I did not get any Audio in my MPEG file. I have a Tivo with a DVD burner could that make a difference. Thanks!

Nice! can’t wait to try it. now we need to write an http subscription/download interface to pull .tivo files off the box. Shouldn’t be that hard.

Tim, i heard the dvd toting version of tivo records audio in .ac3? .aac? one of those wacky formats..

I though the latest version of tivo decode took care of that problem though.

How do you pull the shows off the Tivo to your Mac?

I remember being able to access and download the shows right through Safari back in the day… but can’t for the life of me remember how I was doing it.

You need the IP address of your Tivo box. You can find that using Bonjour. Type it into your Safari it will promt you for user name and password. User name is “tivo” and the password is your MAK#. If you don’t have that you can get it from tivo.com and log in to Manage My Account.

Nik,

Any chace of updating the AppleScript droplet with the new version of Tivodecode 0.1.3 https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=183716. My understanding is that 0.1.3 fixes the audio issue I am having. Any help would be apreciated. Thanks!

Any chance of getting at the source script etc.? It’d be nice to be able to use the latest tivodecode, perhaps be able to tweak the script to feed it to mplayer while downloading, etc.

Thanks for writing this tool!

I just posted an updated version of the application (v1.1). This now includes tivodecode version 1.3, which should fix the problem with missing audio. Thanks, Tim, for the heads-up on the new version.

I have also updated the post, above, to include some helpful tips on how to get videos off of your TiVo.

The droplet is a simple AppleScript application. You can open it up in Script Editor to view the source. It’s a fairly simple script.

If you want to change the tivodecode program for some reason, you can just replace the TiVo Decode.app/Contents/Resources/objects.dir/ directory’s contents with a different version of tivodecode.

Downloaded the latest version as of right now (1.1) and cannot unzip the file in the Finder or via CLI. Here’s the error in CLI:

Archive: TiVo_Decoder.zip
End-of-central-directory signature not found. Either this file is not
a zipfile, or it constitutes one disk of a multi-part archive. In the
latter case the central directory and zipfile comment will be found on
the last disk(s) of this archive.
unzip: cannot find zipfile directory in one of TiVo_Decoder.zip or TiVo_Decoder.zip.zip, and cannot find TiVo_Decoder.zip.ZIP, period.

I’ve tried extracting this with stuffit expander and BOMArchiveHelper on the mac, and 2 different unzipping programs on a pc, but all say that Tivo_Decoder.zip is bad. Am I an just an idiot, or did it get corrupted somehow?

I’ve been waiting for a tivo decoder for the mac for so long now. Please help! :)

Not sure what the problem you’re having is. I just successfully downloaded and unzipped the file using both Safari and Firefox. You may just want to try it again.

I just re-posted in the file in case that was a problem, just to make sure.

yep, the re-posted version is good.

Just wanted to confirm that the newly uploaded 1.1 now downloads and unzips properly. THANK YOU!

Galleon is cool but it’s a bloody mess…if you want a quick way to download tivo videos to your mac use the FRIGGIN WIDGET! IT’S SICK! :) -Digitol-

Is there a limit to the size of the Tivo file that can be decoded? One of my files is over 8 GB. I accidentally grabbed about a three hour recording in Fine mode. If I run this program on the entire file I get an AppleEvent Timed out error.If I segment the file i get a different error.

I’m a newbie to this but I downloaded the applet, it extracted just fine and I followed the directions to get the TV show on my mac (G4 ibook 1.25GHz). Downloaded a tv show and dropped on the applet and got the following error message: No such file or directory. I must be doing something wrong??

OK, I changed the name and it now I get the error message that the applescript has timed out….

I tried this and it converted fine, but when I tried to view in VLC, it was stretched tall and skinny (not 640x480). Is there a setting that needs to be changed somewhere to convert to the proper size?

I’m also getting the Timed out error. This is with a 2.7 GB file. Converts fine when I run it through the command line.

Looks like this is an AppleScript problem. It will only wait so long for that shell script to complete. I’ll see what I can do about that.

When tryiing to download TiVo Decoder, I get noting downlaoded, and a “2” on a blank page from this site. Any known issues?

Thanks!

J. Alexander Jacocks

Just tried the download and it’s working fine now.

I am also having the same problem with certain files. Some files only download around 700kb of data before saying done. Others are 2.5gb long and download fine. I have tried the download in both Firefox and Safari. Any help would to resolve this would be appreciated!

