Transfer from pc to tivo?

[Billy Bob Boy]

Hi, I have a massive dvd collection and a 400 disk dvd player, but i prefer the way it works with tivo as you see everything at a glance and you can have all your movies resart at the point you left off vs the 400 disk machine which can only remember 1 disk at atime.

Basicly what i want to do is get a S/A Tivo and transfer my disks to the tivo. I had an S1 which allowed me to do this but renaming was impossible. It has been 1.5 years since i tried this with my S1 and i am sure the newest software is better. Can I transfer my disks to my pc HD and transfer them to the tivo. Or transfer direct, although that would be a analog transfer.

Second do I need to pay the tivo monthly to do this or is that only for the guide. info.

I also plan to bump up the drive to accomodate the collection.


If this thread belongs in a different forum let me know as i will copy it to a notepad if it needs to be moved.


If anyone else does this let me know.
Thanx all.
If i can hook the tivo to my wireless network so much the better!

[restart88]

I don't think that's sanctioned, even if it's possible. But this sounds more approate in a hacking forum anyway.

[petew]

The Series 2 models support the GoBack features which allows MPEG files in specific formats stored on a PC to be transfered to the Tivo. Either the TivoDesktop software or the open source galleon (www.galleon.tv) is used to host the files and they are retived through an icon at the bottom of the now playing list. The file name of the .mpg file is used as the title of the recording once it reaches Tivo.

Discussion regarding DVD Decrypting is not allowed on this forum but I'm sure google will help you out. If you happen to have DVD that is not copy projected you can simply extract the .VOB file from the DVD and rename it .mpg

[TiVo Steve]

Rip your DVD collection to XviD and put the files on a PC hard drive. Then you could use VLC Player to access your collection. A 4-8GB DVD ripped to 1GB (or less) in the XviD format will let you store your entire collection on a 500GB hard drive.
I have ripped DVD's to MPEG format and transferred them to a Series 2 TiVo, but it is very time consuming!

[kb7sei]

You could also try TivoServer, check the underground forum for more info. I've tried it on DivX/XVid and MPEG2 and it worked fine for me. It takes a directory of video files on your computer and emulates a TiVo running HMO so you can use MRV to transfer the files over. You would need an S2 for this to work as S1 units can't do HMO. From the TiVo units, the computer looks like any other TiVo, and you use the stock TiVo interface to do everything. The other bonus to this is that you can use a smallish hard drive in the TiVo and keep the big disks in a computer so you can use RAID and have access to faster backup technologies. It would really stink to get everything transfered into a TiVo box just to have the drive die on you, requiring you to start over. If you have RAID, replace the dead drive and you probably didn't have any downtime. If not, restore the backup you made onto the new drive, restart TivoServer, and you're up and running again.

I don't know how much computer you need on your TivoServer box. I use my Athlon64 based WindowsXP machine and it doesn't seem to break a sweat. I get about 3x transfers over a wireless bridge network. About as fast as TiVo to TiVo transfers ever go on this network.

Another decent option is a hacked XBox with XBMC installed.