# New user to pyTivo - can't get it to work



## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

To give some background, I want to get a network attached storage device to store TiVo videos, but I haven't had time to do it yet, but meanwhile, my wife's TiVos have run out of space, and she's losing shows, and she's pressuring me to give her a way of offloading shows from her TiVos ASAP.

As a short term solution, I installed pyTiVo on her Windows 7 laptop, which has a 500GB drive on it, so I figured it could store a fair amount of stuff if it needs to.

It's connect to my wifi network wirelessly though, so I'm guessing that's going to cause some slow transfer speeds, but maybe that would be okay for the short term.

The other thing is that all 4 Tivos in our house are connected wirelessly as well, because our 1988 house does not contain any kind of ethernet network. My plan though is to put some kind of network attached storage in my study next to my router, so at least that will have a wired connection. (I have no experience with networked attached storage by the way, so that will be a learning experience by itself - I hope it won't require expertise beyond what I possess.)

Anyway, I successfully transferred a show from my TiVo Premier to my PC, but I can't seem to transfer from PC to a TiVo. I wanted to try such a transfer so that I could try to play the video on the other Tivo as a way of proving the transfer really worked.

I first tried to transfer to my TiVoHD. I see the computer icon in Now Playing and the video. When I try to transfer, it says it's scheduled on the To Do List to transfer, and will transfer when the current transfers are finished. But I have no current transfer, so it won't transfer. 

I then went to my wife's two series 2 TiVos. I do see the computer icon on those two as well, and when I try to transfer it tells me it won't, and that I should look at the View History to see why it won't transfer. I look, and it says "Transfer Error". 

By the way, I can see in Windows Explorer that the show is stored on the PC with a .TiVo suffix, which I assume is correct. 

I wonder if the first transfer (to the PC) really worked, or if there's something wrong with the file. Is there a way to tell if the file is okay or not? Basically, I'm wondering how to troubleshoot my problems.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

Did you use pyTivo to transfer them to the computer? Are you also running TiVo Desktop? Are all of the TiVos on the same account and thus have the same MAK?


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

lpwcomp said:


> Did you use pyTivo to transfer them to the computer? Are you also running TiVo Desktop? Are all of the TiVos on the same account and thus have the same MAK?


Yes I did transfer to the computer with pyTiVo, but assuming TiVo desktop is some other software package, no I'm not running that. Also my TiVos are all on the same account with the same MAK.

Btw, at first I couldn't even get the transfer to the computer to work, until I specified the save path without using C: but instead using \\<computer name>\<path>


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

timckelley said:


> Btw, at first I couldn't even get the transfer to the computer to work, until I specified the save path without using C: but instead using \\<computer name>\<path>


That's because the togo path is supposed to be the total system path so it can be a network drive or a share name. Do you have any shares defined? You might want to post your pyTivo.conf file (between

```

```
 tags) after redacting sensitive material ( user id, passwords, etc.).


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

timckelley said:


> To give some background, I want to get a network attached storage device to store TiVo videos, but I haven't had time to do it yet, but meanwhile, my wife's TiVos have run out of space, and she's losing shows, and she's pressuring me to give her a way of offloading shows from her TiVos ASAP.


I'm not suggesting you turn away from your intended path - far from it - but along with the other upgrades, I suggest larger hard drives on your TiVos. Copy and expand the original internal drives, and then set them on the shelf for safekeeping. It will give you a huge amount of breathing room, and allow a very quick and easy repair solution when one of the hard drives fails. BE sure to keep at least 1 original hard drive for each model of TiVo you have, as hard drives are compatible between different units of the same model, but not between different models of TiVo.



timckelley said:


> As a short term solution, I installed pyTiVo on her Windows 7 laptop, which has a 500GB drive on it, so I figured it could store a fair amount of stuff if it needs to.


Well, it's something, but not all that much. A mere 500G shared between the OS, applications, and videos is not huge. 'More than you had, obviously.



timckelley said:


> It's connect to my wifi network wirelessly though, so I'm guessing that's going to cause some slow transfer speeds, but maybe that would be okay for the short term.


Well, that's your call. Slow transfers from the TiVo to the PC are probably a lot better tolerated than slow transfers to a TiVo.

I surely recommend you pull some Category 5e drops from a central location to each room.



timckelley said:


> My plan though is to put some kind of network attached storage in my study next to my router, so at least that will have a wired connection.


Every wireless connection you can replace with wired will represent a significant gain in performance.



timckelley said:


> (I have no experience with networked attached storage by the way, so that will be a learning experience by itself - I hope it won't require expertise beyond what I possess.)


Well, by definition, any endeavor one has not previously undertaken requires at least some level of expertise beyond which one possess at the outset. What is your budget? Your ultimate aims in terms of storage and capability? Purchasing a ready-made NAS of course requires very little expertise, but can be pricey. Building a roll-your-own NAS or file server is not very difficult, but based upon your posts in this thread, I think you will need to learn a few things. I and others are certainly willing to help.



timckelley said:


> Anyway, I successfully transferred a show from my TiVo Premier to my PC, but I can't seem to transfer from PC to a TiVo. I wanted to try such a transfer so that I could try to play the video on the other Tivo as a way of proving the transfer really worked.


There are two basic means of transferring a video to a TiVo from a PC. One is known as a "pull". It is the simplest in terms of the underlying process (not the user experience, which is about the same for both). Simply go to one of your TiVos, go to the Now Playing List ("My Shows" on the Premiere), and go to the bottom of the list. There you will see each video share you defined in pyTivo.conf listed as a folder. Click on the folder, and then select a show like any other on the NPL.

The other is known as a "push". In your favorite browser, put the IP Address of the machine running pyTivo followed by ":9032" or whatever port you defined in pyTivo.conf on the "port = " line. (Note you can edit the pyTivo configuration from here, as well.) Toward the bottom of the page, you will see a line that says, "Push from video shares:" with all the video shares shown as links below it. Go into the video share you want, and click the boxes next to the videos you wish to transfer. At the bottom of the page, select the TiVo to which you wish to transfer the videos fromthe drop-down box, and click on the <Send to TiVo> button. Note that pushing videos requires you to supply your tivo.com user name and password, because to implement a push, pyTivo must log in to TiVo's mind server.



timckelley said:


> I first tried to transfer to my TiVoHD. I see the computer icon in Now Playing and the video. When I try to transfer, it says it's scheduled on the To Do List to transfer, and will transfer when the current transfers are finished. But I have no current transfer, so it won't transfer.
> 
> I then went to my wife's two series 2 TiVos. I do see the computer icon on those two as well, and when I try to transfer it tells me it won't, and that I should look at the View History to see why it won't transfer. I look, and it says "Transfer Error".


I would reboot the TiVos.



timckelley said:


> By the way, I can see in Windows Explorer that the show is stored on the PC with a .TiVo suffix, which I assume is correct.


For the moment, at least, yes. Does the file size look correct?



timckelley said:


> I wonder if the first transfer (to the PC) really worked, or if there's something wrong with the file. Is there a way to tell if the file is okay or not?


Yes, several. I think the easiest for just a temporary / testing solution is to download and run tivodecode against the file. It will convert it to a standard .mpg file. Then any media player such as VLC or WMP can play the file. If it pays OK on the PC, then it is probably OK.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

timckelley said:


> Yes I did transfer to the computer with pyTiVo, but assuming TiVo desktop is some other software package, no I'm not running that.


Yes. If TDT is running, it could interfere with pyTivo. It's not, so it won't.



timckelley said:


> Btw, at first I couldn't even get the transfer to the computer to work, until I specified the save path without using C: but instead using \\<computer name>\<path>


That's odd. I'm not running pyTivo on Windows, but c:\<pathname> should work just fine. You did remember the "\" right after the ":", right?


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

lrhorer, with all due respect, I think it would be better to stay away from "push" for the nonce to avoid adding another set of variables to the equation.


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## mlippert (Apr 3, 2010)

I haven't installed pyTivo, but I am using kmttg (at code.google.com/p/kmttg) which is awesome and I highly recommend it. You should be able to keep your shows on your NAS or wherever as unencrypted mpg files. See the documentation on the kmttg page.

Also I don't know if this is helpful or not, but I bought myself a Netgear ReadyNAS and then found out that it has some support for TiVos. Not great support, but I can tell it what top level folder I put my downloaded Videos in, and it is available in my Now Playing on my TiVo. Which was very handy because for some reason TiVo Desktop would not work for me. I may try pyTivo at some time to see if it is better, but the ReadyNAS functionality is sufficient.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

lpwcomp said:


> lrhorer, with all due respect, I think it would be better to stay away from "push" for the nonce to avoid adding another set of variables to the equation.


