# Transfering programs from Tivo to Tivo (aka friend to friend)



## mrmagoo1974 (Dec 28, 2001)

I looked all over the place and did not see this suggested, so I thought I would throw it out there. 

How about being able to transfer programs from tivo to tivo. I dont mean within a household, I am talking a MUCH broader scale. 

It would be SO cool if say you miss a show and can ask a "friend" if they recorded a certain show, and have them send it from thier tivo to yours! I would assume as long as they are series 2 tivo's hooked up to broadband this cant be totally out of the question or impossible.....right?


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## megazone (Mar 3, 2002)

It is technologically possible yes - but ReplayTV used to do this and it got them sued by a number of content providers, contributing to SonicBlue's (RTV's owner at the time) bankruptcy. DNNA, the current owner, killed the feature when they acquired RTV to settle the lawsuits.

So TiVo is probably not eager to jump into the same crosshairs.

It would be nice. Right now you could kind of do this in a roundabout way. TiVoToGo transfer the show to you PC. Strip the DRM to get a bare MPEG file. Then send your friend the MPEG, to their PC. They can watch it there, or use TiVoToComeback to pull it to their TiVo.

I expect it is just a matter of time until someone write an automated framework to do that...


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## custer (Jul 19, 2005)

megazone said:


> It is technologically possible yes - but ReplayTV used to do this and it got them sued by a number of content providers, contributing to SonicBlue's (RTV's owner at the time) bankruptcy. DNNA, the current owner, killed the feature when they acquired RTV to settle the lawsuits.
> 
> So TiVo is probably not eager to jump into the same crosshairs.
> 
> ...


All it would take is some way to make the TiVo show up in windows explorer as a drive, whcih you could them move files to and from. I was going to suggest this just for the new podcasting service - since the TiVo never turns off, it can do all of my podcast downloading as time and bandwidth permits. This is great, except I can only play them on the TiVo. In fact I can't even move the podcasts to other TiVo's, I can only listen to them on the one that downloaded them.


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## classicsat (Feb 18, 2004)

megazone said:


> It would be nice. Right now you could kind of do this in a roundabout way. TiVoToGo transfer the show to you PC. Strip the DRM to get a bare MPEG file. Then send your friend the MPEG, to their PC. They can watch it there, or use TiVoToComeback to pull it to their TiVo.


Still, that is against your TiVo TOS, and possibly against the law.


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## rpmws1 (Dec 11, 2005)

actually I know a guy that does this between his beach home and his house. He has 2 HDVR2's with HMO/MRV and he has his broadband firewalls set up for port forwarding. It took him a while to get it to work ..packet sniffing and all that but I have seen him do it ..it took 4.5 hours to grab an American Idol over the net but that was 700 miles across the net.


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## HotStuff2 (Feb 21, 2005)

custer said:


> All it would take is some way to make the TiVo show up in windows explorer as a drive, whcih you could them move files to and from.


With a few tweaks to the TiVo unit and a Windows program called WebDrive, you can accomplish this. (WebDrive lets you map any FTP address to a physical drive letter in Windows.)

I doubt TiVo will do what the OP asked, due to the inherent legal ramifications already evidenced by ReplayTV.


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## scully153 (Jul 3, 2007)

rpmws1 said:


> actually I know a guy that does this between his beach home and his house. He has 2 HDVR2's with HMO/MRV and he has his broadband firewalls set up for port forwarding. It took him a while to get it to work ..packet sniffing and all that but I have seen him do it ..it took 4.5 hours to grab an American Idol over the net but that was 700 miles across the net.


 I have two houses and have one hacked DTIVO at my cabin and two hacked DTIVOs at my home. Do you have any info on the way he ported his router??


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## grapeape (Feb 8, 2004)

rpmws1 said:


> actually I know a guy that does this between his beach home and his house. He has 2 HDVR2's with HMO/MRV and he has his broadband firewalls set up for port forwarding. It took him a while to get it to work ..packet sniffing and all that but I have seen him do it ..it took 4.5 hours to grab an American Idol over the net but that was 700 miles across the net.


I think this only works if your Tivos are on the same account. i.e. same MAK


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## berfy (Apr 24, 2005)

megazone said:


> It is technologically possible yes - but ReplayTV used to do this and it got them sued by a number of content providers, contributing to SonicBlue's (RTV's owner at the time) bankruptcy. DNNA, the current owner, killed the feature when they acquired RTV to settle the lawsuits.
> 
> So TiVo is probably not eager to jump into the same crosshairs.
> 
> ...


