TiVo Recording

[lawnmowing]

Thanks for the tip on TV Harmony Autopilot. I downloaded the software, and I converted a TIVO file to try it out. The file converted just fine. However, I'm having trouble getting the converted file to play on the MVP. The file actually plays, but the picture resolution is terrible... lots of large color blocks make up the picture. Is this something with the TV Harmony settings?... or the playback on the MVP? Thanks for the help... I'm getting closer!

[HtV]

I downloaded and tested the autopilot and I think it's the settings there that you should change. It seemed to me that for conversion to mpeg2 it defaulted to 768 kbps, that's way too low. Depending on the resolution I think you should try at least 3000 kbps.

[lawnmowing]

Cool.

What video & audio rates do you recommend for NTSC analog broadcast television? That's all I have now. I just don't want to loose video/audio quality during the conversion.

[HtV]

I'd start with 3000 kbps for video and 224 for audio. From there you can raise or lower the settings depending on what you think of the quality.

[lawnmowing]

OK,

I changed the settings and reconverted the test file. This time it plays and looks just like the original on WMP... thanks. However, the video still looks blocky and very low resolution on my MVP... and causes my GB-PVR MediaMVP Server software to crash (something it's never done before). Any ideas? Still moving along...

[HtV]

What resolution did you choose in the settings? I think the mvp won't play all resolutions. I think you should try to choose 720x480 if possible. That's ntsc-dvd resolution. The mvp should be able to play that.
Are you sure the converted show has the mpg-extension e.g. xxyyzz.mpg?

[lawnmowing]

I'm good on the resolutions. I changed the options so it's a .mpg file is created instead of .avi. Now all I get is a black screen and no sound when trying to play the file on my MVP. I was getting video with a bad pic with .avi extension. Any ideas?

[HtV]

When you play an avi through the mvp it is transcoded on the fly to mpg.
That's probably where it went wrong for you. This also depends on your system-specs, specially your cpu.
If you convert to mpg the file doesn't have to be transcoded because the mvp can play mpg's natively. But it won't play every resolution I think. 720x480 would be the best for you I guess. Besides that it only plays mp2 or mp3 for audio. so if your file has e.g. ac3-sound and that isn't transcoded to mp2/mp3, it won't play. I guess you can adjust the settings in autopilot to make it do that.

[NI2O]

I know this thread is old but I thought I'd throw in a few pennies.

The TiVo desktop software includes a TiVo specific CODEC and set of DLL's to allow you to decrypt (yes, it's encrypted!) the TiVo show end then play it on a handfull of Windows based media players (and I think a Mac too).

There are a few hacking tools around that'll convert the .TiVo files into plain MPEG2's but it's a manual job and takes about an hour to copy the file from the Tivo to the PC and then about an hour to transcode it.

Frankly it's not work the grief!

Mark