Philip Fibiger

Tivo’s enabled “TivoToComeBack” (the opposite of TivoToGo) on the Series 3 for a couple of months now, but the only conversion guides I’d found ended up with standard def video on the Tivo. Following these instructions I was able to download a 720p sample video, convert it in VisualHub, and send it to my Tivo. Note that it has black bars because the film is a different resolution than my display.

My system for watching downloaded video is actually pretty neat (though prior to this it just handled SD content): Downloaded video are dropped into a folder which is a samba share on my headless mac mini, which is also my itunes/music server. An automator action watches the directory and when video files are dropped in, it fires up VisualHub and starts converting them to mpegs with the “tivo” set of options. When VH finishes the conversion, it drops the newly converted files into a second directory which is monitored by the Tivo Desktop software. So, I can just download a pile of content, drop it into a folder, and walk away. A few hours later (the mini is relatively old/slow) I have a bunch of content ready to play on the Tivo.

Just as it’s refreshing when you hear a musician or someone in the record industry who gets mp3s, It’s wonderful to hear a television exec who doesn’t have a knee jerk reaction to Tivo and other digital video recorders. Bob Wright, CEO of NBC has a Tivo, uses it, and doesn’t think it’s going to destroy network television.