# KMTTG, PyTiVo, & Hydra



## Joe Siegler (May 10, 2000)

OK, I have Hydra. It took me a LONG time, but I got used to it. Tonight, for the first time in a really long time I went to put something back on my TiVo from my Mac. It worked fine with everything that's installed on my Mac for some time now, but this is the first time I've tried to do it since I went Hydra earlier this year.

So I discovered tonight that there's no way for a Hydra to see PyTiVo running on my Mac. Lovely. OK, so I thought "I remember being able to use KMTTG to push stuff to my TiVo units through PyTiVo". 

However, my KMTTG installation doesn't have a push option. I looked around the docs, and couldn't find where/how to configure KMTTG to use PyTiVo to push anything. Can someone direct me to this?

In the meantime, I'm going to use a real kludge. I still have a Roamio on the home network that's not gone Hydra - I can use that one to copy the program from the Mac, and then go to the Bolt with Hydra (where I want it), and then copy from the Roamio. Not the way I want to do this, but I can't think of another way.

KMTTG works great at pulling stuff FROM the Hydra box, but I can't figure out how to get stuff back there, despite having KMTTG & PyTiVo installed on my Mac (in the same versions that worked fine last time I transferred something to my TiVo (pre Hydra). 

Tkx for any pointers.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

AFAIK, you CANNOT get shows back TO THE TIVO when you're using Hydra.. That's one of the reasons (among the lower end actually to me) I haven't "up"graded. Others have said in the other threads that it's supposedly coming some day?? (but correct me)

You MIGHT be able to use StreamBaby to stream them..??


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## Joe Siegler (May 10, 2000)

Dammit. I thought there was a way around it with KMTTG and having it use PyTiVo to push it back. But my KMTTG doesn't have a push option, and I can't find a way to do it. I was pretty sure there was a way around it.

I mean I can get it to the Hydra box through the Roamio box which hasn't been upgraded. But not my preferred method obviously.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

well, if you can get it through the roamio, then maybe I'm wrong.. maybe it's only pushes (which I've never used), and you could pull via the Tivo?

Nowadays I use streambaby to watch entire shows I have downloaded.. and only transfer back something I really want to skim through quickly or use quick mode.. (During my vacation, I put some episodes of the dumb "The Wall" show back on my Tivo so I could skim through 99% of it and watch just the trivia question part.. That wouldn't've been easy via streaming..). But if I'm watching a sitcom or drama I offloaded for space reasons, I just use streambaby, then I can actually delete it in the Tivo UI and it's deleted from the computer (and the metadata file remains, that I nowadays keep to indicate I watched that episode).


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## Joe Siegler (May 10, 2000)

Oh, I can copy stuff from the the Roamio to the Bolt/Hydra no problem. I just can't figure out how to go to the Bolt/Hydra straight from my Mac when I used to be before Hydra.


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## reneg (Jun 19, 2002)

Push to Tivo is dead for both Classic UI & Hydra.


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## Joe Siegler (May 10, 2000)

reneg said:


> Push to Tivo is dead for both Classic UI & Hydra.


If that's true, then how do I get stuff back? Surely the entire system is not SOL - I have an obscene amount of old .TiVo files.

I can always kludge it and use KMTTG to get the raw video file out, copy it to a flash drive, and play it on my TV, but that negates the whole point of having a home network.


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## Tony_T (Nov 2, 2017)

Is Plex an option?


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## reneg (Jun 19, 2002)

Joe Siegler said:


> If that's true, then how do I get stuff back? Surely the entire system is not SOL - I have an obscene amount of old .TiVo files.
> 
> I can always kludge it and use KMTTG to get the raw video file out, copy it to a flash drive, and play it on my TV, but that negates the whole point of having a home network.


Pull to Tivo from the Classic UI still works with PyTivo (and PyTivo Desktop) when the transfer is initiated through the classic Tivo UI. I always decrypt .Tivo files, but I seem to remember problems transferring at one point with unencrypted .Tivo files. I think they can be transferred with PyTivo.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

Joe Siegler said:


> Oh, I can copy stuff from the the Roamio to the Bolt/Hydra no problem. I just can't figure out how to go to the Bolt/Hydra straight from my Mac when I used to be before Hydra.


The short answer: the capability (PC-to-TiVo box transfers) was ignored in Hydra and no longer is possible (the other way, TiVo box-to-PC, still works). TiVo has said that this was more an oversight as Hydra went forward--this was not a conscious decision. TiVo also has said that it may look into this in the future, but no promises--it's not high on the list.

For now, transfer to the Roamio/TE3 and then from there to the Bolt/Hydra. Or use Plex to stream from your PC to the TiVo box. Or, decrypt the files to a "regular" (i.e. non-.TiVo) format and stream them directly to your TV (or to your DVD player) for watching, if your TV (or DVD player) is networked and supports this.


