Shows not transferring with ratings info & another weird bit...

If you want all, or almost all, of the metadata, you need to use TiVo Desktop and copy to computer and then copy from computer.

Sucks, but that's the way it is.

 

I didn't write the program and I don't have access to the source code or to the people who did write it. What I know, I've pretty much learned by trial and error.


I discovered that copying to a TiVo from another TiVo assigned a "date recorded" to the copy of the day and time when the copy was made, and apparently discarded the original record date, and that going to the listing in Now Playing on the TiVo that did the copying and hitting the "info" button brings up a lot less info.

If you look at those copies with the TiVo Desktop program's "Pick Recordings to Transfer" (they use transfer when they should say copy, must be a don't get the content providers riled up thing), I think it shows details, possibly including original record date, that the TiVo which did the copying doesn't, so I guess some of that metadata is still there, but not normally accessed by the TiVo that did the copying.

I then later discovered that using TiVo Desktop to copy from one TiVo to a computer (although they're still calling it transfer), and then using a second TiVo to copy from the computer left the show in the second TiVo's Now Playing list looking and acting pretty much as though it had originally been recorded by that machine, although I think I remember that hitting the info button doesn't bring up quite as much info as it would on the original TiVo, but I didn't take copious notes or anything.


It's all "Pull" type stuff.

You go into TiVo Desktop and choose the TiVo from which you want to copy, then select the shows and initiate the copy.

Later, you go into a TiVo's NPL and at the bottom, below the Recently Deleted folder, should be the computer running TiVo Desktop, and you open it like a folder and select shows to copy to that TiVo. You can't push shows from a TiVo to the computer with TVD, and you can't push shows from the computer to a TiVo with it, either. The target has to request from the source.

It is, in many ways, a royal pain, and has a lot of limitations and performance issues, and if I were a benevolent dictator of the entire globe I'd direct TiVo to add a lot of features and fixes before I abdicated, and someone should be along any moment to talk about how much better 3rd party solutions like pyTiVo are.


I've found that it helps if you give the TiVos their own computer. Late model P3 or early P4 or AMD equivalent is sufficient. Of course that's another XP or later license required. Maybe that would be a good way to repurpose Vista machines.

 

This is based on transfers between my Series 2s - YMMV.

On MRV transfers it loses all of the metadata except the Series Title, Episode Title, Description and channel. Using Desktop as an intermediary maintains everything except the channel (either way you lose the channel logo).

My MRV transfers keep the correct date and time that a show was recorded, but I have seen a lot of posts that say it reassigns it as unitron noted. I have no idea why but it's probably an S2-S3 thing.

Edit: I just noticed that if you use the https interface on the TiVo the date is listed by the date it was transferred. I'm guessing that some models use that date and other models use the internal date from the TiVoVideoDetails XML file.

 

Be aware that the latest release of the Premiere s/w has even more metadata problems. I don't know whether using the computer and TiVo desktop still retains more of the metadata or not as I can no longer even access the desktop server from the Premiere.

 

For what it's worth, my TiVo to TiVo copys before I started using TiVo Desktop were S2 DT (TCD649080) to S2 DT and then back to the original (now with a bigger hard drive) S2 DT

 

Let us know if Plus can actually push, to a TiVo, shows previously copied from a TiVo to computer , and not just other videos and music from other sources.

If it'll let me do stuff from one room instead of two or three, it might be worth the money.

 

Has any checked to see if a Premiere running 20.2 still gets full metadata when transferring a .tivo file from the computer via TiVo Desktop?

 

It does not. I've mentioned this before, but you may have thought I was only speaking in relation to pyTivo. Not so. In fact, you get more of the metadata via pyTivo than TiVo Desktop. But most is still missing.

(This was with TD 2.8.2; I haven't tried 2.8.3. I'd be amazed if it's different.)

 

It SHOULD work, but they broke something in 2.8 and pushes of the 3 "native" file formats (.TiVo .MPG & .VOB) stopped working. 2.8.2 fixed the issue for MPGs and VOBs, but TiVo files still don't work. I haven't looked at 2.8.3 yet. I will try it this afternoon and let you know.

 

Weird - that's what I'm using.

 

.TiVo files are unpushable because the TiVo, in push mode, rejects them. pyTivo gets around this, by running them through tivodecode as it pushes. Needless to say, this negates the only advantage of having a .TiVo file -- that it conveys metadata -- but then, that's broken in 20.2 anyway.

(Note that ggieseke and I are using "push" here to mean a specific type of transfer that originates at the computer rather than at the TiVo. I think that's what unitron meant as well.)

 

The metadata problem is with the Premiere s/w, not TD.

I'm not sure I understand why people want to pay for TD+ when the free 3rd party s/w does as good or better job.