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Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Here Come the TiVoToGo Hacks
Weeks and weeks ago I wrote about a new feature called TiVoToGo that would allow you to finally download shows from your TiVo into your PC for burning onto a DVD or sharing on your home network. To get the software you have to wait for your TiVo to update itself with new firmware, and I had all but given up, until last night when I found that...ta da...I had it on my system. By the time I went to bed a movie was streaming its way wirelessly to my nearby PC. The downside: over 802.11b it's a long haul. I also can't tell you how it came out yet since the file isn't done, but will report back soon.

Meanwhile, over at PVR Blog, they have assembled a collection of hacks and tips fro getting more out of the new system. Read on: "It turns out that, along with TiVoToGo, another thing added by the upgrade to version 7.1 of the operating system is a built-in webserver. From the looks of things, the functionality it offers is limited to browsing the Now Playing list and downloading recordings off the box (which are still encrypted with the TiVo's media access key); there's also an XML feed of the Now Playing information, and someone's already written a tool to parse it with PHP. (Of course, given that online, remote scheduling can be done via Tivo Central Online, that's a feature that's not really needed onboard the box itself.) I'm sure that there are other goodies hidden in there, just waiting for someone with command-line access to their TiVo to discover them.

"While Sonic did release the DVD burning program, it seems folks figured out one way of converting the files to a standard DVD format and burning with anything. This post explains how the video codec interacts with Windows, and how any DirecShow aware editor may be able to access the video files.

"What's cool about both the webserver and file conversion news is that I'm happy to see TiVo adopting features and functionality seen in the "hacker underground" tools like TiVoWebPlus,
which offer quite a number of features that I've long wished TiVo would adopt in their OS."


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TIVO 2 go?

How about www.elgato.com and eyetv?

Hardware support for international standards (for those of us who travel and spend an extended stay in the EU or Far East); HDTV built in - so: NTSC, PAL, SECAM, HDTV + built in support for streaming content over a local intranet and export to DVD +
MPEG4, MPEG2, DIVX & Quicktime (from mpeg2 & 4) and .AVI

Built in timers to record, built in editor to remove content + join recordings.

No annual fee, no snoop knowing what you record and, at present, no Broadcast Flag DRM support.

Oh, yeah ... it runs with a MAC and I'd bet a bundle that the Mini-Mac and Eyetv combo will replace many DVD / PVR packages.

www.elgato.com



 
That elgato thing looks pretty good, doubt it would replace most people's DVR's though. It would need cable card support or some type of satellite tie-in. Right now looks like it would only support the 2-125 range of channels, no premium or encrypted channels.


 
It's Feb 1st and I still have no TivoToGo. I'm I the only one not to get the update?

I signed up on the priority list during the first week of the release but because there is no confirmation for the sign-up I don't know for sure. A call to Tivo support on 1/31/2005 revealed that support staff can't offer any time frame for the roll-out of the update besides "sometime in the next 2-3 months". That's right the time frame is months. So maybe I'll get in April.

Maybe Bill or Alice can get more satisfactory answers from Tivo about:

Why Tivo customer service can't determine whether a customer signed up for the priority list.

Why Tivo customer service can't give a reasonable time-frame to a customer on when to expect the update. I would hope the release is being done using some sort of plan instead of just updating at random. I'd be happy to just know the approximate week in the next 2-3 months to expect the update.



 
I also did not get my update yet. I signed up the 2nd day fairly early. By monitoring the tivo community boards seems like i should have mine any time now. Saw a couple people who signed up with about a 6-9 hour time frame ahead of me have just gotten their updates.
Seems the reason the tivo support people don't know when you'll get the update is that the exact amount of people who would be getting the update from day to day and week to week is fluid. As they figured out the demands being placed on their support system by the quantity of people who had the upgrade were judged, they planned to up the quantity of Tivo's that received the upgrade.

Basically, they didn't want to dump the whole update out there, have way more people call their support than they could handle, and really have everyone pissed.

Also, the priority list people didn't get moved automatically to the front of the line, the priority list(in order of the date applied) is being merged in with their normal random rollout. This again I believe is a support system thing. They didn't want all the first people to get it be the ones who knew exactly what is going on, this would not let them judge support issues with any accuracy.



 
After what seemed like an eternity (right around three weeks, oh the priority list is a joke) I finally have my TTG update. Transferring over my wireless network has not been as bad as some people have reported. It took about 20-30 minutes to transfer an hour long program. While I would love to see the tranfer time be quicker, I can live them. The problem is Sonic MyDVD not installing properly. What a load. The online support says to uninstall all other DVD/Video programs. Sure no problem, I'll just uninstall the 3 other programs the behave nicely together for your steaming load. I can only hope other software manufacturer adopt the TIVO format as input.


 
Check elgato - there is direct hardware support for"
s-video, composite, coaxial DVB-s, DVB-T, DVB-C,ATSC/Cle

look at the product matrix.... www.elgato.com



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