New Tivo not recognized my Mac

[Noddy]

Hi i wonder if anyone can shed some light on this problem?. I had to exchange my old HDTivo (which was working fine with Roxio's Tivo Transer and iTivo) and now the new DVR is not recognized by any of the programs. The strange thing is that the Tivo can see and allows me to transfer the recordings that are already on my Mac back to Tivo. I did check and the MAK stayed the same

I would be grateful of any help

[bedelman]

Are you able to access the TiVo from the Macintosh if you go to https:// (note the "s" in there) followed by the IP address of the TiVo? You should be prompted for a user name and password. Use tivo as the user name and your 10 digit Media Access Key as the password.

If that works -- see if the TiVo shows up on the Bonjour list from Safari (you may have to enable Bonjour in the Bookmark menu or Bookmark bar)

- Bob

[Noddy]

Hi Bob,
thanks for the reply. I did try to connect and it worked fine, after checking the Bonjour bookmarks nothing is listed.

Thanks again for trying to help, any ideas what the problem might be ?

Strange it seems to be working with iTivo now but still not with Tivo Transfer

[bedelman]

TiVo Transfer uses the Bonjour protocol (as do many Mac OSX applications) to discover devices and other computers. There are some routers (and wireless bridges) that will block Bonjour -- most notably Linksys routers which come pre-configured to block it. But the setting can be changed to take care of this.

However, this wouldn't make sense in your situation because from what you wrote -- the only thing that changed is the TiVo and not any of the networking stuff, right?

I had something similar happen to me a year or more ago -- I changed my TiVo to use a static IP address which made it work (and changing back to an automatically assigned IP address worked as well after I had changed it to a static IP address)

- Bob

[Noddy]

I tried the static IP with no luck, but I'm still able to connect using iTivo and the web interface. Its not the end of the world but just strange that the Tivo Transfer will not work. I even tried un and reinstalling Tivo Transfer

Maybe I should upgarde to Toast 9 I'm using 8 at the moment.

Thanks again

[bedelman]

If it's a Bonjour issue, it won't matter what version of Toast you have. If you have more than one Macintosh, you might also have problems with iTunes music sharing or iPhoto photo sharing too.

You may want to try running Bonjour Browser (http://www.tildesoft.com/Programs.html#BonjourBrowser) from TildeSoft. It will show you all the Bonjour devices on the network that are advertising their services (it will also show the services originating on the Mac as well -- i.e. "seeing itself")

- Bob

[stevewjackson]

TiVo Transfer uses the Bonjour protocol (as do many Mac OSX applications) to discover devices and other computers. There are some routers (and wireless bridges) that will block Bonjour -- most notably Linksys routers which come pre-configured to block it. But the setting can be changed to take care of this.

- Bob
I'm afraid I'm a bit confused here. I've never owned anything except Linksys routers (3 or 4 in total), and never once have any of them blocked Bonjour. If they had, I would never have been able to share printers and other resources in my home without configuration changes, and I've never made any such changes. My current router is a Linksys draft-N model and I have no problems at all using TiVo Transfer and Popcorn. Maybe you can elaborate on this?

[Yoav]

If it's a Bonjour issue, it won't matter what version of Toast you have.

Just trying to short-circuit (I don't know what's wrong).

If it were a bonjour issue, then iTiVo also wouldn't list his tivo (he would have to connect via IP address). It sounds like iTiVo is seeing his tivo, therefore it's not a bonjour issue.

[Noddy]

Thank you all again for trying to help. I even cleared out the MAK in Tivo Transfer uninstalled it and reinstalled with no luck. Yoav (thank you for iTiVo) I think the IP from the old Tivo was still in iTivo when I connected with the new one, would that bypass Bonjour at all ?

[bedelman]

I'm afraid I'm a bit confused here. I've never owned anything except Linksys routers (3 or 4 in total), and never once have any of them blocked Bonjour. If they had, I would never have been able to share printers and other resources in my home without configuration changes, and I've never made any such changes. My current router is a Linksys draft-N model and I have no problems at all using TiVo Transfer and Popcorn. Maybe you can elaborate on this?

