I’m exceptionally pleased with myself after finally figuring out how to successfully hack my TiVo, transfer television shows to my Linux box and decrypt the .tivo file format into a friendly MPEG 2 so I can watch it on Linux or any other operating system for that matter.

Basically I point a browser at my TiVo using this address:

https://[YOURTIVOADDRESS]/nowplaying/index.html

You’ll get an authentication prompt where you should enter ‘tivo’ as the user and for the password, enter your Media Access Key (MAK), which you can find if you navigate to your TiVo settings. This will bring you to a page listing everything on your TiVo’s hard drive, with a link to download any of the files. I’ve read that getting them with wget causes problems. Most people recommended using cURL, but I was able to navigate and download the files just using Konqueror. I tried it with Firefox as well, but found that the browser would consistently crash after just a fraction of the way through a download each time I tried.

After transferring a file to my Linux box, I installed this command-line application. After I compiled the program, I tested it out like so:

tivodecode -m [Media Access Key] -o outputfile.mpg sourcefile.tivo

The result worked wonderfully and I am now watching Aqua Teen Hunger Force, kicked back in the bedroom with my laptop, running Kubuntu. I’ll be sure and transfer several episodes of Law & Order SVU for the airport wait and flight time when I take a vacation next week. Hot shit.

If you’re a Firefox junky like me, you probably take the built in pop-up blocker for granted. It’s a dandy little feature that helps make browsing bearable. However, you may have noticed that over the past few months, the blocker seems to be letting stuff through. This is due to scumbag pop-up spammers taking a new tactic by using Flash to trigger the new windows. The honeymoon is looking to be at an end.

But, before you hang yourself from the shower curtain rod, there’s a way around this issue. Pour a stiff drink, sit down, tear up the suicide notes (you really aren’t sorry for all the trouble you’ve caused anyway, c’mon) and prepare to do some fixing!

How to stop pop-ups from Flash in Firefox

1. Open a window in Firefox (…duh) and type about:config in the address bar.
2. Right-click (CTRL + click for Mac users) on the page and select New and then Integer.
3. Name it privacy.popups.disable_from_plugins
   
4. Set the value to 2.

That’s it motherfucker! You’re a man now. Have a cigar or something. Buck the fuck up, you did it yourself. Stop slouching. It’s okay to smile, but ain’t a damn thing funny…yadda, yadda, yadda.

To take it further, you can adjust the value of the integer (we’d set it at 2) to customize how strong the pop-up spanking should be:

• 0: Allow all popups from plugins.
• 1: Allow popups, but limit them to dom.popup_maximum.
• 2: Block popups from plugins.
• 3: Block popups from plugins, even on whitelisted sites.

Just thought I’d spread the word. Thanks Pete Bevin for figuring it out and thanks StumbleUpon for bringing it to my attention.