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Absolute dependence on Bonjour. Recently I finally got TiVo Transfer to connect to my TiVo via my home network through my Linksys router, but this would have been MUCH easier had there simply been an option to specify my TiVo's fixed IP address in TiVo Transfer's preferences. The freeware TiVoDecode Manager works this way, and really, it's easier to implement than Bonjour support, so it would be pathetically easy to add. If there's a concern about people not just using this for their home network, surely there's a way to limit IPs to just that.
It forgets the transfers between runs There are lots of reasons you may need to interrupt transferring temporarily. TiVo Transfer does not handle this gracefully at all. If you had initiated a number of transfers they're all forgotten the next time. This can lead to confusion as to what programs you've already transferred if you had a number of them. What happens when you try the same program again? See below! BUG: Transfers often hang Transferring files over a network by its very nature is subject to problems. How does TiVo Transfer handle them? It doesn't. If a transfer hangs, for whatever reason, no attempt is made to restart it, go to the next transfer (and save that one for later), or anything at all. This can cause all transfers to stop indefinitely. BUG: Attempting to re-download a program causes strange results. Whenever I try to download a program I've already downloaded, the status indicates that it's nearly finished downloading (so, e.g., a 750 MB program is 720 MB downloaded with a minute to go), but actually passes the full download amount by, and keeps going indefinitely (up into the gigabytes). This corrupts the previously successful download! Why not just indicate (in that status without an alert) that the program is downloaded and keep going? BUG: Auto transfers can CRASH the application Recently I had set up auto transfers for a particular program. I left my computer up and running, as there was some catching up for it to do. When I came back, TiVo Transfer was no longer running, and when I tried launching it, after it connected to the TiVo and realized it still needed to do some auto transfers, it CRASHED. This made TiVo Transfer absolutely useless, since every time I tried launching it after that, it crashed before I could remove the auto transfer. I had to delete its preference files (not an option for the novice) to get it to stop crashing. BUG: Doesn't pick up on new name of DVR after it's changed BUG: Right-clicking on a list item doesn't necessarily do the operation on that item. Instead, it does the operation on the selected item, which can easily be a different one.There are probably more problems that haven't come to mind. I'll post them if I think of them.
I actually purchased Toast largely because of the promise of TiVo Transfer. I am so sorry I did. I wish it lived up to the minimum of what I expected.
Edited by KJS, 08 May 2008 - 02:49 PM.