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## Joe Siegler (May 10, 2000)

There any info on how to set up Plex on my mac? Not looking for step by step here, just a point in the right direction. Danke.


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## eherberg (Feb 17, 2011)

Quick-Start & Step by Step Guides | Plex Support


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## jcthorne (Jan 28, 2002)

Yes, under Hydra the UI is for tivo sourced content only. Your stored network content is only accessable via plex. Really hope this changes some day. I would actually be happier with bookmarks in the now playing list to plex content than transferring the content itself onto the tivo hard drive.

But for now, the concept of a single ui to provide content is lost.


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## PSU_Sudzi (Jun 4, 2015)

Joe Siegler said:


> OK, I have Hydra. It took me a LONG time, but I got used to it. Tonight, for the first time in a really long time I went to put something back on my TiVo from my Mac. It worked fine with everything that's installed on my Mac for some time now, but this is the first time I've tried to do it since I went Hydra earlier this year.
> 
> So I discovered tonight that there's no way for a Hydra to see PyTiVo running on my Mac. Lovely. OK, so I thought "I remember being able to use KMTTG to push stuff to my TiVo units through PyTiVo".
> 
> ...


Roll back from Hydra and wait until they open up the UI to transfers again.


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## krkaufman (Nov 25, 2003)

PSU_Sudzi said:


> Roll back from Hydra and wait until they open up the UI to transfers again.


... making sure to offload any precious content prior to the rollback.


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## krkaufman (Nov 25, 2003)

Joe Siegler said:


> Oh, I can copy stuff from the the Roamio to the Bolt/Hydra no problem.


No problem but not without hassle, since doing so requires use of TiVo Online, rather than being able to initiate transfers directly from the receiving box's UI.

And some have reported playback issues with transferred content; though I don't know how widespread an issue it is. (see here) So rollback or only transferring as far as the TE3 DVR seem the most reliable options.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Joe Siegler said:


> If that's true, then how do I get stuff back? Surely the entire system is not SOL - I have an obscene amount of old .TiVo files.
> 
> I can always kludge it and use KMTTG to get the raw video file out, copy it to a flash drive, and play it on my TV, but that negates the whole point of having a home network.


Push has been gone for several years now. It required a command on the TiVo servers to function and TiVo removed that command from their API back in like summer 2015, maybe 14. Pull has never been an option in Hydra. Even on the older UI it still uses the OLD S2 style UI screens, so I assume they didn't want to even have those screens available on the Hydra UI.

TiVo Desktop and TiVoToGo have basically been abandoned. There is a LONG standing issue with transferring TS files where they get glitches due to some failure in the encryption on the TiVo side. (worked fine originally, but broke somewhere along the lines and never got fixed) TiVo Desktop doesn't even work anymore unless you manually replace it's SSL certificate and even then it's got issues where a Windows update can break it and require a reinstall. And now Hydra doesn't even have the option to transfer content from PC to TiVo. It wouldn't surprise me if they broke or removed the ability to transfer recordings from your TiVo to a PC in the near future. TiVo seems to be almost entirely focused on mobile now, even though that doesn't work very well either.


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## Joe Siegler (May 10, 2000)

Dan203 said:


> Even on the older UI it still uses the OLD S2 style UI screens, so I assume they didn't want to even have those screens available on the Hydra UI.


That's probably likely, but given how long they had a hybrid HD/classic interface, that seems like the wrong time for me personally to go "No more old style screens - period".

I'm just pissed off at the inability to get stuff back to my Hydra TiVo. I've actually gotten used to the interface, and don't really want to revert. Plex isn't a solution, at can't deal with .TiVo files. I'm not going to strip all of them, I have a metric TON of .TiVo files, I only strip what I want to look at - or in the past transfer them back to an actual TiVo.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Don't hold your breath waiting for them to add the feature back.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Joe Siegler said:


> In the meantime, I'm going to use a real kludge. I still have a Roamio on the home network that's not gone Hydra - I can use that one to copy the program from the Mac, and then go to the Bolt with Hydra (where I want it), and then copy from the Roamio. Not the way I want to do this, but I can't think of another way.


Try one. See how long it takes. The TE3 Roamio still has network diagnostics that show transfer time. My basic Roamio is about 94Mbps. Once on the Roamio I can use Online to copy the program to my TE4 Roamio. I have done several TB with this method.

The underlined part doesn't work.


