TiVo rolls out Vista-compatible, DivX-supporting Desktop 2.5

TiVo's official website still doesn't show any indication of it, but Dave Zatz of Zatz Not Funny! says the company's PR folks have confirmed to him that TiVo Desktop 2.5 is now official, and a download link has already been turned up on the TiVo Community Forum. Headlining the updates this time around is Windows Vista compatibility, not to mention support for the transfer and playback of DivX and Xvid files, along with support for conversion of previously transferred recordings. TiVo's also now finally added the iPod to the list of portable devices, and it'll kindly send converted files straight to your iTunes library. Hit up the link below for the download.

[Mile @ Aug 8th 2007 1:53PM]

My Tivo died two nites ago. Cry for me, engadget. Cry.

[Chris Lemon @ Aug 8th 2007 2:00PM]

From what I see, the conversions only work if you've paid them the $25 for the Plus upgrade, which I'm awfully loathe to do considering that a) free alternatives exist, and b) I'm already paying these guys $13 a month.

That said, when I try to use said conversion tools (lately I've been running the thing through DirectShow Dump to turn it into an MPG and then trying to convert to Xvid) the audio tends to get really desynched from the video. (Which is another reason I'm not too keen on paying Tivo $25 for their software.) Anyone know how to get around this? Is there a converter I could be using that lets me fix that?

[Paul H @ Aug 9th 2007 9:23AM]

So you don't want to pay $25 because a free alternative exists, and another reason you don't want to pay is that the free alternative doesn't work properly? I think the problem is with DirectShow Dump.

Well there is a solution, buy VideoReDo - it can load TiVo files directly, edit them and save them out as standard MPEG.

It handles audio syncing correctly and can even fix some sync problems in mpeg files.

[Akbar Fazil @ Aug 8th 2007 2:09PM]

so for the playback of divx stuff, does this do the same thing as tivo.net?

[Grammar freak @ Aug 8th 2007 2:29PM]

Sweet! However, on my old computer, tivo desktop was a major resource hog. Is this new one as much of a wet blanket?

[rmg2768 @ Aug 8th 2007 4:07PM]

I paid the $25 and tried the Tivo 2.4a convert-to-iPod and transcoding back, and it worked OK, but the conversion took forever and the TivoServer service seemed to have a memory leak (200+Meg at points).

I've had good success with pyTivo, and can easily retune the transcoding parameters (ffmpeg options), which you cannot do with the Tivo transcoder.

I'll try the 2.5 when I get a chance - the one nice thing about the Tivo transcoder is that it will search subdirectories for files to transcode, e.g. video podcasts in iTunes, and is more stable than using Tivo.net or pyTivo which display the subfolders in your now-playing, but can cause the Tivo to reboot if you dive into/out of subfolders too fast. The alternative I use for pyTivo is to keep everything 1 folder deep, and set up several individual folders for Now Playing.

[halozero @ Aug 8th 2007 3:57PM]

Yeah, the FFMPEG stuff causes A/V sync issues. TiVo Desktop Plus conversions have no sync issues. It converts to MPEG-4 (essentialy DivX) or H.264, and does it automatically without having to strip encryption and stuff. This new version claims to transfer DivX video downloads to your TiVo box (does the conversion automatically with the Plus upgrade). I just tried installing it and it's a free upgrade if you've already bought a previous version.

[Johan S @ Aug 8th 2007 5:14PM]

Why doesn't Tivo license their technology to HDTV manufacturers? Ideally HDTV's would be able to talk to computers with WiFi also. Oh yeah and redesign the remote with few buttons (OLED + LCD).

[rmg2768 @ Aug 9th 2007 8:27AM]

There are several tools which can convert an mpg (output from eTivo's DirectshowDump) into divx, mp4, avc for ipod, etc. FFMpeg does a great job and is somewhat tunable and can be batch scripted for use with a directory monitor like DirMon2 (so when .Tivo file appears and finishes being written, 1st run DSD, then converter, then delete).

Other standalone apps work well for conversion to ipod and other formats, videora, SUPER, etc. but may not be batch-scriptable (ie. command line driven)

[billyf2k @ Aug 21st 2007 9:03PM]

After installing tivo 2.5, i found my PC slowed-down to the point that it was unusable.
After removing 2.5 my pc worked fine.
Has anyone else experienced this issue? if so, any work around or patch?

[joyce @ May 31st 2008 1:07PM]

I loaded TIVO desktop plus and was very happy with it. The converting and downloading took a long time but the end product on my IPOD was great. Now, all of a sudden the "convert to Apple IPOD" quit working. I don't know why. I didn't change anything. Is there some sore of limit or something? I have XP on my computer.
Any one else have this problem?