linux on direct tv?

[eriksays]

so i just cancelled my direct tv (for reasons unimportant to this thread) and they tell me to keep the three settop boxes and the dish (uh, okay)!

anyhow, i thought i'd try to put linux on the boxes and i don't know what for the dish yet.

any suggestions or thoughts on getting linux onto these things? any ideas for the dish itself?

[hard candy]

Do the boxes have hard drives or flash memory? Is it an encrypted file system? What type of file system is native? How to load a new OS on them? A lot of questions. I've seen articles about installing Linux on TiVo equipment since they have a hard drive but nothing on installing on the set top boxes.
As far as using the satellite, what band would you have to use? The direct tv stream is a proprietary MPEG2 which I believe is encrypted. So you would have to find a satellite, find out what format the signal is in, find out what decoder you would need.
There's a reason DirectTV felt safe letting you keep the equipment.
A Canadian man got 7 years for selling hacked smart cards for DirectTv.

[eriksays]

okay, so lots to think about

thanks for the input.

[BaVinic]

I guess my first question would be, how would you even get linux on the box?
they do not have hard drives, they use Flashmemory and e-proms,
there is no network ethernet port on them, and needless to say no drives such as cdrom or floppy.

of course this does depned on your model, but I thnk it is the same of all Directv boxes.

I could be wrong, so if I am please let me know, I would love to do it to the 5 boxes I have here :)

BaVinic

[Sgood1971]

I saw a link on converting an old satellite dish to a cantenna type of wireless antenna. They are very directional from what I read though.

[Icarus]

Thy should have at least a phone port :D

I've never taken one apart, but from what I imagine they are all solid state embeded programs.
Good luck on doing anything usefull with them! :p

[davisfactor]

Originally posted by Sgood1971
I saw a link on converting an old satellite dish to a cantenna type of wireless antenna. They are very directional from what I read though.

Yup, there's a picture on neworder of something similar:

http://www.neworder.box.sk/gal_arch.php?cat=other%20stuff&page=7

it's 4 pictures down.

[merclude]

this actually happens to alot of people, especially when one sat. dish company got bought out, there were tons of dishes laying on the curb.

i picked up one, because i wanna play with it and some wireless stuff, its amazing how far you can put a signal off those dishes.

should try it, if you're into the wireless stuff, just dont point it towards the FCC or whatever.