Issues with the new TiVo DVD-Rs (with update)

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Issues with the new TiVo DVD-Rs (with update)

Just got this as a suggested post from Kevin Reynen:

TiVo need to put in GIANT RED LETTERS a disclaimer regarding using DVD-R TiVos and Home Media feature:
DISCLAIMER: While you can view content recorded on a standard Series2 TiVo on a TiVo with DVD burning functionality using the TiVo Home Media function, you CANNOT burn this content to a DVD.

I imagine that there are other people are going to purchase a DVDR enabled TiVo assuming that this would work. It doesn't and neither TiVo, Humax, or Pioneer have been very upfront about this. You can read more about my issues with this on my blog. -- Kevin

Pretty surprising that TiVo would bake DRM into their new DVD recorders like this. Even though you can freely record shows from your DVD-R that has TiVo, you can't record any shows transfered from another new TiVo in your house. Doesn't that seem odd? What if you wanted to backup your favorites from your old TiVo to your brand new DVD recording TiVo? Isn't that a perfectly legal and expected use for customers?

I have to concur wholeheartedly with Kevin here, I see no reason why TiVo tries to protect recordings from other TiVos in your very own house. That's like having two VCRs in your house that can't play tapes on each other. It's another stupid example of "attack of Digital Rights Management for your own good."

UPDATE: Megazone rightfully explains that this isn't due to DRM or studio issues, but is hardware related.

by Matt Haughey October 16, 2004 in TiVo

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I wouldn't be surprised if this was yet another thing they had to do to keep the MPAA and other lobbies off their back for letting consumers do what they want with their own hardware.

Posted by: B.K. DeLong at Oct 16, 2004 5:31:27 PM

This has nothing at all to do with DRM. Nothing in the least.

It is technical. I've had an 810H for a year, and I've talked to people at TiVo about this a few times. The issue is simple.

Standard TiVos do not record in a DVD compliant format. The MPEG settings are different, and the audio encoding is wrong as well. The units would need to transcode the content, and that's beyond the capabilities for the HW to do reasonably.

Now, you also can't record content MRV'd between multiple DVD-RW units. I asked about that, and that's a problem fixable in software - but there just hasn't been demand. There is meta-data required for the DVD burning, and that meta-data is not currently transferred by the MRV process because it isn't reqired for anything else. Since few people are going to buy multiple DVD burning units, and why MRV the content to burn if there is a burner on the unit with the content in the first place, it just isn't a priority change to make to MRV. It wasn't including in MRV because the MRV protocol pre-dates the DVD-RW systems. This is just an issue of finite resources and engineering priorities.

The solution to the first problem is TiVoToGo. Instead of an 810H, you can have your RAIT (Redundant Array of Independent TiVos) and connect them all to a PC with a burner. The PC can do the transcoding. It'd also let you edit the footage, etc - more power and flexibility then the DVD-RW unit anyway.

Posted by: MegaZone at Oct 16, 2004 7:11:50 PM

MegaZone is right. This is not DRM, but an encoding/hardware issue and I said that in my full post...

http://blog.evankai.com/archives/000500.php

"I called Pioneer and TiVo to see if there was a way around this, but they said they weren't trying to prevent us from doing this... it was a codec/compression issue. OK, fine. I can see that having the additional DVDR hardware in one box would give you options the standard Series2 wouldn't have for encoding, but TiVo needs to make potential customers aware of this limitation."

Matt went and submitted this to BoingBoing, so I'm off to try to correct this there too.

Posted by: Kevin Reynen at Oct 17, 2004 10:55:57 AM

I sent Cory an update shortly after megazone posted here, to ask for an update to the post. Sorry I flubbed the news a bit, I didn't see the explanation the first time around.

While it's not DRM, it is a bummer the hardware can't support this common use-case. If I bought a DVD burner today, the first thing I'd want to do is move recordings off my other boxes to disc.

Posted by: Matt Haughey at Oct 17, 2004 11:20:54 AM

The whole situation is frustrating because the documentation that shipped with the Pioneer is the only place we read that this wasn't going to work. I realize that not everyone has multiple TiVos, but if your target audience is early adopters, isn't it safe to assume that some of them are going to want to do this? This just reinforces my view that an improved version of an open source PVR like MythTV will eventually become the standard. As often as codecs change online, how can a closed system like TiVo hope to keep up?

Posted by: Kevin Reynen at Oct 17, 2004 1:15:16 PM

Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but can't you circumvent the whole Home Media Option thing by plugging the output from one TiVo into the input of the DVD Tivo and pressing "record"? Then when you're done, you can just record it to DVD, right?

Might seem like a bit of a painful workaround, but really, how often do you need to record from one TiVo to another, then record to DVD? Once? Twice?

Posted by: sixtoe at Oct 18, 2004 9:04:00 AM

I would do it ALL THE TIME!! Essentially, this would allow me to have two Tivos record different shows at the same time and be able to burn either to DVD. Also, it would let me offload some of my "stored content" on my current Tivo. For instance - I now have 107 episodes of "Good Eats" - essentially a great video cookbook. I would LOVE to free up that space on my Tivo, but that means seven video tapes and a free fifty hours in which to "Save to VCR," then some kind of indexing situation to be able to find them on a degrading, outdated mode of video storage. If I could MRV them to a DVD-R Tivo, I could queue them up and burn them in big bunches unattended.

