Shared Knowledge
"Tivo - File Formats"
14 February 2011
Summary: if your Tivo is connected to a home network and if you use a personal computer (PC) as a Tivo file server, now and again, you might want to place a file on the PC server for Tivo viewing or burn a CD or DVD of a Tivo recorded program. In either case, you need to know about Tivo file formats.
Background:
There are many video file formats.
Formats are differentiated by the file extension they carry.
Common video file formats include: ASF, AVI, AVS, FLV, MOV, MP4, MPG, RM, VOB and WMV.
The most common types of video are MPG and VOB.
What you can put on your PC Tivo server, transfer and watch on a Tivo without any sort of video format conversion:
Tivo will play any MPG or VOB (properly prepared) file transferred to it.
All other video formats require a conversion to MPG. There are many Internet available free and commercially available video format converters.
I have experimented with many free converters but have now settled on using Cucusoft Ultimate Converter Suite. This one tool lets me convert just about any format to any other format and it does it with a few mouse clicks.
VOB is the file format of DVD movies. To get a DVD movie onto your Tivo, click here.
Tivo's own recording format:
Tivo records programs in TIVO format, which is basically MPG.
You can play back a TIVO format file using Windows Media Player if you wish as it will recognize TIVO as being an MPG file.
Although MPG and VOB are very similar video formats, you can not simply copy a MPG file to a DVD disk and expect it to play in a DVD player, you must first convert the TIVO file to VOB.