Enabling MRV and HMO on a DirecTiVo with PTVnet

[Lou Jacob]

Two things that make a TiVo DVR stand out among ordinary DVRs are Multi-Room Viewing (MRV) and the Home Media Option and (HMO). MRV allows programs recorded on one TiVo DVR to be watched on another, using your home network. HMO provides the ability to display digital photos, and play MP3 file shared from a computer on the same network.

As you probably already know, DirecTV chose not to enable these features on Series2 DirecTV TiVo units, however the capability is embedded within the software.

The following instructions are written to allow you to enable these features using a PTVnet-enabled Series2 DirecTV DVR as a starting point. The initial configuration can be obtained by either installing a pre-configured PTVnet kit in your system or using PTVnet and InstantCake to create a new drive for your unit.

The following instructions apply to the following Series2 DirecTV TiVo DVR systems:
Hughes HDVR2, SD-DVR40, SD-DVR80, SD-DVR120
Philips DSR7000, DSR704, DSR708
RCA DVR39, DVR40, DVR80, DVR120
Samsung SIR-S4040R, SIR-S4080R, SIR-S4120RIf you have a Hughes HR10-250, which is a DirecTiVo TiVo with HDTV tuners, this tutorial and utilities does not apply. It is possible to implement HMO on these units, however that topic will be discussed in a different article in the future.

You will need to know the IP address of your TiVo on your home network. To acquire this, check the DHCP clients table from your router's administrative screens, or you can use a program like Angry IP (http://www.angryziber.com/) to scan your network; to download and run Angry IP on a Windows system, just click here (http://ipscan.sourceforge.net/ipscan.exe). The IP address is the same IP address that you use to access TiVoWebPlus from the other computers on your network.

Enabling HMO & MRV:

Open a telnet session to your TiVo, you can do this from a DOS or any shell window, or use TeraTerm Pro.

Type (or use copy and paste) the following to retrieve the SuperPatch software that can be used to activate HMO/MRV on your unit. This script was written and contributed to by a number of folks at DealDatabase and is available in its original form here (http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showthread.php?t=43325) and the modified version that we use is here (http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showpost.php?p=276700&postcount=32).


cd /var/tmp
wget http://www.dvrupgrade.com/software/hmo/superpatch-6.2a.tcl
Now run it:


tivosh /var/tmp/superpatch-6.2a.tcl
If you are planning on using MRV, then you will also need to set the name of your TiVo. Rather than using the shell script set_mrv_name_67.tcl mentioned at the end of the superpatch screen, simply use TiVoWebPlus to go to this page:

http://192.168.1.xx/mrv/

using your IP address, of course, and pick a unique name for your TiVo on your network.

This module is listed under more... on the main TiVoWebPlus page.

Pick a unique name for your TiVo and then restart your unit from the command line simply by typing the following:


reboot
Or use your remote and the System Reset menu.

When your TiVo unit is restarted you should see the Music & Pictures option in your TiVo menus, and if you have other units on your network with MRV enabled, they will show up in your Now Playing list.

Additional instructions and links for HMO

To utilize the Music & Photos feature of HMO, you'll need to install the TiVo Desktop on your PC. You will need to use version 2.3a or earlier, because the newest version (2.4) will not work with the DirecTiVo at all.

There are variety of earlier versions of TiVo Desktop floating around on the net, but you can download version 2.3a from here (http://www.dvrupgrade.com/software/hmo/TD-2.3a.exe).

When you install the TiVo Desktop, you will be asked for a Media Access Key, simply ignore that question if you do not have one (ie leave it blank). This information is not needed because it is related to using the TiVoToGo feature which ONLY works on TiVo standalone units; it will not work on DirecTV TiVo units, even if equipped with PTVnet.

When you start the TiVo Desktop, you may need to configure you may receive a Windows XP security warning, or if you are running another personal firewall application, you'll need to set your permissions to allow your TiVo to talk to your PC; as you explore in the TiVo Desktop, you'll see that there are a variety of ways to verify that you can "see" the TiVo systems on your network and that they can "see" the TiVo server running on your desktop.

Moving forward, its simply a matter of picking the Photos & Music you want to share with your TiVo.

Note that content transfers (TiVoToGo) will not work with these modified units and the TiVo Desktop; the capability to extract videos from your DirecTiVo is not within the scope of this article.

[Lou Jacob]

I've read a few posts from a few users at DVRplayground indicating that folks using the default PTVnet DHCP IP settings may have some problems with MRV-enabled units recognizing each other on a network. I've not been able to replicate this problem, so the following workaround is only recommended if you actually have a problem with MRV in your environment.

The procedure documented overrides the DVRupgrade/PTVnet method of setting IP addresses and instead puts the IP information to the TiVo's MFS database.

