TiVoToGo for Mac Announced

An anonymous reader writes "After much anticipation, some backpedaling, a bite of hope, and a delayed release date, TiVoToGo Mac Edition is here. While there have been some unofficial hacks, those solutions have not been ideal for everyone. With support for transferring shows and burning to DVD/iPod, TiVoToGo is bundled as a part of Roxio's Toast Titanium software that will be announced tomorrow at Macworld."

Too bad, almost sounded useful

[Anonymous Coward]

Bundled as part of Toast? Well, so much for that idea then. A CD burning application that costs $100 and breaks with every security and system update that apple puts out? No thank you, I'll stick with the "unofficial hacks" (which work just fine).

back PEDALING, not peddling

[Anonymous Coward]

back PEDALING, not peddling.

Unfortunately... There's DRM

[8127972]

According to Engadget.com:

"Take heed, the software does indeed embed a non-visible watermark of your Media Access key into converted video -- same as the PC kiddo."

Click below for the full details:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/08/roxio-deliverst ivotogo-for-mac-yes-roxio/ [engadget.com]

I saw this coming.

[kyouteki]

This timing, of course, is not coincidental. The open-source hack tivodecode [sourceforge.net] has made .tivo file decoding possible on non-Windows platforms. Tons of people are using tools like the TivoDecode Manager [thebenesch.com] to replace the functionality not available from TiVo officially...until now.

Dissappointing

[Hawthorne01]

Clearly, this is an attempt by Roxio to stay relevant on the Mac. But there's no word yet of iTunes integration for full-size videos. Therefore, I have doubts (which hopefully will be settled tomorrow) about how this will work with 'iTV".

Likely to work with a Series 1?

[mccalli]

The UK only ever got Series 1 hardware - is this likely to work with a series 1 device?

Incidentally, for some more of those infamous hacks might I recommend TivoTool for the Mac [tivotool.com] and my own cross-platform TivoPodcast [eruvia.org] for handling podcasts of digital radio.

Cheers,
Ian

Not available without Toast?

[masonbrown]

It looks like there's no transfer-to-Mac capabilities without purchasing Toast:

"Roxio is the exclusive official provider of TiVoToGo(TM) for the Mac--and Toast 8 Titanium is the way to get it and enjoy your favorite shows on the Mac, on DVD, and on-the-go."

http://www.tivo.com/mactivotogo/ [tivo.com]

And...

[sootman]

...still no love for DirecTiVos. And, I guess, never. From http://www.tivo.com/4.9.4.1-1.asp [tivo.com]
"The TiVoToGo feature is not currently available on Series3. This feature will not be available [emphasis mine] on the DIRECTV DVR with TiVo or the original TiVo boxes (TiVo Series1)."

All I want to do is download shows. I've got two hackable TiVos (and even a supported USB/network adapter) but I've never been able to get it to work, and with two jobs, a newborn, and no "spare" PCs anymore, it's difficult for me to try--my last attempt was over a year ago. Are there any reputable services/people that can hack my TiVo for me? I'm not trying to get around TiVo's fees, I just want to have it make shows available for download, and maybe a web-based frontend for recording/deleting shows and the ability to make its daily call over the network would be nice, too. Any suggestions?

$100 vs free

[diamondsw]

And note that while Windows users get it for free, Mac users only get it as part of a $100 application; one that you hardly need with all of the built-in CD and DVD burning services.

Roxio Discount

[frenchs]

I'm pretty sure I'm in line with everyone else in that I don't really want to buy a $100 dollar piece of burning software just so I can download and view my tv shows on my mac.

But for those that are into that. If you go to Roxio's site to an invalid URL (Like this one [roxio.com]), you can get a 10% off coupon for their online store.

Re:It's still TiVo - I won't go there

[Have Blue]

The keynote is tomorrow at 9AM PST.

Re:$100 vs free

[Anonymous Coward]

Not exactly. Yes, the software is free on the PC, but won't actually play video without you having already acquired an MPEG-2 codec for the machine, can't burn to DVD without you acquiring DVD burning software from a third party, and won't convert to some of the formats this supports without an additional fee (~$30) to cover the costs of the codec licensing for those formats.

Since the Mac OS X software as packaged has a vastly different things feature set than the Windows version, as packaged, it's not an apples-to-apples pricing comparison,

Re:DRM

[mark0]

Install the TiVo Desktop and DirectShow Dump.

Re:Not Exactly

[Niten]

No, it's not DRM. It's a watermark. It does not and cannot prevent you from doing anything at all with the video; all it does is provide the content owners with a means of identifying copyright violators, should the video show up in a torrent somewhere.

I agree with shirizaki - this is the proper way for media to be distributed online. This watermark will never be an issue for you until after you've already, publicly violated someone else's copyright.

Re:Too bad, almost sounded useful

[lakeland]

I used to use toast too, but have stopped since the number of things it can do best has shrunk to virtually zero.

As a serious backup program it doesn't work. It doesn't handle backing up open files and I don't even think it has an option to span disks.
Backing up the odd file from your home directory is far easier in the Finder than launching a seperate program.
Music and Photo backups are meaningless now with the builtin apps doing them better.
That leaves movie backup. It does a passable job there, but so do dozens of other apps. Last time I used something called ffmpegX, not as pretty as Toast but did a better job. Besides, how often do you need to backup movies for a DVD player? I can burn DIVX or MOV straight to disk for playing in my 'DVD' player and if I was doing anything serious I would be using iMovie rather than a direct burn.

A few years ago Toast was essential. Now I can go months without using it and wouldn't bother installing it on a new machine despite a site licence.