I-Appliance BBS The Official Source for Internet Appliance Upgrades and Mods BBS Main List | Sign In | Sign Up | Search | Help | Linux-Hacker.net Reply to Thread | Printer |

Home / I-Appliance BBS General / NEWS, Breaking NEWS MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! linksys made, 160GB HD, S-Video, Composite Video, Component Video, HDMI, S/PDIF Optical, S/PDIF Coaxial, Ethernet, Modem

MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! (modified 2 times) Gultig Profile Don't know what all the internals are yet. It has a 160GB HD, S-Video, Composite Video, Component Video, HDMI, S/PDIF Optical, S/PDIF Coaxial, Ethernet, Modem. It's made by linksys. http://www.moviebeam.com/opencms/opencms/Pages/WhatIsMovieBeam/TechInfo.html Here's some low res internal pics: http://www.flickr.com/photos/91529328@N00/148216233/in/set-72057594137590036/ I forgot to add a link to the fatwallet deal thread: http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/messageview.php?start=0&catid=18&threadid=610969 05-17-2006 10:53:56

RE:MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! (modified 0 times) jsmmd Profile I'm in for one. I'll let you know when I get it. For everyone else reading this, 160 gig drives are going for $~50 on pricewatch. http://www.pricewatch.com/hard_drives/4429-1.htm A great toy for the price, and worst case, you get an ok priced HD. I might get a second one just for the drive. I bet they'll pull this deal in 1 week. Promo Code: PR49 05-17-2006 14:55:03

RE:MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! (modified 0 times) Tom61 Profile | Email Gah! Not availible in my area. 05-18-2006 00:36:15

RE:MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! (modified 0 times) dcarr Profile Just ordered one... here we go. -DC 05-18-2006 10:07:09

RE:MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! (modified 0 times) jsmmd Profile Tom61, Gah! Not availible in my area. Don't let that stop you. ;) 05-18-2006 13:32:43

RE:MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! (modified 0 times) Tom61 Profile | Email Don't let that stop you. ;) How do you order one if the service is not in your area? I suppose I could get one from a far-off retailer, but are there any with the $50 deal? 05-18-2006 19:52:18

RE:MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! (modified 0 times) codeman Profile | Email ok jsmmd where are the good pictures of the inside ??? :) codeman 06-12-2006 14:26:48

RE:MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! (modified 0 times) neworbit99 Profile I just got mine - its great. Any suggestions as to where to start investigating its hackability? 06-22-2006 11:02:41

RE:MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! (modified 0 times) dcarr Profile It appears that the hard drive is locked using the ATA security feature. Fortunately, the ATA security features are not that secure. A good place to start hacking would be to try to get access to the software that comes on the disk. From there we can see whether or not it really runs linux and how easy it will be to hack. To get access to the disk, you might try the several disk unlocking programs out there or also the hotswap trick. The TIVO guys are up against the same issues so you might try searching for techniques used to unlock TIVO disks. Also, if you have access to a logic analyzer you can directly read out the password from the bus. See: http://www.xbox-news.co.uk/extracting_pass.htm -DC 06-23-2006 08:45:49

RE:MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! (modified 0 times) s4vol Profile Can someone tell me what processor is using in this thing? May be a SigmaDesign chip? 06-30-2006 16:23:10

RE:MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! (modified 0 times) darkadvent Profile I agree that this is a prime hacking candidate. Hopefully some version of Linux can be ported to it and it can be maybe a PVR/media center. In the back of the manual it does make mention to GNU/GPL. I was looking for info on hacking this, and while I'm by no means a "hacker," I'll share the info I have so far. To answer a previous post, it is a SigmaDesign chip. Here are some pictures of the unit's insides - the hard drive's wires aren't connected because I was about to connect it as a slave to another computer but wanted to put it in for the sake of completeness in the picture: http://i6.tinypic.com/1zmoxgi.jpg - unit from the front (board upside down) http://i6.tinypic.com/1zmoy88.jpg - SigmaDesign chip http://i6.tinypic.com/1zmoyv6.jpg - unit from the back (board right side up) Installed as a slave in Windows, it's detected by the OS but won't give any info to it or a drive letter, so it does have to be unlocked. That's my first task. Hope the pictures help! 07-10-2006 22:04:00

RE:MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! (modified 0 times) darkadvent Profile I found this website - http://www.rockbox.org/lock.html with some info on unlocking the hard drive. My only concern is that if I unlock it will I be able to access it with the MovieBeam? Hmm, at the worst case I can use/sell the hard drive, I already have NetFlix. 07-10-2006 22:13:17

RE:MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! (modified 0 times) s4vol Profile Here is a link if you want to spend some money to unlock... http://www.hdd-tools.com/products/rrs/ 07-11-2006 01:24:24

RE:MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! (modified 0 times) s4vol Profile This is even better... free, looks like, at least for the time being http://www.hddunlock.com/ 07-11-2006 01:36:34

