# Desktop Plus or Roxio Creator?



## Darrelpr (Mar 28, 2003)

Does the Tivo "sanctioned" version of Roxio Creator includes the transcoding functionality of Tivo Desktop Plus? Or, if I want to convert shows to Zune *and* burn DVDs for the living room, will I need to buy both Desktop Plus _and_ Roxio Creator?

thanks in advance!


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

Darrelpr said:


> Does the Tivo "sanctioned" version of Roxio Creator includes the transcoding functionality of Tivo Desktop Plus? Or, if I want to convert shows to Zune *and* burn DVDs for the living room, will I need to buy both Desktop Plus _and_ Roxio Creator?
> 
> thanks in advance!


I don't know a single program that will do all that but you could save yourself the price of desktop plus by using (free) pyTivo and pyTivo (two links).

For conversions, Videora Tivo Converter seems to get a lot of praise on this forum, although I haven't used it myself. Beware of Roxio video stuff if you don't have a fairly powerful PC, e.g., 3 GHz and 1 GB ram. It seems to be very demanding on resources.


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## Darrelpr (Mar 28, 2003)

Doh!!! As it turns out, if you're running Vista Home Premium or Ultimate, you don't need to purchase any additional software. Windows Movie Maker will transcode the *.tivo files to *.mpg and then you can publish to DVD using Windows DVD Maker.

_Beware of Roxio video stuff if you don't have a fairly powerful PC, e.g., 3 GHz and 1 GB ram. It seems to be very demanding on resources. _

Thanks - good to know. My primary machine is a Tosh M4 laptop with a Pentium M (1.86 ghz) proc. As I type this, I'm using WMM to transcode a 2hour, best quality *.tivo file. The processor is running at 100% and the status bar indicates that it's going to take several hours. This obviously is probably a machine not that well suited for this kind of stuff. Depending on the results of the Windows' apps, I may give the pyTivo apps a try next.


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## kthurman (Dec 30, 2007)

Can you explain exactly how wmm transcodes the .tivo file to an .mpg file? I have wmm version 6.0 (build 6000) and I don't see an intuitive way to do this...


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## greg_burns (May 22, 2004)

kthurman said:


> Can you explain exactly how wmm transcodes the .tivo file to an .mpg file? I have wmm version 6.0 (build 6000) and I don't see an intuitive way to do this...


.tivo files are just encrypted MPEG-2 files with metadata attached to the begenning of the file.

If you use something like TivoDecode you can free the .mpg from the .tivo wrapper.


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## bhaas (Aug 5, 2003)

Darrelpr said:


> Doh!!! As it turns out, if you're running Vista Home Premium or Ultimate, you don't need to purchase any additional software. Windows Movie Maker will transcode the *.tivo files to *.mpg and then you can publish to DVD using Windows DVD Maker.


When you use WMM to transcode from .tivo to .mpg, where do you publish to? DVD? Publishing to computer only lets you save it as .avi or .wmv

thanks


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## classicsat (Feb 18, 2004)

WMM probably ties into the Directshow filter.


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## Darrelpr (Mar 28, 2003)

bhaas said:


> When you use WMM to transcode from .tivo to .mpg, where do you publish to? DVD? Publishing to computer only lets you save it as .avi or .wmv
> 
> thanks


If you have Vista Home Premium or Ultimate, you have the additional option of "publishing to DVD". When you select that option, WMM saves your project then invokes Windows DVD Maker. WDM then presents you a series of wizards which walks you through creating your DVD - including creating menus, etc. Works like a champ with the standard TivoToGo package and given Vista's WMM ability to publish as a .wmv, there's no need to purchase the Desktop Plus.

Note that the above only works with WMM 6.0 (the version included with Vista). I was unable to convert the .tivo files using the downloadable version of WMM (for XP).

Hope this helps.


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## bhaas (Aug 5, 2003)

thanks. I see the wizards, but it makes me actually burn a DVD (which I can then of course bring back in). I can't get it to just burn a harddrive image?


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