TivoDecode Manager
I’ve had a Tivo for awhile and I’ve always been disappointed with Tivos support for newer Macintosh systems. Tivo has their own solution for most Windows users called TivoToGo that allows people to download video off of their Tivo and onto their computers. However, TivoToGo has been missing from the Macintosh platform for sometime.
Just recently it has been announced that Roxio will be building a version of TivoToGo with the latest version of Toast, its CD and DVD burning application. I do not think that Tivo owners (or better described as subscribers since we all pay a monthly fee) should have to pay for TivoToGo since this software has been available for free for Windows users for so many years - so I am going with a free alternative called TivoDecode Manager.
The Tivo DRM was hacked and it wasn’t very long thereafter that someone built an AppleScript “wrapper” for it and provided it for free to all Tivo owners that use the Mac. The TivoDecode Manager currently at version 2.1 and seems to work great. Here is a screenshot of how I’m using it right now:
The TivoDecode Manager interface
More than likely the solution via Roxio will be much nicer and have more features, but again I am not in the mood to pay for something that other people do not have to simply because I choose to use the Macintosh.
Side note: I could easily boot into Parallels and install TivoToGo for Windows and use it. It isn’t a case of “not being able to”, it is a case of “not being able to inside of my OS of choice”.
There is one other caveat - My Tivo is connected to my network via a wireless USB thing device that only supports 802.11b. This is something I noticed immediately since transferring data from the Tivo to my Macintosh is rather slow. Since I do have 802.11g in my house, I’m probably going to connect my Tivo to my router via Cat-5 when I get the chance so that it will hopefully remove that bottleneck and I can get the data from the Tivo quicker.
Download the TivoDecode Manager.
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