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Saturday, January 20th, 2007

Video To TiVo From My Mac

Now there’s a way to put video back to my TiVo from my Mac. The interface for turning it on is hidden until you either command-click the TiVo preference pane or type defaults write com.tivo.desktop FileVideo -dict-add VideoUIEnabled -bool true into Terminal (this feature is also known as “TiVoToComeback”).

TiVoToComeback UI

The original discovery came from this TiVo Community Forum post.

Also, you might find TiVoizer useful in converting videos to the mpeg2 format that TiVo likes.

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Tuesday, February 15th, 2005

Faster LAME for TiVo AAC Playback

In my previous post, I was hoping to speed up the AAC-to-MP3 transcoding by compiling LAME on my own. This turned out to be very easy and gave quite an impressive performance improvement.

Here are the steps on the command line for a G4 (from the blacktree forum). Note that the multi-line commands should be entered on one line.

$ cd ~
$ mkdir tmp
$ cd tmp
$ curl http://internap.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/lame/lame-3.96.1.tar.gz -o lame-3.96.1.tar.gz
$ tar xvzf lame-3.96.1.tar.gz
$ cd lame-3.96.1
$ ./configure CFLAGS="-O3 -falign-loops-max-skip=15 -falign-jumps-max-skip=15 -falign-loops=16 -falign-jumps=16 -falign-functions=16 -malign-natural -ffast-math -fstrict-aliasing -funroll-loops -floop-transpose -mpowerpc-gpopt -fsched-interblock --param max-gcse-passes=3 -fno-gcse-sm -mcpu=G4 -mtune=G4"
$ make
$ sudo make install
$ cd ~
$ rm -rf tmp

After compiling, I compared the resulting binary program in /usr/local/bin/lame to the fink-compiled lame and found that the optimized version was 3.6x faster (7 versus 25 seconds) at compressing an mp3 with the default options.

This optimization reduced my processor usage while transcoding with TiVo from 80% to 25%.

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Tuesday, February 15th, 2005

TiVo Desktop 1.9 Plays AAC Files

After digging around to learn more about TiVo Desktop 1.9 for Mac OS X, I learned about an interesting hidden feature: you can play back AAC files on your TiVo by using a transcoding feature.

On the TiVo Community Forum thread about version 1.9, a user describes that you can use LAME to transcode unprotected AAC files. This doesn’t get you iTunes Music Store DRM’ed AAC playback, but if you’ve ripped many other CDs in AAC (like I have), you’ll be quite happy about this.

The basic idea is: 1. Install the lame command line program in /usr/local/bin/lame (or do “fink install lame”, then “ln -s /sw/bin/lame /usr/local/bin/lame”) 2. Stop and re-start TiVo Desktop via the Preference Pane 3. Enjoy

On my dual-800 G4 powermac, the fink version of lame used about 75% of one processor to do the real-time AAC to MP3 conversion.

Alternatively, I’m hoping that compiling lame using an optimization suggested on this blacktree forum will give me an improvement.

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Saturday, February 12th, 2005

TiVo Desktop Mac Goes to 1.9

Grab the update from TiVo or Versiontracker.

Here’s the blurb direct from TiVo:

This update contains: a revised preferences mechanism, support for photo album heirarchies, a new plug-in API, and minor bug fixes.

I installed the TiVo Desktop 1.9 update on my Mac and I was happy to notice that the background process that runs when TiVo Desktop is on is much more efficient. With 1.8, cpu usage was 3-7% all of the time, even when I wasn’t playing music or looking at photos on TiVo. With 1.9, the cpu usage is 0.0% with occasional spikes to 0.9% — much improved.

Also of interest was some of the information displayed by the installer. Here’s a snippet:

Changes since version 1.8 * TiVoDesktop can now work with applications other than iPhoto to share photos. * Enhances performance and stability.

I wonder what applications other than iPhoto they have in mind?

Unfortunately, this update does not support TiVo To Go or the playback of AAC files in Music & Photos. For Mac users, waiting is.

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Saturday, February 12th, 2005

Someone in Love with TiVo

This hilarious FAQ discribes TiVo in a unique way. It made me cackle.

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Friday, September 10th, 2004

TiVo Hacking

The best TiVo forum for learning how to use and improve a TiVo is definately the TiVo Community Forum.

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Saturday, September 4th, 2004

Linux PVR

I’m still intested in building a TiVo-like Linux box. AnandTech explains a setup with MythTV in a good article.

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Monday, June 28th, 2004

HDTV Over-the-air Receiver and Antennas

Since moving to Arlinton Heights, I’ve been trying to get HDTV over the air. The experiment didn’t succeed — I could only get 3 channels (WGN, ABC, and PBS). Without FOX and NBC, it wasn’t worth it.

However, when a channel did come in with HD content, it looked awesome! The nature specials on PBS were very clear and in widescreen high-definition (you could really see that bobcat fight the snake).

For the record, I used a Motorola HDT-100 high definition television receever on an open-box deal from Circuit City (for $270). It worked well, but had to be returned in the end because …

… it turns out I live on the wrong side of the apartment to be able to receive signals from the Sears Tower and Handcock building in downtown Chicago. I did have some luck with the Gemini Silver Sensor UHF antenna — it’s very directional and helped with the multipath problems caused by the signals going through my apartment building. A good website on general antenna info (for dummies) is here.

Also, antennaweb.org is a great website. You type in your address and it can tell you what direction all the TV stations are from your address and then recommend an antenna type.

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