Point taken, except that it does provide another means of troubleshooting his issues.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

lrhorer said:


> I'm not suggesting you turn away from your intended path - far from it - but along with the other upgrades, I suggest larger hard drives on your TiVos. Copy and expand the original internal drives, and then set them on the shelf for safekeeping.


Actually all 3 of her TiVos already have upgraded hard drives, though the oldest of hers was probably upgraded at a time when HDs were much smaller, so it's possible I could further upgrade it.

On the push/pull subject, I've tried both, and I've rebooted TiVos, but none of that solved anything.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

mlippert said:


> I haven't installed pyTivo, but I am using kmttg (at code.google.com/p/kmttg) which is awesome and I highly recommend it. You should be able to keep your shows on your NAS or wherever as unencrypted mpg files. See the documentation on the kmttg page.
> 
> Also I don't know if this is helpful or not, but I bought myself a Netgear ReadyNAS and then found out that it has some support for TiVos. Not great support, but I can tell it what top level folder I put my downloaded Videos in, and it is available in my Now Playing on my TiVo. Which was very handy because for some reason TiVo Desktop would not work for me. I may try pyTivo at some time to see if it is better, but the ReadyNAS functionality is sufficient.


I decided to see what I thought of this, so I installed kmttg on the old XP computer that's not being used for anything. I've successfully transferred a show to the computer, and right now I'm also encoding to mpg just to see if that works, and if I can then play the show. I like the progress meters and graphs this software comes with, by the way.

One thing I can't figure out: how to transfer a show from a computer back to a TiVo. I wonder if I need to go into software configuration to do something that will make the TiVos see my computer like it's another TiVo or something. I've been googling and so far can't see how to get a show moved back to a TiVo.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

timckelley said:


> One thing I can't figure out: how to transfer a show from a computer back to a TiVo. I wonder if I need to go into software configuration to do something that will make the TiVos see my computer like it's another TiVo or something. I've been googling and so far can't see how to get a show moved back to a TiVo.


No, just running a properly configured copy of pyTivo is all that is required. You do have some version of Python 2 (not Python 3) installed, correct? As requested, please post your pyTivo.conf file here.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

lrhorer said:


> No, just running a properly configured copy of pyTivo is all that is required. You do have some version of Python 2 (not Python 3) installed, correct? As requested, please post your pyTivo.conf file here.


Sorry; okay when I get home I'll do that. So I still need pyTiVo then to do this. That explains things. I set up this new software to save in a different spot than the pyTiVo share. My TiVo can see the pyTiVo share though.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

timckelley said:


> Sorry; okay when I get home I'll do that. So I still need pyTiVo then to do this. That explains things. I set up this new software to save in a different spot than the pyTiVo share.


Either the video or a link to it must appear in one or more of the directories for which you have created a pyTivo share. Any metafiles or links to them should also appear in the same directories as the video and its links.



timckelley said:


> My TiVo can see the pyTiVo share though.


That, and having videos or links to them in the directories pointed to by pyTivo shares is all that is required.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Okay, here's all the stuff I did today. I don't know if it was smart or not, but I figured that since the XP computer isn't being used, and since I earlier installed kmttg on that computer, and since it sounds like I still need pyTiVo, I uninstalled it from my wife's laptop and installed it on the same computer as kmttg. At first I had problems even getting it to run, but I think python and maybe something else was being blocked. So I logged on as administrator, and I couldn't even run pyTiVo there, because it wasn't recognizing python as being installed.

That's weird, so I went back to my nonadmin user, uninstalled python, went to Administrator, installed python there, and then pyTiVo would run. I defined a share, and entered the MAK and a couple other settings, and now my TiVos can see the share.

I defined the share as the exact folder where earlier today I used kmttg to transfer a show.

So I went to my TiVo and the share is visible there along with the show I'd copied to the PC using kmttg. I then attempted to transfer the show to the TiVo (called a "pull" I think, using your terminology), and SUCCESS! It's transferring.

I suppose a more thorough test would be to move a show after pyTiVo was installed, instead of before, to make sure that it still works. Another question I have is, does this mean I have to use the Admin ID? It would be nice if I could have the Admin logged off, and have everything executing under the nonAdmin ID.

I guess I could try that to see if it will work, but once I started the transfer to my TiVo, I noticed a python.exe command prompt window open with a bunch of messages in it, among them, that a transfer is in progress, so if I log off now, I suspect it'll terminate the transfer.

Also, I'm not sure if I'm running pyTiVo in console mode or as a service, but I think I might prefer to run it as a service, so it'll always be up. I guess I need to figure out how to do that.

By the way, as requested, here is my pyTivo.conf file:

[Server]
port = 9032
ffmpeg = /usr/bin/ffmpeg
tivo_mak = <redacted - my Media AccessKey is here>
togo_path = D:\TiVoTemp

[MyMovies]
type = video
path = /home/armooo/Videos

[_tivo_SD]

[_tivo_HD]

[E-machine]
type = video
path = D:\Tivo Storage Area

By the way, the "My Movies" section was already there by default, and that path doesn't exist. Is there any harm in me deleting that section?


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

timckelley said:


> Okay, here's all the stuff I did today. I don't know if it was smart or not, but I figured that since the XP computer isn't being used, and since I earlier installed kmttg on that computer, and since it sounds like I still need pyTiVo, I uninstalled it from my wife's laptop and installed it on the same computer as kmttg.


Yes, it has to be running somewhere, and wherever that is must have access to the directories containing the videos.



timckelley said:


> That's weird, so I went back to my nonadmin user, uninstalled python, went to Administrator, installed python there, and then pyTiVo would run. I defined a share, and entered the MAK and a couple other settings, and now my TiVos can see the share.


On an XP machine, it's not so much that the user needs to be an administrator as the PATH variable needs to be updated for all users so they can run Python without specifying the full path.



timckelley said:


> I defined the share as the exact folder where earlier today I used kmttg to transfer a show.


Yep. You can define others, if you like. Each will show up as a separate folder in the root of the NPL.



timckelley said:


> So I went to my TiVo and the share is visible there along with the show I'd copied to the PC using kmttg. I then attempted to transfer the show to the TiVo (called a "pull" I think, using your terminology), and SUCCESS! It's transferring.


Excellent. Congratulations.



timckelley said:


> Another question I have is, does this mean I have to use the Admin ID? It would be nice if I could have the Admin logged off, and have everything executing under the nonAdmin ID.


It should not matter. As long as none of the shares are on mapped network drives, pyTivo should be able to run as any user.



timckelley said:


> I guess I could try that to see if it will work, but once I started the transfer to my TiVo, I noticed a python.exe command prompt window open with a bunch of messages in it, among them, that a transfer is in progress, so if I log off now, I suspect it'll terminate the transfer.


Yes, it would.



timckelley said:


> Also, I'm not sure if I'm running pyTiVo in console mode or as a service, but I think I might prefer to run it as a service, so it'll always be up. I guess I need to figure out how to do that.


There is a way to do it under XP, I believe, but I am not familiar with it. I avoid using Windows. OTOH, since this is a short-term solution, you might just run it from the user for the time being. It's easy under Linux, and when you implement that NAS, that is how you will want to go.



timckelley said:


> By the way, as requested, here is my pyTivo.conf file:
> 
> [Server]
> port = 9032
> ffmpeg = /usr/bin/ffmpeg


That's going to give you some problems. That is a Linux path, not a Windows path. The Windows path is something like


```
ffmpeg = c:\Program Files (x86)\ffmpeg\ffmpeg.exe
```



timckelley said:


> tivo_mak = <redacted - my Media AccessKey is here>
> togo_path = D:\TiVoTemp


That's a valid Windows path structure. As long as the specified path exists, you are fine. Note this particular parameter is only necessary if you are going to be using pyTivo to pull videos from your TiVos. If you choose to use something like kmttg, it is not required.



timckelley said:


> [MyMovies]
> type = video
> path = /home/armooo/Videos


Again, that is a Linux path. Note the "/" directory separators, rather than "\".



timckelley said:


> By the way, the "My Movies" section was already there by default, and that path doesn't exist. Is there any harm in me deleting that section?


'Nary a bit. Add as many others as you like, but just make sure their paths are valid.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

lrhorer said:


> There is a way to do it under XP, I believe, but I am not familiar with it. I avoid using Windows. OTOH, since this is a short-term solution, you might just run it from the user for the time being. It's easy under Linux, and when you implement that NAS, that is how you will want to go.


