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.”