AVI/MPEG/VOB upload to TiVo - is it possible to generate ty from MPG?

[TheWickedPriest]

Why would you want to do that?

To save burn time? Although transfer time is probably higher... Also, if you have a movie that's split into two or more SVCDs, you could combine the parts into one. (You could also do this by putting them onto a DVD, of course -- which might or might not work, depending on your player, and would probably necessitate reencoding at least the audio.)

SVCD is about as good a VHS you ar better off just watching it from the SVCD -- seems like a complete waste of time working on something that goes back in time as far a quality and functionallity goes.

What are you talking about? Converting SVCD mpeg's to ty wouldn't involve reencoding, so the quality would be the same. Functionality would arguably be better -- 30-second skip and instant replay, for example, aren't found on most DVD players.

[wkozun]

Okay. I can see that the top Tivo developers need to stop all other work and concentrate on inserting cheesy AVIs and MPGs into a Tivo so you can stop ruining your CDs and DVDs by walking on them. Obviously, this is the only solution.

Can we be a little more sarcastic, you don't happen to also post under the name of David Bought do you

Don't forget it is most likely the kids who are walking on the CDs and DVDs, unless he is freaking out after having seen the same video 799 times.

[malfunct]

Some people have had some success turning non-tivo streams into .ty files so it can be done, and probably with tools that already exist if you dig around enough.

A work around if you can't figure it out and have a SA tivo is to just play the svcd into the tivo and record it. There is the whole issue of d->a->d conversion and loss of quality, but if its for kids then who cares, it will get the job done.

[erhan]

My reason to insert regular mpgs into Tivo is purely because of the kids movies. The quality is not important. Having quick access to them is what I'm after. However, it's not worth (to me at least) to kill myself looking for solutions, converter and such. If it was readily available I would use it. If I had a standalone I would have recorded it at the lowest possible resolution. Even as it is, I'm recording a bunch of kids shows and it really is a waste of space to me to have them recorded in the "Best" or DirecTV quality.

As I said, it's not important enough for me and I wouldn't think it is for most people. If you're patient enough, you can find most of the kids stuff on TV at some point and that's what the keyword wishlist is for. :-)

[wkozun]

My reason to insert regular mpgs into Tivo is purely because of the kids movies. The quality is not important. Having quick access to them is what I'm after.

It's not free but one solution is to buy a Connected DVD player (the Gateway one costs about $190 for a wired LAN) or similar media server that will play video over your LAN, assuming you have your TiVo connected to your LAN. This way you could play any MPEG file that is on your hard drive and the access is quick, you just pick the show from a list.

[Hi8]

What are you talking about? Converting SVCD mpeg's to ty wouldn't involve reencoding, so the quality would be the same. Functionality would arguably be better -- 30-second skip and instant replay, for example, aren't found on most DVD players.

I meant that SVCD is on par with VHS as far as quality (transcode all you want you are NEVER going to get it better than the source material). IMHO that is Sh!t, hence my handle on this board. Hi8 - sure I have recorded my Hi8 tapes using my Sony SAs - in my opinion that is the way to do it, even though it's an analog signal, recording a quality source DVD, DV, Hi8, Digital8 all look as good as a native SA recording. anything less IMHO is garbage.

oh yet SVCD is also stone age .. when you can buy dvd-r media for less than a $1 why spend the time. Unless your time is worth less than a $1 perhour.

[gobsmack]

I bought a 400 DVD sony changer, in which I threw all the kids DVDs (and am now stuffing it with DVDs burned via TyTools..).

No more scratched DVDs -- kids/babysitters can pick movies via the remote and que up the right DVD in seconds. Probably about as fast as my slow Tivo can let me play a show from Now Showing...

Think of it as a server with 3.8TB of storage space (400 x 9.4G).

Now...... Riley *claims* to have some interface from his TiVo to HIS DVD Changer, but the bloke has never produced a single line of source code to substantiate this claim...

Maybe now that we have this sticky thread to fend off newbies, he'll be saving so much time he can release that code to all of us plebeians?