This brings up something I've been confused about. I wasn't sure if I should continue to run pyTiVo on a PC, and have it store the files on an NAS, or if the actual pyTiVo software should be installed on the NAS. I worry that the latter might be more complex for me implement with my lack of experience with any operating system other than Windows and DOS.

And if it's installed directly on the NAS, there's one I was thinking of getting, as it seems to have high reviews: A Synology NAS. This particular model uses an operating system I haven't heard of before: DiskStation Manager (DSM) operating system. Have you heard of this, and do you think it would pose any difficulties for pyTiVo?


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

timckelley said:


> This brings up something I've been confused about. I wasn't sure if I should continue to run pyTiVo on a PC, and have it store the files on an NAS, or if the actual pyTiVo software should be installed on the NAS.


The NAS is definitely a better choice, although it certainly can run on a workstation and transfer files to and from the NAS.



timckelley said:


> I worry that the latter might be more complex for me implement with my lack of experience with any operating system other than Windows and DOS.


Not really. The Linux bash prompt is not all that much different from cmd.exe for those purposes. I suggest you read through my Linux thread, stickied in this forum, and ask questions. There is nothing wrong with temporarily running pyTivo on a Windows workstation and moving it over. There is also no problem, during the transition, with running pyTivo on both the Windows PC and the NAS, until the version on the NAS is stable and properly configured. Then simply shut down the version on the Windows machine.



timckelley said:


> And if it's installed directly on the NAS, there's one I was thinking of getting, as it seems to have high reviews: A Synology NAS.


Two drive bays is awfully small, although with a pair of 4T drives in a RAID1 configuration, that still gives you 4T. The other potential issue I see is it only has a 1.2 GHz CPU, probably single core. Now that is more than plenty, if you never do any recoding. If you need to do any recoding on the fly - for example pulling an MPEG-4 file to the TiVo, then the transfer rate is going to be really, really low. 'Perhaps 8 hours or more for a 90 minute movie.

I admit, however, the price is very attractive, and your set-up time should be minimal. If you were me, I think I would go with a little larger and faster NAS or a roll-your-own. If I were you, I definitely would go with a roll-your-own.



timckelley said:


> This particular model uses an operating system I haven't heard of before: DiskStation Manager (DSM) operating system. Have you heard of this


No, but it is highly likely it is a version of Linux.



timckelley said:


> and do you think it would pose any difficulties for pyTiVo?


Well, it could. The worst issue would be if the OS is entirely embedded in a PROM, with only a tiny NVRAM section for configuration variables. If the OS is on flash or SSD, then it's unlikey to be an issue. Python is available for just about every OS on Earth. I suggest you investigate before you decide on a purchase.

If it were me, I would look for a used or refurb tower with a decent CPU and motherboard, and no OS. They can be had on ebay for under $100. I would just make sure it had a working DVD drive, at least an 80G hard drive, and a halfway decent motherboard and CPU, and space for at least 3 or 4 additional drives. Loading Debian Linux takes about 45 minutes, and a basic configuration including pyTivo takes another two or three hours for an intermediate user. I recommend getting someone to help you over the phone if you don't know what the command `ls` does and have never used a command line version of ftp.


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## jcthorne (Jan 28, 2002)

Synology DSM runs on linux. pytivo will run fine on the Synology box if you so choose. I did that for a while and went back to running pytivo on a low power laptop that also handles other tasks for my network and runs windows 7. For me, it was easier and I could not move everything running on the pc over to the NAS so both had to run anyway. 

I have been very pleased with my Synology 1511+


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Oh, the old problem has resurfaced. I used pyTiVo to transfer several shows, and I see them in the share on my TiVos as well as when I look at Windows Explorer. But when I try to pull them on to the TiVoHD, it says it's been scheduled on the To Do List and will transfer when the current transfer is complete, but there is no current transfer, so the transfer doesn't happen.

I thought, maybe my pyTiVo.conf file is bad, so I followed lrhorer's advice and made changes to it, but the problem remains. Here is my current config file:


```
[Server]
port = 9032
ffmpeg = C:\PyTivo\Bin\ffmpeg
tivo_mak = 4140251951
togo_path = D:\TiVoTemp

[_tivo_SD]

[_tivo_HD]

[British Royal Family]
type = video
path = D:\Tivo Storage Area
```
I know that's a funny name for a share area, but my wife has a lot of recordings relating to the British royal family, and she thought it would be nice to have a share devoted to it.

By the way, I realize that when I had success it was kmttg that I had used to transfer to PC, not pyTiVo, so maybe I need to go back to using kmttg. The reason I didn't, is because I think I filled in a setting that's causing all my shows transfered using kmttg to show up in D:\TiVoTemp, which is not a share. I tried then to cut and paste shows using Windows Explorer from D:\TiVoTemp to an actual share, but it says I don't have permission or the file is open.

I guess a simple solution is for me to go into the kmttg settings and tell it that transfers are to go to D:\Tivo Storage Area, which where my share is, and then there will be no cutting and pasting needed.

By the way, to you users of kmttg: I don't see any way of telling it which share to transfer my stuff to, on a show by show basis. As far as I can see, I have to update the settings to tell it which path shows transfer to. So for example, if I have 3 shares, and I want to move some shows to share 1, some to share 2, and some to share 3, does that mean I have to update the settings to point to share 1, then transfer those shows, then updating the settings to put in the path for share 2, then transfer those over shows, etc? Or is there an easier way?


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

jcthorne said:


> Synology DSM runs on linux. pytivo will run fine on the Synology box if you so choose. I did that for a while and went back to running pytivo on a low power laptop that also handles other tasks for my network and runs windows 7. For me, it was easier and I could not move everything running on the pc over to the NAS so both had to run anyway.
> 
> I have been very pleased with my Synology 1511+


Yeah, but the 1511+ is a much more high-powered box than the DS212J. Are you sure the 212J isn't more highly embedded than the 1511+? I mean, I would not be terribly surprised either way. To be sure, if the 212J uses the same actual OS code as the 1511+, then running pyTivo on the 212J should be no problem.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

timckelley said:


> Oh, the old problem has resurfaced. I used pyTiVo to transfer several shows, and I see them in the share on my TiVos as well as when I look at Windows Explorer. But when I try to pull them on to the TiVoHD, it says it's been scheduled on the To Do List and will transfer when the current transfer is complete, but there is no current transfer, so the transfer doesn't happen.


You have something really odd going on. You might try clearing out your settings on tivo.com. Reset everything to disable networking, wait a few hours, force a connection on all your TiVos, then re-enable networking and repeat.



timckelley said:


> I thought, maybe my pyTiVo.conf file is bad, so I followed lrhorer's advice and made changes to it, but the problem remains. Here is my current config file:


No, and the new one certainly is not.



timckelley said:


> I know that's a funny name for a share area,


Not at all.



timckelley said:


> but my wife has a lot of recordings relating to the British royal family, and she thought it would be nice to have a share devoted to it.


Absolutely. Name them whatever tickles your fancy, or hers, and create as many as you like. Of course an alternative to creating another share is just creating a subdirectory of a share. That's what I do.



timckelley said:


> I tried then to cut and paste shows using Windows Explorer from D:\TiVoTemp to an actual share, but it says I don't have permission or the file is open.


No, Windows will not allow you to move a file that is open. Linux will, as long as it is on the same physical device, but Windows won't. It's one of the advantges of the way Linux handles files on block devices.

That said, I find drag-and-drop to be easier than cut-and-paste in Windows.


timckelley said:


> I guess a simple solution is for me to go into the kmttg settings and tell it that transfers are to go to D:\Tivo Storage Area, which where my share is, and then there will be no cutting and pasting needed.


That is one solution, yes. It's not the one I use, because I have kmttg (oor whatever) transfer the files to a temporary holding area for processing.



timckelley said:


> By the way, to you users of kmttg: I don't see any way of telling it which share to transfer my stuff to, on a show by show basis. As far as I can see, I have to update the settings to tell it which path shows transfer to. So for example, if I have 3 shares, and I want to move some shows to share 1, some to share 2, and some to share 3, does that mean I have to update the settings to point to share 1, then transfer those shows, then updating the settings to put in the path for share 2, then transfer those over shows, etc? Or is there an easier way?


Well, there are lots of ways. In my case, I recode all the videos to h.264/MP4 and edit them to remove unwanted video (commercials, padding, etc.) using VideoRedo. When I invoke VRD's batch manager, I specify which directory will receive the finished video.

As long as the videos all reside on the same device, moving them from one directory to another takes very little time.

