What happened to Streambaby on Bolt?

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I have no reason at all to think they will reactivate HME apps. They never caught on, and TiVo certainly isn't going to support them on units going forward, so they're not going to release separate software updates for certain units just for those few users who used them.

Streambaby was GREAT... such a shame you didn't get to enjoy it much. By far the best local-media streaming solution I've ever seen. I can't stand Plex and all the others like it, that waste way too much resources trying to be "smart" and pretty, showing you all kinds of fancy UI crap that is utterly unnecessary, and more often than not getting it wrong anyway.

This is so infuriating... but I've known for years this was coming some day, I guess that's today.

 

Check the streambaby thread. It's not completely dead as you can still launch it through kmttg if you really want it. Also, for series 4 units if you switch to SDUI HME apps can still be launched from there. But yeah, it's becoming more and more inconvenient and TiVo has ignored and actually actively discouraged and sabotaged 3rd party development for many years now.

 

pytivo is the way to go... download to TiVo, watch, then delete.

When your shared PC folder "disappears" on your TiVo all you have to do to get it back is restart the pytivo application on your computer. No reboot of TiVo to computer necessary.

 

Launch it through kmttg? No idea how that would work but I'll check out the thread, thanks! It's always baffled me that TiVo didn't just implement Streambaby themselves as part of their core code, it would be a phenomenal feature to have. It worked so well and already just "felt" like part of the normal TiVo feature set anyway.

Yeah but then I have to download everything which is a total pain, also I've seen transfers fail quite often, plus someone above in this thread said that everything he tried to transfer, couldn't be played. I haven't tried it yet to see if it works but will now since it's apparently all I'm going to get. At least until they find a way to disable support for PyTivo as well. Grrrrrrr.

 

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I connected ethernet cat 6 throughout so transfer is very fast. I had problems with streambaby video looking odd.

 

The problem for me has nothing to do with speed or quality, it's use case. PyTivo won't work for us because my other half routinely lets entire seasons play of old shows we've ripped, especially with a TV timer of 1 to 2 hours at night when she's falling asleep. Transferring over 5 or 7 or 10 seasons of a show to the TiVo HD in order to replicate this is totally infeasible. Streambaby was the absolutely perfect solution.

Interestingly, our Premiere TiVos got the update last night, and Streambaby (on SD menus) still works perfectly! Hugely relieved about that at least. Still I'm completely furious about this having all but ruined our media room's usability.

 

Plex is the absolute worst piece of crap ever. Not that I have strong feelings on the subject or anything. Takes forever to launch, then takes forever just to navigate left & right (a good 1 second per button press.. can take 30 to 60 seconds to scroll a good distance). It's so completely bloated, loading up all this fancy crap that is completely unnecessary. All my content is already organized into folders, just show me a damn list and let me hit play. Not to mention that once you are playing in Plex, you don't get your normal TiVo controls either. It's just awful. Streambaby blows it out of the water in every aspect except aesthetics, which are completely unimportant IMO when all I want to do is navigate through and play my chosen content. Plex is "pretty" but in a totally bloated and wasteful way.

 

No, I'm talking specifically about Roamio Pro. Plex is so painful that after 10 seconds I wanted to hurl my remote through the screen. We also have 2 Premieres and Plex is certainly not an improvement on them.

 

Yeah I dunno, maybe different generations of Roamio are different that way too? I don't think it can be internet as we've got 300MBit cable, and Plex is running locally anyway from a dedicated Mac. But for whatever reason it's way too slow to use without intense frustration.

 

pytivo converts the video, degrading the quality significantly.

 

We have a VERY large media library and from the local server Plex is pretty snappy. Its every bit as fast to navigate as the main tivo menus. It works very well to manage and navigate a large library and while some of the trick play features are not perfect, play, pause, FF and Rew work as you would expect from the normal Tivo remote. Plex has its warts but we like it and the fact that it runs on many devices, not just tivo is a big plus.

 

Not if its properly encoded for a tivo to begin with. It transfers / plays natively up to 1080p and DD 5.1

 

Not if you code correctly to start with but for me pytivo looks better than streambaby at 720P across different TVs.

Additionally, I like how pytivo handles my shared folder. Easier to find my stuff...

 

Streambaby on the Premiere (Series 4 Tivos) still works if you switch from the HDUI to the SDUI as moyekj mentions above. My backup option is Plex, but I prefer Streambaby.

 

What is the correct way to code?

 

IMSA standard streamable MP4 file containing h.264 video level 4.1 or below and an AC3 DD5.1 audio track.