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gshacienda · 11-28-2006, 08:46 AM

Greetings, I am regular at TivoCommunity and use Tivo'd video on my portable devices. Having owed 3 Windows CE based portables capable of video, I am familiar with how to do video conversion "the hard way". What I am interested in is advice/ confirmation of what the easiest/ most convenient way is for naive users. My difficulty is that I do not have a Zune right now so I can't confirm for myself. I have a Windows mobile 5 phone that plays video, and the Video iPod for playing kids shows in the car during their commute to school.

As some of you may know, Tivo provides a way to automatically move and convert videos onto portable devices. For example, I tell it to move anything from the series Barnie or Magic School Bus and convert it into H.264 320x240 suitable for playing on the iPod. In the morning, I add the folder where these conversions are deposited using iTunes, sync to iPod, and I am done. 4 or five clicks that are exactly the same. I can do that even in the most groggy monday morning daze with 4 kids screaming.

In Zune's case, it appears that I can get it down to the same simplicity, but there is an inefficiency that I have to generate two transcodes. Tivo's software TivoToGo is instructed to convert to H.264 and add the files automatically to Windows Media Player library. Presumambly since the ZUne application picks up stuff in the WMP library, it will see the H.264 and convert to WMV when it is told to sync up.

First off, I don't know for sure that it will actually work this way. The documentation indicates it will, but heck sometimes the hardware doesn't read docs, or understand them the way my puny brain does.

Could someone with a Zune confirm Tivo interoperability? Does it sound right in theory from the Zune Software side? How about practical tests? If you know someone who has a Tivo set up with TTG plus, then it would be possible to check out. It can be downloaded from Tivo at http://www.tivo.com/4.9.4.1.asp.

Thanks.

11-28-2006, 08:46 AM	#1 (permalink)
gshacienda Zewbie Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 4 Reputation: 10	Tivo to Zune Greetings, I am regular at TivoCommunity and use Tivo'd video on my portable devices. Having owed 3 Windows CE based portables capable of video, I am familiar with how to do video conversion "the hard way". What I am interested in is advice/ confirmation of what the easiest/ most convenient way is for naive users. My difficulty is that I do not have a Zune right now so I can't confirm for myself. I have a Windows mobile 5 phone that plays video, and the Video iPod for playing kids shows in the car during their commute to school. As some of you may know, Tivo provides a way to automatically move and convert videos onto portable devices. For example, I tell it to move anything from the series Barnie or Magic School Bus and convert it into H.264 320x240 suitable for playing on the iPod. In the morning, I add the folder where these conversions are deposited using iTunes, sync to iPod, and I am done. 4 or five clicks that are exactly the same. I can do that even in the most groggy monday morning daze with 4 kids screaming. In Zune's case, it appears that I can get it down to the same simplicity, but there is an inefficiency that I have to generate two transcodes. Tivo's software TivoToGo is instructed to convert to H.264 and add the files automatically to Windows Media Player library. Presumambly since the ZUne application picks up stuff in the WMP library, it will see the H.264 and convert to WMV when it is told to sync up. First off, I don't know for sure that it will actually work this way. The documentation indicates it will, but heck sometimes the hardware doesn't read docs, or understand them the way my puny brain does. Could someone with a Zune confirm Tivo interoperability? Does it sound right in theory from the Zune Software side? How about practical tests? If you know someone who has a Tivo set up with TTG plus, then it would be possible to check out. It can be downloaded from Tivo at http://www.tivo.com/4.9.4.1.asp. Thanks.