You might also consider creating links (shortcuts) rather than moving the files. Among other things, this will allow the videos to show up in more than one share, as appropriate.


----------



## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Thanks for those multiple handy tips... I'll be trying it out this evening.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

By the way, I understand the reasoning for high powered processing for somebody who wants to do video editing, and then encoding while moving their files. I'm not sure if my wife will eventually get that ambitious, but I think really her goals are just this:

1) have lots of space available to store shows
2) ability to transfer the original show, uneditted back and forth between tivos and PCs. Probably mostly in the PC direction, but I'm sure she'll at some point when she starts doing more actual watching, be moving them back in the TiVo direction
3) She has particularly asked me if she can just save a piece of a show, like 10 minute section or something.

To accomplish (3) doesn't even require converting to mpg or doing video editing... she can pause the show at the beginning of the segment, and I think kmttg has as feature where you can transfer from the paused point. The trick though is terminating the transfer when it gets to the end of the segment she's interested in, but I guess if we know how many minutes into it it is, maybe the progress meter will be of help there.

Or another way is to transfer from TiVo A to TiVo B using the standard HMO feature, and actually play the show while it's transferring (on TiVo B), and then stopping the transfer once you see the end point of the desired segment. Then transfer the partial recording from TiVo B to the PC.

So given all this, it might be overkill in our case to get an overly powerful NAS device. Spacewise though, I'm sure I'm going to want multiple terabytes, given her appetite for storing shows.

And to be honest, it seems like even my XP machine is transferring shows at an acceptable rate, but then again I'm looking from the POV of moving from TiVo to PC. I understand that if some day she sits down and wants to watch a show and spontaneously picks one, it could be annoying to wait a long time for the transfer from PC to TiVo before she could watch it. On the other hand, I wonder if it's like TiVo - to - TiVo transfers, where it lets you start watching the show while the transfer is still transferring. If so, I suppose the wait time before watching stuff should be minimal.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

timckelley said:


> By the way, I understand the reasoning for high powered processing for somebody who wants to do video editing


Well, video editing and primary recoding will probably not be done on a NAS. That would be usually done from a workstation.



timckelley said:


> then encoding while moving their files.


With a typical pyTivo setup, the only time recoding needs to be done on the NAS is if the source video is not compatible with the Tivo. For example, my main server only had a dual core processor for quite some years, and it was far more than adequate for my needs during most of that time. Recently, however, the TiVo Mind server was quite sick, and pushes were not reliable. Most of my videos are coded as h.264/MP4, which is natively compatible with pushes, but not pulls, and the dual core CPU was not capable of recoding h.264 to MPEG-II for 1080i videos in real time. That is when I decided to upgrade to a six core CPU with a higher clock rate.



timckelley said:


> I'm not sure if my wife will eventually get that ambitious, but I think really her goals are just this:
> 
> 1) have lots of space available to store shows


= RAID array



timckelley said:


> 2) ability to transfer the original show, uneditted back and forth between tivos and PCs. Probably mostly in the PC direction, but I'm sure she'll at some point when she starts doing more actual watching, be moving them back in the TiVo direction


Why unedited? Commercials and padding at the front and back waste space - a lot of space - on the server and waste your time having to FF through them.



timckelley said:


> 3) She has particularly asked me if she can just save a piece of a show, like 10 minute section or something.


That is editing. 

It is certainly possible to save just a part of a show. If nothing else, one can simply stop the transfer before it is complete. For anything like this, I recommend Video Redo TV Suite. It is commercial software, but worth every penny, if you ask me. I suggest you give it a whirl. It has a 15 day free trial.



timckelley said:


> To accomplish (3) doesn't even require converting to mpg or doing video editing... she can pause the show at the beginning of the segment, and I think kmttg has as feature where you can transfer from the paused point. The trick though is terminating the transfer when it gets to the end of the segment she's interested in, but I guess if we know how many minutes into it it is, maybe the progress meter will be of help there.


Yes, rather crudely. I think you will be pleased if you try out VideoRedo. Cutting out a 10 minute segment with frame accurate editing is quick and easy. You can create any number of project files, start the batch processor, and go to bed.



timckelley said:


> So given all this, it might be overkill in our case to get an overly powerful NAS device.


I certainly cannot argue with you there. Mine worked just fine with only a dual core 2.6 GHz CPU for many years. Being able to upgrade the CPU and / or motherboard, however, is really nice. It is also nice to be able to move to an external RAID chassis when one outgrows the internal bay capacity. All that said, $199 + hard drives is without question an attractive entry level price.



timckelley said:


> Spacewise though, I'm sure I'm going to want multiple terabytes, given her appetite for storing shows.


Trust me, one can *NEVER* have too much drive space.



timckelley said:


> And to be honest, it seems like even my XP machine is transferring shows at an acceptable rate, but then again I'm looking from the POV of moving from TiVo to PC. I understand that if some day she sits down and wants to watch a show and spontaneously picks one, it could be annoying to wait a long time for the transfer from PC to TiVo before she could watch it. On the other hand, I wonder if it's like TiVo - to - TiVo transfers, where it lets you start watching the show while the transfer is still transferring. If so, I suppose the wait time before watching stuff should be minimal.


Yes, you can watch while transferring, and if the file is a native format, it should transfer fairly quickly even with a much slower CPU than is in the Synology unit.

If you pull the file to the TiVo, you will be able to start watching it (if it is the first one in queue) in just a few seconds. Assuming it is an MPEG-II file, a TiVo HD will not suffer any pauses for SD material. An original S3 will not suffer any pauses for most 1080i material, except for some relatively high bandwidth material (like the Planet Earth series, for example). A TiVo HD may encounter significant pauses for 1080i material, unless one allows at least a 5% buffer (3 minutes per hour of show) by waiting a bit before starting to watch. 720p material will suffer significant pauses on either a THD or an S3. The Premiere should not experience any pauses with any material.

Pushes of MPEG-II material take precisey the same amount of time, although there may sometimes be a slightly longer delay before the content starts transferring. If you recode the material to h.264/MP4 when you save it to disk, however, it will transfer up to 4 times faster, and none of the S3+ TiVos should encounter any pauses while pulling h.264/MP4 material. Note the pull mechanism enforces a wait at the outset of the transfer so there will be no pauses if the TiVo ascertains the transfer speed is not sufficient to watch the entire video during the transfer.

In addition to allowing lightning fast transfers, h.264 recordings of the same PQ and the same content as an MPEG-II file take up far less space. The default for VRD, for example, is 30% smaller, so roughly 4 episodes of a series coded as h.264 will fit in the same space as 3 episodes of the same series coded as MPEG-II.

The only real fly in this ointment is if the pull mecanism is unavailable because the mind server is down, then you will be forced to employ a pull, and while the pull of an MPEG-II file takes no longer than a push, a pull of an h.264/MP4 file with a CPU that slow will take a rather long time, indeed.


----------



## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

I think my problems are worse than before. I did log on to Tivo.com as suggested and disabled networking, then several hours later forced the TiVos to reconnect. Then went back and reenabled networking, and force them to reconnect again.

Now when I transfer a show to my PC, that seems to work, but then when I view the share on my TiVo it says there's nothing in it, even though I can see a show in it when I go to Windows Explorer. (To tell the truth, I think it started doing this even before I do the above procedure.)

I tried restarting pyTiVo, and that didn't help.

I thought I'd try pushing it, and when I do it says it's been queued for processing, or something like that, but I don't see any kind of progress screen that shows it happening, nor do I see any evidence on my TiVo that it's happening.

If it helps, here is my current config file:


```
[Server]
port = 9032
ffmpeg = C:\PyTivo\Bin\ffmpeg
tivo_mak = <I put my media access key>
togo_path = D:\British
tivo_password = <my TiVo.com password>
tivo_username = <my TiVo.com user ID>

[_tivo_SD]

[_tivo_HD]

[British Royal Family]
type = video
path = D:\British
```


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Oh by the way, here's a screenshot of my Windows Explorer proving that I have a show in D:\British, if this helps:


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Wait... an encouraging development! I was running pyTiVo as a service, so I went to control panel / administrative tools / services, highlighted pyTiVo, and clicked <Stop Service>

(Btw, restarting the service didn't help matters, so this time I just left it stopped.)

Then I went to Windows Explorer, and double-clicked on pyTivo.py, which I think I starts PyTiVo in console mode, and Behold! My TiVo sees the show, and the transfer is working.  :up:

Now, this is only the second time I've gotten such a transfer to work, so I'm not going to count my chickens until I try to transfer a bunch of shows. BTW, this show that worked was done using kmttg, and I do personally like the UI of kmttg better than the pyTiVo UI, so I'm happy this worked.

