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From Tivo to your iPod

macgeekery.com — Hot on the heals of the Tivo DRM being broken: automatically download, convert and transfer Tivo file to your iPod.

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  • ahknight, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I'm about three hours into this method and it's converted several hours of TiVo video already. :D
  • TheCheeks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4THANK YOU! I was honestly looking for a way to do this last weekend. My almost full 320gig external is about to be completly full.
    • Jrr6415sun, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I was seriously wondering if there was something like this yesterday when I went on a 5 hour trip and had to leave home my tivo.
  • audioscience, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Good to know for when I get an iPod that plays video.

    And now Mac/Tivo users have nothing left to complain about!
    • TheCheeks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4My life as a Mac and Tivo user is complete.
  • capecodcarl, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1How do you know they just won't patch this somehow in the next update of their software? I have never bought a TiVo specifically because they are too unfriendly to the customer regarding what you can do with the video you've recorded. It should be irrelevant to TiVo what I do with my video files after their box has recorded them just as it is irrelevant to Sony or Toshiba what I do with my VCR tapes after their devices have recorded shows on them. MythTV FTW.
    • grgt1994, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4FYI - You can basically do whatever you want with TiVo content once you pull it over to your computer. And they don't care. You can warehouse shows on your PC's HD for later viewing on any of your networked TiVo's. You can dump it to a format compatible for your iPod or PSP - automatically done by the TiVo desktop software. You can tell the desktop software the shows you like copied to your computer, and it will dutifully do so on it's own. You can burn it to CD or DVD for viewing or archiving. Even stripping the DRM is a simple, painless affair.

      Just thought you should know, your reasons for never buying one are gone.
  • bluechicken, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Anyone know if this works with the cable company's DVR box? Or know of something like it?
  • squidmarks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Check out http://www.ipodifier.com. Free software that will take TV content from a wide variety of DVR apps (SageTV, BeyondTV, WMCE, TiVo, MythTV), transcode it for the iPod and automatically upload it to iTunes and sync your pod. It also allows you to manage which shows and how many get sent to the iPod.
  • spdorsey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I use OS X, and I am not a shell scripter or a software engneer.

    I really do appreciate all of the hard work that these people have put into this effort. That being said, I cannot decipher instructions like "The Java JRE bin directory must be in you system PATH environment variable."

    I have a series 2 TiVo which I would DESPERATELY love to pull content from to archive. If this is the answer, I'll have to wait for a GUI solution. I just want to see the list of movies on the Tivo in one window, and then be able to copy them to my Mac so that I can transcode them to .mp4 or whatever Quicktime codec I choose.

    I'll be on the lookout for this in GUI. I really hope it is on the horizon, for the sake of the millions of non-script-mokeys like myself.

    But many thanks to the guys working hard on this.
  • bluechicken, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Here's another question... how do you hook your computer/laptop up to the DVR? Is there a specific cable that's needed? Thnx.
  • kevincupp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I use TVHarmony, it does everything. You just tell it which show you want and the file format you want it in, and it will download it from thw TiVo and encode it for your iPod.
    • ahknight, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Solutions like that don't work on Linux or Mac. This does, and is a good stopgap until someone does a full application for the Mac.
  • cavalier, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I'm mixed on this. I tried for a good set of hours to DirectDump tivo files to MPG and then convert them to H.264 or something iPODdy. After a good chunk of time and a batch of crap files I saw the $25 utility from TiVo, said frig it, and bought it. The next day I had a whole army of TiVo shows properly labelled with meta data on my iPod.

    My time was worth the $25, but if I'd known two weeks later it would have been worked out, wellll... ;)

  • darobu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This article is really about getting Tivo content to a Mac, therefore the title should read "From Tivo to your Mac". There are already several solutions for Windows/iPods -- several have been mentioned in comments here.

    I can't wait to try it.
    • ahknight, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The last part talks about getting it to the iPod. The format described in the transcoding section is compatible both with the Mac and the iPod.
  • omgitsmit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Where did he get a 10 foot tall ipod at? O_o
  • griz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2So there is really no excuse why Tivo has not offered this for Mac users already. I'm guessing pressure from Apple.
    • hargreae, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The final output is DRM-less, and I'm sure the networks don't want to allow TiVo to have TiVoToGo functionality unless DRM is involved. That is why there is no Mac version.
    • ahknight, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'd buy that if the Windows version didn't allow one to make DRM-less files, but it does. If you get the premium version of the desktop software it will make plain-jane iPod video files for you as well.

      They're just flat-out ignoring the Mac. There's no reason for it.
  • dvdrtrgn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Thank you! And thanks for the launchd tutorial!
  • cooldimens, on 10/12/2007, -0/+01. How to convert .tivo to AVI, MPEG?
    2. How to convert .ty to AVI, MPEG?

    Read here:

    http://dvdsoft.us/tivo-ty-convert-to-avi-mpeg.htm
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