File transfer to Tivo Premier

859 Views 3 Replies 3 Participants Last post by nearlygod, May 28, 2011

nearlygod

Discussion Starter · May 28, 2011

I am looking to buy a Tivo (currently have an old ReplayTV) and the one feature that will seal the deal is the ability to tranfer files to the Tivo. For example, I have about 20GB of .avi files that I would like to put on the Tivo (not streaming from the PC) so that my wife and kids can easily access them without having to worry about the PC being on (or most likely being booted into Windows instead of Ubuntu). Is this possible without streaming?

I have all of the original dvds so if the .avi format is the issue, I can re-rip them into a better format if that is necessary.

Thanks for your help.

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jcthorne

· #2 · May 28, 2011

The avi format is likely fine as the starting point for the transfer.

Yes, you can transfer video, even HD to the tivo. You will need a software product installed on a pc to do the transfer but once on the tivo, they play without the pc being present. I recommend pytivo for this, it handles transfers both directions and many other features.

Just fyi, the tivo can also handle music and photos on your computer network as well. Head over to the home media forum section for some reading and ask questions. Lots of helpful folks to get you going.

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P42

· #3 · May 28, 2011

This is what I've done to achieve the same or similar goal, as always there are many many solutions to the one problem

Used DVD Shrink to create MPEG2 file of DVD http://www.zatznotfunny.com/dvdshrink.htm
Installed TiVo Desktop
Placed MPEG2 files in "My TiVo Recordings" folder.
Goto TiVo - under My Shows, down the bottom of the list, the computer on which TiVo Desktop is installed is show, and you can select the MPEG2 files and transfer them to your TiVo.

The down side of this, is that the transfered MPEG2 files are now listed in amongst the regular shows - eg not easy to find. Short term this is an issue, longer term it won't be as you'll tag them not the be deleted and they just filter down to the bottom of the list.

You can use pyTiVo to push the MPEG2 files with some metadata so that they are organized into a folder to make things a little neater - this is what I've done, though I still need to tweak it a little further.
Depending on the number of DVDs you plan on doing this with, you may consume a lot of disk space - all the more reason to install a 2 TB drive. Though I think pyTiVo will transfer without transcoding MP4 files, though I don't know how much space this saves and if there are any disadvantages.

Personally I don't have a large number of DVDs that I need to do this with, and only one TiVo, so storing them on the TiVo is not going impact things much, particularly once I upgrade to a 2TB drive.

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nearlygod

Discussion Starter · #4 · May 28, 2011

That sounds exactly like what I want to do with it. I'll probably pull the trigger this weekend. Thanks for the help.

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