TiVoToGo Launched

TiVoToGo is live!  The feature — which was announced a year ago nearly to the day — will allow people to copy shows from their TiVo box to their Windows PCs.  If you're anxious to get started follow the instructions on TiVo's site to make sure your TiVo box is updated, add a network adapter if you haven't already and download the latest version of TiVo Desktop.

For more information, be sure to check out this post from TiVoBill on the forums.  There are a bunch of caveats that go along with TiVoToGo like it not working with non-Windows computers (they're working on Mac support), DVD burning TiVos or DirecTiVos.  Then there's this DRM doozie:

Note: Not all shows may be eligible for transfer from your TiVo box to your computer. Programming providers may restrict or limit the ability to record, display, view or transfer any particular program using a variety of copy protection mechanisms.

See our post about "transitional fair use" for more about what that could mean in the future.

We'll be sure to post our impressions of the feature once we get a chance to actually use it.

Update: As pointed out in the comments, it might take weeks before the software is loaded on your TiVo box, but you can try to skip the line by signing up for a priority upgrade.

Comments

[Will Collier]

Not to rub it in or anything, but this capability has been available, for free, to any ReplayTV 4000-series-or-higher owner for years. It's called DVArchive, and it has no DRM nastiness. Downloading, archiving, and burning to DVD are painless on either a Mac or PC.

Still, I guess it's nice of Tivo to finally join the rest of us in the 21st century--even if they are charging extra for the "right" to use their crippleware...

[Kevin Breit]

I have the Hughes DirectTV TiVO. Is this available on this system or will it be in the future? I am running system version 3.something, but it's a series 2.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Joost Schuur]

TiVo Bill says it could take _weeks_ before even those who signed up for priority updates will get the new TiVo software update needed that goes hand in hand with the desktop software.

Talk about a dissapointing first impression for everyone that just got excited about the launch!

[B]

I don't see why anyone would use this when you can simply hack your Tivo and do the same thing without all the DRM crap.

[Joseph Smarr]

Note also that you need a valid MPEG-2 decoder (e.g. a DVD decoder) to play the .tivo files and if you have upgraded to XP, you may have to buy a decoder before you can use TiVo ToGo (see www.tivo.com/codec, which redirects to http://customersupport.tivo.com/knowbase/root/public/tv2176.htm). You need to do the same thing before you can play DVDs on XP, which is super-lame, and apparently TiVo has chosen or was forced to exercise similar lameness here. Anyone know of a good free decoder, or will I be foreced to pay for CyberLink/etc?

[Michael Pate]

Will, SourceForge projects don't count. After all, users of a "hacked" S1 TiVo have access to all sorts of things. But speaking of DRM,

subscribers will be able to transfer their recorded shows to PCs or laptops and take them on the road – as long as the shows are not specially tagged with copy restrictions.

The question is, will there be anything available withour the special tags by time the rollouts concludes?

[matthewp]

Any word on Mac compatibility?

[funktruck]

SBC and 2Wire are launching a set top box / PVR that makes Tivo pale by comparison:

www.gigaom.com

[Dave Donohue]

Speaking for those who have modified their TiVos to increase capacity (mine has a 300GB drive) but have been too scared/unskilled to truly "hack" their boxes, I'll be very interested to see if the 7.1 software rollout required for TiVoToGo "fixes" anything that I've modified along the way.

I've asked anyone else who has a Toshiba SD-H400 (a DVD player with integrated TiVo, and one of the last to be hacked for a capacity upgrade) to let me know when they receive the software upgrade at www.davedonohue.com - if anyone here has that model, please do let me know.

[Mike]

All this makes me glad I have a ReplayTV.

[squirrelsew]

Has anybody here wanted to do the opposite of what TivoToGo does? I'd like to upload my own personal videos TO the tivo, so I can show them to guests using my TV.

[Michael Pate]

squirrelsew, when I filled out the survey, way back on February 23rd, I stressed that that was something I wanted to be able to do. Apparently, it wasn't something TiVo was interesting in doing.

[Joel]

to mr. Joseph Smarr -
try out something for free like mplayer:
- homepage: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/news.html
- download: http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/win32-beta/MPlayer-mingw32-1.0pre6.zip

Just create a shortcut to the mplayer exe, and drag your files into the shortcut. I've found this to be the easiest solution to the problem of there being dozens of codecs I've never heard of before.

give it a shot.

[Matt Haughey]

The problem with putting video onto your TiVo is that the decoder is only good at playing TiVo's proprietary flavor of MPEG, though they could create an app that transcodes your video on your PC, and sends to the TiVo box someday. That would be cool.

[jarmb]

Does anybody know if the burned dvd's will be able to play on a set top dvd player, or only on my pc or laptop?

[joevideo]

i received my upgrade last night at EXACTLY 2 AM. The files (even in basic quality) average around 600MB for a 1/2 hour show to a full GB for an hour. And i can't burn them to DVD yet. so far, not impressed.

