A week ago I wrote about turning a DIRECTV HR54-700 into a standalone Jellyfin box. If you haven't read that mess yet, start with the original HR54-700 writeup. It covers getting persistent root, abusing the stock Broadcom media stack, getting WebKit onto the screen, Jellyfin playback, Wi-Fi, and generally convincing a satellite DVR that it has better things to do with its retirement.
That project has now escaped the "pile of scripts on my receiver" stage and has a name:
ReBox.
Yes, the name is a stupid Reebok joke.
Yes, that's why the mascot is a little anthropomorphic DVR wearing sneakers.
I regret nothing.
what ReBox actually is
ReBox is the userland replacement I've been building for the HR54-700. The idea is to take these things after they're done being DIRECTV receivers and turn them into useful little Linux set-top boxes instead of e-waste.
The original project proved the hardware could do it. ReBox is me trying to turn that proof into something another person can actually install.
The HR54 already contains most of the useful shit: Linux, networking, HDMI output, a Broadcom hardware decoder, remote-control plumbing, WebKit, and a bunch of media infrastructure. ReBox sits on top of that instead of trying to replace the entire operating system.
Right now I'm building the custom menu and services around stuff like Jellyfin, local/network media, IPTV and other things that make sense on a box plugged into a TV. Some parts work surprisingly well. Some parts absolutely do not.
Which brings us to the important part.
this is VERY early alpha software
ReBox is public now.
That does not mean ReBox is finished.
This is early alpha software running on a weird 2015 satellite receiver whose proprietary middleware I have been reverse engineering for about a week. There are going to be bugs. There are probably bugs I haven't even managed to invent yet.
The only hardware I am personally developing against is an HR54-700. If you have another Genie-family box, the research may be useful, but do not assume the installer or runtime is compatible just because the plastic looks similar.
Also: don't do this to an activated receiver, leased equipment, or anything you expect to ever use with DIRECTV again. Mine was effectively e-waste already.
If you have an HR54-700 you own, don't particularly care about, and feel like doing something inadvisable with it, though...
go for it.
The repo is here: ReBox on GitHub.
Follow the current README rather than random commands from my original blog post. The old post documents how I got here; the ReBox repository is where the install process and current state are going to live.
please break it
I actually want other people to try this now.
Until somebody installs ReBox on a receiver that isn't sitting three feet from my desk, I don't really know which assumptions I've accidentally baked into it.
Maybe the installer dies.
Maybe your firmware is slightly different.
Maybe the remote mapping is weird.
Maybe WebKit decides it hates you.
Maybe it installs perfectly and the fucking thing actually works.
All of those outcomes are useful.
If you try it and something breaks, open an issue. Include the HR54 model, software/firmware version if you can get it, what step failed, what you expected, and whatever logs or terminal output you have. "It doesn't work" gives me substantially less to work with than the ugly error message the box probably spat out right before it died.
And if it works, tell me that too. Successful installs on other hardware are evidence, not just bragging rights.
where this is going
The end goal is not to make a slightly different Jellyfin launcher.
I want ReBox to be a useful replacement environment for this hardware: boot the receiver, get the ReBox interface, and use the box for things a generic Linux media appliance should have been doing in the first place.
I also want it to be modular.
I don't want every possible feature welded directly into the core ReBox codebase. The plan is to have a module system where somebody can write their own module, drop it into ReBox, and add whatever functionality they want without having to fork the whole project.
Jellyfin can be a module. IPTV can be a module. Camera viewers, games, weird network tools, home automation junk, whatever somebody decides this cursed little box should do can live outside the core and plug into the same menu and runtime.
That matters because I'm one person with one HR54 and a finite number of stupid ideas. If other people start using this, I want them to be able to add their own stupid ideas too.
There is still a lot of DIRECTV machinery underneath it. I'm not pretending otherwise. ReBox is deliberately reusing the parts of that stack that are useful and stepping around the parts that aren't.
It's an old dual-core MIPS box with 1 GB of RAM. I'm not turning it into a fucking Ryzen desktop.
But it has hardware video decode, HDMI, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, USB, a perfectly good remote, and a power supply. There are piles of these things that are otherwise headed for a landfill.
Apparently at least one of them can run Jellyfin instead.
Oh ya, almost forgot to mention...
it runs DOOM now too.
Now we find out whether mine was special.