TiVo Desktop 2.4 Preview!

[Solver]

http://tivo.com/4.9.4.1-2_win.asp

Preview exciting new features coming soon in the next TiVo desktop software release. Download TiVo Desktop 2.4 Preview Release—watch video downloaded from the web on your Series2™ box and dramatically enhance the clarity of your digital photos on your Series3™ box. Includes all the features of TiVo Desktop 2.3.


I.m downloading now...

[windracer]

Looks like this thread beat this one by a minute, but there are more replies over there.

edit: just realized that all of the 2.4 Preview threads were started by you.

[Solver]

Originally Posted by windracer

Looks like this thread beat this one by a minute, but there are more replies over there.

edit: just realized that all of the 2.4 Preview threads were started by you.

Yea, I put the news here, where it should be, and the coffee house forum where most TiVo fans start out. I then realized that the S3 people should also get the news. Looks like the S3 users are the most verbal.

[Bluesfan77]

Has anyone who has a "plus key" tried this yet? I'm trying to figure out if it's worth th $25 or if I should just stick with tivo.net

[Enrique]

Originally Posted by Bluesfan77

Has anyone who has a "plus key" tried this yet? I'm trying to figure out if it's worth the $25 or if I should just stick with tivo.net

I would say stay with tivo.net as tivo.net lets you transfer more formats + it is 100% FREE.

[MonroeEfford]

Hate to ask such a basic question...but here it goes...

Once you download a video from Utube, etc., how do you then save it to your computer so that it can the be placed in your Tivo Desktop video folder?

Thx in advance.

[jtown0620]

Tried it last night, downloaded DLTV and some stuff from Rev3, it worked great the only thing it won't transfer is .VOB files. But it does take a minute for your TiVo to read the pc also I did have to reboot after I downloaded the files. But both of those issues were mentioned in the read me documentation.

[windracer]

Originally Posted by MonroeEfford

Once you download a video from Utube, etc., how do you then save it to your computer so that it can the be placed in your Tivo Desktop video folder?

YouTube is using Flash. One way (I know of) to "download" the video to your local PC would be to use something like the Tamper Data extension for Firefox to figure out the true URL of the .flv file.

But, in this specific example, I don't think TiVo Desktop 2.4 supports Flash video (.flv) so you probably won't be able to upload YouTube videos through it anyway.

[cherry ghost]

Originally Posted by MonroeEfford

Hate to ask such a basic question...but here it goes...

Once you download a video from Utube, etc., how do you then save it to your computer so that it can the be placed in your Tivo Desktop video folder?

Thx in advance.

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2584/

but like windracer said, 2.4 doesn't support .flv. Use tivo.net

[ThatBozGuy]

So while conversion is a large part of focus of this release, there is a new way for the now playing list to be populated that is a vast improvement.

The drag and drop shortcut for multi directory scanning is the right direction but comes up just short and I hope its only because of the preview status.

While it now accepts multiple layers and reads subdirectories it should retain the directory structure. Right now every file goes into one big list, no grouping but the point of sub directories is often to group seperately. If you have hundreds of files, which this release will encourage and many of us have huge archives already, the list is simply unnavigable.

For example I have a large amount of series on an archive, under the archive tree it is setup by season, so for example :

Las Vegas: Season 1
Season 2
Season 3

And the episodes are named by title. 01 Pilot, 02 Title goes here and so on
But since there is no grouping all the shows end up in the list alphabetically which would end up being 01 pilot, 01 episode from some other show 01 episode from some other season 01 some movie and so on.

So some grouping needs to be retained or possible.

In addition since conversion is a major movement some form of info manipulation needs to be implemented. It doesnt have to be direct editing of the xml header all though that would make the most sense but it could be as simple as an additional text file with the same name and a different extension being read with each file that contained title, description, recorded or altered date and so on to be displayed in the lists.

My 2 cents for now.

Boz

[windracer]

Originally Posted by cherry ghost

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2584/

That's a cool one ... much easier than Tamper Data.

[CheezWiz]

I hope they add .avi soon, XVID is my primary archive format.
I have tried Tivo.net but cannot get it to see any video in the directory, so this is at least a positive step by Tivo for me..

[greg_burns]

Originally Posted by CheezWiz

I hope they add .avi soon, XVID is my primary archive format.
I have tried Tivo.net but cannot get it to see any video in the directory, so this is at least a positive step by Tivo for me..

Tivo.net works for me with XVID. Did you open both ports on your firewall 9032TCP/9033TCP?

