TivoToGo to the Mac

March 14, 2005 6:53 PM

I have a TiVo with the TiVoToGo functionality, with which I can download .tivo files of my recorded shows. I also have about 10 Simpsons episodes I need to catch up on, and a trip starting tomorrow where I'll have some time to watch them. Problem: my main rig is a Powerbook, which doesn't support playing the .tivo files. What's the easiest, fastest way of whipping these files into shape? I have Windows and Linux pcs available for my bidding. Can I transcode the .tivo files on the PC to something more manageable?
posted by neustile to computers & internet (12 comments total)

Tivo To Go MPEG2 Decrypting should do the trick. Not the easiest How-To to follow (I got lost at 5: "Dig around for a MPEG 2 Demuxer" Wha...?) but it should get you started.
posted by Ridge at 6:59 PM on March 14, 2005

TMPEG will take care of you. Open the .tivo file and save it as an mpeg. It's pretty simple.
posted by tumble at 7:07 PM on March 14, 2005

Thanks! With TMPGEnc I get (after typing in my playback password): "File E:\blah.tivo can not open, or unsupported." Not sure what to do now.

Ridge's link (thanks!) is Too Much Work to get done in the next day.

Offtopic hijack: is everyone's transfer this slow? Over a USB2 wired ethernet dongle to my router to ethernet to my PC I max out at 280KB/sec, which isn't exactly 100Mbit/s. A 30 minute episode is taking 20 minutes to transfer.
posted by neustile at 8:00 PM on March 14, 2005

I gotta pimp mplayer once again. Dollars to donuts it'll play it. There should be a mac version. Mplayer plays *anything* playable, period, and comes with Mencoder, which will take anything mplayer can play and make it into lots of other stuff. Mostly I use it to make other stuff into divx.

mplayer is a command line tool but for most purposes it's pretty painless. My typical invocation is

mplayer -fs -cache 8192 myfile.avi

-fs is full screen, the cache is used really only if I'm reading from a CD or the network. The quality of mplayers output is highly dependant on the output method. it supports various outputs from the crude to the surreal. I don't know much about it's mac output but on, say, unix, the key is to get it working with opengl or XV extensions, since these offload a lot of the processing to the video card, less overhead, smoother playback. There are a crapload of options to make mplayer work well with crappy conditions (slow network, bad output driver, etc) and if it's really crappy mplayer will *tell* you some things to try, some options to tweak. I've gone so far as to watch 720x480 tv shows over DSL and as long as I precache a bit it works OK.

Last but not least, if you can't get mplayer to play well with mac, it's pretty easy to do with linux. Mencoder can be used to transcode those into something the mac will like. Be forewarned though, re-encoding movies on a modest pc can be something on the order of 15 frames/sec to maybe 50 on a nice computer, so figure you'll need 15 to 45 minutes per 30 minutes of show to transcode. Set up a script so you can start it off and go to bed. I'd be happy to post the arguments I usually use to transcode.
posted by RustyBrooks at 8:02 PM on March 14, 2005

280 KB/s is extremely crappy. With 10mbit ethernet you can easily expect 800K/sec and with 100mbit up to about 6000K/sec. Is this the rate from your tivo to a computer? The tivo is pretty modestly powered, which can affect ethernet stack performance, but, sheesh, 280K a second? I can often get that over DSL.
posted by RustyBrooks at 8:05 PM on March 14, 2005

You need to have MPEG codec, XVid, etc codecs installed to play .TiVo files properly, I can't mention ways to convert the file without violating the DMCA, so I'll just say keep TiVo Desktop open when working with files, it helps.
posted by riffola at 8:33 PM on March 14, 2005

On the tivo-to-go site is a link to Sonic's MyDVD software that has the exclusive "legit" way to burn the .tivo files.

They offer a free 15 day download for Windows (no mac). I just used it to put a movie from my tivo onto a DVD and it worked great. If you have access to a PC and your Powerbook has a dvd, or can play dvd files, then this might work for you.

I tried what Ridge suggested and, boy, is that confusing. It is almost worth the $50 for the program just to never have to try that again.
posted by sciatica at 9:33 PM on March 14, 2005

I don't *think* Tivo has USB2, I think you're stuck at USB1. That would explain your crappy transfer rates.
posted by lfaren at 5:32 AM on March 15, 2005

FYI, that mplayer link has a "Closed for patent infringement" notice on it.
posted by matildaben at 5:46 AM on March 15, 2005

P.S. I had also snagged this link from an earlier discussion, which might have some useful information. this link is OSX specific.
posted by matildaben at 5:54 AM on March 15, 2005

The Series2 TiVos do have USB2 (the very very first Series2 ones did not, but few have those) and my usb->ethernet dongle is USB2. I think, with further research, that they rate-limit ethernet transfers so as not to interfere with normal TiVo operation. They also only allow one transfer at a time. MPlayer doesn't seem like it'll work on the newer encrypted .tivo files, it does work on the old Series1 .ty files however. The Sonic MyDVD looks the best option, but sadly it's not going to work out today for me... not enough time. With the show transfer, DVD transcoding, DVD burning, DVD ripping it'll take about 2 hours for each Simpsons episode. Big Media wins again!

thanks all! I at least learned a lot about all this!
posted by neustile at 5:57 AM on March 15, 2005

You can still get the mplayer homepage, and the patent warning may in fact just be an eye-catching way to announce their disapproval of the proposed EU software patents. As far as I know, nobody is being shut down yet, but it certainly is likely if software patents are adopted. (I may be really behind on this issue, though.)

Also check out VLC, which is based on mplayer and works very well for me with media I otherwise couldn't get working. I don't have any first-hand experience with .tivo files, but good luck!
posted by odinsdream at 8:17 AM on March 15, 2005