Page 1 of How do we get these hacks??

Maybe this is a dumb question, but how do people find the hacks for players? Do they literally sit at the player and continually press buttons on the remote till a hack is found or what?

Just interested really.........

JJ.

A lot comes from becoming competent in reading disassembled firmware files (I`m an expert in reading Sampo firmware now !) : some are trickier than others to read, some are relatively simple.

Certainly, a lot of players made in the Far East share firmware systems, so there are some hacks that work on players completely unrelated to each other.

But, in the main most of the hacks come from either the manufacturers themselves, or from distributors who are told the hacks by the manufacturers : believe me, there isn`t actually someone keying all these codes in. Or is there....?!

The origional hack for the Samsung 709 came when someone was programing their Aiwa Hi-Fi and noticed that the display on the 709 sometimes changed. A lot of keystrokes were then sent to the 709 using Aiwa Hi-Fi remotes untill the basics were sorted and a multiregion hack was found. It was a long time after that the hack useing the Samsung remote was found, this by someone dissembling the code but I think the Aiwa hack gave them some clues.

Steve..

I agree that some codes do emerge more by luck than judgment, Steve !

For example, how on earth was the link between Philips/Yamaha decks and the One For All 6 discovered ?

As you say, it may be a random event that leads to the first connection (such as the Aiwa/Samsung hack you mention), but ultimately it`s the reading of the file that results in the majority of the more obscure hacks becoming known (eg the hack for the Sharp DV740 and Reoc A5 which requires a CD-R with a text file burned on it !)