Sop/Pause TiVo

When you watch a movie that was stored on your computer from the TiVo, it actually copies the movie to your TiVo. You can start watching it while it's still transferring or wait until later. Either way, everything is done with the TiVo remote.

 

If you download a .mov file to your computer it will have to be transcoded into a format that your TiVo can handle, then you could use the TiVo Desktop software to transfer it to the TiVo. You can also use pyTiVo for the conversion & transfer, or even Streambaby to stream it without physically transferring it to the TiVo. Either way you can pause, rewind, etc from the TiVo.

pyTivo is more complicated to set up initially than TiVo Desktop, but it's free and it can convert a wider range of internet files than Desktop with the $25 Plus upgrade. AFAIK Streambaby only works with files that are already in a native format that your TiVo can play. You can find a lot more on both tools in the Home Media forum.

 

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Streambaby also uses ffmpeg to convert to mpeg2 (by default), or ffmpeg can be disabled, limiting Streambaby to only TiVo compatible files. I opted for the latter, and convert non-compliant files to h264/ac3/mp4. There are quite a few options that can be set in the Streambaby ini file.