77 replies to this topic

[yoav]

App to play shows directly off your home tivo.

EDIT:
The app is now available directly in the app store, so no need for these instructions

Information on the app is still available at http://wiki.plexapp.com/index.php/TiVo

[ding]

Yoav,

YOU RULE!!!!!

[Isaac Ordonez]

Wow, that is REALLY cool! One of our devs is installing this right now I'm assuming you need iTivo installed? I think with a little cleaning up and an instruction screencast this might be a good addition to the appstore.

[maddox]

Just played with it. This is fantastic. AWESOME work yoav!

[maddox]

You don't need anything installed. I simply provided my Media Access Key (you get this from Tivo's website in your account details).

After giving it the access key, the plugin just SEES all my Tivos. I can then browse their content. Bravo. This thing is great!

Pause/Play works, but seeking does not. Also there is no thumbs. It'd be awesome if there were a way to get thumbnails, but obviously the Tivo does not even have thumbs to provide.

[yoav]

Yeah sorry, still fighting with it a bit.

it should work 'as-is' without needing anything else installed. Tivo unfortunately doesn't support
providing a thumbnail for movie clips. It is possible to try and download a little bit of each show, and then
generating a clip of it, but due to the tivo's penchant for 'refusing connections' once it sees too many
attempts, I think that may misfire.


I haven't figured out how to control the view bar that shows up. Tivo only feeds a full
http stream of the movie. No fast-forwarding/rewinding allowed (byte-range). So pause, stop, and
start from beginning works, but that's it.

I was hoping plex would keep the rest of the movie it's already shown in a buffer, but that's
looking like a no-no. I *could* put the data in a file and point plex at that (instead of the http stream)
but I'm not sure if there's a way to tell plex "this file is growing and getting more data, so don't assume
the movie is over when you hit the end of the file".

I also haven't figure out how to tell plex to use more buffer space (which should help
the burping that happens when plex catches up to the head of the stream).

Other than that, glad it's working well for you guys .

You don't need anything installed. I simply provided my Media Access Key (you get this from Tivo's website in your account details).

After giving it the access key, the plugin just SEES all my Tivos. I can then browse their content. Bravo. This thing is great!

Pause/Play works, but seeking does not. Also there is no thumbs. It'd be awesome if there were a way to get thumbnails, but obviously the Tivo does not even have thumbs to provide.

[Isaac Ordonez]

Until you think it's ready for prime time feel free to create a "unsupported plugin" page for it. This way people don't have to search through a head of forums to find the latest version.

http://wiki.plexapp....pported_plugins

I also added this to the plugins in progress page

http://wiki.plexapp....ins_in_progress

[yoav]

Until you think it's ready for prime time feel free to create a "unsupported plugin" page for it. This way people don't have to search through a head of forums to find the latest version.

http://wiki.plexapp....pported_plugins

I also added this to the plugins in progress page

http://wiki.plexapp....ins_in_progress

Ok done creating the page. I also uploaded a new version of tivo.tgz there, which now will include the show information (like episode description or season/ep number) when available in the list...

[SoupX]

Thank you very much, this app runs beautifully.

I'm really loving Plex more and more every day. I'm clueless as to why people use Boxee, Plex offers so much more.

[Mike]

I have an original "hacked" TIVO 1 that I have installed cxstream on which I am able to stream content from to my XBMC with an old TIVO script that I found. I can see the "what's showing" list and then select a show and play it. It also allows me to switch between the 2 TIVOs in my house. Is there any way to make this new plugin work with that?

Thanks

Mike

[yoav]

As written, no. This plugin uses tivo's official 'tivotogo' methods to fetch show data and the show itself.
That is not to say you can't modify the xbmc/ccxstream plugin to work in plex..

I have an original "hacked" TIVO 1 that I have installed cxstream on which I am able to stream content from to my XBMC with an old TIVO script that I found. I can see the "what's showing" list and then select a show and play it. It also allows me to switch between the 2 TIVOs in my house. Is there any way to make this new plugin work with that?

Thanks

Mike

[hansonmark]

I tried this and it looks awesome, however I am experiencing audio problems. I have a Tivo series 3 HD unit and my Mac Mini is connected via SPDIF to my amp. When I select a movie from the tivo box it plays but the audio is not intelligible, looking at the amp it keeps trying to get a lock on the audio and it is constantly dropping so you get no sound. Everything else in Plex works just fine, it is only this one application that is not working. I also noticed with the HD recorded shows that it should probably buffer them more as the Tivo box is not streaming them quite fast enough and the picture stutters sometimes. The Tivo is hard wired to the ethernet.

