Hacking The Myvu Personal Video Player


[jongscx] picked up a Myvu personal media viewer and promptly began scheming about improvements. He decided he wanted to be able to watch any input on the device, not just an Ipod.

After some messing about with different inputs, he eventually calls Myvu to ask some questions. Surprisingly, he gets the engineer who designed the thing. The engineer turns out to be pretty helpful and is happy to help him hack the device. [jongscx] ends up finally getting it to work and posts the schematic for the world to see.

He says his hands are full with some other projects right now, but hopefully he’ll do an official write up with pictures of the final product soon.

[DrNathan] wrote in to note that [RetroPlayer] was responsible for much of the work as well as contacting the engineer.

[thanks, DrNathan]

17 thoughts on “Hacking The Myvu Personal Video Player

  1. Impressive, its rare for a company to have people in there engineering department that actually are willing to advance there products through hackery. Too bad Mac’s engineers are held behind a thick layer of glass that prevents them from communicating from any and all outside contact. Sure they can see, but you try explaining schematic details as a deaf/mute.

  2. Really jongscx proposed the hack and did some initial work, but RetroPlayer was the individual who really dove in and put it all together. Just wanted to put that out there and give RetroPlayer his due along side jongscx.

  3. …Actually… all I did was propose the idea and post all the websites I got off the internet… Where the hell it says I actually cracked the thing is beyond me.

    As much as I’d love to take credit for this, I wouldn’t deserve it. If it was done, all the credit belongs to the other guy. I was just the lucky schmuck to start the thread.

    [yes, this IS Actually Jong-scx and not some random griefer…]

  4. this hack is cool but for $24.95 you can buy a universal input cable direct from myvu’s websitem, the hack works out more expesive and time consuming im a avid hacker but even i dont see the point of this one

  5. ok, guys, seriously- can we have, like, a bat signal that says “go buy one of these HMDs before an article on how to hack them is posted and the whole world and his dog buy one and push the price up”?

  6. Hey, glad to see this thing’s finally getting some real hack work done to it. Glad someone else has more patience than I do when it comes to dealing with micro-electronics! %$@# those little 40gauge wires!

  7. For those that keep saying the universal kit is all you need, obviously you don’t own one of these.

    You cannot use the universal cable kit with these. For the last time!!

    Do 10 seconds of research before you post your “I’m so cool” comments.

    Why would anyone hack this when they can just buy a cable? Do you think you are smarter than everyone else because you can 600613?

    Anyway… to the rest of the people that own these and have been able to get them on the surplus markets for half the cost of the viewers that CAN use the universal cable, this hack saves them more than $90.

    The model being hacked is an obsolete product from MyVu. It is either the Solo (not Solo Plus) or the “fully loaded edition for 5th Gen Ipod only.” It cost me $50 surplus for the glasses and about $15 in parts. That’s 65 bucks total. The viewers that this “universal cable kit” works with is $150 and the cable is another $25 (though why not just buy the universal one to begin with if you want to pay that?)

    So, again… READ before you post something.

    Sorry for the rant, but these kinds of people just drive me nuts.

  8. 3-d hack anyone? parts required = 1 LM1881, a hex inverter, possibly a PIC and it will accept field sequential 3-D. Plus it virtually doubles the resolution to boot.

    what would be neat is a chip or ASIC which converted 640*480 into chopped 320*240 so it split half the horizontal resolution across both eyes but when combined shows a wide screen image.

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