Did you know that if your TiVo is on your network, you can access it with your web browser and ultimately transfer shows off of it? Here’s how to do it. Enter your TiVo’s IP address into your favorite web browser. When you enter the address, make sure that you use https. In the case of my Series 3 TiVo, I can access it with the following URL: https://192.168.1.108/.

If you’re not sure what your TiVo’s IP address is, you can always find out by navigating to the following menu item on your TiVo: Messages & Settings –> Settings –> Phone & Network. At the top right hand corner of this screen you can see your TiVo’s IP address.

As soon as you enter the correct URL in your browser you will be presented with a confirmation window which ask you whether or not you want to accept your TiVo’s certificate. Simply click accept the certificate and continue.

Once you accept the certificate you will be presented with a login window. In order to access your TiVo you need to know your media access key which you can find here. To login, all you have to do is enter the username “tivo” (without the quotes of course) along with your media access key as the password.

Assuming you enter the correct media access key, you should now be logged into your TiVo! From this page you can view the shows that have been recorded on your TiVo. Also, at the bottom of this page you can set whether or not you want your shows to be grouped into folders of if you want them to appear in one alphabetized list.

If you find a show that you want to transfer, all you have to do is click on the “download link” and your web browser should initiate the download (assuming the show isn’t “Protected“).

Did you know that you can use the “Clear” button to delete a recording off of your TiVo? To use this tip, all you have to do is highlight the show that you want to delete and then “click” on the “Clear” button. This tip will save you a lot of time especially if you’re like me and your neurotic about deleting shows that you’re no longer going to watch.

Do you have a TiVo tip that you would like to share with everybody?  If yes, feel free to contact me…

Did you know that you can “page” through your TiVo’s guide data simply by using the fast forward button? I use this tip all the time to quickly navigate through the guide. If you don’t use this button, you’re stuck having to navigate the guide one show at a time. This tip will obviously save you a lot of time if you frequently access the guide. Does anybody have any other tips for navigating the guide?

Here’s a feature that I didn’t know was possible. According to a TiVo.com knowledgebase article, the TiVo Glo remote (Series 3 remote) is a “learning remote” which is capable of being programmed via another A/V remote. Essentially what this means is that you can program your glo remote by pointing it at another device’s remote and the glo remote will program itself. This is obviously a great feature if you are having a tough time getting your glo remote to control another A/V device.

Has anybody successfully used this feature? If yes, I’d love to hear how well it worked….

If you’re like me, you’ve probably been having some performance issues with TiVo desktop. On my PC, TiVo desktop use to take an excessive amount of time to startup and whenever I would start it, my computer’s hard drive would go crazy with activity. After doing some research, I stumbled upon the following thread on TiVoCommunity.com where a couple of users got together and came up with a solution to this problem.

According to the thread on TC, the culprit of the slowdown can be caused by an excessive amount of cache files within TiVo desktop’s cache folder (c:\Document and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\TiVo Desktop\). In the case of my PC, TiVo desktop had written out 11,266 cache files into the cache folder!

In order to improve TiVo desktop’s performance, all you have to do is periodically delete the contents of the cache folder. Along with deleting these files, you might want to look into reducing the amount of space that TiVo desktop can use for its cache (take a look at the following screenshot).

Thanks to the following script, I’ve gone ahead and scheduled it so that my computer clears the cache on a nightly basis. Now, TiVo desktop runs like a champ on my computer!

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As a side note, I would like to thank Scott and Jarrod for putting me down as their TiVo rewards referrer. If you’d like to put me down as your referrer, all you need to do is enter my email address (raianoat AT gmail DOT com) when you activate your TiVo. Thanks Scott and Jarrod. It really is appreciated!