Random Stuff – Page 4

June 28, 2011

ReplayTV, TiVo and the general state of DVR’s

I currently have 5 (yes 5) DVR’s for recording shows. This goes back some years, but I have 3 ReplayTV DVR’s (2 with 80 gb Drives, and one with a 200 gb drive that I hacked to get it to work after the original 40 gb drive died in it.). They were / still are great DVR’s. They were pioneers in many ways compared to TiVo. They have built in network connections long before TiVo did. They allowed streaming of shows between units, years before TiVo could. All around they are great little Standard Definition DVR units. Granted they could only record what was on the analog tuner, however they supported multiple inputs so you could hook a cable box to them or other device and record it.

Up until late last year, 2 of them were connected to a Comcast cable box so I could record any channel that I received on the cable box. The third unit was connected just to the cable, so it could only record the analog channels. Well as with the “rest of the world” Comcast decided to drop all analog channels from their cable line up, in favor of the “better” digital signals. (Which they compressed to hell and back….) Anyways, this would have made the one DVR a door stop. However, Comcast decided to give away 2 free “Digital Tuning Adapters”. So I thought this would be cool, I could just hook it up and put it in front of the DVR and be able to record the channels. Well, the DTA required me to “hack” the ReplayTV unit as it (the ReplayTV) did not have the IR codes to control the DTA. This took me a better part of a day one weekend to get working. So at least it is able to record the basic/extended cable line up.

So fast forward half a year, and I turned on the ReplayTV one night to watch a recorded episode of Top Gear [because Comcast doesn’t have BBC in HD 🙁 ] and I see a message stating that:

Important Announcement!

The ReplayTV Electronic Programming Guide (EPG) Service will be permanently discontinued on July 31, 2011. After this date, owners of ReplayTV DVR units will still be able to manually record analog TV programs, but will not have the benefit of access to the interactive program guide. Effective immediately, monthly billing for the ReplayTV service to remaining customers has been suspended.

The industry conversion to HDTV is complete and ReplayTV DVRs are unable to take advantage of the wealth of HDTV programming. Please contact your service provider for current offerings.

What pissed me off the most was the last line: “The industry conversion to HDTV is complete….” Wait just a minute, there are hundreds of SD channels on Comcast’s lineup, that aren’t available in HD. So now all of the sudden I go from having 5 DVR’s to 2. Granted ComCRAP just raised my bill by another $16 a month, so the saving in the lost of paying the ReplayTV monthly fee makes my cable cost go down a little, but this still makes me mad as the ReplayTV DVR’s are still useful and very much liked by their user’s.

Well it appears that some people are trying to get a fix to allow them to continue to work after the July 31, 2011 cut off. One of the workarounds is by using WiRNS and Schedules Direct. Since I had previously set up a WiRNS system to hack the one DVR to get the IR codes in it, I decided that it wouldn’t be too hard to set it up on the new VMware server I have at the house since it didn’t require much processor and disk space. Also the Schedules Direct method only charged $20 a year for guide data vs the $23+ a month I was paying now for the ReplayTV units. (So almost a $260 a year possible savings.)

This is all cool, however there is one thing that hasn’t been figured out yet. That is how to handle the encrypted clock connection on the ReplayTV unit. If this can’t be figured out, then the 3 ReplayTV’s, basically become the VCR’s of the 90’s.

So on now to TiVo. I have had one of my TiVo’s for a year now, the other for about 6 months. Over all it is pretty good, but there were items that the ReplayTV made so much easier that I can’t do yet with the TiVo. For example, there is a Java application called DVArchive that I run on one of my servers that “talks” to all the ReplayTV units and shows me a list of what all shows are recorded on them, what upcoming shows will be recorded, lets me transfer shows from the ReplayTV to the local server and lets me schedule recordings from one web interface to go to the ReplayTV’s instantly. This isn’t available on the TiVo. Yeah I can go to TiVo’s site, but it is some what of a kludge to see the entire ToDo list across both TiVo’s. Also the scheduling is based on the TiVo polling the Internet vs the push of the recording to the ReplayTV.

