It's actually very simple:

1) open ports 443 (ssl) and 80 (html) on the router and setup port forwarding to the IP of the TiVo

2) Go to: https://<tivo ip>/nowplaying/index.html

3) You will be prompted for a username and password, the user is tivo (lowercase) and the password is your media access key.

4) Through the webinterface you can simply download anything off the TiVo like any normal download. You will still need the TiVo desktop on the PC you are downloading onto and will have to enter the MAK just like on a normal PC.

Getting TiVotoGo content onto my PSP, THAT is cool :)

Hmm. My be a bit of trouble running a web server - I'm not sure what their ISP's terms of usage are.

What sort of bandwidth is needed?

You don't really "need" any kind of bandwidth, the faster the upstream, the faster the download. Tivo itself can't upload faster than around 700-800 anyway.

When I tested this on a 256 upstream it took around 3 hours to transfer one 30 minute show, I now have an upstream 3 times faster and still need to test it.

If you are handy, you could setup a VPN to the house and bypass having to open those ports. Just VPN and then download locally. Another option is to have someone at home save the content and put it on an FTP server on the home PC with some weird port assignment the ISP won't look for...

You can just use ssh port forwarding.

-David

Unless something changed recently then that doesn't work for the downloads. It seems to use SSH for the web, and regular port 80 for the video download itself.

I don't see why that can't work. You simply forward two local ports (443 and 80, if you must use those specific ports) through your router, onto ssh on a local server at home and forward them to 443 and 80 on the tivo. Why won't that work?

On your notebook ~/.ssh/config add:

Where tivo is an entry on /etc/hosts on your sshd host. (or you can use the local IP in your .ssh/config file)

Then you just open the connection with 'ssh tivo-fwd' and browse to https://localhost. When done, exit from ssh. Why won't that work, Scott? (You might want to do 'ssh tivo-fwd bin/busy-wait' so the remote shell doesn't timeout and close the connection in the middle of your transfer. ~/bin/busy-wait is an executable file containing:

-David

Any similar options to TiVo?
 

Hmm. It doesn't sound like it will work too well for me, if it takes 3 hours to get a 30 minute show at 256kb - based on that, I assume it is using MPEG2. I've got 12mbit down / 1 mbit up on my connection, but they only have 512k down / 256k up on theirs.

Is there any similar sort of system that would do MPEG4, which would hopefully allow for acceptable quality at smaller file sizes? Preferrable a system that I could plug in and forget as my parents are not technical at all.

I forgot one thing .. it's a PITA to forward priviledged ports.

-David

SEA-Flyer, I have an older, hacked Series 1 Tivo that I use to do this (the hacks render it very similar to the newer Series 2 with TivoToGo.

I just got back from two weeks in China, and was able to stay current with The Amazing Race and the Apprentice by transferring them from my Tivo in San Francisco. Here's how I did it:

I have an old, slow laptop on my network which stays on 24/7 (I use the old laptop because it consumes very little power). My internet access is via DSL through a Linksys router that supports VPN.

First I establish a VPN connection to my router. Then I use VNC to get to control my laptop (which is loaded with a VNC server). The laptop is connected to an X-10 controller, which I use to turn on those machines on my network which don't respond to wake-on-LAN. Fortunately, my primary computer does recognize WOL, so I issue the WOL command from the laptop (I have little batch files for all of this).

While the primary computer is booting up, I telnet in to my Tivo and start the server software (the program is called Tserver). I also use Internet Explorer in combination with more hacked Tivo software that lets me control the Tivo remotely and start whatever show I want to transfer playing on the Tivo (a necessary step to unscramble it before transfer -- TivoToGo doesn't require this).

Though I could, in theory, transfer video directly from the Tivo to my remote travelling laptop, I prefer to transfer it to the primary computer at home first. Unlike TivotoGo, this is a very quick process on a hacked Series 1 -- it takes about 15 minutes to transfer 2-hours of programming. Once it's on my primary comptuer, I convert it to mpeg (another 3 minutes or so) and it's ready for the long haul data transmission to wherever I am. Using telnet, I shut down the Tivo server.

Using rather crappy hotel high-speed connections in Beijing and Shanghai, it took rougly 6 hours to transfer 1 hour worth of video, which averaged a little over 1 gigabyte of data.

Once on my travelling laptop, I shut down the primary computer at home using either VNC, or a remote shutdown program from the old laptop at home. Then, I can watch the transferred mpeg in WinDVD.

It works great, and the video quality is fantastic.