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TiVoToGo for Portables Updated
fistfullast33l writes "In a followup to previous stories on Slashdot, IGN is reporting that TiVo has released a new version of TiVoToGo that now allows subscribers to transfer shows to portables such as the iPod, PSP, and Treo without the need for third-party software such as Videora. The upgrade costs $25 for current subscribers and includes the ability to transfer to desktop PCs as well. To recap, you can now transfer your TiVo shows to your laptop, desktop, and portable, as well as burn them to DVD. Time for me to subscribe to HBO."
A computer without a streaming video server.
Hard to believe they still don't have a Mac version. Check out the graphics on their site. The "PC" they use kinda looks like a Mac to me.
Surely such technology will only promote filesharing and pirating of movies! We must alert the MPAA and take down this horrid threat to the american way of life! Ohh.... wait... it's done by a corporation that charges you money to use it, therefore it can't be illegal or morally wrong. Carry on!
You never realize how much manually made unmanaged "linked" lists suck, till you have src.link.link.link.link...
FYI, there is a great service which can be used to view live television, called MobiTV.
Click here or here.
OR I could do the whole shebang for free
So TivotoGo is hardly everything it's cracked up to be (if you want true freedom, you'll still have to set up MythTV or a similar app). Adding portable support is a step in the right direction. And it is nice to be able to transfer recordings to DVD (but only using Tivo's special codec on the encrypted transferred files).
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
TivoToGo has been arround for a while... completly free for qute a while and already included the ability to do everything EXCEPT to the mobile devices without third party software. What they also didnt say, and what I do most of all is go the OPPOSITE route using TivoToGo.... ... you can use a third party program to encode divx avi files into mpeg and put them in your "tivo download" folder on your pc. then you can upload all of those backup movies or tvshows from your hard drive on your computer to the tivo. (on tivo your computer shows up on the now playing list) ... even on a wireless B network (all my tivo NIC supports) shows download to tivo faster than I watch them.
oooohhhhoooo!
And watch your own cable/pvr/etc with Slingbox Mobile.
From the web page:
Television programs transferred to portable devices using TiVo Desktop Plus contain information that can be used to identify the TiVo account and/or DVR from which the transfer originated.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
as an owner of both supported mobile devices (the ipod video and the psp) i found it a noble gesture, but ultimately it fails. here's why:
- first, it costs $25 to even enable the feature. their ceo says it's to help pay for the licensing costs... i guess, but it's still too pricey for a simple add-on. divide that number by five and i might consider it. especially when i have to buy a separate license for every PC i run the software from. it should be tied to the device's media access key, IMHO.
- you can't convert stuff you've already transferred over from your tivo to the mobile format. i use my PC as a backup for my tivo - as the DVR runs out of room i move stuff over to the PC and stream it from there if i want to watch it. so the ~30 shows sitting on my PC are gone off my tivo and I can't re-transfer them.
- i can't convert-on-demand. i have to go into the preferences and turn on mobile conversion, and then transfer a show from the tivo. wrong, guys, i should be able to right click on a show from the list and convert on the fly.
- i can't convert to both ipod and psp formats at once. true, i'm a gadget nerd and few probably own both devices, but give me the option instead of leaving it out. i don't get why software developers continually forget that more options = happier consumersx.
- the psp has a 480x272 widescreen. i should be able to render my tivo recordings at that resolution, but output from this app is max 320x240. which will look sad and grainy on my psp.
- they still haven't fixed long transfer times. there's no reason at all that it should take an hour to copy a 1GB file from my tivo to my PC on my 100mbit LAN.
- the transfers take a long time, so if my connection dies during a transfer or i lose power, the software should allow resuming of transfers. nope. restart it and walk away for another hour.
the featureset is tolerable for your average user, but i don't think those are the people downloading this application. consider it statistically - how many people own a Tivo and have a home network? out of those, how many bother to try to transfer shows off of the DVR to their PC? out of those, how many want to convert them for use on one of these two portable devices? the small group of users that fit into this category are likely schmoes like me that shake their head at sub-par functionality.bottom line is, it feels like tivo rushes this type of thing out the door and risks distancing themselves from the only people who are still rooting for them. writers have been sounding their death knell for a while now. where's the series 3 box? are there enough compelling features to push me to upgrade to it, if it ever comes out? what are their engineers and developers doing in their spare time, then, since we haven't seen a new product in eons? do they really not have the available time to write a five star product instead of a weak little three star app that almost cuts it?
fortunately i run mostly windows still so i won't complain about the lack of full OSX support, although i have tried their version of tivo desktop for OSX and it won't even start up on my macbook.
remember, with two free applications (directshowdump and videora/pspvideo9) you can strip out the DRM and render the video at whatever size you want for your portable devices. don't shell out $25 for a DRM-crippled, slow, clunky, low-res solution.
---
"how can the same street intersect with itself? i must be at the nexus of the universe!" - cosmo kramer
I personally hate all types of packaged media (DVD, HD-DVD, Blue HD-DVD ...) and all broadcast protocols (DVB-C, DVB-S ...)
