Experiences with Sony2000 SA and WinME

[zathrasinspace]

Hi!

Yes, WinME sucks, but not as bad as my Sony Stand-alone. It's one of 
those directTV-like PITA's that require you to zero-out initrd to keep 
it from wiping-out any changes you make to /dev/hda4 and /dev/hda7. 
But, I did get TivoNet up and running.

TivoAPP - Couldn't be more convenient. To bad it will only get the 
first tystream.
ExtractStream, sendstream, etc: Slightly less convenient. Won't grab 
tystreams after the first one, instead endlessly writes:

Sector fails signature check. Trying next block.

I used mkfifo to create 4 fifo's on TiVo. I used mfs_export to fetch 
each tystream, piping it to netcat, thereby receiving it on WinME. I 
ran each tystream through tyconvert, creating a mpg. The four mpgs I 
concatenated in a dos window:

copy/b mv1.mpg+mv2.mpg+mv3.mpg+mv4.mpg andromeda.mpg

I got an hour long episode of Andromeda, with a brief pixelation where 
the second mpg started. Obviously, I should have concatenated the 
tystreams.

So, I did. Ran the concatenated tystream through tyconvert. It died 
where the second mpg would have started with:

Access violation at address 00402c9c in module 'TYCONVERT.EXE'. Read 
of address 00581234

Running each individual tystream through tyconvert EXCEPT the first 
provoked the same error, but tyconvert completed each conversion. 
Like I said, running the concatenated tystreams through tyconvert 
provoked the above error, but killed tyconvert, too.

Conclusion: On my weirdo-TiVo, all but the first tystream of a show 
have... Something in them at the start that kills most programs that 
try to read it.

Request: Please fix any of these tools to cope with the offending bit 
of data. Oh, and while I'm at it, how about world peace, too. I'd do 
it myself, but I'm in the middle of watching tv.

Seriously, if anyone has already come across this and hacked any one 
of the tools to cope, SHARE, please. Else I'll start looking at them 
this Sunday. Recommendations on which tool people most want fixed? 
And that I can least difficultly compile? And, any idea why Cygwin's 
"setup.exe" spent a long time downloading stuff but never installed 
Cygwin?

John,
Who's grateful to all the people who've hacked TiVo before me.