If you spend a lot of time on the road and your wife is deleting your Tivo content because you are too busy to watch it, then I suspect that Tivotogo on your Z may have crossed your mind.
This is my first attempt. I am not sure that I will pursue this. Doing a cost(time)/benefit analysis indicates that this is becoming a hobby more than a tool to save me time.
"togo" is a strong word. Many like myself think of "togo" as fast, quick, and easy. Untrue in this case. It takes 90 minutes for every 60 minutes of video on your Tivo just to network copy to your PC. Plan ahead. Using Dr. Divx to convert to .avi files takes 2-3 times the duration of the recorded program. Again plan ahead. My advice: copy your .tivo files in the day, batch encode at night. Give yourself 6 minutes in the morning of the next day just to copy your .avis to your 4GB micro drive for every 60 minutes of recorded video.
Quite a pain, but there are rewards... I got a flat tire (3 nails) today, it took an hour to fix. I had nothing to read, but I did have "Nova - The Viking Deception.avi" on my Z and my iPod ear buds.
Converting Tivotogo (.tivo) files to .avi. I have tried 3 different methods with varying success.
1. TMPGEnc. Others have reported problems using this method. I also had problems. I can get the audio, but not the video. It is an issue with codex installed. In my attempts to get this working I did happen on a good article titled "Codex Hell".
2. Graphedit. This solution is more work than TMPGEnc. It involves splitting the DirectShow stream into audio and video then using a Muxer to splice back together rendering a stanard .mpg file. You still have to convert to .avi. I also had problems with the resulting .mpg file.
3. Dr. Divx. I preferred this method. A single tool with lots of options to easily convert my .tivo files to .avi. It has 2 problems reported by many. 1. No rotate option or filter available, this means the Z has to software rotate, not a show stopper. 2. Audio not in sync with video. This is NOT a Z issue, but a resulting .avi file issue. Windows also has problems playing the .avi file. However for me it is good enough. I only Tivo science programs, and it is 95% narration (i.e. no moving lips to worry about). For me it is good enough.
Viewing on the Z:
I am using Cacko 1.21a on my c860 with Kino 0.4.2 with the latest w100 mplayer. I watch all programming from my 4GB micro drive.
Dr. Divx has a Portable Profile. i.e. 600/80 video/audio bit rate at 320x240. I have been using the default and the default Kino options with scale (full screen) selected. On occasion there is a micro pause, but nothing to complain about. My initial attempt to watch my first encoded .avi file with the old Kino and mplayer was greeted with great surprise. My expectations had clearly been exceeded (my expectations were very low). Upgrading Kino/mplayer and over clocking while playing results in very viewable television.
640x480 .avi files play slower, unacceptably slow. The resolution was not very improved. BTW the .tivo files are 480x360 (actually 480x480 with a large blank upper boarder). Using Virtualdub I was able to prerotate, lower the bit rate (to 500) and clean up the time shifted audio. This helps, but Virtualdub is taking an existing .avi and reencoding it. This effects the output making the original 320x240 attempts with a lot less work look better. Unfortunately Virtualdub at this time cannot read the .tivo files. If only it would use DirectShow to read. I suspect that others will find ways to make Dr. Divx/Virtualdub 640x480 output that runs well, but why all the effort for something that I am going to watch once and delete? I am not interested archiving or redistributing quality video. On a 3.3" screen arms length away 320x240 is good enough for TV.
Long story short:
1. Save yourself some time. Use Dr. Divx Portable Profile and over clock your Z, or lower the bitrate to 512 or 384 if you do not want to over clock.
2. Over clocked Z can watch 2 hours of video on a single charge.
3. MythTVtogo. Consider building your own PVR with MythTV and scripting your .avi. This was my initial idea some time ago, but just no time to implement it.
4. There are other methods ot getting content of your Tivo, however this is more work than I am interested in doing.
Legal stuff: Don't pirate video. Over clocking can damage your Z (or so it has been argued). Over clock at your own risk.
