Possible to Transfer Shows from an S3 to a XL4?

Yes. No.

 

2 caveats:

Both TiVos must have an active subscription.

You will not be able to transfer anything that is copy protected.

 

If you buy the XL4 from TiVo, you might be able to negotiate Product Life Time Service for as little as $100. Then just keep the S3 or with life time service it's an easier sell for more $$$.
TiVo did that for me about 2 months ago.

 

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Yes, you can transfer between the 2 Tivos.
No, it does not require any software, that is for Tivo to/from PC transfers.
However, Both Tivos MUST have a Tivo Subscription.

 

You can install the free version of TiVo Desktop to test whether the shows you want to copy are allowed to be copied.

If your cable company has the CCI bit set "wrong", you won't be able to copy to either PC or new TiVo, but if you can copy to one you can copy to the other.

Actually better to copy to PC and then copy from there to the new TiVo, because more of the meta-data will survive, like the original date you recorded the show instead of the date you copied TiVo to TiVo. (There's a month or more's worth of Charlie Rose episodes on my mom's TiVo, all with the supposed record date of Dec. 5, 2010, because I hadn't learned about that yet when I was racing the clock to upgrade her drive size.)

And be sure Desktop copies to an NTFS partition and not FAT 32, or all your 2 hour movies will be one hour, 55 minute movies.

And by all means leverage the purchase of any Series 4 into getting lifetime on the S3 for $99.

 

I don't believe that is true any longer when the destination is a Premiere running the latest s/w. Direct TiVo-Tivo transfer seems to retain as much of the the metadata as TiVo-PC-TiVo does, including the original record time.

 

But since it'll be an S3 sending, might that not have some effect?

 

Not as far as I can tell.

 

IIRC, you still don't get the episode #.. which I *think* you sometimes get when transferring back from a computer.

 

Both programId (which is what is used to set the HDUI Season and Episode, when it works) and episodeNumber are coming over, even from a Series 2. AFAICT, the only thing not coming over is "Categories" but that is true no matter what the source is. The Premiere appears to be using programId to set this field also so it, like Season and Episode, doesn't always work.

 

I transfer all the time between my S3 and my Premiere. Works fine. Comcast here doesn't use the copy protect flags.

BTW, definitely get the $99 lifetime added to that S3 when you buy the XL4. It pays for itself quickly if you keep it, and will give you back more than $300 if you decide to sell it.

Others make it sound like you have to beg/convince Tivo to give you the $99 lifetime on the S3, but in my experience, the will give it to you simply ask. I've done it twice now, once for each S4 that I've bought. I now have two S3 with lifetime, each added for $99. Plan to sell at least one when I get my Premiere 4 setup.

 

I had no trouble getting the $99 deal on my HD boxes when I added new Premieres. They have been sold on eBay for 3-4x what the lifetime upgrade cost.