How to tranfer a TiVo recording and watch it on FreeBSD?
I broke my TiVo remote to my TiVo series II.
I wanted to watch a TiVo recording on my laptop…running FreeBSD. I had never done this, so I wasn’t sure if it was going to happen.
Gratefully, I succeeded. Here is what I had to do.
Step 1 – Find my media access key.
You can find this on your TiVo, but since I didn’t have a remote, I couldn’t look on my TiVo. So I went to http://www.Tivo.com, logged in, and sure enough under My Account, there was a link to see my Media Access Key.
Step 2 – Download a video recording from your Tivo
- Connect to you Tivo using your favorite web browser using https.
Note: I wasn’t sure of my Tivo’s IP Address so I had to connect to my Wireless router and look at its DHCP leases. - Login using these credentials:
User: tivo
Password: [your media access key]Once in, you will see a list of recordings in a table and you can download them as you desire. - Download your recording. Your recordings are .tivo files.
Step 3 – Install tivodecode
When I tried to play the .TiVo file with mplayer, it failed. So I looked at how to convert it.
Turns out there is a port called tivodecode. Install it as follows.
# cd /usr/ports/multimedia/tivodecode
# make install
# make install
Step 4 – Decode the .TiVo file
Run the following command to decode your .TiVo file.
tivodecode “Some Video.TiVo” -o “Some Video.mpg”
And now you can play decoded video in mplayer.
