# KMTTG and PyTivo



## Chesterton (Aug 5, 2013)

I'm going to upgrade my Roamio basic to 3 TB. I want to first back up all the existing recordings and Season Passes, then restore them onto the larger disk. I have installed kmttg and PyTivo on my PC. I tried some experiments:
Experiment 1:
a. I did a basic transfer of a recording using kmttg. It appeared on my PC disk as a .TIVO file.
b. I deleted that recording on my TIVO using kmttg.
c. I requested PyTivo to push it to my TIVO.

The recording didn't ever show up on the TIVO.

Experiment 2:

Same as above, only I used PyTIVO to transfer the recording. This time it did restore the recording after I had deleted it.

So I have a few questions:

1. Why didn't PyTivo successfully restore the recording transferred by kmttg?
2. Assuming I solve the above, is there a way to batch restore all the recordings, to avoid having to run PyTivo manually for each one?
3. Is there an easier way to do this mass backup/restore from my small disk to the new, larger one?


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## ncted (May 13, 2007)

Caveat: I am no pytivo expert. That said, when I upgraded my Roamio to a 2TB drive recently, I found that downloading the recordings to my PC with pytivo, and restoring them to my upgraded Roamio by transferring them on the Roamio itself seemed to be the most reliable way to do things. I never got the pytivo push to work reliably.


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## FitzAusTex (May 7, 2014)

Got a question about this : Transferring from a smaller drive to a pc back to a larger drive will only work for unprotected content? I think Time Warner has the flag on for everything except locals. I'm interested in transferring, but I think I won't be successful since I'm only interested in doing it for premium channel movies and series?


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

I suggest you edit your other, duplicate post.


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## Chesterton (Aug 5, 2013)

FitzAusTex said:


> Got a question about this : Transferring from a smaller drive to a pc back to a larger drive will only work for unprotected content? I think Time Warner has the flag on for everything except locals. I'm interested in transferring, but I think I won't be successful since I'm only interested in doing it for premium channel movies and series?


I cut the cable and just have over the air recordings from San Antonio and Austin, so I can't test this out for you. I imagine someone else can.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

FitzAusTex said:


> Got a question about this : Transferring from a smaller drive to a pc back to a larger drive will only work for unprotected content? I think Time Warner has the flag on for everything except locals. I'm interested in transferring, but I think I won't be successful since I'm only interested in doing it for premium channel movies and series?


There is no way to transfer protected content.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

Chesterton said:


> c. I requested PyTivo to push it to my TIVO.


You did this via kmttg? What did it's log show?



Chesterton said:


> 2. Assuming I solve the above, is there a way to batch restore all the recordings, to avoid having to run PyTivo manually for each one?


pyTivo allows you to select multiple files to push. What do you mean by "run pyTivo manually"? It should be running all of the time.



Chesterton said:


> 3. Is there an easier way to do this mass backup/restore from my small disk to the new, larger one?


None of which I am aware.


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## ej42137 (Feb 16, 2014)

lpwcomp said:


> There is no way to transfer protected content.


...that we can discuss in these forums.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

ej42137 said:


> ...that we can discuss in these forums.


Even the methods that shall not be named don't work on the newer platforms.


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

Chesterton said:


> Experiment 1:
> a. I did a basic transfer of a recording using kmttg. It appeared on my PC disk as a .TIVO file.
> b. I deleted that recording on my TIVO using kmttg.
> c. I requested PyTivo to push it to my TIVO.
> ...


I'd have to see your logs to really know, but my guess as to what happened is that you downloaded a transport-stream .TiVo file via KMTTG, and a program-stream .TiVo file via pyTivo. Then, to understand why one failed and the other worked, the first thing to realize is that *you can't actually push .TiVo files,* directly. So, when you ask pyTivo to push a .TiVo file, it has to pass it through tivodecode on the way; and then, you run into the second problem, which is that *tivodecode can't handle transport streams.*

One more thing you should know: *Push trashes most of the metadata.* That doesn't keep it from working, but it does make it a questionable choice for this application.

And to be clear, _pulling_ the .TiVo file (i.e. initiating the transfer from the TiVo's UI, under "My Shows") would have none of these problems -- pulled .TiVo files don't need to be decrypted, and don't lose metadata.


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## Chesterton (Aug 5, 2013)

Thanks everyone for your responses. I'm guessing that the transport vs. program differences are the cause of my problem. I didn't realize that PyTivo would let me batch download and batch upload all my videos that I want to keep. I'll look further into how to make that happen. So what I'm hearing is, for what I want to do - save and then later restore most of my recordings - PyTivo is the right approach, and kmttg isn't the right thing to use.

Again, many thanks.

P.S. I'm sorry, but I don't have the log file that you requested.


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