Case study

WebTV PTL: documenting the set-top box listings format

WebTV PTL documents the binary television-listings database used by WebTV Plus and DishPlayer set-top boxes. The write-up describes its location on device storage, big-endian integer encoding, versioned header, block layout and footer.

Targets: Firmware
Category: Independent reconstruction cases
Relationship: Independent reconstruction project
Sources reviewed: 2026-11-06
Evidence class: C3 notes only

Stars: 2
Last commit: 2023-08-10

GitHub data as of 2026-11-10

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Evidence

Observed: Code observed; no usable documentation found.
Scope: Notes
Checked: 2026-11-08

How evidence classes are assigned

Requirements & limits

Scope: The documented format concerns PTL listings databases used by WebTV Plus and DishPlayer boxes.
License: No licence file in the repository.

Cite

BibTeX

@misc{webtv-ptl-format-case,
  title = {{WebTV PTL: documenting the set-top box listings format}},
  howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/wtv-411/webtv-docs}},
  url = {https://github.com/wtv-411/webtv-docs},
  urldate = {2026-11-06},
  note = {Awesome REA entry: \url{https://awesomerea.org/resources/webtv-ptl-format-case/}}
}

Plain text

WebTV PTL: documenting the set-top box listings format. https://github.com/wtv-411/webtv-docs (accessed 2026-11-06). Awesome REA entry: https://awesomerea.org/resources/webtv-ptl-format-case/

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About this entry

The description was reviewed against primary sources.

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Primary sources

docs/WebTV_PTL_listings_format.md GitHub · wtv-411/webtv-docs · Revision f4d05c5
README.md GitHub · wtv-411/webtv-docs · Revision f4d05c5