[peteypete]

Damn. Too bad I'm at work, I'd like to try this. a couple questions.

1) what is tivo.net that people are referring to?

2) Any workaround for real media files?

[windracer]

There's a very long thread on TiVo.Net here. The official site is here.

As for Real Media files, it uses ffmpeg for it's transcoding, so if ffmpeg can handle Real Media files, it will work.

[ocntscha]

Originally Posted by windracer

That's a cool one ... much easier than Tamper Data.

I like the all in one videobookmarklet.. http://1024k.de/bookmarklets/video-bookmarklets.html

[miller890]

Originally Posted by windracer

YouTube is using Flash. One way (I know of) to "download" the video to your local PC would be to use something like the Tamper Data extension for Firefox to figure out the true URL of the .flv file.

Here is another way to grab a YouTube video as a .flv filehttp://www.videodl.org/

[KRKeegan]

I have been tinkering with TiVo.net for a while and others. But one major problem we run into is having to estimate the transcoded file size before transcoding. I was wondering if anyone savvy enough out there could get me some intormation on how Desktop 2.4 handles this problem.

If someone could get me the XML data that Desktop sends to the TiVo about the file I would appreciate it.

Thanks

Originally Posted by miller890

Here is another way to grab a YouTube video as a .flv filehttp://www.videodl.org/

And finally one last one:

http://vixy.net/

For this one just plug in the page at youtube for the video you want and they convert it to avi for you and you download the avi.

Very Nice.

[CuriousMark]

Originally Posted by KRKeegan

I have been tinkering with TiVo.net for a while and others. But one major problem we run into is having to estimate the transcoded file size before transcoding. I was wondering if anyone savvy enough out there could get me some intormation on how Desktop 2.4 handles this problem.

If someone could get me the XML data that Desktop sends to the TiVo about the file I would appreciate it.

Just install TiVo Desktop 2.4, put a file that would need transcoding on the PC and then use your browser to query it using:
https://127.0.0.1:4430/TiVoConnect?C...TivoNowPlaying

Look at the source size and see what it says.

That will tell you what Desktop thinks it will be, but that may not be enough to get a handle on the problem. What would be interesting is if it returns new tags indicating that the data is streamed, rather than having a fixed size. If it is a fixed size, then it gets more complicated figuring out how they solved it.

Good luck,

CuriousMark

[KRKeegan]

Originally Posted by CuriousMark

Just install TiVo Desktop 2.4, put a file that would need transcoding on the PC and then use your browser to query it using:
https://127.0.0.1:4430/TiVoConnect?C...TivoNowPlaying

Look at the source size and see what it says.

That will tell you what Desktop thinks it will be, but that may not be enough to get a handle on the problem. What would be interesting is if it returns new tags indicating that the data is streamed, rather than having a fixed size. If it is a fixed size, then it gets more complicated figuring out how they solved it.

Good luck,

CuriousMark

I completely agree this is the type of information I am looking for. But i dont want to have to shell out $25 just to discover that answer. All I am looking for is how desktop responds when TiVo requests a file that needs to be transcoded. And this is of course only available in the "plus" version.

So if someone feels like being a guinea pig for me and report back a few things let me know.

Thanks

Kevin

[ocntscha]

Originally Posted by KRKeegan

I completely agree this is the type of information I am looking for. But i dont want to have to shell out $25 just to discover that answer. All I am looking for is how desktop responds when TiVo requests a file that needs to be transcoded. And this is of course only available in the "plus" version.

So if someone feels like being a guinea pig for me and report back a few things let me know.

We've got the plus version, my wife bought it a while back because she has a video ipod, I might fire up ethereal and check into what you're saying about the xml tags

Do you have 8.1a yet? I think we've pretty well determined in the tivo.net thread that as long as the size of the file is over reported to the Tivo, besides some disk space being unneccessarily tied up while the video is in transit all will be well. That's been my experience with Tivo.net, I've got its fudge factor cranked up to 4 and I simply do not have that dissapearing video problem at all now. So anyway, I know you had some odd ball version of the Tivo software, maybe the 8.1a has or will cure it for you?

[windracer]

Originally Posted by KRKeegan

So if someone feels like being a guinea pig for me and report back a few things let me know.

PM sent.

[Durfman]

Desktop 2.4 won't install on Vista. It says it needs XP SP2 or later. Grr.

Rob

[sandycityscott]

I've tried the 2.4 preview... it's not ready for Prime Time. So many bugs it's not usable. I'll wait for the real thing.