Breaking It Open, Making It Better
Two products in particular have become popular with hackers lately: the ReplayTV and TiVo "personal video recorders." These VCR-like machines save and play back television programming using hard drives rather than videotape. By adding a larger hard drive to a Replay or TiVo, a hacker can double or even quadruple the number of shows their PVR can record - a $250 drive can boost an older Replay box's capacity from 20 hours to 80. Some hackers go even further with tricks like adding an Ethernet card for networking to a computer or enabling PAL-format video output for use in other countries.
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