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TivoToGo for Mac users... Finally!
- Thread starter Flowbee
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Does it have to be wireless? Couldn't you just get a usb--ethernet adapter and plug it into your router?
can't have that either... unless i don't need the internet (the router doesn't need to be connected to the 'net) its "screws up" the network at my school
Well puckhead193 it unfortunately sounds like this isn't a Mac issue - you'd be stuck whether you were using OS X or Windows.
I am extremely pleased that they finally broke the structure of the encryption key. I'm sure someone will complain about "piracy", but given that you can't decode the .tivo file without knowing the MAK for the Tivo... it's pretty hard to get worked up over this.
I'm just glad I can easily access my shows from my Mac now. Before this I had to pull them over, load up an XP session (Virtual PC or Parallels), run Direct Show Dump, and pull the file back over to OS X. What a pain!
The thing I find really funny about this is - I've heard the Tivo guys talk about how difficult getting TivoToGo onto the Mac is, how the platform constrained them etc. etc. But apparently these hackers broke this completely during one big coding session (transcript of what appears to be an IRC session during the work is on their site). I used to love Tivo - I still love the interface - but if Apple offers me a viable replacement with iTV I'll drop Tivo in a heartbeat. They haven't really shown Mac users any love, so I don't feel any loyalty towards them any more. The manpower that could have gone towards TivoToGo for us has instead gone into new and different ways to push commercials to us.
I am extremely pleased that they finally broke the structure of the encryption key. I'm sure someone will complain about "piracy", but given that you can't decode the .tivo file without knowing the MAK for the Tivo... it's pretty hard to get worked up over this.
I'm just glad I can easily access my shows from my Mac now. Before this I had to pull them over, load up an XP session (Virtual PC or Parallels), run Direct Show Dump, and pull the file back over to OS X. What a pain!
The thing I find really funny about this is - I've heard the Tivo guys talk about how difficult getting TivoToGo onto the Mac is, how the platform constrained them etc. etc. But apparently these hackers broke this completely during one big coding session (transcript of what appears to be an IRC session during the work is on their site). I used to love Tivo - I still love the interface - but if Apple offers me a viable replacement with iTV I'll drop Tivo in a heartbeat. They haven't really shown Mac users any love, so I don't feel any loyalty towards them any more. The manpower that could have gone towards TivoToGo for us has instead gone into new and different ways to push commercials to us.
Cool...I started pulling a show onto my PowerBook through wireless and got 326 out of 1480 MB. My fiancée came into the room and turned on the TV and started playing another show from the TiVo on the TV, and it appears to have paused the transfer of my other show to my Mac. Interesting...I'll have some fun playing with this.
Basically, some hackers figured out the structure of the encryption key used by Tivo (in their Series 2 boxes) to protect their MPEG2 files. This tool takes your MAK (so you still need to know your Tivo's Media Access Key, just like you do with TivoToGo) and decrypts the .tivo files into MPEG2 format.
Note that it's muxed MPEG2, so you'll have to watch it with VLC or MPlayer. If you want to use Quicktime you need to do a further conversion with ffmpegX or somesuch program that can split out the audio and video tracks. Quicktime's for-fee MPEG2 add-on will not play the original MPEG2 file.
I don't know if this is the case with the files this outputs or not, but my ReplayTV files come through as MPEG2 files that play in VLC, and iSquint converts them to iTunes H.264s very nicely. 
I don't know if this is the case with the files this outputs or not, but my ReplayTV files come through as MPEG2 files that play in VLC, and iSquint converts them to iTunes H.264s very nicely.
When I tried using iSquint on my Tivo-converted MPEG2 files, it messed up the aspect ratio - not surprising since iSquint is an ffmpeg front end, and I see the same problem with ffmpegX if I don't manually change the resolution.
Yeah, it's funny... the iSquinted conversions look fine in iTunes, but get squashed on my iPod screen.