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## bradleys (Oct 31, 2007)

Plex is going to be your best bet - it works pretty well and I stopped transferring content to my TiVo quite a while back preferring to just leave them on my media server. (I am still using the legacy UI)

Setup is simple and I like the indexing / the mobile tools.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Yeah they also removed the TiVo to TiVo transfer option from Hydra. You can only stream from the UI. You can still do a transfer if you use online.tivo.com, but you can't do it directly from the TiVo running Hydra.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

bradleys said:


> Plex is going to be your best bet - it works pretty well and I stopped transferring content to my TiVo quite a while back preferring to just leave them on my media server. (I am still using the legacy UI)
> 
> Setup is simple and I like the indexing / the mobile tools.


He doesn't want to use Plex because he'd have to decrypt all his .tivo files and he has a ton of them.


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## bradleys (Oct 31, 2007)

Dan203 said:


> He doesn't want to use Plex because he'd have to decrypt all his .tivo files and he has a ton of them.


Understood - aside from downgrading, I do not think he has much of a choice and i wouldn't count on TiVo adding the fuctionality back again. If they do awesome, but i wouldn't count on it.

@Joe Siegler: If you change your mind, kmttg can decrypt your .tivo files that are located on a file share and automatically name your files so Plex can easily index them.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

Dan203 said:


> He doesn't want to use Plex because he'd have to decrypt all his .tivo files and he has a ton of them.


In my scant experience, decrypting a show is fairly quick. And, of course, one could simply set a PC to do it all in a batch, until it gets done.


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## hmspain (Oct 11, 2015)

Now that automatic skip is coming to Tivo this spring, and since it is only on Hydra, getting pyTivo running on Hydra takes on additional importance IMHO.


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## JACKASTOR (May 26, 2011)

Has anyone else gotten a flag for a virus from the pytivo page?


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## JACKASTOR (May 26, 2011)

Doesn’t TiVo online allow transfers from box to box?


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## HerronScott (Jan 1, 2002)

hmspain said:


> Now that automatic skip is coming to Tivo this spring, and since it is only on Hydra, getting pyTivo running on Hydra takes on additional importance IMHO


Curious why you think automatic skip increases the importance of being able to transfer shows from your PC to your TiVo under TE4 (you should be able to download shows already with pyTivo and TE4)?

Scott


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## hmspain (Oct 11, 2015)

Since the loss of pyTivo is a deal breaker for me  ... I can't upgrade to Hydra, and have to miss out on automatic skip. I can (of course) still use manual skip with the older UI.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

hmspain said:


> Since the loss of pyTivo is a deal breaker for me  ... I can't upgrade to Hydra, and have to miss out on automatic skip. I can (of course) still use manual skip with the older UI.


Many of us in this club.


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## bradleys (Oct 31, 2007)

hmspain said:


> Now that automatic skip is coming to Tivo this spring, and since it is only on Hydra, getting pyTivo running on Hydra takes on additional importance IMHO.[/QUOT


There is no "getting Pytivo to work" with Hydra, Hydra doesn't support MRV. You can use Pytivo desktop or KMTTG to download shows to a local drive, but you cannot move content back to TiVo or from one TiVo to another. Plex is your option in this case.

I haven't moved to Hydra mainly because of live guide, but as soon as the spring update is released I will upgrade.


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

JACKASTOR said:


> Has anyone else gotten a flag for a virus from the pytivo page?


Which page exactly?


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## JACKASTOR (May 26, 2011)

wmcbrine said:


> Which page exactly?


 Its embedded in the download for windows. TivoLibre.exe is the file that is indicated by fsecure. the virus name comes up as "HEUR/AGEN.1036990.5B4661474!FSOCAP"


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## HerronScott (Jan 1, 2002)

JACKASTOR said:


> HEUR/AGEN.1036990.5B4661474!FSOCAP


I'd guess a false detect.

Scott


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

hmspain said:


> Since the loss of pyTivo is a deal breaker for me  ... I can't upgrade to Hydra, and have to miss out on automatic skip.


No, you don't. Plenty of us use kmttg autoskip every day and it works way better than that IFTTT kludge.


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## JACKASTOR (May 26, 2011)

HerronScott said:


> I'd guess a false detect.
> 
> Scott


You would guess wrong.


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## omelet1978 (Mar 7, 2006)

Question, I have a Bolt+ with TE3 and a MacBook. I have been able to pull movies off of my Tivo, but I did not see a way to put movies back onto it.

Can someone point me in the right direction on how to do that? I'm using PyTivo Desktop.


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## reneg (Jun 19, 2002)

hmspain said:


> Since the loss of pyTivo is a deal breaker for me  ... I can't upgrade to Hydra, and have to miss out on automatic skip. I can (of course) still use manual skip with the older UI.


I don't feel like I'm missing out on Tivo's automatic skip. I use KMTTG's Autoskip support kmttg / Wiki / AutoSkip I can even create & import skipmode tags for downloadable shows that don't have skip data. Not a solution for everyone, but I can still avoid Hydra and have my Tivo do what I want it to do.


