 
VCR does [OSD's, etc] in logic gates -- it's much simpler in 
software). Now, changing the programming is difficult, but possible. 
(BTW, DVD players can be "enhanced" too, but since their CPU tends to 
be embedded into the MPEG2 decoder chip, they have to use an outside 
firmware ROM. Changing the ROM is often a way to "enhance" the DVD 
player).

Of course, with the advent of stuff like FPGAs and PALs, etc, it makes 
it difficult to examine the layout of a circuit board (ask anyone who 
tried to write an emulator), even with the schematic. It's easy to 
identify the RAM, the ROM, etc, but the peripheral I/O is difficult to 
map into the proper address space without actually looking at the 
FPGA/PAL/PLA/etc.