One of the big things that was missing on the TiVo side was the ability to “stream” between the two TiVo units. This was one of the reasons why I went the ReplayTV route instead of the “mainstream” TiVo route. Yeah you could “transfer” recordings between the TiVo’s, but this could only be done IF the cable company did not set the Copy Protection flag, which nearly every HD and SD digital channel has this set except for the local OTA channels. In the long run, this meant that if I recorded a program on one TiVo I had to watch it on that TiVo, instead of “where I wanted to” like with the ReplayTV’s. Well as of yesterday, this seems to have changed. It appears that TiVo with their latest software update has enabled “Streaming” between the TiVo’s (like the ReplayTV’s had probably a good 7+ years ago). Now you don’t have to “copy” the entire program to the other TiVo to watch it, in addition the Copy Protection flag does not apply to the “streaming” of the video between the 2 TiVo units.

This is excellent news as now I can record a movie on one and then watch it on the other and vice verse with my weekly shows that get recorded.

So you are probably thinking if you are even reading this far, what the hell does this have to do with the “General state of DVR’s”? Well it just shows how some DVR’s are pioneers, some are the “popular” ones and then some are ones that people are just “stuck with”. What I mean by “just stuck with” is those people who are unlucky enough not to realize how good ReplayTV was, or how much functionality the TiVo Premiere’s have VS a “Cable company” DVR. Seeing how I have had all three now for a while, (although I did get rid of the ComCRAP DVR) I would still rate the ReplayTV as the best DVR that I have had. Granted it doesn’t do HD picture, but then again not everything on Comcast’s lineup is in HD. I still use them to record all my SD content and use the TiVo’s only for HD content.

Comcast’s DVR is just plain the worse thing I have ever seen. They only have a 160 gig HD in their HD-DVR which means that after a week of shows, it is usually out of space. Not to mention, there was NO way to schedule anything on it except scrolling through the on screen guide. There was no “searching” for items to tape. No way to save programs. No way to stream it to other units.. Think of it as the VCR of the 90’s with the VCR+ module added in.

Overall I think that DNNA made a bad move by discontinuing the ReplayTV EPG, but I guess in this day and age every one has to way the good vs the bad at some point.

WiRNS (the Windows Replay Network Server) URL: http://wirns.com/
DVarchive URL: http://dvarchive.org/
Schedules Direct URL: http://www.schedulesdirect.org/
ReplayTV announcement: http://www.digitalnetworksna.com/replaytv/

June 4, 2011

Wireless security

Been doing some research lately on WiFi and security of it. So I have been doing some scans and out of the 3,655 WiFi access points I have observed, here is the breakdown on the security of them:

Count	Encryption Type
859	Not Encrypted
760	[WEP]
680	[WPA-PSK-TKIP+CCMP][WPA2-PSK-TKIP+CCMP]
519	[WPA-PSK-TKIP]
301	[WPA2-PSK-CCMP]
110	[WPA-PSK-CCMP][WPA2-PSK-CCMP]
101	[IBSS]
36	[WPA-PSK-TKIP][WPA2-PSK-CCMP-preauth]
31	[WPA-PSK-TKIP][WPA2-PSK-TKIP]
30	[WPA-EAP-CCMP][WPA2-EAP-CCMP]
28	[WPA-PSK-TKIP+CCMP][WPA2-PSK-TKIP+CCMP-preauth]
21	[WPA-PSK-TKIP+CCMP]
18	[WPA2-PSK-CCMP-preauth]
18	[WPA-PSK-CCMP]
18	[WPA-EAP-TKIP][WPA2-EAP-CCMP]
16	[WPA-PSK-TKIP][WPA2-PSK-TKIP+CCMP]
15	[WPA-PSK-TKIP][WPA2-PSK-CCMP]
14	[WPA-EAP-TKIP+CCMP][WPA2-EAP-CCMP]
12	[WPA2-PSK-TKIP+CCMP]
10	[WPA2-PSK-TKIP]
9	[WPA-EAP-TKIP]
8	[WPA2-EAP-CCMP]
8	[WPA2-EAP-CCMP-preauth]
8	[WPA-PSK-TKIP+CCMP][WPA2-PSK-CCMP-preauth]
8	[WPA-?]
5	[WPA-PSK-TKIP][WPA2-PSK-TKIP-preauth]
3	[WPA-PSK-WEP104+TKIP]
3	[WPA-EAP-TKIP][WPA2-EAP-TKIP]
2	[WPA2-PSK-TKIP-preauth]
1	[WPA-PSK-CCMP][WPA2-PSK-CCMP-preauth]
1	[WPA-EAP-TKIP+CCMP][WPA2-EAP-TKIP+CCMP]
1	[WPA-EAP-CCMP]
1	[WEP][IBSS]

It is amazing that nearly a quarter of them were unencrypted. What was even more interesting I saw a bunch of them on rural roads, so it was almost like “well no one lives around me, so why encrypt it”. So I would ask that everyone, no matter where you live, please enable encryption on your Wifi. In addition don’t use WEP, please use at least WPA and preferably WPA2. If I add in WEP as being basically “un-secured” you have over 44% of the WiFi access points not being “secured”. WEP just isn’t that strong, and with people doing banking and online shopping, you shouldn’t be doing any username, password or credit card info over a open or WEP encrypted WiFi connection.