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## fcfc2 (Feb 19, 2015)

JACKASTOR said:


> Its embedded in the download for windows. TivoLibre.exe is the file that is indicated by fsecure. the virus name comes up as "HEUR/AGEN.1036990.5B4661474!FSOCAP"


VirusTotal
Why not try it at the above site.


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## HerronScott (Jan 1, 2002)

JACKASTOR said:


> You would guess wrong.


Why do you say that? TiVoLibre has been out for quite some time (and virus protection vendors do put out DAT's with false detections).

Scott


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## JACKASTOR (May 26, 2011)

HerronScott said:


> Why do you say that? TiVoLibre has been out for quite some time (and virus protection vendors do put out DAT's with false detections).
> 
> Scott


Just because the program has been out for sometime does not mean anything. It was infected from the download site that hosts pytivo. And it was 100% infected with the virus I indicated. So download at your own risk and use. Either way it was infected.


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

JACKASTOR said:


> Just because the program has been out for sometime does not mean anything. It was infected from the download site that hosts pytivo. And it was 100% infected with the virus I indicated. So download at your own risk and use. Either way it was infected.


What's the exact download link that you used? The HEUR in HEUR/AGEN.1036990.5B4661474!FSOCAP indicates a heuristic detection, not a specific detection based on a known virus signature. Have you sent a sample to fsecure to confirm the detection?

It sounds like a false positive to me, but I'd be happy to run it through Malwarebytes, McAfee Enterprise, Microsoft, etc.


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## HerronScott (Jan 1, 2002)

wmcbrine said:


> Which page exactly?





ggieseke said:


> What's the exact download link that you used? The HEUR in HEUR/AGEN.1036990.5B4661474!FSOCAP indicates a heuristic detection, not a specific detection based on a known virus signature. Have you sent a sample to fsecure to confirm the detection?
> 
> It sounds like a false positive to me, but I'd be happy to run it through Malwarebytes, McAfee Enterprise, Microsoft, etc.


Second request for exactly which page/link. Does pyTivo even include TiVoLibre.exe (I don't think so)? pyTivo Desktop does so I'm guessing they mean from here.

Download for Windows

No virus detection here for tivolibre.exe in a new download/install from there. 

Scott


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## WorldBandRadio (Dec 20, 2010)

Mikeguy said:


> ... TiVo has said that this was more an oversight as Hydra went forward--this was not a conscious decision. TiVo also has said that it may look into this in the future, but no promises--it's not high on the list....


The removal of copying back to the TiVo is a roadblock for me moving to Hydra.


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## Test (Dec 8, 2004)

I have a premiere on the old UI and a bolt on hydra. I have a bunch of mp4s transferred from my pc to my premiere and they can't stream from my premiere to my bolt. Is there any format that I can transfer to my premiere so I can view it on my bolt? Pretty much making my premiere a media server


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## ajwees41 (May 7, 2006)

Test said:


> I have a premiere on the old UI and a bolt on hydra. I have a bunch of mp4s transferred from my pc to my premiere and they can't stream from my premiere to my bolt. Is there any format that I can transfer to my premiere so I can view it on my bolt? Pretty much making my premiere a media server


why not just setup a plex server?


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## Test (Dec 8, 2004)

For starters I already have this set up, I prefer the tivo ui over the plex and trying to get someone else in the house use to using plex when you already have them use to using tivo is tough. 

I'm not looking to go back and convert all my mp4s, but going forward if there is a file format that would work on the premiere and can be viewed from the premiere on the bolt that would be ideal. Right now I can watch things on the bolt that were recorded on the premiere, figure I could transfer a file to the premiere and make it work the same.


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## Joe3 (Dec 12, 2006)

Test said:


> I have a premiere on the old UI and a bolt on hydra. I have a bunch of mp4s transferred from my pc to my premiere and they can't stream from my premiere to my bolt. Is there any format that I can transfer to my premiere so I can view it on my bolt? Pretty much making my premiere a media server


Get rid of Hydra and go to TE3, which I assume is running on your Premiere. You wil also get the transfer quality you expect.


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## kpeters59 (Jun 19, 2007)

TiVo's pretty much require either .mpg or .mp4.

PyTiVo's function is to put the files on the TiVo in one of those formats. So, if it's working at all, that's all you can do...

-KP


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## fyodor (Sep 19, 2006)

Test said:


> I have a premiere on the old UI and a bolt on hydra. I have a bunch of mp4s transferred from my pc to my premiere and they can't stream from my premiere to my bolt. Is there any format that I can transfer to my premiere so I can view it on my bolt? Pretty much making my premiere a media server


Were the MP4s originally sent to the Premiere by push, back when it was available? If so, they will have been flagged copy-never. If you re-pull them to the Premiere that may fix the problem.


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