How do I upload videos to Series 2 without buying the desktop upgrade?

[Gregd]

There is probably a thread in here somewhere on this but I am tired of looking (after 30 mins...honest!).

I used to be able to download home video's to my Series 2 Sony last year. They are still on my Tivo now (family vids).

I tried last night to put more videos on instead of wearing out the camera over the holidays. It seems that now I have to buy Tivo desktop Plus for $25 to do what I used to for free (Running V2.5 now).

Am I just forgetting how to upload home videos or is this for real?

Thanks in advance for the help.

Greg

[greg_burns]

You can upload .tivo files and .mpeg files. The .mpg or .mpeg must be in a specific format that is compatible with Tivo. The S3 and TivoHD are more forgiving.

If you have other file types, you don't have to buy Plus. Check out pyTivo or Tivo.Net.

I would test with a .tivo file to make sure all communications are a go first.

Place a .tivo file in your My Tivo Recordings folder. If you firewall is setup right, you should see your PC's name at the bottom of your Now Playing List on your Tivo.

Good luck

[dlfl]

Your Desktop TiVo Beacon Server must be both started and resumed for this. The pesky thing has a habit of being started but paused.

The server can be controlled either by right-clicking on the little TiVo icon in the system tray or from the server menu in Desktop.

[Gregd]

So I figured it out. Maybe this thread can help others. I know there aren't many doing this but it really is easy if you are a little savvy.

The movie must be in Mpeg2 format in order for the Tivo to recognize it without the Plus upgrade. The plus upgrade allows for more formats.

I first captured from my Camera in MPEG2 format, using Pinnacle Studio software. This allows the encoding to be done while capturing and greatly reduces rendering time (I shoot in HDV so the camera first converted to DV, and then Pinnacle converted to MPEG- all on the fly!).

Then I put in my fades, transitions, cuts, etc.

Finaly I formatted in the "make movie" tab to render to a DVD quality Mpeg2.

Once rendered, I put the video into the "My Tivo Recordings" folder. Then my CPU appeared in the now playing list. Once I transfered the movie, I was able to watch.

Pretty easy.

One thing I noticed is that the movie was shot in wide screen mode (in HD) and the Sony series 2 I have does not support this 16:9 mode I think. There were light blue bars on the top and bottom of my video on the wide screen TV. Kind of odd. Like the color of the blue screen when accessing the ethernet features of the unit. Other than that the quality was very good.