Newbie: Recording on External Device

[banjo_42]

I have been using GB-PVR with a PVR-150 for about 2 years. My problem is that the system is only a P3 and cannot really stream out the recorded video. To watch any recording, I have to burn it to a DVD and play on another device. These uses up lots of DVDs and creates lots of extra work.
Recently, I got an old Series 1 Tivo. My plan, if I can get the hard drive working on this old Tivo is to use it in manual record mode. I will not have a Tivo subscription and I do NOT want to take EPG data and import it into the Tivo. Rather, I only want to automate the manual record process.
Series 1 Tivos allow manual recording without subscription and I simply want to automate the process. Flame me if you feel you must, but this is not illegal.
What I would like to do with GB-PVR is to be able to hook into the record button. When the record button is pressed in the GUI, the data for that one particular show would be transferred to another app which would pass it only to the Tivo via "manrec".
My wife want to turn off the PC that has GBPVR running, so I cannot use it to control the Tivo via a blaster at the actual record time.
Is there any option in the program to allow any processing when the record button is pressed at "schedule" time? Are individual scheduled recording parameters stored in a separate folder in a format like TVPI that I could monitor?
I only get very basic cable, so I will not be concerned about two recordings overlapping or being scheduled at the same time. Scheduling conflicts are assumed to be non-existent.
While I plan on using an old Series 1 Tivo, others could also use external DVRs from other manufacturers or even an old VCR. The point is to use GB-PVR as a graphical "schedule ahead" non-realtime interface to programming these beasts.
Thanks.
--- Steve

[sub]

Sorry, there is nothing built in that would help with this very specialised requirement. The app just isnt built for this purpose.

[dennit]

Recently, I got an old Series 1 Tivo. My plan, if I can get the hard drive working on this old Tivo is to use it in manual record mode. I will not have a Tivo subscription and I do NOT want to take EPG data and import it into the Tivo. Rather, I only want to automate the manual record process.
Series 1 Tivos allow manual recording without subscription and I simply want to automate the process. Flame me if you feel you must, but this is not illegal.

I'm not sure why anyone would want to flame you. You own the TiVo - how you use it is up to you.

What I would like to do with GB-PVR is to be able to hook into the record button. When the record button is pressed in the GUI, the data for that one particular show would be transferred to another app which would pass it only to the Tivo via "manrec".

I have no idea what "manrec" is. Is it a program that runs on or communicates with a hacked TiVo to schedule manual recordings?

My wife want to turn off the PC that has GBPVR running, so I cannot use it to control the Tivo via a blaster at the actual record time.
Is there any option in the program to allow any processing when the record button is pressed at "schedule" time? Are individual scheduled recording parameters stored in a separate folder in a format like TVPI that I could monitor?

What is TVPI?

The GBPVR recordings are stored in the gbpvr database in the table called "Recordings" IIRC. You can use SQLite Browser to view them, and if you are handy, you could extract the SQL stored info with an automated tool, format it and do what you want.

Personally, I've been using a TiVo1 with my own EPG data since long before the Tivo Series 2 came out. I came to GBPVR because of the EPG tools when the predecessor of Schedules Direct shut down. Then I fell in love with GBPVR.

I'm going the opposite direction from you. I've got 4 Tivo1s, and I still run a 24/7 TiVo mothership emulator (pretends to be the master Tivo guide data server and feeds EPG guide data directly to the Tivos through my home network) but I'm down to running only one of them now as I move to GBPVR and HD.

The tools for building TiVo1 EPG slices are available on the web (or at least they were 3-4 years ago when I set it all up. - The tools I used are *nix based.) I started by manually building EPG slices and manually FTP'ing them over to the TiVo. Then I automated that process, then I set up the emulator. (Australia and Canada had some active groups working with TiVos.)

[banjo_42]

Thanks for all the info.

Manrec is a script that allows manual recording through the Tivoweb hack. At least that is my understanding. As a newbie, I don't have anything working yet.

TVPI is an XML-based file format started by TitanTV to schedule recordings. Apparently the drivers for at least some of the capture cards understand this format.

Parsing the GBPVR database is probably over my head. So I will work on another solution. (I really wanted to use GBPVR as I like the GUI interface.) Another program that accepts the Schedules Direct data is MyTelly. MyTelly does provides an EPG, but only outputs a schedule or viewing list. It does not control capture cards. I can get MyTelly to output to the TVPI format, but is a multi-step process. However, then all I need to do is take this TVPI data and parse it over to the Tivoweb with manrec.

[pBS]

you could use the external recorder plugin or better the graph recorder plugin as i believe it allows a command to be run instead of a capture card, but you'd have to leave the gbpvr machine on cuz it would only send it during the actual recording..
i could probably put something together to read the db, [it's easy with sqlite3.exe in batch]
but kicking off the send to the tivo,not sure how it would trigger...could put it in updateepg.bat but that only gets run once a day..or postprocessing.bat as that runs after every recording...but neither would catch immediate scheduled recordings..

there aren't any batches that run after a recording just being scheduled..
[which would be the 'proper' way,it would catch all scheduled recordings seconds after scheduling]

[rbelisle]

There is parallelprocessing.bat. Take a look at the post I just made to do something similar:

http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=37443

[JonnyCam]

Getting the data from gbpvr is easy. Either use slimm gbpvr's command line interface, or the web admin RSS feeds.
If the pc will be off a lot of the time, you could either have a windows sched task every 15 mins (set not to wake the pc) or set a custom button in pvrx2 which you run after setting a recording.