# pyTivo / tivoDecode / downloading Tivo programs to a Linux box



## smbaker (May 24, 2003)

Hello,

I've been an avid pyTivo user pretty much since the beginning of pyTivo. Usually I use this to transfer programs to the Tivo, but now I want to transfer programs from the Tivo to the Linux box. Looking around, this is a little confusing. 

It looks like it needs `tivodecode`, which I can only find windows binaries for, the source hasn't been touched since 2007, and I'm not seeing linux build instructions anywhere. (maybe I'm looking in the wrong place)

I do see that @wmcbride has written a tivodecode-ng which is on github and has nice build instructions, but it's described as "not fully working yet". Is it ready? Can it be configured with pyTivo?

What's the best way to proceed?


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## eherberg (Feb 17, 2011)

Tivolibre


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## Allanon (Nov 2, 2005)

smbaker said:


> Hello,
> 
> I've been an avid pyTivo user pretty much since the beginning of pyTivo. Usually I use this to transfer programs to the Tivo, but now I want to transfer programs from the Tivo to the Linux box. Looking around, this is a little confusing.
> 
> ...


I don't think pyTivo transfers from the Tivo to a computer for that the go to program is KMTTG which is written in Java and uses tivo-libre to decode the .TIVO files.


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## smbaker (May 24, 2003)

Allanon said:


> I don't think pyTivo transfers from the Tivo to a computer


Actually it does. I installed wmcbrine's tivodecode-ng, reconfigured pyTivo, and it does now have options on the pytivo web interface to pull from the tivo.










Unfortunately, it didn't seem to work right for me. It downloaded a 153 MB audio-only mpg file instead of a 1.08 GB audio/video mpg file. Maybe it's broken and nobody uses this pyTivo feature anymore?

Regardless, in taking the above screen shot I just realized that there isn't a new walking dead epsiode, and I'm trying to transfer an old one anyway. I guess the show hit its season finale? Didn't realize this...


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## Allanon (Nov 2, 2005)

smbaker said:


> Actually it does. I installed wmcbrine's tivodecode-ng, reconfigured pyTivo, and it does now have options on the pytivo web interface to pull from the tivo.


Sorry for the misinformation, my pyTivo build doesn't have that plugin configured and when looking in the menus I didn't see the option.


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## eherberg (Feb 17, 2011)

smbaker said:


> It downloaded a 153 MB audio-only mpg file instead of a 1.08 GB audio/video mpg file


You may need to transfer as .ts as the symptoms sounds like the channel is h.264 -- which a normal ps transfer will only bring audio.


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## smbaker (May 24, 2003)

eherberg said:


> You may need to transfer as .ts as the symptoms sounds like the channel is h.264 -- which a normal ps transfer will only bring audio.


That has worked! 

Now if I only had programs to transfer. Last week the main Tivo decided it was out of space (why?) and dropped itself down to ~ 50% deleting a bunch of stuff that I really wish I had marked to save.

Regardless, this is good, I now have an efficient web interface to do these downloads.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

My version uses tivolibre instead of tivodecode-ng. I've never really tried it on Linux, but it should theoretically work. I attempted to port the full package, with installer and tray app to Linux at one point but the tray app would run because, at least in Ubuntu, they disabled all support for tray apps. And porting it to the type of app that tuns in the side bar was going to be a lot of work for very few users.


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