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Page 2 of 6 First Get The Tools and Hardware
There are quite a few tools you need to get the TiVo up and running with a "roll your own" EPG. First, you need a TiVo. UK TiVos turn up on EBay on a regular basis, and sometimes can be picked up for around £20 if you are lucky. Even with shipping, it should cost you less than £60 for a TiVo. Next, you need a network card. Without this, you may as well give up now. You can go for either a TurboNet card or a CacheCard . I've had both over the years. The TurboNet is fine with a "standard" TiVo, but if you've got a large hard disc, the Cache Card makes it faster. If you don't want the hassle of customs and ordering from the US, there are a couple of UK suppliers that frequent the TiVo Community Forums in the UK. Their prices will look more expensive than the US, but if your package is stopped by Posten or Tull you'll have to add a customs charge, customs tarrif AND MOMs... I'm not going to go through how to install the cards - perfectly good guides are available on those websites. I'm also not going to go over how to put in a larger hard disc into your TiVo, that again is well covered on many websites. I especially recommend Steve Conrad's website for these sort of things. They are proven pages that many people refer to. Once you've got the disc you want, and the network set up, the next big thing you need to gather are the software tools. TiVo uses Linux, so a lot of this is done via telnet sessions. This can be using the standard telnet tools that come with your OS, but if you are using Windows I highly recommend downloading PuTTY and saving your sanity! PC Tools you'll need - PuTTY
- A good FTP client
- A spreadsheet
- A text editor
- XMLTV for downloading listings.
- MC2XML - Windows, Mac and Linux
- For Windows additionally I recommend downloading XMLTV GUI to pre-process the data.
For processing the data into slices, you'll need xmltv2tivo.
TiVo specific tools you'll need: Unless you've got all those things, don't think of going any further! Access to these tools from the UK, USA, Australia and New Zealand is blocked as they have a TiVo service they can subscribe to.
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