RE:MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! (modified 0 times) s4vol Profile Oops... the last one erases the drive, so probably good if you want to just re-use the disk but not very good if you want to see what is on it. 07-11-2006 01:39:25

RE:MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! (modified 0 times) s4vol Profile By the way, SigmaDesign implementations typically use ucLinux. Here is a link to the port for the EM8500, an earlier, less feature version of the EM8622 ... http://www.uclinux.org/pub/uClinux/ports/arm/EM8500/ 07-11-2006 02:16:07

RE:MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! (modified 0 times) jsmmd Profile So, how I see it, I'm going to try the following: - attempt to boot a CD on MB - attempt to boot a HD on MB I'm sure both won't work. Next, I'm going the unlocking. The Archos method looks best, but without a password it'll be fun. The paid app. looks suspect. It's windows, which I'm sure will mess with the drive. I'll report back. Anyone else active on this? 07-18-2006 17:55:59

RE:MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! (modified 0 times) dcarr Profile I'm looking for a suitable logic analyzer to read the password as it gets clocked out by the player's bios. I tried with an ancient HP analyzer but couldn't get it to do much useful. I'm trying to find someone who has a better analyzer at the moment. -DC 07-19-2006 19:20:19

RE:MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! (modified 0 times) jsmmd Profile dcarr, I know this guy named codeman. I asked him. He might be able to look into this... :) 07-21-2006 12:54:00

RE:MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! (modified 0 times) jsmmd Profile Well, for the record, I plugged in a cdrom w/ Knoppix, and a drive with linux installed. Both didn't even blink past the HD's post. A CD or another HD would have been nice to enhance my MB. Also, a USB keyboard did nothing. I hate the remote, a keyboard would have been cool. Maybe I'll try the IR keyboard from my AOL tv for giggles. It would be interesting if someone where to crack the HD's password. I'm not condoning or encouraging this, but just making a broad statement that it would be interesting. 07-23-2006 20:43:08

RE:MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! (modified 0 times) dcarr Profile Its pretty much impossible for a Knoppix CD or any other x86 operating system to boot on this device. It has an ARM cpu which is a different architecture than x86 (completely incompatible). See this page for more details on the EM8622L cpu: http://www.sigmadesigns.com/public/Products/EM8620L/EM8620L_series.html -DC 07-24-2006 10:23:37

RE:MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! (modified 0 times) jsmmd Profile doh.... I crossed a circuit on that one. You're right. I totally forgot that. 07-24-2006 18:40:48

RE:MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! (modified 0 times) dcarr Profile If you like to experiment though, it would be very interesting to see the contents of the MovieBeam hard drive. I've tried the TIVO hard drive hotswap method a few times with no success, but it worked for the TIVO guys and I don't see why it won't work for us. There's plenty of documentation on this technique on google and it might be a fun thing to mess around with. -DC 07-25-2006 10:00:42

RE:MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! (modified 0 times) jsmmd Profile I've tried to mount the hard drive without success. If you take the cover off, power it up, then disconnect odea after about 15 - 30 seconds. Connect ide to another PC. Bam. The OS / partition must be scrambled. I get complaints about sectors. Maybe you could get furthur then I. 07-27-2006 17:57:27

RE:MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! (modified 0 times) dcarr Profile While you have the HD connected, take a look at the output of the command dmesg. Do you see any IDE errors? When I tried this, I couldn't mount anything also. It turns out though that it was due to the IDE controller erroring on every access to the device. My suspicion (in my case) was that the disk wasn't actually unlocked. -DC 07-31-2006 11:49:16

RE:MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! (modified 0 times) lunchboxfett Profile What about loading a linux distro for the processor used on this device and making into a media center? I'm new to this but I wasn't able to find a linux distro for the ARM processor, (going off of the post above.) 08-06-2006 16:01:40

RE:MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! (modified 0 times) neworbit99 Profile On the fatwallet forums at this link: http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/messageview.php?start=320&catid=18&threadid=610969 There is this comment: <quote> this thingy has 1) hdd password protected 2) brand new file system (as boasted by a guy whose father worked on this system on an online forum), possibly encrypted too 3) ARM processor based system It would need serious hardware+software hacking if you want to make any modifications. till now there is no report of anyone successfully (as per serious google searches) hacking into this thing.. <end quote> 08-08-2006 11:34:49

RE:MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! (modified 0 times) jsmmd Profile Ok, more details: using atapwd, there seems to not be any passwords set, nor is locked, all the items have a - meaning not. All except for: security command set support indicator That has a big old + not sure what that means, searching this now... 08-09-2006 18:09:04

RE:MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! (modified 0 times) SHIFTLOCK Profile Ive been wanting to make a linux based DVR box using an EPIA mobo so I think this will fit the bill I was going to buy a fat HD anyways and I dont care whats on it and the free case will save me money too. Does anyone know about re-using the antenna for another purpose? 09-03-2006 03:10:40

