While TiVo focuses their resources on serving smaller and international television providers,, the larger US cable and satellite companies continue to crank away on their own compelling in-house DVR services. Although DISH may have in the Hopper’s ability to, you know, actually hop (over commercials) they just completed that brings one-button access to Closed Captioning and the ability to watch an in-progress “live” show from the beginning should you have gotten a late start and the programming is resident within the On Demand catalog. But way more interesting, given our collective shift in scripted television viewing patterns, is the new Binge Bar (as shown above).

Nov 12, 2014 My TiVo Roamio & Mini Thoughts & Observations. Can download/decrypt/transcode recordings to your PC/Mac. Provides direct access to DVR recordings from a PC/Mac.

Once you’ve finished watching an episode, any remaining episodes on your DVR or in the VOD catalog are presented – as pioneered by Netflix and similar to Comcast’s X1 “.” Speaking of Comcast, TiVo has felt free to their so-called partner despite upcoming improvements to that Xfinity X1 HTML5 platform — including deeper and other “web site integration,” along with a few other features TiVo doesn’t possess.: Its Share2TV app will allow X1 subscribers to stream personal videos recorded on mobile devices with any X1 subscriber in the country. Comcast is also developing an app called Family Point which will allow subscribers to view the locations of family members on TV by tracking smartphones that are connected to X1, and family members will also be able to leave messages through “sticky notes” that will be displayed when a television is turned on. Ensaburnur, yah – all my TiVo gear is Lifetimed, so I have limited financial incentive to make a move to FiOS hardware which looks to run me $34 month for 1 Quantum DVR and 1 extender. TiVo’s product is still highly reliable and effective as a DVR, but these ongoing updates by the incumbents further reduce the already limited appeal of a third party solution. Given the slowed retail atrophy and high revenue per subscriber (versus their MSO deals), TiVo doesn’t need to worry about existing customers so much as they do finding new ones. By the by, TiVo’s financials might make more sense if they listed “households” versus “subscribers” — pretty sure the bulk of their recent gains are TiVo Mini additions, given. Useless features aren’t going to make Comcast’s DVR any better.

I can figure out my next episode since I have a folder of episodes. Not sure why I’d want that feature. Netflix’s feature is more useful because it’s skips the intro of the next episode. And my iphone has the find your friends app. What Tivo has that is their killer feature (at least for me) is the Tivo Stream.

I can download shows to my iphone or ipad to watch for later without relying on cellular data. So it’s great for commuting (where data quality varies) and flying on a plane. Best of all, I can watch my shows with 30 second skip and 8 second rewind and not have to use that awful slider in the ios videos app. Until someone else duplicates that feature I’m sticking with Tivo. Oh and offloading shows to my PC for archival/backup purposes is very important too.

I know Directv has a similar feature set available but then I have to pay their exorbitant rates on top of phone/internet with Fios. Comcast also allows you to download certain shows to their X1 iOS app — if you live in the right cities. I can do so using their app from Boston (and watch live TV inside the house from their app) but the app doesn’t work from my mom’s house in Pittsburgh – they have not yet turned that functionality on there. I think their restrictions as to what shows are more so than what Tivo allows you to – I think it blocked some ABC show that Tivo lets allows. Dave, what issues are you having with kmttg? I’ve never had problems getting shows downloaded and transcoded for iPad, Kindle Fire HDX or my now dead HP touchpad running Cyanogen Android. Michael, it’s a combination of factors decomissioned my desktop, haven’t yet replaced, so I have a limited sized SSD to work with on a computer that generally isn’t on 24/7.

Then choosing the right profile. Then choosing the best way to move data to Android and app to view it. I haven’t settled on an efficient workflow yet – open to suggestions.

Chucky, I’d say vaguely close isn’t in play anymore and in certain areas they have been eclipsed. I was thinking more DVR development than DVR experience, so the headline maybe isn’t great in that regard. What I imagine is a small or limited development team compared to Comcast or Verizon, given the incomplete HDUI and time to get Android streaming out, I think they were substantially slowed down by the Haxe rewrite.

