Cannot select a folder from a networked PC

Tivo Desktop is quite limited in the folder department. Just switch over to PyTivo. TDP also only can go in through 1 folder depth, PyTivo goes through multiple depths (not sure if there is a limit.)

 

Assign fixed IP addresses to the TiVos and any PCs running Desktop.

Can't hurt, might help.

What the TiVos see and present at or near the bottom of the Now Playing list using the name of the PC running Desktop is just the contents of the My TiVo Recordings folder on that PC, although you can put shortcuts to folders elsewhere on the PC into the MTR folder and the contents of those folders should be accessible via the TiVo.

You aren't running into some sort of Windows pathname/filename length restriction, are you?

 

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I don't know where you get the idea that Desktop is so limited in folder depth, but it's not.

For example, I've got MTR folder -->shortcut to "TV Shows 3" (on a separate drive)-->NBC-->Revolution--Revolution1--filename.tivo, and could probably go deeper than that but it would take forever to navigate to it with the TiVo.

 

pyTivo is the best option, not necessarily because you should switch but because it'll give you more information. (unless you have another Tivo at home)

If the pyTivo+Tivo work fine, then it makes TivoDesktop more suspect.

The alternative to testing with pyTivo is using telnet or wireshark, which is a whole other ballpark.

Also, the two problems you describe sound related. Don't be quick to compartmentalize it as unimportant, because they could be the same thing so fixing it might fix both.

What OS are you running? Could it be a firewall?
Are you running any unusual network gear? Is any of these on Wifi?

Does someone know, will pyTivo pull from TivoDesktop? I've never tried. If it is suppose to work, you should see what happens when you do that on your setup.

 

I would also clear the cache on Desktop. File - Preferences - Restart or Reset.

 

I'm running something like 5 TiVos in one room and 4 in another and 3 or 4 PCs all running Desktop on the same LAN without encountering your problem, and all the TiVos can see each other and all the PCs, and all the Desktop installations can see all of the TiVos.

So it can be done.

Which is not to say I've never had problems.

I've encountered problems which I "solved" by uninstalling and re-installing Desktop.

That may or may not have been necessary but I don't know enough to know.

Also, it shouldn't make a bit of difference, but for what it's worth I have the Desktop cache folder and the My TiVo recordings folder on an NT partition that's not the boot partition (C:\ drive) which is FAT32 and is where the Desktop executable and the other associated files are kept.

And all the PCs are running XP for now.

Are all instances of Desktop running Beacon, or are all running Bonjour, or is it a mix?

What all do you have on your network?

One router, or more than one?

Is it wireless?


EDIT to add:

Use Windows Explorer (not Internet Explorer) to look at the partition where the folder in question (I'm assuming you mean My TiVo Recordings, or a folder inside of it) resides, right click on it, and take a look at Properties to see if there's anything "off" and to make sure sharing is enabled.

 

Heh. I guess it could, but TiVo Desktop is ignored when building the list of TiVos to pull from, because it doesn't announce a TSN (TiVo Service Number). (This also keeps out other instances of pyTivo.) Subtly, it does announce a "tsn", but the TiVos use uppercase.

Let me fool with this for a second... nah, that's not enough; I also need to get pyTivo to recognize the port it uses. Hmm.

 

Odd, I've got TiVo Desktop running on 3 PC's with Bonjour and pyTiVo running on my Windows Home Server and have not had any problems with the 3 TiVo's in our house.

Scott

 

If you're running Desktop on more than one PC on your home LAN, and you want to up to Plus, do you have to pay for Plus separately for each PC and get a unique enabling code just for that PC for each PC?

 

So, it turned out I actually had to do a whole bunch of little tweaks to get pyTivo to talk to TiVo Desktop -- mostly by way of making the ToGo plugin work more like it should have to begin with. Anyway, it's done now: The latest version of pyTivo in my repos will download from TiVo Desktop, as well as from another instance of pyTivo. This is an optional feature, which you have to activate by adding "togo_all = on" to the Server section of your pyTivo.conf. Zeroconf also needs to be working. I plan to leave this feature basically undocumented and obscure, but it's there for amusement purposes, at least (and I have found it slightly useful for development).

Interestingly, I've only been able to download .TiVo files (video/x-tivo-mpeg) from TD, and not plain MPEG files (video/mpeg) -- those come up as 404. They do transfer to a TiVo, but I can't listen in on the traffic between the TiVo and TD, so I don't know what's being done differently. (pyTivo has always marked everything as video/x-tivo-mpeg, so it makes no difference there.)