How To Watch Almost Any Video Podcast On Your TiVo
TiVoCast is one of my most favorite capabilities that TiVo has to offer. That being said, one of the biggest limitations of TiVoCast is that you can only download and watch the shows that TiVo currently has to offer. As of today, there are forty-one shows that are available via the TiVoCast service. Forty-one shows may seem like a large number of video podcasts however, if you’re a geek like me, you probably subscribe to a number of shows which TiVoCast doesn’t provide access to. To get around this limitation of TiVoCast, I’ve come up with a simple solution which utilizes TiVo Desktop Plus and iTunes.
Here’s what you are going to need to mirror my setup:
- A networked Windows box running TiVo Desktop with the TiVo Desktop Plus upgrade ($24.95). If you want to save a couple of bucks, you probably could use TiVo.Net or pyTiVo instead of TiVo Destkop plus. I’ve decided to use TiVo Desktop Plus because I already own a license for this software.
- iTunes, so that you can subscribe to video podcasts.
- A Series 2, Series 3 or TiVo HD connected to your home network.
If you haven’t already, the first thing need to do is subscribe to at least one video podcast within iTunes.
Once your subscription(s) are established, the next thing you need to do is identify where on your machine iTunes stores your video podcasts. By default, iTunes will download video podcasts into the Podcasts folder under your iTunes music folder. For my setup, iTunes is configured to download video podcasts into the following directory: C:\Shared\MP3s\Podcasts\.
Next, you need to create a shortcut for each of the folders which contain the video podcasts that you want to watch on your TiVo. Once you’ve created these shortcuts, you need to copy or move them to the directory where TiVo Desktop is configured to store your TiVo Recordings. If you’re not sure of this location, you can find out by accessing TiVo Desktop’s preferences (File –> Preferences –> File Locations). In my case, I have TiVo Desktop configured to store my TiVo recordings on one of my external USB drives: F:\My TiVo Recordings\.
Here’s a screenshot of the shortcuts that I’ve placed inside my TiVo Recordings folder.
Now that I’ve placed these shortcuts in my TiVo Recordings folder, TiVo Desktop Plus will allow me to watch my video podcasts on my TiVo DVR. Essentially, TiVo Desktop plus will transcode my video podcasts into a format that my TiVo can then playback. According to TiVo’s website, TiVo desktop plus has the ability to transcode the following video formats:
Supported video formats include:
Note: Files with digital rights management (DRM) or other copy protection are not supported.
- Windows Media Video (.wmv)
- QuickTime Movie (.mov)
- MPEG-4/H.264 (.mp4,.m4v,.mp4v)
- MPEG-2 (.mpg,.mpeg,.mpe,.mp2,.mp2v,.mpv2)
- DivX and Xvid (.avi, .divx)
Now that the shortcuts are in place, your DVR should be able to transfer and display your video podcasts. As you can see from this screenshot, my TiVo now has access to LabRats (Episode 103: Whatware?).
Here’s a couple of screenshots of what a video podcast looks like using the solution I’ve outlined in this post. Kind of cool hunh?
December 30th, 2007 at 11:36 pm |
[...] Detailed instructions can be found here. [...]
December 31st, 2007 at 2:34 am |
[...] at TiVo Blog has written up a nice guide on how to watch nearly any video podcast on your TiVo, given a Windows PC, TiVo Desktop Plus, and [...]
December 31st, 2007 at 7:24 pm |
This sounds like exactly what I’ve been looking for except that I use a Mac. Is there any solution available for the Mac (and no, Galleon, however cool it may be, is not what I’m talking about…)?
December 31st, 2007 at 9:36 pm |
@Queco Jones,
Doesn’t pyTiVo run on a Mac?
January 2nd, 2008 at 1:23 pm |
I found this amazing website it is a WEB 2.0 that supports all media files conversion it is called http://youconvertit.com, they can do the following:
1- Convert document, images, audio, video and Archived files.
2- Convert any Youtube and other Online Video to popular formats or download the video
3- Send file(s) up to 300 MB to friends or post it on any forum for 7 days
4- Convert any type of units (Acceleration, Area, Torque and others)
what makes them amazing is you can add up to 5 different file formats, i used them to convert a document and couple of audio files.
Try them and give me your feedback http://www.youconvertit.com
January 2nd, 2008 at 2:46 pm |
[...] TiVo is no sling box and even though I could re-formu-i-tunes-ulate my movies to play on my TiVo. It’s not happening automatically. It’s not even happening [...]
January 2nd, 2008 at 7:22 pm |
Minor nitpick: You say there are 29 TiVoCast channels — but actually we have 30 partners with 41 channels. Don’t forget that some of the partners listed have sub-channels (5 for Weather Channel, 4 for The New York Times, and 5 for PodshowTV).
January 2nd, 2008 at 9:01 pm |
Thanks for pointing that out Stephen. I’ll update the post…
January 2nd, 2008 at 9:34 pm |
Great tip, thanks!
The only obvious glitch with this is that I subscribe to a significant number of podcasts, and I wonder if all of them will show up when I do this? I don’t think that iTunes allows me to specify separate folders for video vs. audio podcasts, and populating my Tivo folder with a LOT of stuff which I have to page through, often slowly, to allow me to occasionally watch a video podcast, might not improve my life much. Much better if I could somehow limit the podcasts that show up just to video podcasts, or even just to certain video podcasts… I wonder if there is a way to do that…
January 2nd, 2008 at 10:01 pm |
Glenn, you could just create shortcuts to video podcasts only. If you do that, you won’t have any audio podcasts (assuming the video podcasts that you’ve subscribed to don’t publish audio files). Also, younmight want to look
into the settings that iTunes provides. I have iTunes only keep the latest podcast for all of the podcasts that u subscribe to.
January 7th, 2008 at 8:36 am |
[...] video podcasts) directly from within the TiVo Desktop interface (kind of like what I’ve done here). The new version is expected to be released in March ‘08. I’m sure we’ll find [...]
January 9th, 2008 at 11:09 pm |
[...] a video podcast on your TiVo was already achievable via a simple hack. But TiVo’s CES announcement will definitely push independent video content even further into [...]
January 12th, 2008 at 12:25 am |
Great tip - thanks!
I manage all of my video and audio subscriptions using the web-based mefeedia.com. 280+ subscriptions. I was there was just a way to point the TiVO to the URL:
http://www.mefeedia.com/user/franks/queue/rss/
I have it go off on its way and have these accessible on my TiVo!