Also, if Virgin and RCN are any indication, with Facebook app and web portal respectively, they seem to receive certain development priority. ” I’d say vaguely close isn’t in play anymore and in certain areas they have been eclipsed.” Huh.

I’ve played with an X1, though it’s been several months, and I pretty strongly disagree. But, again, I highly value my user experience, which is why I sat out the TiVo S4 debacle. (I value user expeience far above “feature lists”.) “I was thinking more DVR development than DVR experience” Well, sure. But as a customer, why should I care about that? It’s a pretty mature product, in terms of development.

The final refinements of the IBM Selectric weren’t major advances. And let’s not forget that the MSO’s have dramatically different incentives than TiVo in who they are catering to, and thus how they shape the user experience. I think the paltry storage capacities offered by the MSO’s is no oversight, for one example. In other words, more DVR development by the MSO’s is no guarantee of a better DVR user experience at some unspecified point in the future. Of course, if my MSO were to offer a DVR with a better user experience than the TiVo at some unspecified point in the future, I would be strongly tempted. But I also don’t forget that the way I ended up with a TiVo in the first place is that my MSO was insisting they would, within weeks, come to my home to replace a DVR I liked quite a lot with a new DVR, with or without my consent. And when I read about the new model DVR they were going to be forcibly moving in, it sounded incredibly awful.

Moving to TiVo freed me from that kind of compelled threat. (As a general rule, I really like to keep my gear separate from my service providers. The above example is one bit of rationale for why I think it’s a sound general rule. Not to mention that since I live in an area served by multiple MSO’s, having a TiVo makes it far more convenient to switch, should circumstances ever point me in that direction.). Chucky, I’d say “best experience” is really dependent on what one is trying to do in relation to how much one cares. I would certainly benefit from Hopper’s Android offloading this month and often wish I did have access to Verizon’s On Demand services.

I’d also enjoy the Hopper’s commercial skip capabilities, although that’s another topic with a whole lot of complexity. Obviously, I’m a long term and mostly satisfied TiVo customer plus there are also certain financial benefits to folks who’ve paid for Lifetime service and who don’t envision cutting the cord X months/years after purchase. Bryan10024, Yeah Roku 3 is still my favorite streamer. I keep waiting for new/more/better Fire TV apps to hit, but we’re not there yet.

Yes, I use sync cable for all transfers. For iOS devices, I import the videos into iTunes (though kmttg may have an option for this, I’m not sure) then sync videos via iTunes. For Android devices, Windows recognizes the device when plugged in and mounts it as a drive letter. I think Mac requires a something like “android file transfer” or something like that which allows you to do the transfer. I am pretty sure that the Fire recognized the videos and would play them.

I looked into using a different player just because I think that the player that came with FireOS had a terrible user interface. It was a long time ago so I don’t remember the specifics – I think it may have been that fast forward was very difficult, especially when using on something like equipment at the gym. I haven’t tried it with the latest FireOS update.

I haven’t used kmttg as part of my day-to-day operation simply because I moved to the Roamio with built-in stream so mostly use Tivo iOS app and downloads. I just completed the biannual FIOS vs Comcast contest for my business. Neither of their advanced boxes are compelling enough for me to leave Tivo. FIOS would require $45 per month for the so-called Quantum Service and additional monthly fees for the STB rental. Comcast priced out within a couple of dollars.

I still have a media server with 12TB of storage so it’s easy to store Tivo recordings except for HBO and Cinemax which are DRMed. My family really likes the Roamios with the updated interface. Occasionally we miss FIOS on demand but recordings, Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, and Hulu Plus have easily filled that void and then some.

Also, the Vudu integration is great. If the Roamio gets Plex then I would have one box to rule them all. No way I’m going back to multiple boxes to access content. We don’t access much media outside the house but I’ve put some shows on DH’s iPad through iTunes for business trips. Kinda kludgy, but wireless takes too long. Different animals, the new one is probably significantly less lucrative as the first funded engineering to produce DVRs and took a per subscriber cut.

But it was a debacle. Years of work and a crappy product at the end that had to be put down after very, very limited distribution. The new agreement is about putting Xfinity VOD on TiVo and Comcast being on the hook for a certain level of support and marketing is my understanding.

