Does Anyone Use Their Tivo Like I Do?

[TivoZorro]

I have an 80 Hour DT Tivo and a Series 2 80 Hour Tivo. Both are connected to my network with the wrieless Tivo Adaptor. Before I purchased my DT I had transfered all of my shows from my Series 2 to two external hard drives. Now I transfer all of my shows from my DT to the hard drives. Then when I am ready to watch them I transfer them to the Series 2 80 Hour in the spare bedroom downstairs. They wait for me there until I decide what I want to watch and I transfer them to my upstairs DT Tivo which is where I watch TV. No longer does it matter how many hours my DT Tivo will hold because it basically stays empty with everything being tranfered to the externals. It may seem like I am adding an additional step but it works for me. The Series 2 Tivo is more like a storage Tivo for me. Although when the fall season starts it will handle shows on nights with conflicts.

[classicsat]

To a certain degree, I do. I have the better part of a 200 GB USB drive filled with TV recordings from the TiVo. mostly thoufg, itis record, delete, as I have a 160 GB drive in my TiVo.

[ChuckyBox]

Does Anyone Use Their Tivo Like I Do? [ ... ]
Yes, it seems likely that other obsessive-compulsive people would do things like that.

[gnacey]

I NEED to set up an external HD for my Tivo. I am constantly having stuff "not recorded" because of there not being enough space - meanwhile, it's an 80 hr Tivo, and I have only 16 hrs saved on it. Tivo tech support gives me giberish about both the quality settings and the season pass manager, and how many shows are "planned" to record, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I can see deleting when the thing is full, but not BEFORE it's full - anyway, I'm trying to stay calm here. The first two people in this thread have used additional Tivos and external hard drives. I gave my first Tivo to another "convert", so I need to use an additional hard drive. Can someone give me the details as to how I can do this, and how do I then tell programs to "move" to the hard drive, and then "move back" so I can watch the program. This may save my from deep clinical depression, then losing my job, my family abandoning me.... you get the picture :( . All "Tivo help for dummies" will be GREATLY appreciated :cool:

[jjberger2134]

I NEED to set up an external HD for my Tivo. I am constantly having stuff "not recorded" because of there not being enough space - meanwhile, it's an 80 hr Tivo, and I have only 16 hrs saved on it. Tivo tech support gives me giberish about both the quality settings and the season pass manager, and how many shows are "planned" to record, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I can see deleting when the thing is full, but not BEFORE it's full - anyway, I'm trying to stay calm here. The first two people in this thread have used additional Tivos and external hard drives. I gave my first Tivo to another "convert", so I need to use an additional hard drive. Can someone give me the details as to how I can do this, and how do I then tell programs to "move" to the hard drive, and then "move back" so I can watch the program. This may save my from deep clinical depression, then losing my job, my family abandoning me.... you get the picture :( . All "Tivo help for dummies" will be GREATLY appreciated :cool:


First you need to learn about Multi Room Viewing (MRV). A link can be found here (http://customersupport.tivo.com/knowbase/root/public/tv2018.htm?).
MRV is used for transferring shows between TiVo's on the same account.

Another thing you need to learn about is transferring shows to your PC. This can be accomplished by downloading TiVo Desktop from the TiVo website. You will then be able to manually transfer shows between your TiVo and your PC. From there you will have the ability to move the file to an external HD. To move the file back to the TiVo, you will need to transfer the show via the menu selection on the TiVo and then wait for the download. Transfer times vary based on your network and depends on the recording quality.

Another, possibly more economical, solution is to upgrade your hard drive that is in the TiVo. You can buy a 250GB-300GB drive on sale for under $100. Then just image the drive with the TiVo software and you have greatly expanded your storage capacity. There is no fuss with transferring and all of your shows are available to you immediately on the TiVo.

[TivoZorro]

Yes, it seems likely that other obsessive-compulsive people would do things like that.

LOL! I thought about that when I wrote the post that I'm becoming another Monk! Mainly I do it to keep things from getting deleted off the Tivo when I am away from home. I will be pet sitting a total of ten days in July and a combined three weeks in August and September. Things can build up on the Tivo during those times and then I will get them on the hard drive when I get back.

And because of the pet sitting and all of the computer work I do for a local organization I'm way behind on my tv shows. I've got five months of episodes of one show and four months of another. At one point this spring I had over 100 GBs filled with shows on my one hard drive.

[Deacon West]

Count your blessings. I wish I had some catching up to do in the summer doldrums.

[TiVo Troll]

Yes, it seems likely that other obsessive-compulsive people would do things like that.

Yep; you betcha!

I've finally worked out the perfect compromise for achieving what I want from a DVR.

The cheap way of doing (very) roughly the same thing as I've obsessively assembled, for as low as about $135 after rebate and no service fee, would be to buy a "Toshiba TiVo DVD Recorder w/TiVo Basic". (Search eBay with the quoted description.)

