Any Tivo users out there?

[The Sauce]

Hey, my old lady got me a Philips DTV DVR with Tivo. The guy at BestBuy swore up and down that he had the same one and that it was a cinch to connect it to a computer and transfer the shows you record. He said just connect it to your computer with a USB cable and it will show up as a removable drive in explorer. Can anyone confirm this? What kind of cable do I need?

 

[bozo1]

He lied.

If you have a Version 2 Tivo, there are ways to get stuff transferred to your PC but it's not as simple as he said. There sometimes is discussion on it at the tivocommunity.com forums but those posts usually get deleted. I'm sure if you read through there you'll find some or pointers to other forums that discuss how to do it.

 

[bozo1]

Found it. Go here to learn about all kinds of stuff Tivo doesn't want you to know about.

 

[The Sauce]

This particular model is pretty new and does have 2 USB ports on the back. Is that true of all Tivo's, or is it possible that this is a new feature? In the manual when it refers to the USB ports it saus "For future use."

 

[bozo1]

The Series 2 Tivo's had USB ports. The plan is to let people use that to connect to the Internet to download programming info instead of using the built-in modem. (Many people are doing it via the internet now, but it's unsupported.) They also want to let you record stuff to your PC, send stuff to other Tivo's, etc., but they are running into obstacles from the MPAA and those type organizations. Check out the link I posted above to see what all you can do.

 

[The Sauce]

Ok, thanks man. Don't know why they would run into trouble with the MPAA, you can already record stuff to VCR or DVD-R standalone players. Recording it to DVD on a PC is not all that much different.