If you own a TiVo, you probably belong to the ranks of TiVo addicts (like me) who constantly struggle to watch their favorite shows before the hard drive fills up. That 80-hour box sounds like a lot until you start cluttering it up with movies and old episodes of “Ask This Old House” that show you how to build the deck you’ve been meaning to install for three years now...
Ironically, since I bought the TiVo mainly because I travel a lot, I always end up madly cleaning it out just before going on a trip, to make sure that there is enough free space to record “Mystery” and “House” while I'm gone. It's become another item on my travel To Do list, along with packing and calling the petsitter. But there's not always time to zip through everything before I leave, and it's really painful to have to delete unwatched shows, or get rid of a favorite old movie.
So what's the solution for TiVo addiction and full hard drives? Assuming you have a networked Series 2, 3 or HD model, you can shell out big bucks for one of the new add-on hard disks that just came out, or you can buy a few blank DVDs, and use TiVoToGo and Roxio software to burn shows to disc or export them to your portable media player. Both Easy Media Creator 10 and Toast 9 have official TiVoToGo support.
Now, instead of having to watch 10 shows before I leave on a trip, I can take them with me to view on my laptop, which is great for airplanes. And all those movies and shows I want to keep for posterity I can burn to DVD, instead of letting them use up hard drive space.
You can even use the editing tools in Toast and Creator to remove unwanted segments from your recordings. Usually I only want to keep one 10-minute portion of a "This Old House" episode, for example. With Creator or Toast, I can cherry-pick the good parts from lots of episodes and put them all on one DVD with a nice menu for navigation. My dream house may not be built yet, but I'll know exactly how to do it!
I just need to upgrade to an HD TiVo and I'll be in DVR heaven.
So what is your experience using TiVoToGo? Any tips? Let us know in the comments.
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Comments (3)
Thanks for the post. The more I read about it, the more I want TivoToGo. I guess it's just another reason to upgrade my Toast. (I currently have Version 7.)
Right now, I use a little freeware app to get my Tivo shows to my computer. But you get what you pay for. It's very unreliable and quite slow. If it does transfer the whole show, then I have to convert it, usually using Quicktime Pro to take out the commercials, and export to iPhone dimensions. All of it is a big hassle. That's why TivoToGo sounds perfect for me.
The only relief is a little piece of hardware that elgato makes called the turbo.264. I have an older Powerbook and it really has sped up the export/conversion time.
Posted by Nate Anderson | April 20, 2008 7:57 PM
Posted on April 20, 2008 19:57
TivoToGo is very handy and works well. The transfer process from Tivo is quite slow however even with hardwired ethernet networked house.
Posted by A Ventura | May 1, 2008 10:03 PM
Posted on May 1, 2008 22:03
Yes, it takes a while to transfer shows (they are LARGE!) But that's actually one of the benefits of using the Roxio software along with TiVoToGo, since you can tell it to automatically transfer shows to your PC as they are recorded on your TiVo, and even convert them for playing on your iPod or other media player. All this can be done in the background. Shows recorded in the evening can be all ready to copy to your player in the morning.
Posted by Becky Waring | May 2, 2008 3:57 AM
Posted on May 2, 2008 03:57