Problem with playback of .TiVo files

[MeInMaui]

Hi,

Has anyone gotten playback of TiVoToGo files to work within SageTV?

My TiVo has been relegated to recording kids shows for my 2yr old. The hard drives started making some funny noises last night, so I thought I'd better copy off the shows that might cause a 2yr old meltdown if they were lost. I put one of the transferred shows into a SageTV media library folder and tried to play it in Sage. It just comes up with a black screen and the spinning icon appears for 2-3 seconds. The file appears stuck at about 10sec according to the time bar. (The time bar correctly shows the length of the recording). At this point SageTV locks up. The only way to get out is to use task manager to end the SageTV process. I tried using the NVidia decoder as well as the Cyberlink decoder. Both are supposed to be compatible with .TiVo files according to the TiVo website. Do I have to have the TiVo Desktop software installed on the SageTV computer to handle the DRM? (I used a different computer to transfer the .TiVo files)

If I convert the .TiVo files to MPEG2 using VideoRedo, then everything seems to work fine. So if I can't resolve this issue, I at least have a fall back.

In another thread, Narflex said that .TiVo playback should work (since SageTV v3), but I wasn't able to find any examples of anyone actually doing it successfully. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

System specs:
SageTV v5.04 with latest SageMC
AMD64 3200+
1Gb memory

Aloha,
Mike

[MeInMaui]

In case anyone else runs into this problem, here is an update. It appears that it is necessary to install the TiVo Desktop software on the SageTV computer in order to play back .TiVo recordings. I installed the software and the files now play from the media library. However, there are still some issues. The time bar shows a recording length of 0:00 and pressing the skip fwd (FF) button causes playback to stop. Interestingly skip back (RW) seems to work fine. This is using the Nvidia decoder and the SageMC STV. I have not tried any other combinations.

I think I will still use VideoRedo to convert and trim the files. Hope this helps someone.

Aloha,
Mike

[Opus4]

If you are having problems with it, it wouldn't hurt to check with tech support to see what they suggest. If it turns out that there is a fix they can include with SageTV, it would also help others in the future.

- Andy