Here’s a list of Mac software which is capable of improving your “TiVo experience”. Some of the applications on this list may no longer work but, I thought I should include them just in case they ever get updated. If you’re a Windows user you might want to check out my Windows roundup which I published back in December of ‘07. A star (
) next to the application name means that I’ve actually used the application before.
Please let me know if I’ve left anything off the list….
TiVo Desktop : TiVo Desktop is the official Mac application from TiVo.com. The app allows you to browse and listen to your music on your TiVo. Along with this feature, TiVo Desktop also allows you to view photos and publish videos using TiVo Go Back.
Roxio Popcorn : Popcorn® 3 lets you enjoy your video anywhere you want, on the playback device of your choice. Easily make high quality copies of your DVDs and movies. Take television recordings from your Mac to the portable device of your choice for on-the-go viewing or fit 4 hours of video on a single layer-DVD. Now with batch video conversion, support for a broad range of consumer devices, and exclusive support for TiVoToGo transfers, your video will go everywhere you do. Review here.
Roxio Toast: Roxio Toast® 8 sets the standard for burning CDs, DVDs, and now Blu-ray discs on the Mac. Create superior sounding audio CDs with crossfades. Enjoy your TV shows anywhere with exclusive EyeTV burning and TiVoToGo transfers to DVD or iPod®. Copy your audio CDs, movies and DVDs. It’s your digital life, Toast It!
SeasonPassGetter (SPG) : SPG takes TiVo content and transfers it to iTunes. Its main purpose was to transfer regularly scheduled recordings (Season Pass on TiVo) for viewing on AppleTV. There was a lot of interest in content for the iPod, so when a show is transferred to iTunes, SPG will initiate an iPod sync. Wake up in the morning and your shows are ready to go. Review here.
TiVo File Decoder: Portable C program to convert a .TiVo file from TiVoToGo to a normal MPEG file given the MAK for the TiVo which generated the file. Used by several applications including TiVo DecodeManager and several other 3rd party addons.
VisualHub : VisualHub is a great application for converting video files into a number of different formats. One of the nice things about VisualHub is that it provides a TiVo “profile” which allows you to convert video files into a format that your TiVo will be able to playback using the TiVoGoBack feature. More information about this feature can be found here.
TiVo NowPlaying : OS X dashboard widget which allows you to transfer and transcode shows from your TiVo. Review here.
TiVoTool: TivoTool allows you to download, stream, or burn videos from your Series 1 or 2 Tivo or DTivo. You can also send videos to iTunes for viewing on a video enabled iPod. The command line version consists of a subset of these functions and works on Linux.
pyTiVo: pyTivo lets you stream most videos from your PC to your unhacked TiVo. pyTivo acts as a TiVo GoBack server. It loads many standard video compression codecs and outputs mpeg2 video to the TiVo. It allows you to watch videos that are stored on your computer in, say, DivX format without having to wait for the video to be transcoded first.
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