I have Series2 TiVo (specifically a Pioneer 810-H), and with the purchase of a new 5.5g ipod, I’m finally interested in moving DVR captures to my PC. Enter TiVo Desktop. Doesn’t work. Even with my firewall and virus software disabled. Not all of the services are present, and they simply won’t launch. I don’t want help with this. It doesn’t appear to be an uncommon problem, and I’m writing off TiVo Desktop as pure crap. FWIW, I have XP pro and TiVo plus. The Pioneer boxes come with free basic, and a one time lifetime charge for plus. The TiVo’s wireless connection tests OK.
I’m more interested in the open source solution Galleon, or reports that you can browse the TiVo using http protocol. I’m too dumb to get it to work. I can ping the TiVo, but Galleon doesn’t see it. Simply pointing a browser at the IP address comes up with an error.
That’s not a lot to go on, so without boring you all with everything I have tried and learned, let me give you some idea on what info I think will help:
Force sharing on the TiVo box. I’m not convinced it knows it is supposed to be sharing, since the TiVo website knows its media access key, but the box does not, despite rebooting it.
Instructions on how to browse using http. I’m not sure it is as simple as typing in the IP.
Any other 3rd party solutions?
WTF is up with Tivo, anyway? I bought the TV, the box, the service, the PC, and the network. They act like they are doing me a favor by allowing (should it ever work!) the transfer of free TV recordings. Recordings which I could manually tranfer by disk if I wanted to invest the time.
On the TiVo website, under your account information, there’s a place where you specify if transfers are allowed or not from your box. Make sure that you have said they are, or it won’t work.
If that’s not the problem, you might want to drop in at the TiVo Community forum, at http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/ and they should be able to help.
Are you using a wireless USB network adapter on your Tivo? These tend to cause problems. I’m using one and have got a few transfers to work using Tivo Desktop, but it’s slow and unreliable enough that I very rarely do it.
It’s nearly that simple. Go to https://192.168.xxx.xxx/ (your TiVo’s IP address) - just remember to use https, not http. The username is “tivo”, and the password is your media access key.
I transfer shows using TyTool, which can cut out commercials and save MPG or VOB files, but getting that set up means hacking your TiVo to install the server software and disable encryption. On the older Series2 models, you can do that just by putting the hard drive into a PC, but on the newer ones (like the DT), you have to replace a ROM chip before you can install your own software.
TiVo has basically just bent over for Big Content. Witness the “upgrade” that made it start deleting certain shows 24 hours after you watched them… or the fact that there’s still no TivoToGo for MacOS because they painted themselves into a Windows-only corner by adding a layer of encryption… or the fact that the new $800 Series3 TiVo has no TivoToGo functionality.
Yeah, I’m using a USB wireless adaptor, but it tests fine. I can connect to get program info, and can also ping the TiVo.
However, the TiVo doesn’t answer when I use HTTPS://192.168.1.3, where I’ve confirmed that it is.
From inside the TiVo website, I don’t get an option to ‘allow transfers’. Could it be that because I bought the service through the Pioneer box, that TiVo doesn’t have me correctly registered? Interestingly, I get “TiVoToGo: i,i,i” as the status within the box’s info and settings. I think this indicates that it is NOT sharing. Is there anyway to force it short of hacking?
It’s not that I don’t like the hack idea. But my model is not mentioned specifically as supported, which could mean spending hours I really don’t have trying to figure out how to get it to work on my box.
This is what I see when I click “manage my account”, and then when I click “name your DVRs” on the right, I see this. If you don’t see those options to allow transfers, and your TiVo isn’t giving you a list of shows via HTTPS (or even a welcome message via HTTP), you can probably conclude that your model doesn’t support TivoToGo.
Since the 810H is a DVD burner, I’d suggest just burning the shows to DVD-RW and then ripping them on your computer. The files you get that way will be more useful anyway, since they’ll be plain MPEG files that you can play on any system.