But I want more. So here's what works for me:

There are 3 DVR's; a Series 2 80 hour Lifetimed Tivo; a ReplayTV 5040 upgraded w/320GB HD connected to a cable box so that its days long recording buffer is never dropped, and an LGB LRM-519 w120 GB HD plus an external 500GB USB HD, connected to a Philips HDRW720/17 DVD Recorder w/120GB HD (and more importantly a 6 hour ongoing recording buffer, any portion of which can be selectively recorded as a permanent HD recording and/or DVD,) which can be switched to any of the DVRs' ouputs.

The HDRW720's recording buffer is maintained through channel changes. The recorder employs TV Guide+ EPG. TV Guide+, while it has limited capabilities, isn't terrible, but still has one major inbred flaw. TV Guide+ receives data from designated OTA channels without requiring phone calls but components using it must be turned off to aquire EPG data. So bye-bye to the HDRW720's ongoing 6 hour recording buffer. But using the DVD recorder in conjunction with the DVR's, I just turned off TV Guide+ and record without it. Recordings can be extended in 30 minute segments for longer than the 6 hour buffer. But a recording (not the buffer)can be ended at any time by merely changing channels.

The HDRW720 is the most difficult to learn how to operate video component I've ever used. (For example, ending a recording before its prescheduled duration is strangely not covered by the manual.) Its remote is a miserable mishmash of seemingly randomly placed buttons. But hiding under its awkwardness the HDRW720 is a real gem. It's relatively stable except for glitches associated with TV guide+. There is method behind its superficially confusing madness.

The HDRW720 has complete editing facilities except for playlist editing. IOW, you can eliminate segments and/or cut a program into multiple segments, insert or delete chapter markers, change the index picture, edit the title name, but you can't change the order of segments.

So I've basically got a TiVo with a functional 6 hour recording buffer and complete editing facilities. Certainly not every TiVo user's desire but it works and enables me to watch TV my way!

[juanian]

Me -- you bet! I am currently out of town, and I use Galleon to automatically transfer shows from my lowly 60 hour TiVo to a PC hard drive (an old Win 98 PC). Galleon lets you set up rules to transfer shows onto a PC (or Mac) based on a variety of criteria (like words in the title and such).

I generally transfer shows off of my 60 hour onto a 140 hour, just because my 60 hour is clogged up with some shows that I don't want to transfer off (long story).

Before I left on my trip, I also transfered shows off the 140 because it might be starting to fail. When I attempt to transfer one specific show episode off of the TiVo, it reboots (well, this happened twice, and it seems to have rebooted at the same point in the transfer; once I get back, I can research it more, but my departure time was approaching fast, and I decided to make a copy of everything stored on it before I left, "just in case").

I recently found 300GB 7200RPM Maxtor drives for $89 (no rebate required), so I just bought one, and added an external enclosure (USB-2 and Firewire, $40), it makes a fairly inexpensive place to temporarily store lots of shows. (I don't know if my 140 hour can handle a larger drive or not -- must look at other posts one of these days!)

I do transfer shows back to a TiVo to watch them at a later time. Since I am "Mac-based", that is the only way I can view the shows (at the moment). But, even when (?if?) TivoToGo comes to the Mac, it is just simpler to view the shows from the TiVo directly (at least based on what I have seem from using WMP on a PC).

So (after a few rambling paragraphs), I confirm - I do essentially the same thing you do. Now, if I had a TiVo with lots of disk space (or, a TiVo that would support connecting external hard drives), I'd really be happy. But, i have neither, so I do what I can.

OCD? Nope (I don't think so, but I have let TiVo help me watch all of some old shows, like the original Twilight Zone episodes. I've seen all of the TZ shows, except for a few that never seem to be shown. I checked this weekend's TZ marathon on SciFi this weekend, and the shows were still not shown -- what's up with that?!?), but I digress again (which is a problem of mine!).

And let me ask you this -- I have had a situation occur a few times where I was transfering a 1 hour show (Basic quality) between TiVos, and I had much more than an hour available, but it wanted to alter the Save Until time of, like 6 hours worth of shows, or it would want to adjust (or not record) shows that were not going to be recorded until like a week later. Since it sets transfered shows to be saved for up to 2 days, why would this only affect recordings that would take place a week later? Has this happened to you? (Maybe not, if you keep your TiVo fairly empty.)

[ZeoTiVo]

its an algorithm based around how your season passes are set (KUID, KUSN) and how many shows are scheduled out. I use a lot of KUID and see these warnings as well even when I have 8 suggestions some times. Not a big deal though if you do keep watching the shows and removing them

[mr.unnatural]

(I don't know if my 140 hour can handle a larger drive or not -- must look at other posts one of these days!)
It can most definitely handle larger drives. You just need to make sure you have an LBA48 aware kernel (OS version 6.2 comes with one) and a Linux boot CD that supports large drives (i.e., the ptvupgrade boot CDs).


