# pyTivo vs Streambaby



## tomm1079 (May 10, 2005)

What exactly are the differences between these 2 programs? I have setup streambaby and love it but i am wondering what functionality i am missing from pyTivo since alot of people seem to use both


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## scummybear (Mar 3, 2010)

tomm1079 said:


> What exactly are the differences between these 2 programs? I have setup streambaby and love it but i am wondering what functionality i am missing from pyTivo since alot of people seem to use both


Streambaby gives you the ability to stream video from pc to tv through tivo. PyTivo allows you to transfer recordings from pc to tivo and tivo to pc. You can watch while video is downloading but still putting it onto your tivo.

They seem to run smooth together.

But if all you want to do is stream from computer to tivo, streambaby is all you need.

I may be missing some functionality, as I haven't been using for any length of time, but that is what I gathered so far.


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## windracer (Jan 3, 2003)

As scummybear said the primary difference is pyTivo _transfers_ a copy of the recording to your TiVo whereas streambaby _streams_ it.

pyTivo also has other features like being able to download shows from your TiVo via the web interface, serve up music and photos like TiVo Desktop, etc. You can also push shows to your TiVo from the pyTivo interface (instead of having to pull them from the TiVo itself).

I use them both ...


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## Scyber (Apr 25, 2002)

I actually just starting looking into both of these the other day. 

Unless I'm mistaken, another difference is that pyTivo appears in your Now Playing List while streambaby appears in the "Music, Photos, & Showcases" list. Since I pretty much use the former exclusively, pyTivo made more sense to me.


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## windracer (Jan 3, 2003)

Scyber said:


> Unless I'm mistaken, another difference is that pyTivo appears in your Now Playing List while streambaby appears in the "Music, Photos, & Showcases" list.


True, pyTivo is an HMO application, streambaby is HME (thus they appear in those different locations).


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## dbtom (Feb 14, 2002)

Streambaby also does not work on S2 Tivos. So if you have a mix of S2 and S3 / HD, you can't just rely on Streambaby.


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## tomm1079 (May 10, 2005)

ahhh thanks for the info guys.

I have a windows home server that has tivo desktop on it and streambaby. Currently have a series 2 (which is being replaced by a Premiere) and 2 Tivo HDs. I guess i can stick with the streaming then and just use tivo desktop for transferring. Does pyTivo transfer faster?


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Dumb questions, but do you still get closed captioning/30 second skip forward/8 second skipback on streams?

I like the idea of streaming if it works well (and doesn't take up space on my Tivo even temporarily). But if I lose those features, I would just transfer instead.


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## tomm1079 (May 10, 2005)

closed captioning no

skip forward and skip back seem to work fine. It works like the way netflix does it.


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## txporter (Sep 18, 2006)

If you rip the closed captions to a .srt file (same name as video, just use .srt extension), then Streambaby will overlay the text as subtitles. Leave the .srt in the same folder as the video file. You can use something like T2Sami or CCextractor to rip the captions.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

OK, this is probably a FAQ.. but I'm hoping someone will know the answer. (I did do some searching last night and couldn't find an answer.)

I set up pyTivoX, and was able to have my Tivo download a program that I had earlier downloaded from the Tivo. (i.e. a raw .TiVo file). To be technical, I only actually let it go for a few minutes, but I have no reason to believe it wouldn't've gotten the whole thing.

But when I tried to *stream* it, it said something like "incompatible file format".

Is there some obvious reason why one would work and the other wouldn't? Again, it's the same file, that I had downloaded directly from the Tivo a few minutes earlier.


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