Posted by: Patrick at Oct 18, 2004 10:52:41 AM

The claim that this limitation is NOT necessarily true.

If you have TWO Pioneer 810-H units, and transfer a show from one to the other, you cannot burn the transferred show to DVD.

Hmmmmm.

Posted by: Nathan at Oct 23, 2004 9:45:09 PM

Sixtoe,

That is what we're doing but you can't cue up several shows to play and record in succession, so you have to do this in real time. You also have to manually enter the program information if you want it to appear on the DVD.

We did not try to transfer programs between DVDR versions. I will test that after we are done with the project Nov 2.

- Kevin

Posted by: Kevin Reynen at Oct 24, 2004 7:01:53 AM

With Tivo to Go, why would anyone have a combo DVD Recorder/TIVO unit? Why not just have Tivo standalones and transfer everything to computer HD, then burn to DVD?

Posted by: Jerry at Oct 24, 2004 7:54:04 PM

This is just an example caring more about money than their customers. But hacks abound if you know where to look(I don't, but I guarantee that if I had a tivo, you'd be hearing about my results). My advice:

1st day: Do about 1-2 hours of hardcore tivo info surfing and keep notes of any message boards and software. Sign up on message boards if you even suspect the people there can help you.

2nd-14th Spend about 15 minutes to an hour each day surfing your posts and applying the information you obtain where necessary.

Replace "tivo" with anything from "George Bush" to "Shake-n-Bake recipes" and any problem worth researching can be solved.

Btw, if you follow this advice, take the time to use the Copy and Paste option to tell people about your experiences. Everybody appreciates help(Apologies to those easily offended; my advice was dead serious, though)

Posted by: Jason Gopher(not real last name) at Oct 26, 2004 8:00:19 PM

can you burn any movies off your tv on the new tivo burner.
please reply!
thank you

Posted by: mike malone at Jan 16, 2005 8:08:37 AM

OK, so, I'm still not clear ... if I buy a DVR record ... can't I just cue up a show and hit play and start the DVD recording ... just like a VCR?

Unlike some, I'm not looking to transfer a lot of content from Tivo to DVD, just a movie once in a while. So, having it record in real time like a VHS doesn't bother me.

Posted by: Howard Owens at Feb 26, 2005 10:19:00 PM

From my research, one of the early posts here is correct - the format on a TiVo DVR recording is not the same as DVD. So no, you cannot record to your DVD-R in real time. However, a software product called MyDVD from Sonic (see sonic.com) allows conversion of the TiVo file to DVD format so you can burn, say, a movie you recorded on your TiVo DVR to a DVD-R on your PC. TiVoToGo, a service from TiVo, allows this (using Sonic's software), but you must have a TiVo Series2 DVR. And if you're like me and own a DirecTV TiVo DVR, you are out of luck. I've got a question in to Sonic's support desk to find out if I can use a video capture card on my PC to record a TiVo program, then use MyDVD from Sonic to convert the file to DVD format.

Posted by: Mike S at Feb 28, 2005 10:27:42 PM

I down loaded trial of Sonic MyDVDStudio to my computer .. I have recently gone to VoIP telephone with Vonage and my TiVo could not get a clean enough line to call for nightly updates .. so I am happily using the TiVo desktop to update schedules and even program from afar .. the problem is that I have transferred a bunch of programs to my Dell hardrive and when I try to use Sonic MyDVD starts a project and then it spends a huge amount of time changing the video code then gives me a message that it has to close down .. and then sends a message to MSFT .. I have also gotten a message that my DVD writer is not set correctly .. Sonic hasn't answered my questions .. any suggestions for another DVD software that I can use to successfully write DVDs of my TiVo recorded programs? thanks

Posted by: pedro at May 21, 2005 9:53:02 AM

To the recommendation of connecting the output of one Tivo to the input of a second as a means of transerring - this would result in a significant reduction in quality. These devices use lossy compression. The copy will be subject to two passes of lossy compression and will look terrible.

Posted by: Dave at Jul 12, 2005 1:13:22 PM

First off, MyDVD (Now owned by Roxio) is the ONLY program to support the TiVo format. Secondly, make sure you have TiVo desktop 2.0 installed and NOT 2.3 or whatever. They removed functionality. If you have a Series 2 then TiVo To Go works fine. Also, many non-TiVo recorders by companies such as Panasonic record to a DVD using a normal codec so you can use one of those instead but I don't think they support TiVo To Go as well but they do use DVD-RW disks so you can edit them and then just erase the media and use it again and then burn the edited version to a DVD-R disk if you want to have edited versions. The previous run-on sentence was supplied free of charge.

Posted by: Advisor at May 18, 2006 4:04:14 AM

Roxio Creator 8 & 9 will decode and burn a playable DVD to disk. It takes a long time to do it but it does work.

Posted by: scottc at Oct 29, 2006 7:17:36 PM

Issues with the new TiVo DVD-Rs (with update)

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