My Blog

Tag: TiVo

  • Tivo Series 3 Backup

    I was surprised to find out in the last few days that you can backup your TiVo internal hard drive and subsequently also upgrade/replace it.

    We have two TiVo’s and unfortunately the WD DVR expansion units we had on both have long since died unfortunately, and now I know we can upgrade the internal drive. I pulled one of our units apart and hooked up the drive to a Windows XP machine and created a truncated backup. Just incase, below is a screen grab from the Windows application I used.

    tivo-a708

    After you select the drive, you can run a backup of the drive. Which I did quite promptly.

     

  • Decoding TiVo files as downloaded from TiVo series 3

    I’ve always been meaning to determine how one can decrypt the *.tivo files as saved out from the TiVo units by the TiVo Desktop application.

    Turns out it wasn’t as hard as I thought, just took some research. Found an application called tivodecode, but the binary I found I couldn’t get to work. But I eventually came across the page here. Which linked to a java application called kmttg, which is a good app to use instead of the TiVo Desktop one. However, the tools zip file they provide has the tivodecode binary that works on my Windows 7 x86 host.

  • TiVo bonus

    Purchased a TiVo 160gb just the other week. It’s a run out model in a brown box. I had my suspicion it was a refurbish unit, however couldn’t get a straight answer. In any case I was going to purchase one, as it was far cheaper then the current 320gb models available. It comes with 12 months warranty.

    Managed to get a bit knocked off price too. Brought it home set it up, then had to wait about 12 hours for the device to get the latest updates, then get enabled with the device name I selected. We already owned a older TiVo 160gb and I had the home networking package enabled/purchased.

    While I was waiting for it to update I noticed TiVo offering a 1Tb Expander drive by redemption. Just need to setup a Caspa Wallet, then purchase a unit between a certain time frame. Of course pay for postage costs. Submitted details and got a error. Which clearly said the unit was believed to have been previously registered prior to the offer. Contacted the people behind the email address pointed out this was a unit purchased a few days earlier and falls within the period, and isn’t excluded by any conditions. To my delight, they fixed the problem with in 2 business days and then a few days later my credit card was charged for the postage. 1Tb Expander drive arrived today and it only cost me $10 for the postage. Very happy.

  • Australian TiVO

    I’ve been a long time fan of Mythtv and have used it on and off for a number of years, however it was always a big ask to get WAF (wife acceptance factor).

    Since the launch of the Australian TiVo, I have been long interested in a purchase of a unit. It was going to be purchased to replace the Topfield 5000 my wife has used for a number of years. We had a Beyonwiz DP-S1 in the past too, but sold it as I hated it, and my wife wasn’t overly keen either.

    I’ve had the TiVo hooked up now for a number of days, and it’s been going about it’s business. I setup a few season passes and from this it has recorded a vast number of suggestions. I’ve then set about rating them so that it does more of the stuff we like vs the stuff we don’t. My wife is yet to use the unit and should do so from tonight onwards, I am interested to see her feelings on the unit. I certainly like it, so much so I want to purchase the Home Networking thing before the promo ends this month, or look to buying a 2nd unit instead, then adding it to our existing account, then we will get the Home Networking option for free if we have 2 units before the promo ends. I see a huge value in having the ability for a 2 unit setup in seperate rooms being able to playback recorded content from either unit. Especially handy since our house has ethernet ports in those rooms.

    Guess I will need to make some decisions after my Wife has manged to use the first unit we purchased, however I must say I am impressed. It works rather well, even with some limitations imposed on the Australian models vs those sold in the US.