It may no longer apply to the newest ones, but here's a post with regard to the effect on iTunes and iPhoto from another site...To enable sharing with a newer Linksys Cable/DSL Router (I have a BEFSR41 v4.1), you need to modify your router's setup. Go to the Security page (i.e. http://192.168.1.1/Filter.htm), and down near the bottom, you'll see a setting for Filter Multicast. By default, it will be disabled -- which logically strikes me as the proper setting. However, if left disabled, sharing won't work -- change it to Enabled, save the settings, and you'll be good to go!

[bedelman]

Just trying to short-circuit (I don't know what's wrong).

If it were a bonjour issue, then iTiVo also wouldn't list his tivo (he would have to connect via IP address). It sounds like iTiVo is seeing his tivo, therefore it's not a bonjour issue.

I don't use iTivo -- so I'm unfamiliar if it uses Bonjour or not. I know that tools like TDM use IP addresses

But that's also why I mentioned trying to see if it appears in the Bonjour menu in Safari (when it's enabled) or with Bonjour Browser.

[Noddy]

This is what I see with Bonjour Browser, I think the two Tivo enters are my iMac not the Tivo. Also I do have 3 macs and a AppleTV that work fine sharing so I guess its just Tivo Transfer :-(

[Yoav]

Thank you all again for trying to help. I even cleared out the MAK in Tivo Transfer uninstalled it and reinstalled with no luck. Yoav (thank you for iTiVo) I think the IP from the old Tivo was still in iTivo when I connected with the new one, would that bypass Bonjour at all ?

Yes.

(iTiVo uses bonjour to figure out the IP address of your tivos. If you have an IP address cached or input your own IP address, it already knows what it should talk to, and so still works).

So yeah, I guess it is a bonjour issue.

Try rebooting the tivo. Try forcing a connection back to the tivo service. If those don't help, I'd definitely suspect my hub/switch or whatever you're connected to. Bonjour uses broadcast/multicast UDP, and your router may be filtering it.

[stevewjackson]

It may no longer apply to the newest ones, but here's a post with regard to the effect on iTunes and iPhoto from another site...To enable sharing with a newer Linksys Cable/DSL Router (I have a BEFSR41 v4.1), you need to modify your router's setup. Go to the Security page (i.e. http://192.168.1.1/Filter.htm), and down near the bottom, you'll see a setting for Filter Multicast. By default, it will be disabled -- which logically strikes me as the proper setting. However, if left disabled, sharing won't work -- change it to Enabled, save the settings, and you'll be good to go!
My first router, if memory serves, was a BEFSR41, though an earlier version...but I could be remembering wrong. My current router is a Linksys WRT150N (which I'm planning to replace sometime in the near future with a Time Capsule). The "Filter Multicast" setting is not on and has always been kept turned off, since it would've caused some problems with software testing I did some time ago (developing some multicast applications for work). Yet Bonjour sharing works perfectly throughout my home. (I also don't use the 192.168.1.* IP address due to a conflict with the VPN software I sometimes use to contact my company's system, having instead switched to 172.17.1.*, but that's not an issue either.)

So none of this explains why it works perfectly for me when I've seen this and other suggestions that Linksys routers need a configuration change. Hmm. Maybe I'm just lucky. :)

[bedelman]

This is what I see with Bonjour Browser, I think the two Tivo enters are my iMac not the Tivo. Also I do have 3 macs and a AppleTV that work fine sharing so I guess its just Tivo Transfer :-(

The TiVo services will appear in a few places including HTTP -- which you're not seeing. It looks like almost all the list are singletons, but there are some with two (Apple File Sharing and Samba). You may want to try to spin those open and see what two devices it's seeing for them.

Perhaps there's a patter where wired devices work, but not wireless -- or perhaps the other way around. Or something like that -- look for commonalities to see if there's a pattern that can be determined.

[Noddy]

Well last night I received the fall update. I saw the pending restart and restarted fired up Tivo transfer and low and behold the Tivo showed up. Its there also under Bonjour, so Bob you were on the right track with the Bonjour route.

Thank you all for your input and help. :)