[gobsmack]

Just doing the math here on whether this was actually cost effective on a per gigabyte basis.... Note: this is highly sensitive to current media prices and hard drive prices, so don't bother debunking this after Jan 2004...

400 DVD blanks at $1.50 apiece = $ 600
1 400-dvd changer = $ 340
total ---------
$ 940

assume 4.5GB of storage on each = 1800GB of storage space

$940 / 1800 = $0.52 per gigabyte.

** which only holds if you max out every disc **

Nevertheless, I haven't seen 200 Gig drives for less than about $150 or so(Newegg), so not a bad deal. Plus your movies are protected from viruses and crashes. If blanks fall in price, you've got an even better deal. QED

[rd001]

I replied with words to the effect of "just wait, sooner or later somebody will invent it," to which I received responses like "yeah right," yet here we are

Okay. Events have proven you right. It remains to be seen how reliable such disks will be. Seems pretty dicey but they'll get it to work eventually, I suppose. I just find it hard to imagine 16x burning of dual-layer discs producing anything very reliable. But then, I used to say the same kind of stuff about high-speed CD-R burning and overburning. A lot of us still distrust the high-speed stuff. But many others find it works fine for them.

Feels great to be vindicated, don't it?

[FredThompson]

Now...... Riley *claims* to have some interface from his TiVo to HIS DVD Changer, but the bloke has never produced a single line of source code to substantiate this claim...

Maybe now that we have this sticky thread to fend off newbies, he'll be saving so much time he can release that code to all of us plebeians?

It shouldn't be that tough to do this. There are already a few s-link packages available for programming. Google and you'll find them. Personally, I'd like the basic functions available for Win2KXP. The current libraries don't support that and I've no desire ot try to learn the Win API.

[FredThompson]

400 DVD blanks at $1.50 apiece = $ 600

Supermediastore and Meritline sell Ritek and Optodisc at good prices. A better figure is $1/blank.

[FredThompson]

I just find it hard to imagine 16x burning of dual-layer discs producing anything very reliable. But then, I used to say the same kind of stuff about high-speed CD-R burning and overburning. A lot of us still distrust the high-speed stuff.

You've seen beam-splitting writers, haven't you? The reported speed is data writing speed, not spinning. Still, how to pump that much data across a bus and not screw the blank up when the mouse is nudged...

[jg123]

d70, after his work on tyshow component felt he had a pretty good handle on the ty structure, and professes it wouldn't be hard to write an mpg to ty muxer.
Link to discussion.

[rc3105]

Now...... Riley *claims* to have some interface from his TiVo to HIS DVD Changer, but the bloke has never produced a single line of source code to substantiate this claim...

I replaced the audio mechanism in 400 disk sony cd changers with sony dvd rw drives, each rev is an improvement over the last, built 3 so far. they're currently run off usb->ide adapters from gentoox on an xbox & a usb -> serial adapter forwards commands to atmel at90s2313-10 ($2 in bulk, same chip as in dtv card programmers, the tivo ir controller + lots of hobby projects) which manages the actuall disk load / change mechanism

I've got 1200 dvd slots of near-line storage & ~30 gig of proxy cache in the xbox. the interface is a variation on mfs_ftp, it appears to the rest of the network as a 6tb ftp server. (haven't filled all the slots yet)

last batch of bulk dvd-rw was about $0.65 each == $0.13/gig == $11 for 80 gig


all sorts of interesting things here that may or may not ever see the light of day - if the tbservers were allready ***** proof I'd be selling them through 9th tee

[lart2150]

if you don't want to burn or wait for some one to make a mpeg2->ty converter (I don't think it will happen. I would do it but I don't want to look through 100k of code. if there was a nice document that describes how ty files differ from mpeg2 files I might be able to forge a header chunk and then convert svcd to ty but ya) you can get a xbox mod it and use xbmp/xbmc. with the remote it's just WOW. you can play ANY format out there and stream right of your computer (windows, mac, linux, tivo...). total cost will be around $200 but there is SOOO much you can do with an xbox(that's also why I gave up with making ty files I got a xbox).