Who knows if any money even changes hands – TiVo generally isn’t very forthcoming on these sorts of things and the investment community on their quarterly calls pitch slow balls underhand. (Whatever happened to???) But the same month Comcast and TiVo renewed their vows after years of litigation I’m sure that ongoing story arc was motivation for Comcast to stay out of court and licensing. But what I am specifically referring to tho is the to work together on a post-CableCARD solution.

TiVo’s Time Warp patent protection expires in 2018. Remember, until they were acquired. Speaking of TiVo reliability, this week we started watching the fall shows that have been accumulating on the DVR.

And I just had to buy a second episode of The Good Wife this evening – so that’s two of six failed recordings due to delays TiVo wasn’t able to navigate. I assume football pushed the earlier show back which in turn had a domino effect in bumping Saint Alicia down the line. $6 to Amazon. It happens.:) Edit: Gah, now it’s three of seven. Wonder if this is on Verizon On Demand (not that TiVo gets it). “Speaking of TiVo reliability, this week we started watching the fall shows that have been accumulating on the DVR football pushed the earlier show back which in turn had a domino effect in bumping Saint Alicia down the line.” Yeah.

That dang TiVo reliability. Of course, the wondrous DVR’s outpacing TiVo wouldn’t have put you in a spot like that, given that they’ve achieved sentience. (I’m beginning the think the sand in your panties is entirely due to the fact that you have a bad Mini that is emitting some annoying sound, and you don’t want to deal with repairing/replacing it.) And for the future, here’s a pro-tip an intrepid few of us discovered 10 years or so ago: when recording a network show on a night that follows football, or the like, schedule a manual recording with very ample padding.

(Also, if I recall correctly, a film/teevee twit I follow who is a serious The Good Wife aficionado seemed to mention that their Philly local affiliate was just arbitrarily cutting portions of the episodes following football. That damn TiVo strikes again!). Dang, I forgot all about that Mini. Now I have to go listen to it again. Even if if fails or I pull it, I’m fine. Premiere XL4 was banished to the basement before Haxe rewrite. It’s mostly welcome to return upstairs now.

Also, I have an older unplugged 2-tuner Premiere I could put Lifetime on (probably) for just $99. Regarding Good Wife, I didn’t even know what day, time, or network it’s on. I watched all prior seasons via Amazon or Netflix. The show before was recorded, but not football, so obviously at least this network/affiliate didn’t join the earlier show already in progress. I lost most Episode 1 while 6 and 7 had nearly 30 minutes. (Tried to download, decrypt, and transcode 3 episodes of Flash overnight via kmttg. Only the third completed successfully.

Running the Pilot thru again. This isn’t a TiVo thing, it’s an underpowered netbook thing. Regardless, almost makes you want to grab the content you paid for from unsavory sources.). “The show before was recorded, but not football” Well, there’s your solution. Just craft a 1970’s – 80’s video game physical screen overlay with The Good Wife characters on it, and voila!

You’ll never be able to tell the difference “Regarding Good Wife, I didn’t even know what day, time, or network it’s on.” Pro-tip: keep at least minimal awareness of potential football conflicts when scheduling a season of a network show during that time of year. IIRC, this wouldn’t have happened in the EU, as they (properly) mandate transmitting a signal to indicate when shows start and end, meant specifically for DVR’s. That dang TiVo’s iron-fisted and malicious rule over the FCC strikes again! “Tried to download, decrypt, and transcode 3 episodes of Flash overnight via kmttg. Only the third completed successfully.

Running the Pilot thru again. This isn’t a TiVo thing, it’s an underpowered netbook thing.” How many years have I been telling you to stick a cheap headless Mac Mini somewhere on your LAN? They last forever. They keep an insane amount of their value if you ever want to flip ’em.

And they eliminate all these kinds of issues, as well as solving problems you weren’t even aware you had, because you never imagined they had simple solutions. “Remind me what software you use to control it?” I use Apple Remote Desktop, cuz we’re an all Mac household, and I appreciate the fine control it permits. But that involves cost, and is really overkill for most use-case-scenarios. OS X out-of-the-box supports standard VNC serving, which is how most folks approach the thing.

