The setup in our house may be a little, umm, excessive. Three TV’s, three TiVo’s, one 40Gb AppleTV, an iMac, and a couple of laptops. All but the laptops are connected via Ethernet. Two TiVo’s are Series 2 model 2400 units, and one is a TiVo HD (*). For the most part, I stream content directly from the iMac to the AppleTV, as 40Gb doesn’t really touch the size of the library. This does mean I usually have to walk over and wake up the iMac before I sit down to watch TV, but that’s no big deal.
To get content from the TiVo’s into iTunes, I use TiVo Download Manager (TDM). This freely downloadable program allows you to browse the “Now Playing” list on the TiVo’s, select programs, and queue them up for batch downloading. As each program is downloaded, TDM automagically imports it into iTunes, along with the tag information (like program name, date, synopsis, etc.). It’s really a simple program to use. The TiVo supported option for Macs is Roxio’s Toast with TiVo to Go capability. I have purchased and used Roxio’s solution, but it is a two-step process. You have to download the program, then separately instruct it to transcode each one to MP4, then drag the program into iTunes. If you’re running Windows, TiVo to Go is part of TiVo’s TiVo Desktop software. If I recall, the TiVo Desktop software is free, but regardless of whether you run a Mac or Windows, you need to pay a nominal (like $10) fee to set up your TiVo account to allow downloads.
Both solutions result in a video file that is viewable in iTunes, and is compliant with TiVo’s DRM obligations. Both solutions result in a video file that is watermarked, and easily traced back to the TiVo subscriber’s account. Roxio’s solution is even sold on TiVo’s website.
Another note: My iTunes library is much larger than the stock drive which shipped with my iMac. I have relocated the iTunes library and the iTunes database to an external Western Digital MyBook hard drive. As these are not infallible, I have an identical WD MyBook drive that I use as a backup. The vast majority of the content is unchanged from day to day (and month to month), so I just wrote a short rsync script to synchronize the contents of the two drives. Unless I’ve added a whole lot of content, this only takes five or ten minutes. The resulting backup has been tested, since I upgraded to a larger MyBook a few months ago. I simply shut down iTunes, unmounted the Media drive, and renamed the backup drive “Media” before restarting iTunes. Worked like a charm. Then I took the new, larger MyBook, named it “Backup”, and that night ran rsync again while I slept.
- The TiVo HD is in the Series III product line, and is new. TiVo’s documentation says that TiVo HD’s support TiVo to Go, but I have not confirmed this myself, either with HD or standard quality content.
You go to the YouTube section, then to “History.” If you scroll all the way up above the topmost entry, there should be an item that says “Clear History.”