# Transfer season passes and scheduled recordings



## Rolande

I currently have 2 Series2 TiVo's and just got a new TiVo HDXL this week. This will be the second time this year that I need to recreate all the season passes etc. on a new box. There should be an ability to export/import at least the Season Passes via TiVo Central to the new DVR or else be able to request a transfer on the menu somewhere. I guess I can at least use TiVo Central to program it to save me from remote control hell.


----------



## ciper

I want to add to this request. We should be able to make a backup of our season pass so that if we every clear and delete everything or install a new hard drive we can get the season passes back.


----------



## SirDucky

What woul be really cool is if Tivo could store season pass information on your account . Then from your computer, allow you to transfer the season pass list or checked items to another Tivo (New or additional).


----------



## sfalvey

Something that could save your thumbs as well as SPs would be handy.


----------



## f0gax

I'll throw in with this one too. Either let us download it through Tivo Desktop or store it "in the sky" with our account on Tivo.com.

Of course, if we ever get co-operative scheduling this may not be a problem


----------



## EvilMidniteBombr

I agree. Please make it easier to copy/transfer Season Passes, Thumbs Ratings, and other personal info.


----------



## ragingfish

People, I can't help but wonder if this is a christmas miracle, or if tivo already does backup our season passes.

My tivo's hard drive failed last week. It wasn't the factory drive. It was a 160GB western digital drive I had bought and used as an "upgrade." Well, stupid me, should have known better then to use a western drive, but I did, and it literally seized up after only 2 years in service. In any case, before I could retrieve my SP's and recordings, it was dead.

I cleared off a seagate 250gb i had lying around, and dug my old tivo factory drive from the bowels of my storage room. Well, following the weaknees upgrade instructions, I transferred the tivo software from the factory drive to my new seagate.

After several hours of the tivo updating itself, i sat down armed and ready to start setting up my SPs again...and when i went into the season pass manager...i swear things i had just added to my SP list only about a month, maybe 2 tops, ago, were already there. Keep in mind, this tivo factory drive hasn't seen the light of day for almost 2 years. There is NO possible way that my factory drive had these newer SPs on it. Granted, in addition to what appeared to be most of my season passes, there were also season passes from back in the day when the tivo factory drive WAS installed. 

So after deleting all the really old SPs i didn't want, i only had to recreate 2-3 SP's.

So some magic was in play here...or maybe tivo DOES store SP information on it's servers?


----------



## magnus

That's number 1 on my wish list. Wish they'd implement this and stop messing around with more advertisements.



f0gax said:


> Of course, if we ever get co-operative scheduling this may not be a problem


----------



## Minok

Its really a sorely missing feature that one can transfer recorded shows between TIVO units but not one's season passes and wishlishlists and knowledge base about likes/dislikes between them.

The same way my new HD can see my S2DT and transfer things from the now playing list, it should be able to see the Season Pass list (with all of the SP's and wishlist entries) and transfer those as well.

Having to 'start over from day one' is not cool, given that I've paid $300 for a subscription to feed me advertisements, try to get me to buy Domino's Pizza (which I will use at some point) and provides a mediocre program guide (the one that my TV supports off of just the cable feed is better as it provides access to HD in-the-clear channels without cablecards).

I can appreciate the need for Tivo to make money and the developers working on new 'features' that deliver content, but lets not fall into the trap of delivering a bunch of features many people will not use at the expense of not delivering a feature everyone thinks SHOULD be there. (Microsoft is a master at this.. the OS has no capability to make or write out or handle ISO images natively out of the box, but its loaded with features that have no business being in an operating system)


----------



## Ckought

I think the casual TiVo user (as opposed to people on here) would be less scared about upgrading to a newer TiVo if they knew all they had to do is plug it in and turn it on and everything would be transferred automatically from the old one to the new one (of course, a call to TiVo or a menu choice during the set-up walk-thru would be needed so that the new TiVo knew it needed to copy stuff from the old TiVo -- and if there are multiple other TiVos, then which one is being replaced).

I just purchased two new TiVoHDs (not here yet) and I'm already running through my head all the things I'll need to do to move all the old shows and settings from the old S2DTs to the replacement TiVoHDs. It's going to be a pain and take forever doing it manually.


----------



## TooMuchTime

I'll agree that this should _at least _be something available on the Tivo Desktop. The entire point of TD is storage for saved recordings. Why not saved configurations as well? Even the TD Plus doesn't have this. If it did, I'd buy it.

On the other hand, if what *ragingfish* says is true, then his configuration settings must have been saved "in the cloud." It certainly would explain how he did have to recreate a few SPs; maybe they were the newest ones and hadn't been saved yet. I know they're not stored in non-volatile memory on the device. If they were, then *all of them* would have come back.

We need to get this confirmed by Tivo.


----------



## StanDaMan

I would LOVE to have that feature. It's getting time to upgrade my FIVE tivos to HD, and that sounds like a big pain in the butt transfering all this stuff.


----------



## Jonathan_S

ragingfish said:


> So some magic was in play here...or maybe tivo DOES store SP information on it's servers?


I can't seem to find the post from a TiVo rep that explained this.

But as I understand it if you've opted-in to the extra data sharing with TiVo (possibly as part of enabling kids-zone), then your season passes _do_ get reported to TiVo's servers.