(And while the OS X server software offers some extra bells and whistles, I prefer the simplicity of client OS X, which still lets me do everything I can imagine.) “It’s your Plex server?” It’s my everything server. Plex, Time Machine, Clone backups, staging area for cloud backups, random file sharing depository, controller for SAN and bare drive toasters, Apache server for both the LAN and outside-the-home, iTunes server, TiVo server, CD / DVD / Blu-Ray server, transcoder and other heavy CPU tasks, and on and on and on. Keep the clients thin, and do everything heavy on the Mini. And, of course, I have a second Mini under the teevee as my HTPC, which does a whole boatload of other things and which I personally love, but I’m not recommending that to the general audience. CBS used to have a useful email service that alerted you when football was going to run over (i.e. Every week they have a 4:00 game) but now they switched to a system that relies on iOS notifications from their iOS app (and never actually work) a Facebook post (which does work) or their website (where they post relatively late).

It’s annoying but combine that with the tivo app and I almost always was able to fix my CBS padding. I wish CBS would move to what Fox does and just not schedule anything for the 7:00-8:00 timeslot. Added them, thanks. Although I follow so many people at this point, I miss many good tweets I’m sure.

Definitely need to rethink my entire configuration – both for moving video in out and around and I need to really organize 15 or so years of digital pictures. That’s on the docket for 2015. Usmle World Step 2 Cs Free Download there. A Mac Mini could be the centerpiece for all that and might make better sense than a new iMac, since I mostly use a laptop (all over the house and beyond).

So all my Flash encodes have failed after several attempts – even when the format is right, instead of 63 minutes of video I have 13 – 30. Not sure if I’m out of space for the operation to move from.tivo >MPEG2 >MPEG4 or profile is bad or something else. Edit: Just freed up some more space – found a 5GB Yosemite installer sitting in my Applications folder. Really need to reimage this MBA. “A Mac Mini could be the centerpiece for all that and might make better sense than a new iMac, since I mostly use a laptop (all over the house and beyond).” See, a goodly chunk of my whole point is that having a phyically and software-ably stable Mini on the LAN beats the hell to Reno and back out of periodic: “Just freed up some more space – found a 5GB Yosemite installer sitting in my Applications folder.

Really need to reimage this MBA.” —– “Added them, thanks. Although I follow so many people at this point, I miss many good tweets I’m sure.” You know I’m old school, right? I don’t run JavaScript in my browser, that much you know, and that I rely on RSS. But it goes further. Much further. I’m still running Snow Leopard on most of my Macs. (VMWare Emulation of the latest OS for iOS serving.) I’ve got a nice Adobe suite 5.5 license for Bridge, Dreamweaver, and the lot.

Plenty speedy enough with SSD’s. And the whole thing is just damn stable. No troubleshooting; it’s just there. When something like apocalyptic Apache bugs creep in, UNIX fixes are quickly posted.

And all the post-Snowy OS’s have been some sort of beta, anyway. In that same vein, for the twits, I’ve never used an official client. I just use the mobile web site author pages. Browser folders that click to open multiple tabs, by groups according to my logic. No timeline for me, but voila, all the info I want just the same.

Welp, I take it all back. Xfinity’s X1 let’s you filter the channel guide by shows that are trending on Twitter. So smart.” If I had known that, I would have switched years ago. If that’s not a game-changer, I don’t know what is. So smart, it’s like the DVR has actually achieved sentience.

Of, course, we also get: “the issue: X1’s web interface doesn’t work on any version of Chrome, you need Safari & updated Flash install” Silly Rick. When learns he can ditch that Flash for Kmmtg, he’ll really be ready to roll with the X1. So Rick’s move is interesting For context, he’s led a variety of projects at Google, now with Google Ventures. Was a long time TiVo owner and just swapped his Premiere for that X1. Regarding X1 downloads, they’re coming: Kinda sorta not related, I tried Safari for a few days, for the first time in a year or three, and ended up back on Chrome.

It’s the little things – right clicking on a picture to search Google for other instances or cutting+pasting an image straight into the Twitter compose box for example. Maybe Safari has extensions for those things.

