# Transferring Recordings via USB??



## ref_karl (Jan 24, 2005)

Ok, this may be a bit strange, but here goes:

You can transfer recordings via network to a PC. This takes a long time, especially over wireless. I could set up a temporary wired connection, I suppose.

You can transfer recordings via a video cable to a VCR... if you have one. Has to be done in real time, so it takes quite a while as well.

There's a USB port right on the Tivo... what's preventing Tivo from adding functionality to allow you to mount a USB drive (even a cheap thumbdrive can hold a few shows) and save/transfer recordings to the drive?

You could even put video on the drive, and use the Tivo to play those videos, if the Tivo could read the format(s).

Thoughts?


----------



## Allanon (Nov 2, 2005)

I think the thing that makes Tivo transfers slow is that the Tivo needs to encode the video to .Tivo format before transferring it. And when transferring videos to the Tivo they need to be encoded in a format the Tivo reads so that might take some time.


----------



## CuriousMark (Jan 13, 2005)

Why add a USB drive when the DVR supports an external eSata drive? 

Of course older models don't have the eSata connector, but I can't imagine TiVo wanting to supply a USB solution that would reduce the advantages of upgrading to a current model.


----------



## Allanon (Nov 2, 2005)

He wants to be able to download movies to a drive then take that drive and hook it to a computer to watch the videos. Can't do that with the current Tivo drives.


----------



## CuriousMark (Jan 13, 2005)

True. I am not sure adding sneakernet to the existing network interface to TiVo Desktop is widely desired though. After all, you would still need TiVo Desktop on the computer to play anything back.


----------



## ref_karl (Jan 24, 2005)

Good points, all. Thanks for your feedback.

Some clarification:
- I already have an eSATA drive attached for expansion. My understanding is that the expansion drive is "wed" to the Tivo, and removing it will NOT allow me to extract whatever shows are on that drive. In fact, data for a given show may be spread across both the internal and external drive.

I guess at the end of the day, what I'm looking for is a better way to "quickly and easily" move shows off the Tivo and play them on my computer. While Tivo Desktop does the job, I find it only somewhat easy and not at all quick. Even FTP/HTTP isn't (appreciably) quicker than TD.

Perhaps encoding is the constraint here. The "conversion" of adding the Tivo wrapper (which seems to be a very small change when extracting the mpeg file from the .tivo file) should not be taking up much time at all. I don't know if the data is stored in mpeg format on the Tivo, or if it's something else... perhaps someone can shed some light on that.


----------



## CuriousMark (Jan 13, 2005)

ref_karl said:


> I guess at the end of the day, what I'm looking for is a better way to "quickly and easily" move shows off the Tivo and play them on my computer. While Tivo Desktop does the job, I find it only somewhat easy and not at all quick. Even FTP/HTTP isn't (appreciably) quicker than TD.
> 
> Perhaps encoding is the constraint here. The "conversion" of adding the Tivo wrapper (which seems to be a very small change when extracting the mpeg file from the .tivo file) should not be taking up much time at all. I don't know if the data is stored in mpeg format on the Tivo, or if it's something else... perhaps someone can shed some light on that.


You nailed it. The processor in the DVR is pretty wimpy and it simply cannot do this quickly. It doesn't matter how fast the external connection is. It would probably take just as long to save it to a flash drive as it would to send it across your network.

The files are in MPEG2 format on the SD units and the cable companies HD MPEG2 format on the HD units. It is also encrypted before being put on the hard drive. When you send it to the PC it is unencrypted and re-encrypted with the Media Access Key (at least that is how it was explained to me, but that may not be fully accurate) and then sent over the network. So you would not gain any speed using a USB drive, at least with TiVo's current encryption system.


----------