Another factoid is the preference for WiFi channel:

Count	Frequency (Channel)
1	2407 (??)
1	2472 (13 – Non US)
40	2457 (10)
41	2442 (7)
46	2432 (5)
52	2417 (2)
69	2447 (8)
141	2427 (4)
158	2452 (9)
229	2422 (3)
718	2462 (11)
731	2412 (1)
1428	2437 (6)

It appears that Channel 6 (aka 2437 Mhz or 2.437Ghz) is the “most popular”. Probably because that is what most routers come with as a default. It also appears that a lot of people don’t change their SSID either. I saw 214 “Linksys”, 106 “NETGEAR” and 22 “belkin54g”, which are all default SSID’s. 542 total were a combination of those 3 (spelling case and maybe a number added to it).

So in the end what does this all really mean? For one vendors need to be more proactive about helping inexperienced customers to properly secure their wireless network devices. In this day and age, routers should be sold “secure by default” and really not let the router connect to the Internet until the default admin password and ssid have been changed, and proper encryption has been set up. Why do I say this? Well there are ton’s of people who just buy a WiFi router, and don’t understand that if they don’t secure it that some one in their neighborhood could use their WiFi network, with or with out permission, and do something “bad” and the next thing you know the cops will be showing up at your door because the connection was traced back to your house, NOT your neighbor’s.

Some tips for SSID’s as well.

Please don’t make the SSID your postal address, especially if you are in an apartment don’t tack on your apartment number.
Don’t leave it as the default from the vendor. If you do this makes it a litter easier to guess that you haven’t done any security on it, and some one can now take control over it, because you more than likely have not changed the default password.
Don’t name it your family name, or any ones name in your family. If you do, you can fall pray to some social engineering hacks
Make it something that is not going to interfere with some one around you if you live in a crowded area.. Nothing like having 6 WiFi’s in a small apartment building all on channel 6 all with the SSID as Linksys and different passwords on all them, you will get horrible performance.

May 25, 2011May 25, 2011

Changing passwords? lets make it as difficult as we can…

In this day and age of computer hacks and security problems, why do companies make it awkward to change usernames and or passwords? One example of an awkward procedure to change a password is on the VMware vCenter server. If like any good security minded person you have all your passwords set to expire every 28 days or so, to change the password on the vCenter server you have to do some “command line fu” to change it. Heaven forbid that you have to change the username as well. So how do you do it? Well if you are running vCenter on a Windows 2008 server and connecting to a Oracle server (that actually holds all the data) there are a couple of things you need to do:

Shutdown the vCenter server (disable it in the Services Control panel)
Change the password for your vCenter user in the oracle DB
Now here it the BIG gotcha. On the windows side you have to run a CMD prompt as an admin user. Just clicking on it in the start menu won’t do it. You have to right click on it and do “Run as Administrator”. If you fail to do this, the next step will fail and just piss you off even more. (The reason for this is the username and password are stored in the registry and I guess running cmd as normal user revokes all privs to modify the registry.)
Now go to the location where VMware vCenter is installed and run the vpxd command with either a -p or a -P. If you use the lower case -p it will prompt you for the new database user password. If you use the -P option, right after the P you can put the new password on the command line.
Now you should be able to start back up the vCenter processes.

Now if you need to change the userid, you need to use Regedit and go to :

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\VMware, Inc.\VMware VirtualCenter\DB (under My Computer)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\VMware, Inc.\VMware VirtualCenter\DB for 64 bit versions of Windows.

and change #2 to be the new userid.

This is documented in the VMware KB Article : Changing the vCenter database userid and password. But if you don’t pay attention go the run as part, you will spend a lot of time trying to figure it out even if you are logged in as an administrator.

If your password expires in Oracle while vCenter is up and running, it appears to continue to work while it is up. But if you reboot the vCenter server or restart the vCenter processes, it will “hang” and never start. They also need to make their error messages a little more detailed as to why it is ‘failing’ to start.