And if for some reason (like a drive replacement) these SPs disappear from your TiVo they can get re-synced from TiVo's servers. (But only onto the same TiVo box, if you did an box replacement you wouldn't get your old SPs restored)


----------



## kuyper

+1e12 for this - here's a cross post I just plopped in another thread:
You know, it amazes me that years later TiVo have still not built the ability to backup a season pass/wishlist (and all your thumbs-up/down preferences) to your TiVo Desktop (their "excuse" not to have that automagically stored in your accounts is "privacy") and therefore be able to restore to a new device is pretty l4m3

I'm on my 6th TiVo (counting 2 dead/misbehaving HDs that they had to replace) which means 5 recurrences of me having to handraulically transfer all that info.

Urgh....


----------



## resanders

Is there a way to transfer the entire Now Playing list from my S3 box to the new Premier XL box? However, I'm not really completely sold on the Premier units... the new GUI interface is nice but is it worth the extra $$. Still deciding.


----------



## Jonathan_S

resanders said:


> Is there a way to transfer the entire Now Playing list from my S3 box to the new Premier XL box? However, I'm not really completely sold on the Premier units... the new GUI interface is nice but is it worth the extra $$. Still deciding.


Probably, depending on your cable provider.

If both units are subscribed any show that doesn't have a copy protection flag set can be transfered between them using multi-room viewing (MRV). (Or you can transfer the shows from your S3 to a computer, then back to the Premiere later). Some cable companies are more restrictive of shows that others. Reportedly Time Warner copy protects everything except the broadcast channels and on the other hand Verison FIOS doesn't copy protect anything.

If your shows are copy protected then you're going to be out of luck. There's no way to move or copy those.

(And even with MRV that only moves existing recordings. And season passes, wishlists, scheduled recordins, favorite channels, thumbs data, or other settings would need to be manually recreated)


----------



## draaisma

Tivo's webbased season pass manager allows you to move season passed between tivo's and even resort/delete season passes.
It's in the season pass manager in the 'Find TV Shows' section on the main menu from Tivo.com.


----------



## Wislander

I have a feeling this was one of those things that was added after the request was posted here.


----------



## tivogurl

Web based? What a silly bit of indirection. If I install a new TiVo box, I should be able to transfer SPs, Wishlists, channel lineup, and channel selections (which are active and which aren't) over Ethernet from my old TiVo. In fact, my new TiVo should be able to set up itself fairly instantly by transferring all the databases from the old TiVo rather than talking to TiVo and wasting hours downloading and crunching program information (and that's just for the initial download of a day's worth of programs). Why bother when two weeks of program information has already been downloaded and fully processed by the other TiVo?


----------



## innocentfreak

Because there is no guarantee you are on the same cable company or even in the same area.


----------



## tivogurl

innocentfreak said:


> Because there is no guarantee you are on the same cable company or even in the same area.


Same area/same cableco/same channel lineup is the standard use case. Few people have TiVos in multiple locations. In any case, your new TiVo should darn well _ask_ if it should be set up like the other TiVo on the network. Not implementing the standard case because the marginal case can't work is silly.


----------



## seattlewendell

tivogurl said:


> Same area/same cableco/same channel lineup is the standard use case. Few people have TiVos in multiple locations. In any case, your new TiVo should darn well _ask_ if it should be set up like the other TiVo on the network. Not implementing the standard case because the marginal case can't work is silly.


TiVo does a lot of things wrong. This is not one of them. The web based season pass transfer works just fine. Also the there is no garantee that a TiVo to TiVo transfer would be any faster.


----------



## tivogurl

seattlewendell said:


> The web based season pass transfer works just fine.


Unless they've fixed it, the web transfer doesn't properly retain SP order, and it doesn't do wishlists. That was one of the original complaints about it on this forum, in fact. That's not fine in my book.

In any case, SP transfer is _wholly inadequate_. You have to have already set up the new TiVo and downloaded the channel lineup, for one thing. That's too darn slow. What I'm talking about is transferring _everything_ from your old TiVo. Channel lineups, season passes, wishlists, guide data, favorite channels, and suggestions. All preprocessed and ready to go on your other TiVo. No need to waste hours in guided setup and guide data processing. Just transfer it over and be done. Web transfers are a pathetic imitation of how TiVo should work.


seattlewendell said:


> Also the there is no garantee that a TiVo to TiVo transfer would be any faster.


In what universe is a local network not faster and more reliable than the Internet?


----------



## seattlewendell

tivogurl said:


> Unless they've fixed it, the web transfer doesn't properly retain SP order, and it doesn't do wishlists. That was one of the original complaints about it on this forum, in fact. That's not fine in my book.
> 
> In any case, SP transfer is _wholly inadequate_. You have to have already set up the new TiVo and downloaded the channel lineup, for one thing. That's too darn slow. What I'm talking about is transferring _everything_ from your old TiVo. Channel lineups, season passes, wishlists, guide data, favorite channels, and suggestions. All preprocessed and ready to go on your other TiVo. No need to waste hours in guided setup and guide data processing. Just transfer it over and be done. Web transfers are a pathetic imitation of how TiVo should work.
> 
> In what universe is a local network not faster and more reliable than the Internet?


I have used macs for about 10 years. One of the things I really like about the OS is that it has a handy "transfer profile" option. It is as you describe above. You buy a new Mac (which I do every 3 years), connect the network cable and transfer all your settings, bookmarks, data, indv. App settings, EVERYTHING. It takes many, many hours. Trnasferring and application with settings intact is complex resource intensive computing operation.
Also I can download a HD movie from Amazon in less time than it takes to transfer from my Premeire to my series 3.

So to answer your question...."in what universe?" The TiVo universe of course...


----------