Another thing you need to learn about is transferring shows to your PC. This can be accomplished by downloading TiVo Desktop from the TiVo website.
TivoToGo degrades the image. There are better ways to transfer shows to your PC but we aren't allowed to discuss them here.

[GoHokies!]

TivoToGo degrades the image. There are better ways to transfer shows to your PC but we aren't allowed to discuss them here.

This is the first I've heard of this - can you elaborate? Much like the others, I've recently been using my computer as a "lifeboat" for .tivo files, and been transfering them back to the Tivo to watch. You're saying that somewhere in the transfers I'm loosing quality?

[juanian]

TivoToGo degrades the image. There are better ways to transfer shows to your PC but we aren't allowed to discuss them here.First I've heard about it too. I thought the re-encryption was a lossless conversion. (And thanks for the info on the upgrade. Now that my old 60hr is out of extended warranty, I'll look into the upgrade.)

[supasta]

Im am in the market for a second DT TiVo VERY soon (today) and am planning on using the combo of 2 DT models in a similar fashion as you do.

[mattack]

OCD? Nope (I don't think so, but I have let TiVo help me watch all of some old shows, like the original Twilight Zone episodes. I've seen all of the TZ shows, except for a few that never seem to be shown. I checked this weekend's TZ marathon on SciFi this weekend, and the shows were still not shown -- what's up with that?!?), but I digress again (which is a problem of mine!).

You do realize that the reruns are generally hacked to bits, right? (For all shows, not just TZ.. Though I think it's Sci-Fi that *sometimes* runs TZ in 35 minute timeslots, so hopefully those are uncut versions with the current de facto standard amount of commercials.)

Anyway, the season of hour long episodes isn't typically syndicated, and there's a few more episodes that aren't syndicated for subject matter reasons, and a few more "lost" episodes that I don't think are currently syndicated but were shown in one or two two-hour "movie" format (3-4 eps in a row, I think one of them had one of the hour long eps) in the late 80s or early 90s.

All seasons have been released on DVD season sets, in "Definitive Editions", though unfortunately netflix hasn't gotten them.. I should suggest they get them.

[juanian]

I decided to look at tv.com to see what's up with the "missing" episodes (which is where I retrieved the original list of episodes).

"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" (http://www.tv.com/the-twilight-zone/an-occurrence-at-owl-creek-bridge/episode/12728/summary.html) - This episode was actually a french film broadcast as a Twilight Zone episode, and may have only been broadcast twice. Intriguing enough for me to try and find a DVD with it.

"The Encounter" (http://www.tv.com/the-twilight-zone/the-encounter/episode/12737/summary.html) - tv.com says "This is one of the original episodes that was not shown in syndication, apparently due to protests from viewers after its initial broadcast."

"In His Image" (http://www.tv.com/the-twilight-zone/in-his-image/episode/12688/summary.html) - Doesn't seem to be any reason why I haven't seen this one, but . . .

So, that's what I've missed, and now I have a better understanding of why. (I do know that many are chopped up; this is especially evident in one episode that had a 'repeating" sequence, and one of the flashback parts was cut out of each sequence.)

And not to further take this thread off-topic, but there are many "Amazing Stories" episodes that I haven't seen reshown on SciFi; they keep repeating about half the episodes, but not the ones I'm not sure I've seen. (I saw most of them when they were originally aired, but I don't remember if I had seen some of them.) I do recall that many were rebroadcast clumped together as "movies", but I don't know which ones.

[puckettcg]

I do a variation of this. I recently moved one of my 80 hour TIVO's to my kids playroom's where we don't have cable. I bought a 400 hour DT Tivo - and have about 30 SP's set up for keep at most 5 episodes for the kids. It is at the moment doing 90% of my non-HD recording - and the red light stays on more than its off. (I'm using a COMCAST DVR for HD) The kids watch and delete shows (even my 5 year is an expert with the TIVO remote), and every couple of days in the morning I'll check to see how many shows are in recently deleted, and fill their box back up. I used to transfer everything to my PC before I got the 400hr TIVO, and transfer them back for viewing. But, its one less transfer this way.

[mattack]

"The Encounter" (http://www.tv.com/the-twilight-zone/the-encounter/episode/12737/summary.html) - tv.com says "This is one of the original episodes that was not shown in syndication, apparently due to protests from viewers after its initial broadcast."

Yeah, that's the subject matter one I was referring to.

The various Amazing Stories that are shown are syndicated as two-hour movies, AFAIR, not individual episodes.

Season 1 of Amazing Stories comes out on DVD on July 18th.