[Scott]

With Tivo Desktop 2.0 installed, can you download the movies from a hacked Tivo directly without the update and play them on your computer?

[Brian Stearns]

As indicated by joevideo, yeah the files are big. 630 MB for an episode of Drawn Together that is at medium quality. It will be nice when this stuff can be off loaded to dvd. I can see eating up a lot of hard drive space quite quickly.

[K9 Dave]

Just Wondering:

Any idea how long it takes for a 30 min show (medium quality) to transfer? Wireless, with USB 1.1 bottleneck, isn't a 1/2 hour show gonna take forever? Or can you begin watching on PC before the show is fully transferred? My TIVO HMO network is TIVO-to-USB/Ethernet adapter, to G-wrieless bridge, to G-router...

[Pete]

How long did it take for Tivo to upgrade your box once you requested a priority upgrade?

I asked last week, and still have not been upgraded.

[Ben]

You can sorta watch it while you're copying it. You can start watching it whenever you want during the transfer, but can only watch up until the point you started the transfer, then it ends. So you have to get up, and double-click again and fast-forward to the point it stopped. A tad inconvienient, but at least you don't have to wait for the transfer. Yes it's USB 1.1. yes it's not a speedy transfer... on a wired network, about 20 minutes for a 620mb file (which is a 30 minute show at basic quality).

[CodeMonkey]

Here is a free AWSOME MPEG-2 decoder.

DScaler: http://deinterlace.sourceforge.net/

[Grapes For Buddha]

I have a Toshiba SD-H400 and just got the Tivo upgrade yesterday. I've got a wireless USB NIC hooked up to it and I'm getting transfer rates of about 460 KB/s (or roughly 1.75 GB/hr). Unfortunately, that's not quite fast enough to keep up with playback so streaming is pretty much out.

I've also pretty much decided that the TiVo Desktop software is useless. The web page that the tivo puts up is much better (albeit unsupported). The new rev of the TiVo "firmware" opens up http and https on the device and you can login to it with a browser. Just go to https://tivo (user: tivo, password is your media access key, assuming that "tivo" resolves to the IP address of your tivo box, otherwise just use the IP). You'll have to accept a certificate but it's no problemo after that.

[Rich]

I have a Humax Tivo DVD Burner and have difficulty playing the DVDs in a) Sony Playstation II and b) Panasonic DVD Player. I realize the PS2 was a long-shot even though it manages to play other DVDs just fine. I was suprised that the Panasonic couldn't do it. It's about 5 years old, so I'm gonna chalk it up to age until I can test the DVDs on a newer unit. It plays fine in my Sony Vaio laptop DVD drive, but not in a Dell laptop DVD drive.

The general obseration is: the burned DVDs are not universally playable.

--r

[Barry]

I uploaded my first TiVo files starting yesterday. All my files are of highest quality. Takes about an hour per 30 minute show, so four hours for a movie. I downloaded the Sonic MyDVD trial software that converts the TiVo files and burns them to DVD and was not at all impressed.

I have a 2.4 Ghz XP Pro box with 1/2 Gig of RAM and it took about five hours to convert a two hour movie and burn it. The resulting DVD is of pretty poor quality; very uneven playback which is realy obvious since I chose a musical and there are syncing issues as well as skips. I waited a year for this? It is horrible.

[Garry]

I got my TivoToGo on Saturday. I transferred the Super Bowl to my laptop and now I find I cannot even fast forward or rewind.

That super sux....

Anyone know a way around that??????/

[Aaron]

>>>Has anybody here wanted to do the opposite of what TivoToGo does? I'd like to upload my own personal videos TO the tivo, so I can show them to guests using my TV.<<<

You can easily do this with a modded Xbox using XBOX Media Center. It's pretty awesome...

http://sourceforge.net/projects/xbmc

I have a share on my home network's main media machine for video and you can connect to it with the Xbox and stream the video over your home network to any TV connected to your Xbox. You need to get a mod chip, but they're pretty cheap these days.

[Rob]

Go to Walmart, and for $99, buy a DVD-R recorder... Solves lots of problems... and is the cheapest solution...

what benefit is there if a show takes 2x as long as it's length to transfer? Yeah, you can edit out the commericals, etc, but all that takes more time, etc... THEN you still have to encode a DVD anyways!! plus, ties up your Computer, etc...

The amount of quality you will lose going this route is nothing compared to the added compression needed for encoding to DVD, which is why people have complained about the quality... plus no Drop Frame issues (audio will not be out of sync)...

Someone needs to give TIVO some real competition! Or, at least a series 3 box should not need a stupid USB to Eithernet adapter (major bottleneck!) The new boxes should have FW and Cat 1000 base T ethernet... cheap enough to do...

My 2 cents