Would you mind giving some directions for stripping the DRM from Tivo Programs?

I haven't a clue but would like to know how.

Thanks.


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## megazone (Mar 3, 2002)

berfy said:


> Would you mind giving some directions for stripping the DRM from Tivo Programs?


Google 'DirectShow Dump' or 'TiVoDecode Manager'.


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## scorp508 (Mar 2, 2004)

rpmws1 said:


> actually I know a guy that does this between his beach home and his house. He has 2 HDVR2's with HMO/MRV and he has his broadband firewalls set up for port forwarding. It took him a while to get it to work ..packet sniffing and all that but I have seen him do it ..it took 4.5 hours to grab an American Idol over the net but that was 700 miles across the net.


All that takes is setting up a simple VPN from one location to another. That'll essentially put both Tivos on the same LAN.


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## n6161h (Jan 10, 2002)

scorp508 said:


> All that takes is setting up a simple VPN from one location to another. That'll essentially put both Tivos on the same LAN.


Yes, but how?

this shouldn't be a violation of the TOS. Both Tivos are on my account, in my "household" and have the same media access key. They just aren't located in the same physical location.

I know one of the typical limitations of MRV is the Tivos won't traverse sub-nets, so the first thing is to set both firewall/net boxes to the same sub-net, but different sections. i.e. one uses DHCP from 192.168.1.50-99 and the other uses 192.168.1.100-150.

What I suppose I need at this point is either a pair of firewall boxes that support VPN natively or a couple PC's acting as VPN routers between the two locations.

Anyone else have any thoughts?

-markr


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## classicsat (Feb 18, 2004)

n6161h said:


> this shouldn't be a violation of the TOS. Both Tivos are on my account, in my "household" and have the same media access key. They just aren't located in the same physical location.


A different physical address, for the purpose of program rights and all that stuff, isn't considered the same household.


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## jtlytle (May 17, 2005)

Have you thought about Slingbox?


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## jblake (Jan 24, 2002)

A VPN would work, but it would be so extremely slow you wouldn't want to do it. Think it takes a while to download a show now? Try it with the upload that your cable or DSL connection has. As much as it's a rights issue, it wouldn't be a very fun experience and I think Tivo wouldn't want their customers to have that kind of experience.


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## n6161h (Jan 10, 2002)

classicsat said:


> A different physical address, for the purpose of program rights and all that stuff, isn't considered the same household.


Ok, I actually read the entire agreement. It's an interesting exercise in circular definitions. Numerous locations state that "TiVo reserves the right to terminate the TiVo service accounts of users who transfer or distribute content in violation of this Agreement" but never define what would be in violation. The only obvious violation transfer is outside your household. And "household" is never defined. There is talk about both devices needing to be on the same subnet, but physical requirements of the subnet are not addressed.

Mostly, it talks about your household, your PC etc. Both of these systems are mine. Same account, same media key.

The word "home" is used a couple times, but always in reference to liability for 3rd party copyrights, program content etc. And while there are cautions about liability for copyright violation, the agreement never says that 3rd party copyright violation is a violation of the Tivo agreement.

The multiservice discount agreement *does* talk about both Tivos needing to be in the same call-in area and the same "address." So for that service, they need to be in the same location. But I'm not using multi service discount; they are both lifetimed.

I know this is a case of splitting of hairs, but there is a lot of splitting that goes on here.


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## n6161h (Jan 10, 2002)

jtlytle said:


> Have you thought about Slingbox?


Yup. nice idea. I'm actually looking around for a original Slingbox used.

But there are other advantages to getting both Tivo's on the same logical subnet.


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## n6161h (Jan 10, 2002)

jblake said:


> A VPN would work, but it would be so extremely slow you wouldn't want to do it. Think it takes a while to download a show now? Try it with the upload that your cable or DSL connection has. As much as it's a rights issue, it wouldn't be a very fun experience and I think Tivo wouldn't want their customers to have that kind of experience.


I'm sure Tivo doesn't want customers to have a bad experience. That's why they created a locked boot sequence, so we wouldn't hack our Tivos and have a bad experience. It's about control and trying to make the media tycoons happy.

Yup it would be slow. Very slow. But that's one of the beauties of computers, they have all the time in the world. a 600-700MB hour long show would probably take an hour to move across a cable modem based VPN.

But I'm not talking about a mass market solution. Realistically, how many of the things that get talked about here are mass market?

And just for reference, I agree with ya'll: the OP's question about "friend to friend" is certainly in violation of the agreement.

Anyway, I should probably move this to the underground... Bad OT boy, Bad!


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