--
Mark

[gbdesai]

Thanks for the plug-in it's an awesome idea and addition, however I am having troubles. The plug-in sees my TiVos (both Series 3) but when I pick one it briefly tries to access it then the dialog disappears and I am still at the list of my TiVos. It happens for both TiVos, I am running 0.7.13... Any ideas on what might be causing this? I'll try a reinstall from the app store (which is where I got it in the first place)... Thanks again!

[yoav]

I tried this and it looks awesome, however I am experiencing audio problems. I have a Tivo series 3 HD unit and my Mac Mini is connected via SPDIF to my amp. When I select a movie from the tivo box it plays but the audio is not intelligible, looking at the amp it keeps trying to get a lock on the audio and it is constantly dropping so you get no sound. Everything else in Plex works just fine, it is only this one application that is not working. I also noticed with the HD recorded shows that it should probably buffer them more as the Tivo box is not streaming them quite fast enough and the picture stutters sometimes. The Tivo is hard wired to the ethernet.

--
Mark

I suspect the HD show that is having the audio problem is 720p? (Fox? CW? etc?). Somehow shows in 720p with AC-3 audio do not play right on plex. It has nothing to do with the plugin, and is simply an issue with the current release of plex (check out http://yoav.org/files/Terminator.mpg it probably has the same problems you're seeing). I *think* that once plex switches to the new version of ffmpeg, this problem will go away, but I'm not 100% sure.

As for the buffering. You can up the buffer up to 32meg under the preferences (this documented on the plugin page: http://wiki.plexapp.com/index.php/TiVo ). Right now there is no way for an app to increase the buffer size, but this may change later. HOWEVER, if your tivo is not providing the show fast enough, no amount of buffering will help -- I wouldn't be too surprised to find out that some HD shows simply won't live stream no matter how good your connection is -- you may have to use something like iTiVo to download it first, then view it.

[yoav]

Thanks for the plug-in it's an awesome idea and addition, however I am having troubles. The plug-in sees my TiVos (both Series 3) but when I pick one it briefly tries to access it then the dialog disappears and I am still at the list of my TiVos. It happens for both TiVos, I am running 0.7.13... Any ideas on what might be causing this? I'll try a reinstall from the app store (which is where I got it in the first place)... Thanks again!

Are you sure you supplied the correct MAK? It sounds like the kind of behavior I'd expect with an incorrect MAK.
Instructions on finding out what your MAK is are here: http://code.google.c...ki/Installation

[gbdesai]

Are you sure you supplied the correct MAK? It sounds like the kind of behavior I'd expect with an incorrect MAK.
Instructions on finding out what your MAK is are here: http://code.google.c...ki/Installation

Yup, it's correct, that's the first thing I verified. Regardless, if my MAK was wrong would it list my TiVos at all? I have a second Plex machine, will try it there next.

[yoav]

Yup, it's correct, that's the first thing I verified. Regardless, if my MAK was wrong would it list my TiVos at all? I have a second Plex machine, will try it there next.

Yes it would list the tivos (the mak isn't required to discover tivos, it is only required to talk to them to obtain a show list and download the show).
Do you mind trying to manually fetch the show list off the tivo by connecting to:

https://TIVOIP/TiVoConnect?Command=QueryContainer&Container=%2FNowPlaying&Recurse=No

where TIVOIP is the IP address of your tivo? It will ask for a username (tivo) and password (your MAK). If you get
a long bunch of gobbledigook XML stuff, then it worked. If you get an error, then it might explain why
you're not seeing the show list in the plugin either.

Do other applications (like Tivo Desktop or iTiVo) see your tivos and list your shows correctly?

[gbdesai]

Do you mind trying to manually fetch the show list off the tivo by connecting to...

I just tried this and it worked perfectly, I get XML results that list each of the shows in the Now Playing list...

Do other applications (like Tivo Desktop or iTiVo) see your tivos and list your shows correctly?

Yes, they do... Strange isn't it. I did get a SSL certificate exception request when I tried from a Windows machine, but if you've used your own HTTP retrieval code I doubt this could be it...

Thanks for taking the time to help me with this, I really do appreciate your time and effort regardless of the result.

G

[yoav]

I just tried this and it worked perfectly, I get XML results that list each of the shows in the Now Playing list...

Ok so it's definitely a bug with the tivo plugin. At the point I'm guessing a showname or somesuch is freaking out the processing and making it crash.

[b]edit:[b/]

I need to see the contents of "<user>/Library/Logs/PMS Plugin Logs/com.plexapp.plugins.tivo.log"

[Jam]

Each media server plug-in has its' own log file, stored at "~/Library/Logs/PMS Plugin Logs/<Plug-in identifier>.log".