It's Official: TivoToGo on Your Windows Mobile Device!

[Darius Wey]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.tivo.com/0.0.asp' target='_blank'>http://www.tivo.com/0.0.asp</a><br /><br /></div><i>"For TV-loving road warriors, leaving home often means leaving their favorite shows behind. But just in time for the busy summer travel season -- the Travel Industry Association (TIA) predicts a record-breaking 328 million trips will be taken from June to August -- millions of people will now be able to hit the road, rails or friendly skies with their favorite TV shows in tow. TiVo Inc. (Nasdaq: TIVO), Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Intel Corp. today announced a nationwide upgrade to the TiVoToGo(TM) service, enabling people for the first time to move TiVo content stored on a Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP-based PC onto Windows Mobile(TM)-based Portable Media Centers powered by Intel(R) Mobile Media Technology as well as newer Windows Mobile-based Smartphones and Pocket PCs."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/wey-20050608-Tivo.jpg" /><br /><br />TivoToGo and Windows Mobile users: convert no more! The service has undergone a nationwide upgrade to provide official support for the transfer and playback of TiVo content on Windows Mobile-based devices (this includes Pocket PCs, Smartphones and Portable Media Centers). And for kicks, <i>"select American Airlines customers will be among the first to try out the latest summer travel technology with free Portable Media Centers - which they'll be able to keep - loaded with TiVo content via a chartered flight on June 8, 2005, hosted by American Airlines, TiVo, Microsoft and Intel."</i> Whoever you are, consider yourself lucky! ;)<br /><br />Click <a href="http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/06-08-2005/0003822609&EDATE=">here</a> for the press release.

[surur]

This is the kind of integration that drives a platform. I have been looking for a source of free legal video programing, and this is perfect for pocketpc's with increasingly better video capabilities.

Surur

[zilla31]

so how does this work exactly? you have your tivo and your PPC online in your wireless network - and you can just pass stuff from your tivo to your PPC through your laptop/home computer? does it compress well? can you choose different size/quality?

[GBlyth]

do you need window media center for this? or will media player do? And which are the "newer" Pocket PCs"?

[dmcostello]

so how does this work exactly? you have your tivo and your PPC online in your wireless network - and you can just pass stuff from your tivo to your PPC through your laptop/home computer? does it compress well? can you choose different size/quality?

You have your Tivo hooked up to your network, your PPC ready to by synched, and the TiVo desktop software on your PC. Using the TiVO dfesktop software, transfer your shows to your PC, they come over as .tivo files. Fire up WMP 10 and select the Synch tab. In the left pane, select your shows and in the right one, select your PPC and sych them.

It takes a little time to convert the files and transfer them over. But they are the exact TiVo files you recorded.

They do compress, a 1/2 hour show is about 135MB, which is just large enough so you can't fit two on a 256mb card. But it is much better than the original size.

[dmcostello]

do you need window media center for this? or will media player do? And which are the "newer" Pocket PCs"?

You need WMP10 on your PC. On your PPC, you need WMP10 mobile. The Axim x50s have this, I'm not sure which other PPCs have it.

[ikesler]

This just put me over the edge to get a Tivo tomorrow.

[Sven Johannsen]

This just put me over the edge to get a Tivo tomorrow.

Just get a tuner card for your PC and save the monthly fees. They all come with PVR software. If MP10 can play it, it will convert and compress it to your PPC, with MP10, or a PMC.

No you don't need a media center PC, all this is a feature of MP10. A MCE gets you a tuner and MSs DVR. There are other options.

[OneAngryDwarf]

This is old news... This has been available for a while... I was just doing research into it a couple weeks ago. And by old news, yes I mean the actual TivoToGo software supported by Tivo that works w/ MP10... they already had this.

[GBlyth]

I don't mean to be dense about this but.... I have Window Media Player 10 on my PC and Player 9 on my Ipaq 4100. Can I move tivo files to my ipaq with this?

[beq]

On a related note, does anyone know where you can buy a high-speed 2GB SD card?? NewEgg finally dropped their SanDisk Ultra II 2GB SD card listing after the item's arrival date kept being pushed back.

I had received a SanDisk 2GB SD card from Dell earlier, but it turned out to be the normal-speed one so I returned it.

[Sven Johannsen]

I don't mean to be dense about this but.... I have Window Media Player 10 on my PC and Player 9 on my Ipaq 4100. Can I move tivo files to my ipaq with this?

Not with any benefit. You don't get the benefit of the automatic conversion for video files, you don't get album art, playlists don't transfer and I don't believe you can even do transfers to removable storage (which includes file store for some reason) because of the DRM issue.

With MP 9 on the PPC you are better off just transferring via a card reader, or via AS if you must. All conversions must be done by you before hand.

[ToddJ]

Is there any way you can put Windows Media Player 10 on an Ipaq 4155?

[Darius Wey]

Is there any way you can put Windows Media Player 10 on an Ipaq 4155?

No. Windows Media Player 10 can only be shipped by the vendor, and HP has stated that they will not be supporting the h4150/h4155 with WM2003SE (which is a prerequisite for the new version of the media player).

[Darius Wey]

This is old news... This has been available for a while... I was just doing research into it a couple weeks ago. And by old news, yes I mean the actual TivoToGo software supported by Tivo that works w/ MP10... they already had this.

Are you referring to Windows Media Player 10 on the PC or mobile devices? I recall a lot of people having trouble synchronising TiVo content to their mobile device over the past few months, and if it was supported a while ago, it'd be strange for TiVo, Microsoft, and Intel to only release the PR now.

[OneAngryDwarf]

Trust me it was available when I looked a couple weeks ago, for how long before that I cannot even begin to speculate... its actually a bad thing though... from this upgrade you gain Windows Media Center integration which is great if you have WMCE and a WMP10 handheld (most aren't) but if you don't have one or both of these things they just took away capabilities from you. Before you were able to transfer videos to your computer w/ TivoToGo but it didn't have WMCE support. However the format wasn't locked so you could make a divx or whatever you wanted out of it. This only benefits those w/ bleeding edge while taking away from everybody else. Before this version you could even put it on your PSP but sadly now you cannot because at the moment WMP10 is required which wasn't the case before. Shame on Tivo for getting into bed w/ MS... the very people who want to destroy them.. i like my MS stuff and I like TV but they are like those two dogs you have who you have to continually separate because they tend to well lets say socialize sexually... then you end up w/ a whole bunch of WMP10-Tivo mutts running around all over the place and all you wanted were two cool dogs to fetch the newspaper... what are we left w/ now? Dog poop to pick up. Did i overstep the sanity line w/ that analogy?

[disconnected]

Can you transfer any show that's on TV, or are there DRM problems? And will that new broadcast chip or whatever it's called affect this?

[ToddJ]

It makes me want to dump my Pocket PC for a Palm out of frustration.....