February 5, 2011

Comcast appointment #whoknows

I had another Comcast tech appointment today. See last weekend TiVo called me to work on the problem with the Comcast Cable card and the “flashing” that was occurring on about 25 channels. I talked with them for a while and then they conferenced in Comcast Phone support. The first thing out of Comcast’s “mouth” was “We need to have a tech come out and look at the lines in your house”. I was pissed, I spent the weekend before that with one of their tech’s who basically did absolutely nothing besides changes the ends in the house and replace the cable card. Neither of which fixed the “flashing” problems. So the phone guy, said he couldn’t do anything until a tech came out and did a in detail inspection of the lines. Haha what a freaking joke. So I had them schedule the appointment for 10AM today, preparing to waste the whole day on waiting for them to show up.

Like normal, 10AM came and past, around 11:15AM I get a call from a Comcast 866 number. It was one of their people calling to say that they ran out of cable cards in the area, and the warehouse was closed, and if I wanted it replaced I would have to schedule it during the week when the warehouse was open. I told them that I couldn’t and replacing it wasn’t going to fix the problem. I then explained what was going on and that the only real reason the tech was supposed to come out was to meter the equipment. She then said “Well the tech is running behind and won’t be there till after 12PM, is some one going to be there then?” I said I would and she hung up.

About 12:30 or so the Comcast guy showed up. Basically said “I know there is a problem with the cable card’s and I can’t fix it.” We then talked for a while about what the problem was and he said that there has been people calling in reporting it, but not one really took it seriously until Milan Puskar called in. It seems he had 15 TiVo’s at his place and ALL of them were doing the exact same thing as everyone else who had been calling in. That is when they finally started looking in to it. Go figure it takes a millionaire to get Comcast off of their ass to start looking in to the problem. The tech said that it is happening all over Morgantown and Fairmont from what he can tell, and every one is having the problems on the same channels.

He basically said there was nothing he could do except for pass it up to the supervisor for handling.

Here is a video I made of what it is doing. It is called “Flashing” by some of the Comcast phone people. I call it “Cable not working”. The funny thing when the tech left, was he said he hated working on cable cards because they don’t work. I was like hmm then make the channels unencrypted and you wouldn’t have this problem.

Since Comcast has not publicly admitted to what the problem is any place that I can find, here is something that I got from some one at comcast:

Only encrypted programs would be affected. More specifically, only programs associated with segments that are part of more than twelve packages would be affected. This is because the ECMs required to carry the entitlement IDs for up to twelve packages will fit into a single MPEG packet. If more than twelve entitlement IDs are required, however, two MPEG packets are needed to fully encapsulate the ECMs. Not all two-packet ECM programs are affected by this problem.

The customer impact is further narrowed by the fact that only devices that specifically check the payload flag of the adaptation_control for ECM packets will be affected. At present, and based on customer reports, this seems to be only TiVo devices.

Basically, there is an issue with decryption. This will cause tiling, missing channels and not authorized errors.

January 27, 2011January 27, 2011

802.11g vs 802.11n

When I got my new laptop, (the other one I think the logic board died in it), I decided that I needed to upgrade the wireless in the house. I was using a Linksys WRT54G router, which I had been using for about 6 or 7 years now. It worked well, however the wireless was a little slow. So I decided to get a new 802.11N router, to “speed up” the wireless stuff in my house. I kept the Linksys running for those devices that don’t support 802.11N. Some people may ask why, well I locked the new router (Buffalo Technology Nfiniti Wireless-N High Power Router & Access Point WZR-HP-G300NH) so that it would only let 802.11N devices connect to it. That is so it would remain the fastest wireless since when you have it in mixed mode, it may step down to lower speeds.

So just how much faster is the N over the G? I did a FTP test from one of my servers that has a Gig ethernet connection. (The new router also has a gig switch in it, whereas the old Linksys only had a 100mb switch in it.)

Using the old Linksys WRT54G router/wireless I transferred a 378Mb file, the result: 397,127,468 bytes received in 04:40 (1.34 MiB/s).

Then I switched to the new Buffalo router and transferred the same file: 397,127,468 bytes received in 01:13 (5.14 MiB/s

As you can see it is almost 4 times faster than the 802.11G router. I think it was well worth it. As now I can stream video wirelessly and it doesn’t cut out and have to buffer like it did on the G router. Another nice thing was the Buffalo router came with DD-WRT already installed as the “Professional Firmware”. Most people who are not technically inclined would find DD-WRT probably way more complicated than is needed for their simple network. But for me, it is awesome that you can customize it, and do a lot more stuff than the “user friendly” firmware supports.