I'm going right now to select about 5 or 6 shows in kmttg and submit the whole list of them to be transferred to my PC, and then I'll see if I can successfully get those over to my TiVo, and if that works, I'll consider myself successful.

I suppose I shouldn't complain if I can't get pyTiVo to work as a service, but really I suppose I shouldn't care. Running in console mode seems to be no big deal.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Good deal! All the shows I transferred worked, and I did a further test of transferring shows from a folder, because think those failed before the first success I had, so I'd vaguely wondered if foldering had anything to do with it. But the folderred shows transferred fine. I found I could then create a folder inside the share and move the transferred folderred shows into the folder (in order to preserve the folder structure the original TiVo had), and that worked nicely too.

I supposed the only other test I could do is to do all this in a nonadmin account. I've been logged into Windows as an admistrator. I suppose it could be nice if it will also work in a nonadmin account.

But this is the most success I've had, and all these shows I've transferred, I've pretty much proven are accurately preserved, because I tried transferring a random sample of them to my TiVo, and I played them, and they do play. So for the first time, I think I can tell my wife she can start deleting shows from her TiVos with assurances they're backed up.

She's told me she's actually has been regularly deleting shows, much to her chagrin, because her TiVos are totally full and continue to record shows, so she's not had much choice, and she's really been trying to get me to nail down an ETA when she can stop losing her shows. She's asleep right now, but I bet when she'll be happy when she wakes up to the news.

On another note, I don't know how she can take that grainy quality. To increase her virtual capacity, she's been recording her stuff on a subpar quality. I haven't looked at her settings, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's medium quality. I record all my stuff in HD. I guess space has been such a premium to her that she's sacrificed quality.

Maybe if I get an NAS with abundant space on it, she might finally feel unnervous enough about her space to finally splurge on her resolution quality.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

timckelley said:


> I thought I'd try pushing it, and when I do it says it's been queued for processing, or something like that, but I don't see any kind of progress screen that shows it happening


No, there isn't one. The only thing other than watching the TiVo, is to inspect the output of pyTivo. I'm not sure how - or if - that can be done with pyTivo running as a Windows service.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Say, here's a kmttg question: On the main screen it shows a folder tab for each of my TiVos, and in each one is a list of shows with handy information like duration, a description of the episode (when you click on it), etc.

It'd be great if I could have a folder tab for the shares as well, so I could see what shows are on each share, and the durations of each, etc. Right now the only way I know to do that is to look at the NP list on an actual TiVo. Is there perhaps a way to view this info on my computer as well?


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

timckelley said:


> Say, here's a kmttg question: On the main screen it shows a folder tab for each of my TiVos, and in each one is a list of shows with handy information like duration, a description of the episode (when you click on it), etc.
> 
> It'd be great if I could have a folder tab for the shares as well, so I could see what shows are on each share, and the durations of each, etc. Right now the only way I know to do that is to look at the NP list on an actual TiVo. Is there perhaps a way to view this info on my computer as well?


Shares are actually a pyTiVo concept, so you should access them through the pyTivo browser interface. However, duration is not one of the values currently displayed. Maybe if you asked one of the pyTivo developers nicely he might be willing to add it.

You can see any file using kmttg via the "FILES" tab but all you see is file name and size.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

lpwcomp said:


> Shares are actually a pyTiVo concept, so you should access them through the pyTivo browser interface. However, duration is not one of the values currently displayed. Maybe if you asked one of the pyTivo developers nicely he might be willing to add it.


Hmm. Well, it certainly can be done, but I see a couple of issues with it. The main one is if the file list is very large, it could take a really long time to calculate the duration for every file. It already takes a little while for pyTivo to open a large share. Running ffmpeg against every video file in the share would take rather a long time, and might even have a tendency to hang if a video is being written to the share at the time.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Well, I've transferred about 10 or so shows, but my wife's checking them to verify that actually transferred correctly. She found a one hour show that for some reason only got 36 minutes transferred.

So I deleted it off the share using Windows Explorer, and resetup the transfer. Again it stopped after 36 minutes.

kmttg just says the job is "DONE". It occurred to me to look at the pyTiVo system console to see if there were any error messages. I saw this:


```
INFO:pyTivo:Last modified: Sun Nov 11 15:21:19 2012
INFO:pyTivo:Python: 2.7.3
INFO:pyTivo:System: Windows-XP-5.1.2600-SP3
INFO:pyTivo.beacon:Announcing shares...
ERROR:pyTivo.config:Bad ffmpeg path: C:\PyTivo\Bin\ffmpeg
INFO:pyTivo.beacon:Registering: British Royal Family
INFO:pyTivo.beacon:Scanning for TiVos...
INFO:pyTivo.beacon:Master Bedroom
INFO:pyTivo.beacon:Family Room
INFO:pyTivo.beacon:Kitchen
INFO:pyTivo.beacon:Blue Room
INFO:pyTivo:pyTivo is ready.
```
That message about "ERROR: pyTivo.config:Bad ffmpeg path: C:\PyTivo\Bin\ffmpeg" sticks out. It does exist and contains 11,910,163 bytes; I'm not sure what's wrong with this. Maybe it means nothing, as the transfers are happening.

For now what I thought I'd do is attempt a TiVo-to-TiVo transfer of this show, to see if it still stops after 36 minutes. Maybe this will rule out pyTiVo as having anything to do with it.

My wife does say that she's able to play the whole hour with no problem on the source TiVo.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

lrhorer said:


> Hmm. Well, it certainly can be done, but I see a couple of issues with it. The main one is if the file list is very large, it could take a really long time to calculate the duration for every file. It already takes a little while for pyTivo to open a large share. Running ffmpeg against every video file in the share would take rather a long time, and might even have a tendency to hang if a video is being written to the share at the time.


Kinda like adding the OAD. 

What could be done is have pyTivo display the metadata iso_duration if it is available. And the metadata generators could be modified to use ffmpeg to determine the value and put it in the metadata.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

timckelley said:


> Well, I've transferred about 10 or so shows, but my wife's checking them to verify that actually transferred correctly. She found a one hour show that for some reason only got 36 minutes transferred.
> 
> So I deleted it off the share using Windows Explorer, and resetup the transfer. Again it stopped after 36 minutes.
> 
> ...


If you're using kmttg, pyTivo only gets involved when transferring from the PC to the TiVo, not from the TiVo to the PC. Transfers sometimes repeatedly fail at the same point and there isn't much you can do to get around it.

That ffmpeg path _*is*_ bad. It is missing the .exe


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

lpwcomp said:


> Kinda like adding the OAD.


Yes, absolutely.



lpwcomp said:


> What could be done is have pyTivo display the metadata iso_duration if it is available. And the metadata generators could be modified to use ffmpeg to determine the value and put it in the metadata.


Yeah, that would work.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

lpwcomp said:


> If you're using kmttg, pyTivo only gets involved when transferring from the PC to the TiVo, not from the TiVo to the PC. Transfers sometimes repeatedly fail at the same point and there isn't much you can do to get around it.


Well, it does happen from time to time, when there errors in the original file on the TiVo, probably due to some bit errors in the stream coming from the source. It shouldn't happen very often. One thing that sometimes works is transferring the video from one TiVo to another via MRV, and then transferring from that TiVo to the server. I would say that has about a 50/50 chance of working. I've seen it work, but I have also seen it fail just about as often. With un-modified TiVos, lpwcomp is right, there may not be much else you can do except start a second transfer pointed at a time just after the error occurs, and then splice the two together. With a modified TiVo, there is another transfer method (actually, a couple of them) that almost always works.

Note the TTG transfer mechanism employed by kmttg, as well as Galleon, pyTivo, and TiVoDesktop, is simply the standard secure HTML transfer mechanism. You can also transfer a file using your favorite web browser. If the transfer fails part way through using one of these utilities, it almost surely will fail using all of them.



lpwcomp said:


> That ffmpeg path _*is*_ bad. It is missing the .exe


In Linux, extensions are meaningless, except perhaps for the user as a means of grouping closely related files by name + extension. Windows, however, attempts to identify file types by their extension. If it is a Windows executable binary file, then it should have an extension of .exe or .com. In this case, .exe.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Oh, thanks for that advice. Given the missing suffix, it's surprising to me that any transfers have been happening.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

It's not absolutely required if the files are natively compatible with the TiVo. It is absolutely required if the files need to be transcoded before transfer.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Oh, that explains it, yes I've been only transferring those natively compatible files. But I did go in a little while ago and correctly my config file, and restarted pyTivo console, and verify the error message is gone now..


