COMPANY: TiVo Inc.

Tivo, Inc sells a digital video recorder (DVR) /personal video record (PVR) device.

A brief mention of Tcl use at Tivo:

http://acmqueue.org/modules.php?name=Content&pa=printer_friendly&pid=53 (broken link)

". At TiVo the main public domain tool we use is the Tcl scripting language. TiVo developed a proprietary extension to Tcl for manipulating the database and media file system on the TCD."

See some of the following web sites for tcl code written to work with the TiVo devices:

[add more as time goes by]


Moritz: Does anyone know why TiVo Inc. chose Tcl?


davidw: Don't know, but it looks like folks working on similar, free projects decided to go with Python instead:

http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2005/01/27/freevo.html

... and they have now released an SDK, but it's Java based:

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/01-31-2005/0002939107&EDATE=


See also:

which get into programming Tcl as well as other hacks.

From a software standpoint, TiVo Inc.'s [L2 ] product is just an extended tclsh. http://www.tivofaq.com , and http://www.tivofaq.com/hack/ in particular, are the best places to start to learn about how to hack TiVo for yourself.

 What: Tivo Web Project
 Where: http://tivo.lightn.org/
        http://tivo.sf.net/
 Description: The latest branch of this project is written entirely in Tcl.
        It runs on the TiVo and works only with the TiVo 2.0 series
        software.  It provides the ability to browse the entire channel
        guide, schedule and delete recordings via software, and requires only
        a TCP/IP connection to your TiVo.
        Currently at version 1.9.1.
 Updated: 09/2001
 Contact: mailto:[email protected]

LV There's a small number of paragraphs in one section which make reference to tclsh, Tcl, incr tcl and tivosh (the customized version of tclsh that is embedded in the early Tivos anyways) in the book "Leo Laporte's guide to TiVO". That book points to the Hacking Tivo book for more details on Tcl.


LV March 2, 2010 - Tivo announces a new hardware platform - series 4 - whose interface is Adobe Flash based. [L3 ]