This method requires you to establish a terminal session with your TiVo and we HIGHLY recommend you acquire a serial cable so that you can maintain BASH access to your TiVo should you make a mistake and somehow bungle your network connectivity. So please use caution when attempting the following:

After establishing your terminal session, type the following to assign a static IP address to your TiVo:


cd /ptvupgrade/bin
set_ip


Now answer the questions as asked; we recommend you just go with DHCP, but if you prefer static, you will be prompted for the IP address you want to use, and the IP address of your router.

Once the IP parameters are set and the script completes, you should then type:


set_dhcp.tcl

or

set_static.tcl


depending upon what option you picked.

Then reboot the system:


reboot


and you should be good to go.

[matter]

Does this apply to version 6.3e as well? I have read that 6.3e does not have MRV support.

[Lou Jacob]

Does this apply to version 6.3e as well? I have read that 6.3e does not have MRV support.

No, it does not. PTVnet is currently not supported on 6.3e (although some folks have installed it using the "force" option; you can see the Official PTVnet Discussion Thread (http://www.dvrupgrade.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17) for more details on that), but it is my understanding that the code to support MRV does not exist within 6.3e. I am not certain about HMO, but I think that the code does exist there; I don't think the aforementioned scripts will work, without modification, on 6.3e.

Lou

[cvogeo]

Lou,

Tried loading this program into my DirecTV Series 2 running PTVnet and software version 6.2-01-2-151. I bought the upgraded disk from this site. Superpatch ran and then gave me the error stating that this version is not supported.

Any ideas?

Thanks, George

[Lou Jacob]

Tried loading this program into my DirecTV Series 2 running PTVnet and software version 6.2-01-2-151. I bought the upgraded disk from this site. Superpatch ran and then gave me the error stating that this version is not supported.

Any ideas?

Thanks, George

The version of superpatch discussed in this article requires 6.2a; you can check out www.dealdatabase.com (http://www.dealdatabase.com) to see if there is a version of superpatch that will work for your version (6.2).

[JeremyBrainard67938]

Hi, sorry to dig up this thread, but I'm at the end of my rope here!

I'm running 6.2a-01-2-381 on a Samsung SIR-S4080R unit. I'm trying to get HMO to work with my TiVo, and I am using TivoTool on OS X 10.51. TivoTool includes a TivoServer, and I have the video/music directory set to the folder I want to share.

SuperPatch installed without a hitch from what I can tell, but when I attempt to connect to my Mac (displayed on TiVo as DVR: TivoServer) to view my videos, I get the following error:

Programs cannot be transferred from the TivoServer DVR to the 39B2 DVR because the 39B2 DVR is not enabled for transfers.

Does this mean HMO is not enabled? Any ideas? This is driving me crazy! :)

[Lou Jacob]

Does this mean HMO is not enabled? Any ideas? This is driving me crazy! :)

Not necessarily, but you'd need to check with the TiVoTool folks to ensure your expectations are correct. Did you happen to see this at the bottom of the article?

Note that content transfers (TiVoToGo) will not work with these modified units and the TiVo Desktop; the capability to extract videos from your DirecTiVo is not within the scope of this article.

[dinaldo]

Took me a lot of work to finally figure this out. If you're trying to enable MRV, make sure to disable both Network and Phone calls.

It took me two days to figure this out.

I had Network calling enabled, and had even forced a phone call over a phone line.

I couldn't get my DirecTV Tivos to see each other, HMO would work, but not MRV.

I finally reinstalled everything from scratch from PTVnet, Instantcake and applied the superpatch for 6.2a, and it all came up.

This is after reconfiguring ip addresses, etc.

Hope this post helps somebody avoid the misery I went through.

[pete1606]

I correctly configured HMO on two of my units, but I they didn't see each other. So I tried the following


Code:

cd /ptvupgrade/bin
set_ip

Now answer the questions as asked; we recommend you just go with DHCP, but if you prefer static, you will be prompted for the IP address you want to use, and the IP address of your router.

Once the IP parameters are set and the script completes, you should then type:

Code:

set_dhcp.tcl

or
Code:

set_static.tcl

depending upon what option you picked.

Then reboot the system:

Code:

reboot
------------------

The PROBLEM is that I entered both set_dhcp.tcl and set_static.tcl instaed of doing one or the other.
Now I can't acess either tivos via my web browser, nor via telnet session. How do I fix my mistake? Is the only way removing the drive and reinstalling telnet?

Peter

[mw4]

I have the samsung SIR series2 DirectvTivo

In the past I have bought and ran instantcake for 6.2, which has automatically upgraded to 6.4 as time went on.

I finally bought ptvnet so I could set up the MRV on my 3 tivos and I have got them all working with the HMO, but MRV just does not work. There are confusing posts all over the place regarding this, but it looks like I'm going to have to go back to 6.2 to make it happen.

Questions:

1. will going back to 6.2 on these boxes be a problem to activate, or since it's the same card and machine, it will be easy?

2. once I have 6.2 reinstalled, how do I prevent the updates that make it 6.4a?