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

timckelley said:


> Oh, that explains it, yes I've been only transferring those natively compatible files. But I did go in a little while ago and correctly my config file, and restarted pyTivo console, and verify the error message is gone now..


Now if you ever drop a .mkv or .div (or whatever) file into one of your video shares, pyTivo will transcode it on the fly as it transfers to the TiVo. It also should make use of any metafile you create to accompany the main file. 'Same syntax as a .mpg file: <showname>.mkv.txt or <showname.div.txt.

Here are a couple of slidshows I created from two of my dive trips:


```
RAID-Server:/RAID/Recordings/SlideShow# ll
total 3546280
drwxrwxrwx  2 lrhorer users       4096 Sep 29  2011 .
drwxrwxrwx 96 root    root      212992 Nov 19 17:23 ..
-rw-rw-rw-  1 lrhorer users 1831060818 Sep 24  2011 Cozumel 2000 (Recorded Mon Dec 06, 2010, Slides).mp4
-rw-rw-rw-  1 lrhorer users      55444 Sep 29  2011 Cozumel 2000 (Recorded Mon Dec 06, 2010, Slides).mp4.jpg
-rw-rw-rw-  1 lrhorer users        363 Sep 29  2011 Cozumel 2000 (Recorded Mon Dec 06, 2010, Slides).mp4.txt
-rw-rw-rw-  1 lrhorer users      16054 Jun 14  2011 folder.jpg
-rw-rw-rw-  1 lrhorer users 1799901813 Sep 24  2011 San Salvador, Bahamas - 1998 (Recorded Mon Dec 06, 2010, Slides).mp4
-rw-rw-rw-  1 lrhorer users      70559 Sep 29  2011 San Salvador, Bahamas - 1998 (Recorded Mon Dec 06, 2010, Slides).mp4.jpg
-rw-rw-rw-  1 lrhorer users        391 Sep 29  2011 San Salvador, Bahamas - 1998 (Recorded Mon Dec 06, 2010, Slides).mp4.txt
```


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Well darn, I'm having a lot of trouble with the 1 hour show that cuts off at 36 minutes. Here's all the stuff I tried.

1. Transfer TiVo to Tivo. The whole hour transfers. Then transfer from second TiVo to PC... it still cuts off at 36 minutes.

2. Transfer to PC via kmttg, while converting to mpg format. Even the mpg format cuts off at 36 minutes

3. Pause the show at the 36 minute point on the first TiVo, then attempt to transfer starting at that point with kmttg. But it transfers from the beginning instead of from the pause point, and cuts off at 36 minutes.

On the #3 option, I wonder if I'm doing it wrong. in the <File> drop down, I'm checking the box that says "resume downloads". I highlight the show, and do <Auto Transfers><Add selected Titles>, then go into <Auto Transfers><Configure> and tell it which TiVo it's on, click <OK>, then click <Start Jobs>.

Isn't this how you transfer from a paused point?


----------



## cherry ghost (Sep 13, 2005)

timckelley said:


> 3. Pause the show at the 36 minute point on the first TiVo, then attempt to transfer starting at that point with kmttg. But it transfers from the beginning instead of from the pause point, and cuts off at 36 minutes.


try TiVo to TiVo from the paused point and then TiVo to PC


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

cherry ghost said:


> try TiVo to TiVo from the paused point and then TiVo to PC


Nice idea. I'll try that. Then even of I'm not understanding how to get kmttg to start at a paused point, it won't matter.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

timckelley said:


> 3. Pause the show at the 36 minute point on the first TiVo, then attempt to transfer starting at that point with kmttg. But it transfers from the beginning instead of from the pause point, and cuts off at 36 minutes.
> 
> On the #3 option, I wonder if I'm doing it wrong. in the <File> drop down, I'm checking the box that says "resume downloads". I highlight the show, and do <Auto Transfers><Add selected Titles>, then go into <Auto Transfers><Configure> and tell it which TiVo it's on, click <OK>, then click <Start Jobs>.
> 
> Isn't this how you transfer from a paused point?


 You have to make sure you refresh listings in kmttg AFTER setting the pause point on the TiVo so it can retrieve the pause point. With latest versions when you click on a show that has a non-zero pause point kmttg will list the % in message window which is how you know it has the pause point set to resume from.


----------



## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

moyekj said:


> You have to make sure you refresh listings in kmttg AFTER setting the pause point on the TiVo so it can retrieve the pause point.


Your advice was exactly right. I refreshed and it worked, and now I have it all transferred (albeit in pieces, which my wife doesn't mind). I did notice when I played the original show on the source TiVo, that when it got to the problem spot at the 36 minute point (where it was cutting off) that the picture froze for a half second and resumed, kind of like the "glitch in the matrix" in the famous movie. I think that glitch is exactly where it was cutting off.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

timckelley said:


> Your advice was exactly right. I refreshed and it worked, and now I have it all transferred (albeit in pieces, which my wife doesn't mind).


I suggest looking into VideoRedo TV Suite. It has a free trial for 14 days, so at the very least you can splice the two fragments into a single show.



timckelley said:


> I did notice when I played the original show on the source TiVo, that when it got to the problem spot at the 36 minute point (where it was cutting off) that the picture froze for a half second and resumed, kind of like the "glitch in the matrix" in the famous movie. I think that glitch is exactly where it was cutting off.


I would not bet so much as a penny against it.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Yes, maybe I should look into this video redo thing. It's not a priority right now, but it may be worth looking into.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

My old problem has resurfaced where, when I try to pull a show from a share to a TiVo, it tells me the transfer has been scheduled on the To Do List, and will run when previously scheduled transfers have finished. But there aren't an previously scheduled transfers.

Last time I think I solve this by logging on to tivo.com, turning off networking, waiting a few hours, forcing a connection, then logging on to tivo.com, turning networking, waiting a few hours, and forcing another connection (on all 4 TiVos). I'm hoping I don't have to go through that hassle again.

But I just looked at my pyTiVo system console, and see a message I don't remember seeing there before:


```
INFO:pyTivo:Last modified: Sun Nov 11 15:21:19 2012
INFO:pyTivo:Python: 2.7.3
INFO:pyTivo:System: Windows-XP-5.1.2600-SP3
INFO:pyTivo.beacon:Announcing shares...
INFO:pyTivo.beacon:Registering: British Royal Family
INFO:pyTivo.beacon:Registering: Halloween
ERROR:pyTivo.beacon:Zeroconf failure
INFO:pyTivo:pyTivo is ready.
```
Namely, the beacon:Zeroconf failure. Does anybody by chance know if there could be a connection between this error message and my behavior?

BTW, I tried restarting the target TiVo, and I still can't pull the shows to it.


----------



## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Wait, I just looked at the above, and something sticks out to me: I created a third share today, but I don't see it being announced. Maybe I should exit pyTiVo and restart it, and see if it will announce all 3 shares. Maybe that will fix things.


----------



## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Well, I looked at the config file, and the "type" and "path" lines are reversed on the third share. I don't know if the order makes a difference, but I just went into a text editor and made it in the same order as the other two shares. When my current transfer completes, I'll restart pyTiVo in console mode, and see if it will now announce my third share.

BTW, my wife seems to want to create a whole bunch of shares with specific meanings, but I told her that I think it's better to not overdo that, and have some broader shares, because I notice you can create folders within shares. I think it's better to use folders for the specific categories her mind is thinking of.

I think this is how her mind thinks though. I notice on her PC when she creates folders, she only goes one level deep with a whole bunch of folders. I like to go several levels deep, with each level containing a limited number of folders.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

timckelley said:


> But I just looked at my pyTiVo system console, and see a message I don't remember seeing there before:
> 
> 
> ```
> ...


There absolutely could be. Zeroconf is one means of scaning for TiVos on the LAN and announcing HMO and HME apps and resources on the TiVo. You might try one or more of three things in pyTivo.conf:

1. Set zeroconf = False

2. Set beacon = <broadcast IP of your LAN>

If, for example, the IP of one of your hosts is 192.168.1.30, and your netmask is 255.255.255.0, then the broadcast IP of your LAN should be 192.168.1.255.

3. Set beacon = <IP of TiVo #1> <IP of TiVo #2> <IP of TiVo #3>...

In the mean time, are there any wireless segments or a wireless router involved in your LAN? Also, if your TiVos' IP addresses are configured automatically, switching to static IPs is not a bad idea.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

timckelley said:


> Wait, I just looked at the above, and something sticks out to me: I created a third share today, but I don't see it being announced. Maybe I should exit pyTiVo and restart it, and see if it will announce all 3 shares. Maybe that will fix things.


