Mac Geekery

You no longer need Windows. Now, it can all be done on your Mac. Everything from fetching the files from the TiVo to the decrypt and playback can be accomplished on the Mac side. This all due to some great work by the guys on the TiVo Decode and Galleon projects. Let’s get started.

A short road map of where we’re going:

1. Install Galleon.
2. Configure the ToGo feature of Galleon to automatically download selected shows from the TiVo into a download folder.
3. Create a script to decode any completed downloads and launch it with launchd when a file is in the folder.
4. Optionally create another script that uses VLC to transcode those decoded files.

This article discusses a method to automate the process of getting the files off the TiVo and into Front Row/iPod format. If you just want to convert a single file then just run tivodecode on the TiVo file and you’ll have an MPEG-2 file that VLC can play. If, however, you want to make a media center that does everything for you and keeps anything from one show to everything the TiVo records, then you should read on.

Note the updated scripts at the end of the article that resolve some issues with catching files in their varying states. These appear to get it right almost all of the time now. There's more »

Hacking the TiVo, 2nd Edition author: William von Hagen asin: 1592004814

Philips HDR612 TiVo 60 Hour Digital Video Recorder asin: B00004UE2L

TiVo Wireless G USB Network Adapter for Series2 DVR (AG0100) asin: B000ER5G6C

The Mac releases of Galleon lag behind the Windows and Unix versions by a fair amount. Get the Unix version (the ZIP) and then drop the following files into the bin folder to make any version work (tested on ye olde bleeding edge 1.6). There's more »

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. There's more »

Galleon is a relatively new project that allows any system with Java to host a wide range of services for your TiVo, ranging from getting news and weather, to archiving your TiVo video and serving your own video to your TiVo. The best part is that this requires no hacking of your TiVo. All of this can be accomplished via the public HME APIs that TiVo has made available to developers.

Having recently installed this software and seeing how useful it is, I wanted to talk a bit about it with some articles on MG. In this first one, I’ll go over installation and basic setup of Galleon. Later, I’ll talk about some more advanced arrangements you can make with Galleon.

At its core, HME is a very simple idea: a program runs on your computer that provides services on the TiVo in the form of pictures and sound, and takes input from the TiVo to trigger changes on the computer. Galleon is a host program, written in Java, that uses a modular architecture to provide a wide range of services ranging from news (RSS) and weather (with forecasts, radar, and local alerts) all the way to podcasting and videocasting (audio-only) support. In fact, with TiVo’s ToGo and GoBack features, Galleon can also take video from your TiVo and send it back, turning your computer into an additional TiVo in the home, essentially. There's more »