Mmm, to be honest, I don't have an iPod that plays videos (I have a 3G/15GB)... so I'm not sure what it would do. I've been converting TV shows using iSquint and the standard iPod resolution / H.264 setup... onscreen, they're 4:3.
Are you taping 16:9 content on your TiVo? Or else how do they appear on the iPod? Is the 4:3 getting vertically squished and letterboxed?
I just realized there are similar problems with iTunes and fullscreen mode. iTunes doesn't have a way to stretch 4:3 content to full widescreen (like my TV would normally do), does it? I can change the TV view mode but that's somewhat less than ideal. Sorry if this is a thread-jacking, but I think it's the same thing you're describing.
iTunes doesn't have a way to stretch 4:3 content to full widescreen (like my TV would normally do), does it? I can change the TV view mode but that's somewhat less than ideal. Sorry if this is a thread-jacking, but I think it's the same thing you're describing.
I'm not seeing the problem in iTunes full-screen mode, but on my video iPod the video gets "squezed in" from the sides, leaving black bars on the right and left. If I play it in widescreen mode on the iPod, it stretches to fill the screen, but I lose the top and bottom of the picture.
I'm not seeing the problem in iTunes full-screen mode, but on my video iPod the video gets "squezed in" from the sides, leaving black bars on the right and left. If I play it in widescreen mode on the iPod, it stretches to fill the screen, but I lose the top and bottom of the picture.
What kind of computer do you have, 'bee? Is your computer display widescreen or 4:3?
It's a Mac mini with a regular 17" (4:3) display. Standard def (4:3) video grabbed from the Tivo and converted with iSquint (to 320 x 240) mp4... this gives me the 'squashed' video on the iPod, but plays full-screen fine on my Mac monitor. I'm currently reconverting the tivo video to 640x480 h.264 to see if that makes a difference.
EDIT: I notice that a new version of the TivoDecode software has been released today... guess I'll give that a try, too.
I think the difference is that your iPod and my iMac are widescreen, but your Mini's display is not. The problem comes in when you view
I'll play around with this more tonight, but likely one (not completely satisfactory) way to overcome this on connections back to TVs (or I guess even on the iMac's screen) at least is to temporarily go to a stretched 4:3 resolution (like I can do 1024x768 on my TV or on my iMac). When I do this on my iMac screen, at least, 4:3 video is stretched to fill the computer screen.
Now as for how to handle this on the iPod....
Although it's a bit off topic, I just wanted to reply again and address my previous question in case someone forum searches and finds this thread. Not with respect to playing an iPod on a TV, but with respect to playing a Mac on one via VGA etc: What I found was that the best way to do 4:3 TV shows from iTunes was to set the resolution for the TV (from Sys Prefs on the Mac) at 1024x768. So I lose horizontal resolution, although the iTunes videos already do not have 1024 horizontal resolution to begin with. It works pretty nicely.
A TV show recorded at the lowest ReplayTV setting (Standard -- or about 860 MB / hour; this setting is fairly close already to my analog cable) and then converted to iSquint with H.264 and the "for iPod" setting becomes about 200MB on the Mac. It's noticeably but slightly lower quality than the ReplayTV original, but is pretty viewable on a 32" LCD at 12 feet, set to 1024x768 (which is the equivalent of the stretch option I normally use... i.e. the 4:3 TV show is stretched to fit the screen). So overall I'm very pleased with this.
A TV show recorded at the lowest ReplayTV setting (Standard -- or about 860 MB / hour; this setting is fairly close already to my analog cable) and then converted to iSquint with H.264 and the "for iPod" setting becomes about 200MB on the Mac. It's noticeably but slightly lower quality than the ReplayTV original, but is pretty viewable on a 32" LCD at 12 feet, set to 1024x768 (which is the equivalent of the stretch option I normally use... i.e. the 4:3 TV show is stretched to fit the screen). So overall I'm very pleased with this.