“because my X1 is a backup box with lame storage capacity compared to my Roamio with Stream” Well, sure. In comparison, it may lame as a DVR compared to your Roamio, but can your precious Roamio filter the channel guide by shows that are trending on Twitter?

Priorities, man, priorities —– “Wow – I just read some of the questions on that FAQ. You can only download a show to a single device — it then becomes “checked out” and must be returned to download to a different device.” See my comment upthread on how MSO DVR development follows a different path than TiVo, since the MSO’s aren’t primarily focused on the customer’s needs. Any show that comes after football on CBS needs a lot of padding. This is nothing new and has been the case for a very long time.

AFter many years of not recording anything on CBS on Sunday nights, this year I started watching Madam secretary. So I added one and a half hours extra to the Season Pass to make sure I don;t miss it. Even when I used VCRs in the old days this was the case. Over the last thirteen years I can count on two hands the number of times that I have missed recordings using my TiVos. On the other hand, even with the newer DVR offerings from Comcast and FiOS, most people I know easily miss more recordings in less than a year using the X1 and Quantum DVRs than I have missed using TiVos for all those years. Chucky, Therein lies the problem and my current source of pain moving recordings from TiVo ->computer ->Android has been problematic.

There is WiFi at the gym, but it’s neither great nor reliable. Xfinity app allows you to download a lot of On Demand content straight to a mobile device. I previously did it on iOS, assume it’s available in Android as well.

Aaronwt, yeah but I had no idea what network or day this was on as a “true DVR owner”;) The final two episodes of the Fall season were messed up too. We ended up watching via CBS app, for free but with commercial interruption, as I’d already given Amazon 9 or 12 dollars at that point. Between these two issues, I can understand why many flock to Bittorrent.

“Chucky, Therein lies the problem and my current source of pain moving recordings from TiVo ->computer ->Android has been problematic.” Hmmm Shouldn’t be, should it? The glimpses of discussion I’ve read led me to think it was just a matter of fixing your transcode profile, no? And if it is indeed a simple fix, once you get that one fix done, then you can automate the whole thing, and no longer have to think about it. (And this applies to more programming than just Showtime, of course.) (Having been following your woes on this topic particularly closely. If it’s something more fundamental than a simple transcode profile fix, never mind.) “Xfinity app allows you to download a lot of On Demand content straight to a mobile device. I previously did it on iOS, assume it’s available in Android as well.” Definitely sounds simpler.

But I always lean toward finer control, and things more directly under my control. But if it just works, and all the Showtime shows ( and episodes) you might want are available in On Demand, will continue to be available in On Demand for as long as you think you might want them, and are available for download, I can certainly understand your wanting to move in that direction. Yeah, moved on from the kmttg transcoding issues – just downloading and decrypting, letting Plex handle the rest. Not sure why Plex Android Sync failed, but it did. Plex transcoding to Dropbox and then streaming back was a buffering mess. Not sure if it’s the Plex client, Dropbox, or the quality level I tried. I’ll do another experiment with “medium” instead of “high” and Google Drive instead of Dropbox.

But my patience is running out. I got enough competing projects, all I want to do is watch the show ya know.

Is using a sync cable that much of a hassle? My usage of kmttg/USB didn’t involve any of the steps you mention.

No plex, no dropbox, no buffering. Just kmttg to download/transcode and then plug in the tablet and copy to mounted drive (or iTunes or iOS device). Even on Mac using Android transfer wizard (or whatever the program was called) was minimally more complicated. Seems like uploading/downloading what is probably at least a 300-500MB file for each video is far more time consuming that a simple copy/paste to mounted drive. “Yeah, moved on from the kmttg transcoding issues – just downloading and decrypting, letting Plex handle the rest.

Not sure why Plex Android Sync failed, but it did.” Huh. I’d suggest just sticking with kmttg/Handbrake, assuming there is a working Android profile posted. Plex seems unnecessarily Rube Goldberg for what should be a simple task. If you can’t simply make it work with kmttg/Handbrake, with some minimal research, I fully understand your giving up on the project, given what might be a simple alternative, assuming all the content you want is accessible via the Comcast app.