I use my PC for everything from programming to entertainment so I hope a day well come where all media well be delivered as plain bits (streamed or not) so it would be easier for people to do whatever they want with it (store, copy, burn, ...) of course some new approaches like DRM are moving in the other direction (complicating things rather than simplifying them).
I spent the last few days attending the SCTE Tech Expo. I was really looking forward to seeing a TiVO booth, hopefully showing off their new interface for Motorola set top boxes and maybe the dual tuner Hidef box they had at CES. They were a no show (However, Moxi was there... I didn't even know they were still in business).
Motorola's big push is to get all of their product lines interacting. They had working demos of a "whole home DVR" that will let you pause on one TV and pick up right where you leave off on another, view any content on any set top, and (if DRM allows it) send video to PCs and cell phones. The box that will allow transfers to cell phones was just a cardboard box, but with a lot of handwaving, we got the idea.
I'm thinking that TiVO is going to become the Apple of the set top industry. One can only hope they will continue to be innovative. In this case, I think it is a no brainer to come up with an easy to use way to get video to handheld devices, but someone needs to just do it. A mini-SD card reader on the USB port would be a simple way to get video on my phone, although the series 2 boxes were only USB1.1, so something in the background would make more sense.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
Time for me to subscribe to HBO.
The pay movie channels really aren't all that great, IMO. Except for the homegrown series that can be pretty good, the movie selection sucks. They just repeat the same limited set of movies all month long. And if you have a cable provider that does on-demand, you can usually watch most of them for free anytime you want. For the cost of just one or two premium channels you can get a Netflix account and get just about any movie you want. Spend a month or three seriously abusing Netflix and you can end up with a pretty big collection of ripped movies which you can reencode however you want and put on whatever device you want.
Heck, I don't even have cable anymore. I used to use a MythTV box to record TV, but now I just use it to play shows downloaded from Bittorrent. That is, when it is too early to get the show on DVD from Netflix. I wasn't watching the commercials anyway, so I don't feel like a pirate. (they were being broadcast for free originally). Saves a lot of money per month. Cable is just too damn expensive.
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
See what it looks like: http://www.zatznotfunny.com/2006-06/tivo-dekstop-2 3-released/
Sure, people can pay $25.00 for something that should be given to subscribers for free.
.tivo file and it will convert to basically any format. I have no doubt there are free utilities to convert from the above formats into PSP and ipod formats.
.tivo file on the way to the desktop.
OR
One can just download TIVO2AVI/TIVO2WMV/TIVO2MPG for free. All you have to do is enter your Media code to decrypt the
The transfer time from the tivo to the desktop is ungodly for being just 1 GB for a 1 hour show. I assume this is due to the media partition being encrypted and has to decrypt to an encrypted
Let's see, $50 for basic cable, $20 extra for HBO, $15 for your Tivo subscription. That's a really big recurring cost. You could go to a lot of movies and rent a lot of DVDs for that much. Perhaps you're willing to pay a huge premium just to see the latest ep of The Sopranos without waiting for it come out on DVD. Or maybe you (shudder) spend so much time in front of the tube that it's a bargain.
But most likely, you're like most consumers: you've been programmed to shell out big money for little bits of entertainment. Now that is really a sad though.
The down rez hardly matters if you are watching these programs on your iPod, PSP, Treo, Palm Lifedrive, etc. You don't need a lot of picture quality for that; it would just be wasted hard drive space.
As to your other points, if you really want to transfer at full picture quality and if you want to strip out DRM, TiVo watermarking, broadcast flags, etc., etc., there already exist ways for you to do this. It's not hard to figure out if you know how to use a search engine and do a little digging on TiVo-related forums. It's silly to expect TiVo, Inc., to do this work for you, however, as they are subject to legal reprisals.
TiVo2Go works fine for what it is intended for: time shifting your TiVo content on to small portable devices. That is good enough for 90% of TiVo users. For the rest, the TiVo "hacking" and the TiVo HME communities have plenty of solutions to offer to fulfill their needs.
Secondly, TTG doesn't use a 'special codec' on DVD burns - if they did it wouldn't work in a DVD player. It simply decrypts the tivo transport stream and uses the same MPEG2 encoded video that's present on your tivo box. I know it's cool to brag about your mythtv box on /., but seriously, do we have to resort to making stuff up about other products to make ourselves even cooler?
That being said, I personally prefer my hacked tivo with vserver on the box and VLC as my PC viewer (see, I can brag about l33tne$$ too). I transcode (yes, and lower the 'resolution' - *gasp*) for my portable using pocket divx encoder or ffmpeg. My Mom on the other hand is quite happy with TTG for ipod transfers.
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
Even with a hacked series 2 Tivo, I still can't use TivoToGo right? I'm currently using tserver and tyshow and it's like a lot of open source software... 80% complete for 80% of the featues with 80% reliability and an 80% chance of never being completed or adequately supported. :)