Using Galleon, anyone with a TiVo (7.2+) and a Java-enabled desktop machine can do a very wide variety of things with the two. Among all the toys Galleon gives TiVo, it’s the one that TiVo gives back to Galleon that really makes the marriage impressive.
By picking a shared directory on the computer and tweaking two separate features, you can have Galleon offload videos from the TiVo and then load them back whenever you want to see them again. Galleon is even smart enough to automatically download certain programs so you always have them handy.
Setup Galleon
You should have followed the first article in this series to install Galleon and be familiar with how to use it before doing this.
Open up Galleon’s GUI and in the File menu go to Properties. Enter your TiVo’s media key here. You can find it in System Information or on TiVo Central Online. Also set the Recordings Path to the folder you want to setup as the media storage folder.
If you go to File → GoBack, you can add additional folders that will show as additional storage devices in the Now Playing list. Any VCD/SVCD-encoded MPEG1/2 streams (not cue/bin files!) with
mono or
stereo sound (not AC3) will work fine on a normal TiVo. TiVos with a
DVD drive use an MPEG-2 stream with AC3-encoded audio. Anything else needs transcoding to the native format. All files should end in
MPG.
If you use mencoder for your CLI transcoding needs then the following command works fine. You may tweak the bitrates and frame size, but I’d only use 720:480 and 480:480 as frame sizes since the TiVo supports a very limited number of sizes.
This command sets up an MPEG-2 video stream at 2,500 kbps with MPEG layer 2 audio at 160 kbps and a frame size of 720:480 (DVD proportion):
mencoder -ovc lavc -oac lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:acodec=mp2:abitrate=160:vbitrate=2500 -of mpeg -vf scale=720:480 -mpegopts format=xsvcd -o outfile.mpg infile.avi
Lastly, let’s add the convenience option. Add a new module and choose “ToGo” as the type. I call mine “Copy to server” but you can, of course, name it however you want. This lets us send files to the server from the TiVo.
Use It!
Go to the TiVo and choose “Music, Photos, and More” and then choose your GoBack module. From here you can tell the TiVo to send any number of files to your desktop machine (technically you’re telling the desktop to request them, but that’s just semantics). When they’re saved they’ll be in the same folder as GoBack as encrypted MPEG-2 streams with a TiVo extension.
In your Now Playing screen, at the very bottom, will be a computer icon now. Go there and you’ll see the movies you’ve copied from the TiVo. Once it’s there and fully copied you’re good to delete the original from the TiVo (try it once on a useless recording to make sure it works both ways!).
This is more useful than you would think, really. You can now go back into Galleon’s GoBack settings and set it up to automatically download shows of a certain type for you so you can have a low-latency delete on the TiVo and collect them on the Mac.
There’s more fun to be had, but that comes later. Enjoy this for now.
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Of course, if you’re not interested in the automatic nature of Galleon, it’s a lot easier to pull down the *.tivo files using your web browser. Just go here:
https://TivoIP/nowplaying/index.html
User: tivo
Password: (Media Access Key)
This may be easier, depending on your situation.
I’d love if this (re: GoBack) worked but it doesn’t. Every command I’ve inputted into the “convert video” option for Galleon—including the one above—results in an error and an unconverted video. “ERROR [Thread 0] VideoFile – Could not convert:“ from the log.txt to be exact.
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