Yes, you will definitely need to restart pyTivo after making any configuration changes in order for the changes to take effect. For the rest, no.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

timckelley said:


> Well, I looked at the config file, and the "type" and "path" lines are reversed on the third share. I don't know if the order makes a difference


No, it shouldn't. It is the existence (or lack thereof) of a directive that counts, not its position within the share definition. It must be below the share definition line and above any other share definition line, but other than that, it doesn't matter.



timckelley said:


> BTW, my wife seems to want to create a whole bunch of shares with specific meanings, but I told her that I think it's better to not overdo that, and have some broader shares, because I notice you can create folders within shares. I think it's better to use folders for the specific categories her mind is thinking of.
> 
> I think this is how her mind thinks though. I notice on her PC when she creates folders, she only goes one level deep with a whole bunch of folders. I like to go several levels deep, with each level containing a limited number of folders.


I don't think there is a right or a wrong answer to this one. It's really mostly a matter of personal preference; different methods of bookkeeping, as it were. There is nothing wrong with doing it either way, or both ways, for that matter. Either is a great way to make browsing through the NPL faster and easier, but I would not go overboard in either direction. Perhaps my best advice is whatever has you spending fewest nights on the couch. 

What I do for mainstream videos is simply place all self-contained motion pictures under a single main share, and create a unique directory in the main share for each TV series or movie franchise and place all the episodes for the series or franchise in its subdirectory. As you can see from the screen-shot above, there are 10 Sherlock Holmes films, 4 Shrek films, 65 of the original Star Trek episodes, etc. Unfortunately, this is a bit unwieldly if one is primarily using the TiVo NPL, but then I am not. The way I do it, however, is not necessarily what may be best for you.

At some point you really may want to check out vidmgr. It is really a very much more powerful way of managing your videos on a TiVo. It allows you to keep your real shares quite simple, but then one creates very sophisticated virtual shares based upon various grouping and sorting criteria such as date recorded, date last pushed to a TiVo, year released, actor, director, channel on which it was recorded, genre, alphabetical grouping, etc. This can all be done with real shares and directories and file links, but doing so represents a great deal of management and rather continuous organization by the user. Vidmgr builds an internal database based upon various user-defined criteria (mostly metafields in the metafiles, but also potentially based upon other criteria).


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Yes reversing the lines didn't get rid of the zeroconf error so I tried deleting the share, and that didn't do it either. So I deleted all the shares, and that fixed it. I added two of my shares back, as I don't really need the third one yet anyhow, and the zeroconf error is still absent, so for reasons I don't understand, the errors are gone.

But I still can't pull a TiVo from my newest share to my TiVo. So I tried the old trick of disabling networking, forcing a connection, reenabling networking, and forcing a connection, and that didn't fix it either. I still can't pull any shows from the new share.

But here's another symptom that might be related. I can still see all 3 shares listed on my TiVo, even though I've deleted one of them from my pyTivo config file. I've even cancelled and restarted pyTiVo console and verify that the announcment of shares on that console just show the two shares, and not my old share that doesn't exist, and yet my TiVo still thinks all three shares are there.

I've restarted my TiVo, forced connections, but it still thinks there's three shares. Does this sound explainable to anybody? If it is not getting the correct current state of shares, this sounds like it could be related to its inability to pull shows from a share. Maybe fixing one will fix the other.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

timckelley said:


> Yes reversing the lines didn't get rid of the zeroconf error so I tried deleting the share, and that didn't do it either. So I deleted all the shares, and that fixed it. I added two of my shares back, as I don't really need the third one yet anyhow, and the zeroconf error is still absent, so for reasons I don't understand, the errors are gone.


OK, I'm just spitballing, here, but the only things of which I can think are:

1. Invalid characters in file or directory names, especially ', ", or /.
2. A corrupt or incomplete video.
3. A hidden file.
4. File permissions.



timckelley said:


> But here's another symptom that might be related. I can still see all 3 shares listed on my TiVo, even though I've deleted one of them from my pyTivo config file. I've even cancelled and restarted pyTiVo console and verify that the announcment of shares on that console just show the two shares, and not my old share that doesn't exist, and yet my TiVo still thinks all three shares are there.


It's probably just another symptom of the issue you are having, not something related to the root cause. If the system stops announcing a share, the TiVo does not necessarily elimninate it immediately. I've seen this on my system from time to time, and my system is functioning properly. For example, if you shut down pyTivo completely, the shares may not immediately disappear.

Did you try disabling zeroconf or explicitly stating the TiVo addresses? Is there a wireless link involved?


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Thanks for all those handy tips.

The first thing I tried (in the last half hour before now) was putting in False for zeroconf, but then after saving the changes, I noticed there's a <restart pyTiVo> button, so I clicked that too. In the past, I'd been cancelling the DOS window where pyTiVo console was running, and relaunching it, but this time I just did the <restart pyTiVo> button.

Well, this fixed my problems. So I don't know if the trick that fixed was
1) zeroconf = false, or
2) restarting pyTivo instead of relaunching the the console, or
3) the hours that passed since my problem earlier today.

I doubt (3) had anything to do with it, because the problem had persisted for quite awhile, even through various relaunchings of the console, and during idle times when I wasn't doing anything. I'm guessing the (1) or (2) was the trick that cured me, so I definitely thank you for the tips.

To be more specific or what my new results are: once I did this, that 3rd phantom share disappeared, and the transferring now works. So both things were fixed.

On your question about wireless - yes, all 4 of our TiVos are wirelessly connected to the network via adapters. At least the computer that's running pyTivo, as well as the hard drives holding the shares, have wired connections to the router, so that's something.

It would be nice if I could run wires to the four rooms, but that could be take a fair amount of labor. One thing I'm tossing in my mind is that my wife has been wanting to add a new room to our house, and in fact we've already had an architect make preliminary plans and we have HOA approval. If we move forward with that, maybe I'll talk to the subcontracters and ask if they could run wires to our 4 TiVos.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

timckelley said:


> The first thing I tried (in the last half hour before now) was putting in False for zeroconf, but then after saving the changes, I noticed there's a <restart pyTiVo> button, so I clicked that too. In the past, I'd been cancelling the DOS window where pyTiVo console was running, and relaunching it, but this time I just did the <restart pyTiVo> button.
> 
> Well, this fixed my problems. So I don't know if the trick that fixed was
> 1) zeroconf = false, or
> ...


#2 restarts pyTivo, but shutting it down and starting it again completely reloads it. It does everything that #2 does, and then some, so while #2 is usually perfectly sufficient, shutting down is assured to do as much or more. #1 was almost surely the fix. It causes pyTivo to use an entirely different method of finding TiVos and announcing itself.



timckelley said:


> To be more specific or what my new results are: once I did this, that 3rd phantom share disappeared, and the transferring now works. So both things were fixed.


I'm not surprised, but I have to say, with wireless links involved, I would not be surprised if you run across some other issues.



timckelley said:


> On your question about wireless - yes, all 4 of our TiVos are wirelessly connected to the network via adapters. At least the computer that's running pyTivo, as well as the hard drives holding the shares, have wired connections to the router, so that's something.


Yeah, but unfortunately, it still leaves the TiVos on wireless links.



timckelley said:


> It would be nice if I could run wires to the four rooms, but that could be take a fair amount of labor.


Well, some, of course. Is yours a fairly new home? Does it have an attic or a full coverage basement? Are all the walls where your TiVos sit interior walls? If the answer to all of these is, "Yes', then there is a good possibility it may not take too much to run Ethernet drops.



timckelley said:


> One thing I'm tossing in my mind is that my wife has been wanting to add a new room to our house, and in fact we've already had an architect make preliminary plans and we have HOA approval. If we move forward with that, maybe I'll talk to the subcontracters and ask if they could run wires to our 4 TiVos.


'Sounds like a good idea, to me.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Well I have a new problem. I have a new NAS, but when installed it, it seemed to require I setup a user ID and password to it.

I mapped a T drive to it, and set a share to point to it, and I've successfully moved a bunch of shows to it. but I can't get any of the TiVos, nor pyTiVo itself to display the contents of the folder. I'm guessing it's because of the user ID and password. If I go to another PC on the network and try to view contents, it asks me for the user ID and password, and once I supply it, everything is fine.

