That's the sort of thing I hear can be done on the Topfield, where they made the operating system accessible to third-party developers through TAPs (Topfield Application Programming?). No such accessibility on the Humax, unless somebody reverse-engineers the existing code to find out how it interfaces with the hardware - which is something both difficult and time-consuming, but also a legal line-in-the-sand which the BYTs have not (not in public anyway) crossed.
Unfortunately (for the Topfield fans, and actually we would all have Topfields if they did), Topfield do not yet make a model that does HiDef, and I hear they have changed their minds about an open interface (possibly under pressure from the broadcasters and content providers) and will not do it again.
Reading the runes I think it is quite lucky that, although the Humax interface is "closed", it is as open as it is, and in future such machines will be clamped down not only for the man-in-the-street but also the hacking community - not to please the manufacturer (who is very happy to have an active squad of enthusiasts encouraging more sales and brand loyalty) but to please the content providers who have everything sewn up in licence agreements.
