April 14th, 2003. 4:41 AM.

The vast conspiracy unfolds as follows:

My dad has for months wondered what tivo is up to in the middle of the night when its red light is on, but there's nothing it ought to be recording. Also, the next day, there is no new programming on the tivo. I never had an answer. That is, until tonight.

I just got back from the media union and was flipping channels when I came across a strange program on the Discovery Channel. It was a bunch of black and white lines rapidly flashing about (like bar codes), and a big banner across the image saying "TIVO SERVICE BROADCAST" and some very poor big-band music.

 

So I called my dad at 4:30 AM (sorry to wake you up) and sure enough, the red light was on. His tivo was up to something. Presumably my dad went back to sleep.

I checked the Guide channel, which described it as "PAID PROGRAMMING." Since I left my Tivo in LA, I couldn't check to see what the Tivo program guide had described this programming.

I did a google for "Tivo Service Broadcast" because certainly somebody else has accidentally flipped onto this broadcast, and lo and behold... only one link came up:

http://news.sweetgoodness.org/20020717.html

This guy believes that his tivo is downloading the movies and bonus features (Best Buy ads, movie trailers, music videos, etc.) that you occassionally see on tivo, since downloading over the modem would take a *very* long time.

I have wondered about that.

I find it very hard to believe that only one other person has noticed this broadcast and wondered what the hell was going on!

Somebody want to write a decoder for the data stream here?