[Request] TiVo Plugin or Script?
#1
Question 
A while back, when this project resided only on the Xbox, there was a script that could talk to TiVo (mine were Series 2 TiVos) and show the Now Playing List and pull shows down for viewing. It required that ms-ftp be installed on the hacked TiVos.

Has that been updated to work with the current versions of XBMC?
Supporter of all things Linux, Android, XBMC and NextPVR
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#2
jkrellner Wrote:A while back, when this project resided only on the Xbox, there was a script that could talk to TiVo (mine were Series 2 TiVos) and show the Now Playing List and pull shows down for viewing. It required that ms-ftp be installed on the hacked TiVos.

Has that been updated to work with the current versions of XBMC?

I don't believe there's currently anything like that now, but I'd definitely be interested. I bet some of the python guys could do some really cool stuff especially since it's much easier to access TiVo's now.
You can get the now playing list/watch shows by going to [url]https://YOUR_TIVO_IP/[/url]
The username is tivo and the password is your MAK (Media Access Key)

It's also possible to telnet into your TiVo (port 31339) and send commands to the UI - see here

Image
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#3
I believe the things you point out are available only on unhacked, standalone TiVos, not hacked standalone or DirecTV TiVos. I have hacked DirecTV TiVos so I would not be interested unless it could support those as well.
Supporter of all things Linux, Android, XBMC and NextPVR
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#4
jkrellner Wrote:I believe the things you point out are available only on unhacked, standalone TiVos, not hacked standalone or DirecTV TiVos. I have hacked DirecTV TiVos so I would not be interested unless it could support those as well.
Ahhh didn't realize you had DirectTV Tivos - don't have any experience with those.
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#5
I would play but i don`t have a Tivo maybe a U.S programmer.
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#6
The .Tivo files are not playable using dvdplayer. The old MPlayer could (on the Xbox1). There is a program called tivodecode that will strip the DRM from the .tivo file and convert to mpeg.
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#7
Link to tivodecode:
http://tivodecode.sourceforge.net/
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#8
What about playing the .ty files accessible on hacked TiVos using MS_FTP? Am I the only one still doing this?
Supporter of all things Linux, Android, XBMC and NextPVR
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#9
Is there any more interest or progress on this?

I'd love to be able to browse my unhacked TiVo from XBMC. I'm tempted to try writing something myself, but it seems like compiling tivodecode for the Xbox would be a little harder than writing a script to fetch the .tivo files.
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#10
I had a thought. I could avoid having to compile tivodecode for the Xbox by writing a proxy that runs on the PC...

On the other hand, if I'm writing a proxy for the PC that provides a list of recordings and then sends an MPEG stream when one is selected, it seems like there's probably already a protocol XBMC can use to browse that list, so I could skip writing a script at all.

XBMSP looks simple enough for this purpose. Any thoughts?
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#11
Not sure if this is the right forum anymore, but here's an update...

I have basic functionality working as a C# app which speaks XBMSP to XBMC and HTTP(S) to TiVo. I can browse the recordings through my Xbox and play the video, with my PC decrypting on the fly.

I'm a little disappointed in XBMC's XBMSP support at this point; from the spec, it looks like you can have unique pathnames that are separate from the descriptive titles, but XBMC doesn't support that, so names have to be both unique and descriptive without breaking the filename parser. What I'm doing now is stripping illegal punctuation from the show title and then appending a unique TiVo recording ID.

Also, I had a hell of a time tracking down several problems that all turned out to be the fault of Windows treating stdin/stdout as text files (which I had to patch tivodecode to fix), and I still have no idea how I'm going to make fast forwarding work. But I can watch Heroes in bed now!
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#12
Any update on this? I'd really like to see this come into fruition.

Quote:I still have no idea how I'm going to make fast forwarding work. But I can watch Heroes in bed now!

I'm not sure if this would be possible to do as I don't think the embedded web server supports HTTP resume. That would make random access impossible unless you pooled the data somewhere as it was downloaded. This wouldn't allow fast forwarding past any parts you haven't downloaded, however you could seek around in areas of the video that you have already downloaded. But doing all of this would invariably complicate things more.
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#13
Ah, almost forgot about this. I no longer use my TiVo, so development has sort of stalled. But it stalled at a very usable point.

Here's a link to my program XBTivens. Unzip to a folder, edit the config file, and run XBTivens.Console.exe.

The parts of the config file you need to edit are highlighted here:
Code:
<setting name="TivoURI" serializeAs="String">
                <value>https://[color=red]192.168.1.123[/color]/nowplaying/index.html</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="ListenPort" serializeAs="String">
                <value>1400</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="ListingCacheTime" serializeAs="String">
                <value>300</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="TivoDecodePath" serializeAs="String">
                <value>[color=red]C:\path\to[/color]\tivodecode.exe</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="TivoMAK" serializeAs="String">
                <value>[color=red]0000000000[/color]</value>
            </setting>

Put your TiVo's IP address in TivoURI, your Media Access Key in TivoMAK (both of these can be found in the TiVo settings menu), and the correct path to tivodecode.exe in TivoDecodePath. You may also wish to edit ListenPort to change the port it listens on, or ListingCacheTime to set the time in seconds that it will cache the TiVo listings.

This might work on Linux or OS X if you have Mono installed. I don't think you'll need my patched copy of tivodecode on non-Windows systems, so just use a native version of that.

Let me know if you have trouble.. like I said, it's been a while since I used this, so I may have forgotten something.
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#14
Woot, thanks, I'll try this out.

Too bad it's discontinued though Smile There have been many ways of streaming files off of a tivo to xbmc throughout the years, but since they never get updated new versions of xbmc break compatibility with them.

I think the most easy option that ever existed was the ccxstream binary that somebody compiled a while back, but it doesn't appear to work anymore for me. It gets a showing list but xbmc just shows a blank menu when it finishes loading it. Sadly I don't know the first thing about C otherwise I'd try to update it myself.

I think it might be that the .ty extension was removed from XBMC's supported formats list, but its been so long since I've used XBMC that I forgot how to modify this (searching all of the existing xml files doesn't reveal anything.)

There's also the option of running mfs_ftp on the tivo but doing so opens a huge can of worms.
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#15
Mr2001, I've been working on a somewhat similar project, and was definitely stymied by the tivodecode stdin/stdout problems you mentioned. Any chance you'd be willing to share the patch source code and some samples of how you invoked it to facilitate the stream redirection?
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[Request] TiVo Plugin or Script?0