Shared Knowledge
“Tivo: Getting PC-Based MPG to Play”
3 April 2007
I have a Tivo Series II box.
Actually I have 2 of them.
Each Tivo box has a USB 802.1g wireless adapter.
My main PC runs Tivo Desktop
2.3a.
My main PC is Ethernet-tied
to a Linksys WRT54G, 54Mbps router.
I have gone to Tivo Central
on the Internet and enabled “sharing” among my Tivo’s.
From my main computer, I can
see the “Now Playing” list on both Tivo’s I own and download any recorded
program to my PC. (Note here. It might say it on the Tivo website but to
run Tivo Desktop and be able to actually download Tivo recorded programs, the
drive hosting the "My Tivo Recordings" folder must be formatted NTFS as Tivo
files can be from 1.5 to 2.5GB's in size. Fat16 and Fat32 file systems do not
support file sizes above 1GB.)
****
Ok, with all that prelim out
of the way, after being able to download recorded programs on one Tivo to the other or
to my PC, I also wanted to be able to move video files from my PC to the
Tivo’s. Specifically, I own a lot of DVD’s and although I handle them with care, others in my family do not, so
I wanted to have a copy of a DVD on my PC
disk for upload to a Tivo.
How do I accomplish this?
1.I “rip” a copy of a DVD to my PC using
(bought) DVD-Cloner
IV software. (There are many DVD clone tools available to include
some that are free but require more user work). I only rip the movie itself as Tivo can not do anything
with menu’s etc. A note here is that because no menu information is available
to Tivo, I can not add subtitles or change a language at the Tivo end once the
movie starts playing and sometimes, I have found the default language of a movie
is something other than English!
2.When DVD-Cloner IV is finished, I have multiple .VOB files, each about 1GB in
size, which make up the movie.
3.Now I don’t want to watch a
movie on my Tivo in pieces, so I put the movie back into one large file and I do
this using a free software tool called
"VOBmerge."
Again note, that if your computer’s hard
drive is formatted Fat32, you will not be able to combine .vob files into one
large file as Fat32 only supports 1GB as its largest file. I.E. you must be
working on a NTFS formatted hard drive. Although it is probably obvious but
when you use the VOBmerge tool, make sure you add all .vob files created by your
clone tool and make sure they are in numeric order, such as 1,2,3,4,5,6 etc. If
you use the shift key begin and end file method, the order of files to be merged
in VOBmerge may be wrong. VOBmerge allows you to move the order of files around,
so no problem getting it right.
3.I now use a free tool
called
"Videora Tivo Converter" to convert my one large .vob DVD file to Tivo format. Note here that according to the Tivo website,
Tivo is supposed to be able to play non-"converted" .mpg files but I have found
that it does not. If you try to transfer and play a non-converted .mpg file,
although the title will show in the "Now Playing" list of your PC, when you try
to transfer it, Tivo will say there was an error in transferring the selected
and direct you to check out "Get Recordings". When you check out why your .mpg
did not transfer, it will say "recording not found on server".
4.I now place the DVD Tivo formatted file in the “My Tivo Recordings” folder on my PC (note
here that I have changed the default disk drive and folder name of "My Tivo
Recordings" such that I have a dedicated disk drive for Tivo recordings) and
when I access the “Now Playing” list on either of my Tivo’s, I see the name of my
main PC and when I click on it, I see all the Tivo files I downloaded from a
Tivo as well as the DVD movies I have copied, combined and converted.
Finally note, (1) it takes my main computer
(3GHZ, 2GB of RAM) about 1 hour to completely copy, combine and convert a movie
for Tivo and (2) that the file size of a DVD, copied, combined and converted for
Tivo playback, can range in size from 1.5 to 2.5GB's so any disk hosting the "My
Tivo Recordings" can fill up fast if it is not a very large drive. Currently I
am using a SATA 500GB drive dedicated to "My Tivo Recordings."
AND, forget moving a foreign language mpeg to Tivo. Since Tivo can not deal with
menus, you have no way to set up for subtitles.