TiVo

From Plex

Contents 1 Plugin Name 2 Author and Contact Information 3 Category 4 Description 5 Issues 6 Version 7 Download 8 Change Log

Plugin Name

TiVo

Author and Contact Information

http://yoav.org/

Category

Video

Description

The tivo plugin lets plex play shows directly off your tivo. Requires an activated Series 2, Series 3, or Tivo HD.

You provide your Media Access Key, it lists the shows on your tivo, you pick one and watch it.

Issues

• There will be burping (stop/go) in your movie if it's not downloading fast enough.
  • The connection to your tivo needs to be significantly faster than the show's bandwidth. High-def shows require a wired connection.
  • Even if your connection is good, it takes processing power on the tivo to provide the show as a stream. If it's recording shows and viewing shows, it will be busy doing a lot of stuff apart from streaming your show, and will likely slow down the streaming. Best way to keep the tivo unbusy is to leave it tuned to an unused channel, and make sure it's not recording or playing anything. Some tivos are just unable to live stream an HD show.
  • Some trial-and-error seems to suggest that TivoHD machines can't do HD streaming in real-time even on wired connections, and that only Series 3 can. However, your situation might differ.

You can help a little bit by changing your Preferences... System... Cache... Internet Video Cache to a large value. But if the transfers are slow, you simply can't view them live. Instead of viewing those shows live off your tivo, try using a downloading tool (like http://iTiVo.googlecode.com/ choosing the 'decrypt' format) and then providing the downloaded file to Plex.

• Channels that use 720p (like Fox-HD, CW-HD) create shows that plex has problems with (you will notice significant audio/video sync problems, and jerky video). This is an issue with Plex's ability to render those shows. Until that is fixed, you may use an external downloader, re-encode the show to a different format, and then view it in Plex.

• If a show is currently recording, or is marked 'copyright'[1] then tivo will refuse to serve the show. Therefore the TiVo plugin will not list those shows.

• Even though you are presented with a full control bar for the video you are watching, only pause, play, stop, and restart actually do the right thing. The rest of the buttons don't work.

Version

0.3

Download

The plugin is now directly available in the AppStore. If you would rather install it manually, then download the file from:

http://yoav.org/files/tivo.tgz

Double-click to uncompress it, and place the resulting bundle into

<user>/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-ins

Change Log

Version 0.5

• Deal correctly with tivos that have a 15-character IP addresses

Version 0.4

• Try and be more helpful detecting communication errors with tivo (especially in the case of an invalid MAK).

Version 0.3

• chmod the tivodecode executable to work around the app installer setting everything to non-executable.

Version 0.2

• do not list copy protected shows.
• do not list shows being recorded.
• Add episode description, season, episode number where available.

Version 0.1

• initial version