RE:MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! (modified 0 times) jsmmd Profile Right now all that we know is that the HDD is secured, and not re-usable. The mobo has a custom bios. I'd say it's far from an easy hack at this time. 09-03-2006 14:21:30

RE:MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! (modified 0 times) jsmmd Profile I've tried HDD Unlock without success. Since the drive isn't locked, it can't to anything. I've attached it to a WinXP box. I ran the WD Diags. Test Option: QUICK TEST Model Number: WDC WD1600BB-59GUC0 Serial Number: (deleted my me) Firmware Number: 120.J232 Drive Type: IDE Capacity: 160.04 GB SMART Status: PASS Test Result: FAIL Test Error Code: 11-Cable Test::Read diagnostics sector error! Test Time: 23:34:09, September 06, 2006 09-06-2006 20:42:34

RE:MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! (modified 0 times) kevincad Profile this was some info,found on the net about getting access too the hd through linux: Has anyone herd of a device called MoviceBeam? Well its part owned by Disney to broadcast movies over the unused bandwidth of PSB (or digital TV) stations. I recently got one of these nice boxes and started to look at what is inside... Well its a Western Digital 160gb HDD, which is LOCKED to prevent access to the data/drive from your home PC. With a little encouragement (plug the POWER connector to a PC and temporarly connect the IDE cable to the MovieBeam box, boot the moviebeam, wait about 1 minute so its accessing the drive. Unplug the power to the moviebeam effectivly stopping all ATA communications to the drive. Connect the IDE cable to your PC now, boot as normal to a LINUX cd... Remember once you power up the drive you can't let it power-cycle (need to use CTRL-ALT-DEL to reboot not RESET or power button!)... When at a LINUX prompt load FDISK... Oh look what you find!! 3 Partitions! 1 Linux Partition (HDA1) ~ 2GB (type 82) 1 Linux Partition (HDA2) ~154GB (type 82) 1 Linux SWAP partition (HDA3) ~ 4MB (type 83) still having problems reading the partitions due to it does not properly end on the right boundaries and some other mess they placed in the partition... But it look like people need to review this box to see if any violations exist! ... They played it tough, lock the drive, embed the security chip in epoxy, etc... Also there is a patent on the device owned by the company MovieBeam which goes into discussion about a journled filesystem (ext3 possibly?!?!?) and use of sending out updated in TAR format... Maybe people need to start looking into this one! I know I sure am! here is the link too the article: http://lists.gnumonks.org/pipermail/tech/2006-June/000104.html 09-07-2006 17:34:28

RE:MovieBeam for $49.99 (with a possible $50 rebate) - Prime Hacking Candidate! (modified 0 times) davidj Profile To unlock the Moviebeam hard drive. Use ATAPWD or Hirens 9.3 bootcd since it has everythihng on it. and repeat WDCWDCWDCWDC until you fill up the password space in the MASTER password and that should clear it. Not sure if you will the partitions though. 12-18-2007 22:46:18

hard drive (modified 0 times) kevincad Profile if you unlock the hard drive with that method,will it keep the files intact? 12-20-2007 22:33:33

moviebeam reciever for sale (modified 0 times) kevincad Profile http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEBTOX:IT&item=160192305164&_trksid=p3984.cTODAY.m238.lVI 12-21-2007 11:35:20

Reply to Thread | Printer | All times are PST Powered by UltraBoard v1.62

I-Appliance BBS General - NEWS, Breaking NEWS - linux-hacker.net BBS on CD Questions - User Groups in Your Town - E-Bay, Yahoo Auction LINKS ONLY (MODERATED) - Jokes & Humor - usdtv box I-Opener Areas - I-Opener General Posts - I-Opener Technical Stuff - I-Opener Technical Info Reference (MODERATED) WebSurfer Areas - WebSurfer General Posts - WebSurfer Technical Stuff - WebSurfer Technical Info Reference (MODERATED) Other I-Appliances - Virgin Webplayer - WebPal - MailStation - 3Com Audrey - ThinkNIC / Oracle NIC - Gateway/AOL Connected Touch Pad - Philips/AOL-TV - ACER NT-150 STB - MSN Companion - Compaq IA - Emachines IA - IBM NetVista IA - Intel dot.station - MSNTV2 Network Computers - Fujitsu-Siemens Scovery Linux Net Computers - GallantWeb Server Consoles - Dreamcast - xbox hacking Web Pads - Epods One General Post - Panasonic CF-01 - Fujitsu Stylistic 1200 - Cybiko Thin Clients - Thin Clients DigitalVideoRecorders - DTV Recorders, Replay, TiVo, Etc... - Tivo Hacks Linux - Midori Linux General Board - ITX MotherBoards Single Board Computers - Earth Computers mARMalade Elite Member Area MISC Areas - The Swap Meet WE TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY TRANSACTION HERE AND NO COMMERCIAL POST PERIOD !!! - Wireless Net - Cameras - Robotics - Routers/Gateways - Mattel JuiceBox