But I don't know how to get pyTiVo to supply the user ID and password. I'm googling around right now, but so far haven't figured out how to do this.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

timckelley said:


> But I don't know how to get pyTiVo to supply the user ID and password. I'm googling around right now, but so far haven't figured out how to do this.


There isn't a way at the application level. In Windows, if the UID and PID for the network share are not the same as for the PC, then the client machine must provide the credentials when mapping the drive. There are two utilities which automate the procedure. When you create the mapping, there are two check-boxes below the folder specification. One says, "Reconnect at logon", and the other says "Connect using different credentials". Both should be checked, and when you complete the mapping, the machine will ask for a UID and PID.

If the UID and PID for the PC are the same as for the network share from the NAS, you should only need to select "Reconnect at logon".

It is quite possible to create a share that does not require a password. For the remainder of this discussion, please take it over to the Linux based Home Media applications thread stickied in this forum. There you can give me the followinhg information:

Telnet into the NAS, and issue the command


```
ls -l /etc/rc*
```
Post the results in the Linux thread.

Then issue the command:


```
apt-get
```
See if it returns an error or if it merely tells you it needs more input.


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## ShayL (Jul 18, 2007)

timckelley said:


> But I don't know how to get pyTiVo to supply the user ID and password. I'm googling around right now, but so far haven't figured out how to do this.


I would mapped the drive with store user id and password and also have windows mapped when it boots. Then you can use that drive mapping in the pytive config.

lrhorer beat me to it.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

Stealing thunder is one of my favorite things!


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Thanks for these handy tips. It sounds like if I follow the first part of your post, then telnetting over to the NAS may not be needed, but if it turns out I need to do that, then I'll definitely post about it in the stickied thread.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

No, actually, it has to do with more than that. Quite a bit more.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

By the way, I did disconnect the drive and remapped it, but this time, I clicked on "connect using a different user name" (per your advice), and supplied the user ID and password of the NAS server.

I then restarted pyTiVo, and using my browser attempted to view the contents of a share that's on the NAS, and voila! I can see the shows now.

Admittedly I haven't gone to the actual TiVo to view them, but I'm assuming it'll work. What I've been doing for the last few hours though is cutting and pasting all the shares from the XP computer over to the NAS, because the NAS is safer, being that it's a RAID array. Once that completes, I intend to restart pyTiVo then go to a TiVo to verify I can see all the shares and their contents.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Hello, I normally use kmttg to pull shows, but my wife has asked if I could print out a list of all the shows she has on each TiVo. I thought of typing http://localhost:9032/ into my browser to see a list I could maybe copy and paste into Word or something to print for her, but I notice when I go there it has a link for Web Configuration, and a section for pushing from video shares, but no section for pulling from TiVos. I could swear I used to have such a section and in that section I could see a list of shows on my TiVos.

Does this make sense that this section would be missing? Or any ideas what could cause it to be missing? I seem to have no problem pulling using kmttg though.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

timckelley said:


> Hello, I normally use kmttg to pull shows, but my wife has asked if I could print out a list of all the shows she has on each TiVo. I thought of typing http://localhost:9032/ into my browser to see a list I could maybe copy and paste into Word or something to print for her, but I notice when I go there it has a link for Web Configuration, and a section for pushing from video shares, but no section for pulling from TiVos. I could swear I used to have such a section and in that section I could see a list of shows on my TiVos.
> 
> Does this make sense that this section would be missing? Or any ideas what could cause it to be missing? I seem to have no problem pulling using kmttg though.


Go to the "Web Configuration" page, highlight "Global Server Settings" and verify that you a valid value for "togo_path".

Yopu can also access the NP for a TiVo directly via a browser using:

https://<ip address of the TiVo>/nowplaying/index.html
as the URL. Example: https://192.168.1.104/nowplaying/index.html

When prompted, use "tivo" (minus the quotes) as the user name and your TiVo's MAK as the password.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Thanks for those tricks. I see the list now in pyTiVo, but due to the number of pages, I think it'll be a hassle to copy/paste, and manipulate into a readable, printable report.

Accessing the TiVo directly is interesting; I didn't know you can do that. I've tried, it and it doesn't display the entire Now Playing. Do you know if there's a way to scroll down to the items near the end of the Now Playing list via browser? I don't see any clicking links that say "Next Page" or anything like that there.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Actually I take that back. Printing is easy. I'll just directly print from chrome using the browser print command. Each page is pretty long (with a scroll bar) that prints out as 3 pages when I preview it in Chrome. For example, I think her TiVo Premier NP will print out as a 7 page report, total. But that's in folder view. If she wants the eps shown in detail, it could greatly lengthen the report. She told me she's not sure yet if she needs that level of detail.

I guess I can give her the folder level report and see if that's good enough for her. Filling in the To Go path in the web configuration certainly did solve my problem.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

Well, it would be fairly easy using a curl script. Also, if you do decide to modify your THD, there is an extremely easy way to print out the contents of the NPL. You also might be able to convince wmcbrine or moyekj to create a printable list for their respective softwares.


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## jcthorne (Jan 28, 2002)

timckelley said:


> It would be nice if I could run wires to the four rooms, but that could be take a fair amount of labor. One thing I'm tossing in my mind is that my wife has been wanting to add a new room to our house, and in fact we've already had an architect make preliminary plans and we have HOA approval. If we move forward with that, maybe I'll talk to the subcontracters and ask if they could run wires to our 4 TiVos.


If you already have TV in those rooms, you already have coax cable run to them for CATV or antenna....You are a prime candidate for MOCA. Exactly what it was invented for and why Tivo is including it on newer models. MOCA will give you nearly the speed and all the reliability of a wired ethernet 100mbit network. No new wires to run.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

jcthorne said:


> MOCA will give you nearly the speed and all the reliability of a wired ethernet


I'm afraid not. Although practical in many situations, MoCA suffers from a number of limitations. It is certainly not as reliable as a wired network, although it is far more stable and reliable than wireless. It is dependent upon the root splitter being of rather poor quality, allowing for lower isolation between output ports than is possible with a high quality splitter. It also has some significant topology requirements. The total loss between the root splitter and any node on the network must be less than 25dB, and the total cable path length between any two nodes must be no more than 100 meters. MoCA utilizes the spectrum between 850 and 1525 MHz, above any existing carriers on the system. In many cases this means the carriers will be above 1000Mhz, and the infrastructure must be able to support these frequencies. That means any amplifiers, splitters, or other passive devices must be able to properly handle those frequencies. MoCA is generally more susceptible to poorly crimped fittings and unterminated ports than video is, and a bad connector or improperly terminated splitter nowhere near any MoCA adapter can casue trouble with the network. A maximum of 16 nodes are supported. (I have more than that in my house, for example.) There is no hypothetical maximum number of nodes on a switched Ethernet network. The maximum total throughput (including upstream transmissions) for a MoCA 1.1 network is 175 Mbps. The maximum total throughput of a MoCA 2.0 network is 400 or 800 Mbps, depending on the implementation.

These limitations may be fine for some users, and they may never encounter any issues from the specifications. In addition, if one does encounter problems with the network topology, often fairly minor corrections, such as installing some different splitters or buying a new amp, will often correct the problems.

One should consider the alternatives, however. A single pair of hosts connected through a gigabit switch can hypothetically enjoy a 2000 Mbps throughput. (Few pairs of hosts owned by a consumer could actually approach that limit, but 900 - 1200 Mbps is quite readily achieved with modern harware). More importantly, the bandwidth utilization between two hosts on the network does not impact the available bandwidth between any two other hosts. A 24 port Gig switch with a non-blocking switch matrix can deliver up to 24,000 Mbps network throughput to 24 attached devices (the attached devices can be additional switches, each with thousands of Megabits per second throughput on their local networks), compared to 175 for MoCA 1.1 or 400 / 800 for MoCa 2.0.

If one employs twisted pairs, then the maximum distance from the switch to an attached device is 100 meters, which means a pair of devices with a switch in the middle might be almost 200 meters apart, whihc is a very long way for most houses. One can also purchase a switch with optical ports on it, along with a media converter ($150 - $200) for each optical drop, although such switches are still rather expensive for a residential user. A compromise solution is to purchase a pair of media converters to extend to any device that must be more than 100m away from a switch with only electrical ports. The distance could be up to 30 Km, which is vastly more than enough for any residential use. Anyone who owns a home (mansion) large enough to require optical ports should easily be able to afford a few media converters and and optical switch.



jcthorne said:


> 100mbit network.


I would definitely recommend anyone setting up an Ethernet network these days go with 1000Mbps, not 100, but even a relatively small 100Mbps Ethernet network can supply a much greater throughput than MoCA.


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