@Chucky — Yeah, I know, what was I thinking wanting my DVR to be functional as a DVR?:) @aaronwt — I agree. The X1 seems to be far better than the old moto boxes but its skipped a recording or 2. It also handles scheduling recordings in a weird way. It seems to want to record the last-known broadcast of a show rather than the first if you have it set to record first run/repeats.

For example, it will record the 10:00AM Daily Show rather than the 11:00PM the night before if you set it to record repeats — even when there is a free tuner at 11. Late to your quest to solve getting stuff on your Android treadmilling tablet of choice.

If you’re cool w/local storage on the device vs streaming and you haven’t already tried it, I’d give CTivo a look. I have a 3.5 year old iMac (though it was as souped-up customized as it could be at the time) and it works pretty well. Format conversions certainly aren’t “fast” but it’s push a button and go away simple. I can download/convert at least 10 episodes (it’s the most I’ve tried) overnight. I’m iOS so I don’t have the “can’t download” problem, but for a multiple episode move, I like the CTivo route better anyway. Even if your MBA is slower than my iMac it should still easily download/convert a few episodes while you sleep.

“I’m still on IR, so I don’t know when or if I’ll transfer to the tablet, but at least we know this piece is covered.” Don’t you follow the NBA? A simple course of platelet-rich plasma therapy would have you able to do the tango again in no time at all, even if you couldn’t tango before the injury. —– “After rebuilding my MBA, amongst other tasks, I gave kmttg another shot looks like I successfully downloaded, decrypted, and converted three episodes of Arrow overnight” Reason #71 to get a Mac Mini: the execrable heat dissipation of the MBA means that such behavior will mean such actions will make your MBA die a miserable death before its time. (And in the future, consider making semi-regular clones of you MBA, especially when you have the Mini server to make it an utterly painless process from the comfort of your couch, so you don’t have to ever “rebuild”. Any problems, just restore from the clone. Carbon Copy Cloner is the software of choice. Time Machine backups are both a good second line of defense, and an easy way to migrate to a new Mac with your data and config intact, though you can also do this from a clone with a slight bit of effort.

Once your Mini is set up as you like it, do the same for the boot partition, again, all from the comfort of your couch.) “Chucky, how many drives, what style, and capacity do you have in your Mac Mini?” Can only offer limited guidance to you here, as my Minis are the Early 2009 model, since they were the first models to be able to handle 1080 video entirely with the GPU, thus handling video smoothly, and thus not putting a burden on the CPU. This applies not only to playback, but also due to clever OS X engineering, to offloading much of encoding/transcoding to the GPU as well. I also like those models since they have the very elegant and reliable Firewire, and I think Thunderbolt, like most Apple developments in the last 5 years, is a degradation. And similarly, the rigs can run Snow Leopard, which I like, as I think the post-Snowy OS’s are crap. (Hell, I’d almost advise you to buy a used, older Mini, but since they keep their value so incredibly, you won’t save any real money by doing so.) But my old models mean my ports are different than your ports will be, and thus I can offer only limited guidance. My config is to keep all the storage external. I use a cheap dual-drive Firewire enclosure from the excellent vendor OWC, and USB bare drive toasters for periodic backup / archiving.

For you, the choice would be to go Thunderbolt or USB 3. (You could also get a Thunderbolt dock, which would give you a bunch of extra ports, including eSata, but that starts adding costs.) If you do go with Thunderbolt drives, I’d advise the excellent OWC as your vendor for the enclosure. But, in short, other than advising external storage, I’m not up on the detailed pros and cons of the various options. Only real advice to is save money by buying the base Mini model, since your storage will be external. (And, of course, buy empty drive enclosures you can open, both for cost, and for future flexibility / maintenance.) Finally, at some point after my model, the Minis started crippling the GPU if it detected is was running headless.

This would affect you in both sluggish VPN performance, and sluggish encodes/transcodes. Happily, there is some $10 dongle you can buy that tricks the Mini into thinking it has an HDMI connection, though you’ll have to a do few minutes of google research for the specific item.

It’s my MBA, but it’s not really my MBA. As such, it’s not a permanent home for anything (although I’ve been tempted to buy a 240GB SSD and make it a little more mine).

