TivoToGo and Multiple TiVos

[Gerry Schultz]

To All:

 

I'm excited about the new Roxio Toast 8 as it will allow new connectivity for my Macs and TiVos that I've been waiting for. I have three TiVos, a Pioneer 810 in the living room, a Humax DRT-800 in the bedroom and a TCD540080 in the garage, all with larger hard drives. On the Mac side, I have an iMac G5 and a MBP C2D and everything is on my home network and it all works fine.

 

First, Does Toast 8 handle multiple TiVos on the network properly? I've had problems with Tivo's TiVoToGo software on my PCs (I didn't mention that I also have three WinXP PCs) properly handling multiple TiVos. Is Toast any better?

 

Second, I do own a 5th generation iPod and I want to use Toast 8 and iTunes to move TiVo recorded programs onto it. How well does that work? On the PC side, I was able to move TiVo recorded programs to the iPod manually but it was quite a task and something that took a lot of time. I'm hoping Toast 8 can streamline this process.

 

Finally, the first two TiVos listed above already have DVD burners in them but the TCD540080 doesn't. A limitation of the TiVo software is that a program transfered to another TiVo cannot be archieved to DVD. So, anything I record on the TCD can't be burned to DVD. I'm hoping to use Toast to solve this problem. How well and easy is it to burn TiVo programs to a DVD on a Mac?

 

Thanks for the help and if it turns out Toast 8 works well, I'll upgrade. I presently have Toast 6.

 

Thanks,

 

Gerry

[kenez]

I can give you a limited review of the Tivo-to-Go feature in Toast 8 Titanium. I have a similar set-up to yours with multiple Tivos, two of which have DVD burners. I have an iMac with the dual core intel processor. I installed Windows XP Pro on this machine using Parallels software. Therefore, I can use the free Windows-based version of Tivo-to-Go (but it does not support DVD burning).

 

After installing the Toast software on the iMac all of my Tivos showed up in the directory (except the HD Tivo - no transfers allowed as of yet). I was able to transfer shows from the other three Tivo's without a problem and I was also able to assemble and burn a disk with shows from each Tivo. The burn speed seemed pretty slow. Maybe that's because I am used to the relatively speedy burns done on my Tivo's that have built-in DVD burners. This burn seemed more like burning in real-time. Also, the Toast burning software creates menus, etc that are different than the familiar Tivo interface. That said, the disc played fine in a non-Tivo DVD player and when I created it I didn't run into the usual problem of "can't burn a transferred show". So, I think the softare was a worthwhile investment, especially considering that the Tivo-to-Go is only one feature of the Toast software. At some point I want to investigate if any editing of the transferred shows is possible (probably not).

 

I hope this helps. I don't own an iPod so I can't comment on the issues you mentioned relating to transfers to an iPod.

 

Ken

 

 

 

 

 

To All:

 

I'm excited about the new Roxio Toast 8 as it will allow new connectivity for my Macs and TiVos that I've been waiting for. I have three TiVos, a Pioneer 810 in the living room, a Humax DRT-800 in the bedroom and a TCD540080 in the garage, all with larger hard drives. On the Mac side, I have an iMac G5 and a MBP C2D and everything is on my home network and it all works fine.

 

First, Does Toast 8 handle multiple TiVos on the network properly? I've had problems with Tivo's TiVoToGo software on my PCs (I didn't mention that I also have three WinXP PCs) properly handling multiple TiVos. Is Toast any better?

 

Second, I do own a 5th generation iPod and I want to use Toast 8 and iTunes to move TiVo recorded programs onto it. How well does that work? On the PC side, I was able to move TiVo recorded programs to the iPod manually but it was quite a task and something that took a lot of time. I'm hoping Toast 8 can streamline this process.

 

Finally, the first two TiVos listed above already have DVD burners in them but the TCD540080 doesn't. A limitation of the TiVo software is that a program transfered to another TiVo cannot be archieved to DVD. So, anything I record on the TCD can't be burned to DVD. I'm hoping to use Toast to solve this problem. How well and easy is it to burn TiVo programs to a DVD on a Mac?

 

Thanks for the help and if it turns out Toast 8 works well, I'll upgrade. I presently have Toast 6.

 

Thanks,

 

Gerry

[patatrox]

Second, I do own a 5th generation iPod and I want to use Toast 8 and iTunes to move TiVo recorded programs onto it. How well does that work? On the PC side, I was able to move TiVo recorded programs to the iPod manually but it was quite a task and something that took a lot of time. I'm hoping Toast 8 can streamline this process.

 

It works very well.

 

1) Launch Toast and go to a DVD-Video project

2) Add your TiVo file in to the project area (or multiple files for a batch export)

3) Click export after selecting the files

4) Choose the iPod export option and go!

 

Your file (or files) will be converted for use on iPod and be automatically added to your iTunes library upon completion.