When I click on Tivo Decoder v1.1 in the attachment list, it goes to the url http://inik.net/system/files/TiVo_Decoder.zip but that only displays a page with the number 2 in it. Can you check the attachement?

All I get is “Finder got an error: Can’t get name of alias” with the path to the file. Tried it on two different files in the same directory as the applet and in a different one. I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.

If you’re having download problems, please email me using the contact form (link on the right) and let me know your browser and OS version.

Thousands of people are successfully downloading the file, so I can’t explain why it isn’t working for you.

If you need tech support and want a quick response, please use the contact form. Thanks.

I successfully downloaded a tivo file and dropped it on the script. It generates an mpeg file but quicktime wont play. Error says simply that the movie cannot be opened. intel macbook mac osx 10.4.8 quicktime 7.1.3

Re: my previous post about it not playing in VLC…Decoded mpegs do play fine in MPlayer.

Problem: script is giving a Timeout error, although the mpg looks complete when viewed in MPlayer.

nice work. Saves a bunch of time. thanks much!!

Okay…color me the other newbie at this…. The Decode Manager software loaded fine, my TiVo programs show up in the Decode Manager window as they should, I click on a show, then the download button and in a whopping 1.5 seconds, it says it’s done….

…and has delivered an mpg file that’s completely empty. What am I not getting right here?

(MBP, 10.4.8, TiVo version 8.1-01-2-140)

Sorry to be so dense. Somethin’s just not clicking for me tonight. Thanks!

The above problem sounds like it is with TivoDecode Manager not Tivo_Decoder. I got the manager too, and it does not download the show only places a linked .mpg that is no size. I then got the NowPlaying widget to download the .tivo file for Tivo_Decoder, but when I try to drop the file into the window nothing happens the file just jumps back to the same spot on the desktop???

TiVo Decode Manager is an entirely different piece of software from this one. Yes, it is super buggy, but the developer’s working on it. You could help by telling him and not clogging up the comments here with notes about unrelated software. It’s just confusing for people trying to download TiVo Decoder.

Sorry to upset your apple cart, Nik.

Since TiVo Decode is part of TiVo Decode Manager, and since the decoding seems to be the problem, I thought it best to post a polite request for info here. Didn’t mean to “clog up” anything….sorry everyone.

When I try to drag and drop the .tivo file onto the Decoder droplet it just snaps back to the location on the desktop. Is this probably a problem with the .tivo file or with the decoder.

I had the same problem. Add the script program to your dock, then drag and drop the .tivo file onto the dock icon. Took me a little while to figure that out!

Now if only I could get the file to PLAY…

I’m downloading VLC player to see if it works.

Nik, Is there any chance you would have time to update this to use the new versio of TivoDecode 0.1.4?

Thanks for your work on this!

I just posted TiVo Decoder 1.3, which adds tivodecode 1.4 and extends the timeout to 10 minutes instead of the default one minute. (Really nice since tivodecode takes longer now — grr!)

Let me know if ten minutes isn’t sufficient. I’ve only tested it on 60 minute long shows.

Nik, Upon extracting the latest .zip file, the creation & mod date say 12/06. There is no version stated in the get info. Is this really your latest version? Thank you for your great work here….

1.3 worked perfectly for me. I can’t tell you how grateful that I can finally do this.

The modification date wasn’t updated, and I’m just going to have to blame that on Script Editor. It is, indeed, the latest version. Sorry for any confusion there.

I have the same problem. I wonder if it is an Intel Mac issue?

I have the same problem. Maybe it is an Intel Mac issue?

Thanks for the info on Itunes

It’s working great now. The longer timeout seems to work fine on the 2-hr shows I tested. Thanks!

Same problem here but I’m using a PPC PowerMac G5. I’ll try VLC and Mplayer in the morning……

Tried VLC and it worked like a champ! Now to figure out how to burn it…..

Nik, thanks for the work, it is a real timesaver as compared to running each tivo file via terminal manually. One issue that I just found is, it seems to have problem processing filename that include ’ (apostrophe). I’ve to manually removing the apostrophe before dropping them into tivodecoder to avoid error message. The other issue that I found is that when it is running, the Finder seems to stall and unresponsive on all finder windows, I will have to wait until it completed the processing before I can gain back the control of the finder. Again, thanks for your work on this.

When I tried to decode a .tivo file it gives me a unexpected error - Encrypted by Qualcomm ;) What amI doing wrong? Downloaded with Toast 8! Help! Thanks! Dan