TiVoToGo for Portables Updated

fistfullast33l writes "In a followup to previous stories on Slashdot, IGN is reporting that TiVo has released a new version of TiVoToGo that now allows subscribers to transfer shows to portables such as the iPod, PSP, and Treo without the need for third-party software such as Videora. The upgrade costs $25 for current subscribers and includes the ability to transfer to desktop PCs as well. To recap, you can now transfer your TiVo shows to your laptop, desktop, and portable, as well as burn them to DVD. Time for me to subscribe to HBO."

Live television on cell phones and wifi devices

[totallygeek]

FYI, there is a great service which can be used to view live television, called MobiTV [mobitv.com].

Or I could do the whole thing for free...

[demongeek]

OR I could do the whole shebang for free [gameinfowire.com]

Before you bitch about the fee...

[Controlio]

I know that I was a little disappointed at paying the additional money for this feature... but it boils down to codec licensing. Quoth the TiVoPony:

The upgrade? While TiVo Desktop 2.3 is free (as always), and the automatic transferring of programs to the PC is also free, the ability to convert those recording for portables has a small cost. It's $24.95 to unlock that ability (there's stuff in there that we have to license, and we can't give that away to everyone for free). But it's a one time fee...you pay once, and you can convert your recordings for playback on your portable automatically, every time they're transfered.

Resolution low + Tivo still allows broadcast flag

[elrous0]

People are joking that they should alert the MPAA on this one. But, seriously, TivotoGo portable transfer seriously lowers the resolution of your recordings (you didn't expect to get that nice Mpeg-2 quality directly out of the Tivo did you?). And, of course, Tivo still allows networks to set the broadcast flag on shows to keep them from being transferred or burned to DVD at all (so far, mercifully, not many are apparently using this "feature").

So TivotoGo is hardly everything it's cracked up to be (if you want true freedom, you'll still have to set up MythTV or a similar app). Adding portable support is a step in the right direction. And it is nice to be able to transfer recordings to DVD (but only using Tivo's special codec on the encrypted transferred files).

-Eric

Re:ultimately a disappointment...

[mark0]

All TiVos, except those with service numbers that begin with "1" have USB2.0 hardware. The bottleneck is the CPU. Additionally, the complaint in the grandparent post about not being able to convert on demand is crap. You can run the conversion utility on demand... you just have to take the time to look.

Re:TiVO/Motorola == Apple/Microsoft

[cryfreedomlove]

Tivo is no where close to being the Apple of the set top industry. They are in danger of ceasing to exist because their annual revenue is still short of $200 million per year and they continue to burn their available cash [google.com] on hand. They just do not have the capital needed to create the next great leap of innovation.

Re:ultimately a disappointment...

[Anonymous Coward]

• you can't convert stuff you've already transferred over from your tivo to the mobile format. i use my PC as a backup for my tivo - as the DVR runs out of room i move stuff over to the PC and stream it from there if i want to watch it. so the ~30 shows sitting on my PC are gone off my tivo and I can't re-transfer them.
• i can't convert to both ipod and psp formats at once. true, i'm a gadget nerd and few probably own both devices, but give me the option instead of

I can't argue with the rest of your points, but it is possible to convert already transferred shows as well as the more than one format. You just can't use the GUI to do so. You'll need to use the TiVoConverter.exe program from the command line to do so. It's an undocumented feature, but it isn't too hard to figure out how to do it if you know that TiVoConverter.exe takes two parameters (the 2nd being the filename). The first parameter can be found by looking in the windows registry and the encodeprofiles.xml file in the Support directory.

That said there are better programs for converting. TiVo Desktop isn't designed for hard core users. It is designed for the Joe TiVo who just wants to transfer a few shows over and watch them on his iPod/PsP/Treo/whatever.

Re:Tracking

[Buran]

restrictive DRM that forces me to used Windows or any particular device

Considering the tool only runs on Windows, they've already managed to accomplish that.

I'm a TiVo user (have lifetime sub on my box, actually, and 160GBx2 of drive space, and might get a Series 3; we'll see) but I'm also a Mac user, and every time there's a new update, it still doesn't have a Mac counterpart.

Simply inexcusable.