My former iMac was appropriately backed up (and those backups are awaiting a new home). Free Download Lagu Morrissey Everyday Is Like Sunday. I still have my 22″ Vizio floating around, suppose I could use that as a monitor if I go the Mini route. It has to sit somewhere. But I’m probably in a holding pattern until I see what Apple releases this spring. I did see some folks were adding a SSD to the prior gen Mac Mini for two drives, if I read it right. Fascinating to see an Apple propagandist like Marco Ament finally writing a noting that OS X has gone to shit.

I’ve never thought I was a crank for continuing to run Snow Leopard on almost all of our household’s rigs, (and even going to the extreme of buying used hardware just for the purpose of replacing/adding Snow Leopard machines and having backups), but others have called me a crank. But what’s the worst about that? I have to replace broken bash and ntpd with my own efforts. I can mange with a little help from useful blogs. And now, I’m pleased to find perception finally coming around. Snow Leopard is the greatest personal computer OS we’ve ever seen, and quite unfortunately, ever likely to see. OS X from 2002 to 2009 was an unfathomable utopia.

And I called the demise at the time. I watched the Steve-o keynote announcing the Lion changes, and halfway through, I ordered an expensive and excellent Italian delivery meal, on the theory that you should always eat well after a funeral (And, of course, the irony is that the iPhone success that “saved” Apple is the direct cause of the demise of the OS X utopia.).

Just a quick brain-dump of things I’ve discovered about the Humax HDR-FOX T2 Freeview HD box in my first few hours of ownership • I set it to 1080p video output via the supplied HDMI cable on our Sony Bravia Freeview HD TV. The picture quality is stunning, even on non-HD Freeview channels. • I connected the box to the my broadband modem / router by ethernet to enable the BBC iPlayer – this also got the Humax box on my home network. • It has a built-in FTP server – you can turn this on under the internet settings menu. Transferring files ON to the Humax is much easier by FTP than mucking around with USB sticks (though USB sticks are needed to get recordings off the box). If you look under the internet settings you’ll also find the box’s IP address. Probably ought to make this static, as it will likely change every time it’s turned on, but anyway I scribbled the address down.

• On a computer on my home network I used an FTP client (FileZilla) to connect to the box, using the Humax box’s IP address, the username humaxftp and the password 0000. • You can then see the Humax’s ‘My Video’, ‘My Photo’ and ‘My Music’ folders on your computer’s FTP client. • I transferred three different types of BBC Redux file from the computer to the Humax box using FTP.

(If you don’t know what BBC Redux is, skip this bit.) • The Redux.TS MPEG 2 original data stream plays but you can’t fast forward or rewind. • The much smaller Redux.TS MPEG 4 file played but also wouldn’t allow skipping within the file. • Amazingly, the small Redux high bit-rate h.264 MP4 version, described as ‘suitable for iPad, tablet computers, TVs’ file played, looked pretty good AND allowed navigation – fast forwarding and rewinding.

This is more than I could have dreamed of! • These files also play off a USB stick stuck in the back of the Humax. • Apparently the Humax box encrypts recordings it makes itself, so you can’t get those off by FTP. You can copy SD (non-HD) recordings to a USB stick and take the files elsewhere, but not HD recordings. One way round this that doesn’t involve mucking around with the Humax’s firmware is to use something called. This doesn’t break the encryption itself, rather it modifies an HD recording so you can copy it back onto the Humax and the Humax box will then decrypt it when you copy it off again.

• Foxy is a Windows.NET application. This is a bit of arse as my main computer is an iMac. But it looks like you can run Foxy on a Mac you need to download and install the.

Once you’ve installed it, you need to use the OS X command line to find Foxy.exe and run it using the command mono Foxy.exe - I can’t vouch this works for sure but the Foxy window appears on my iMac desktop and seems to work as you’d expect. Following the instructions I got the Humax to allow copying of an HD recording to a USB stick, though it was very slow and an error saying there wasn’t enough disk space flashed up at the end. When I copied the.TS file to my iMac’s hard drive, the video played flawlessly in VLC and looked gorgeous, but there was a problem with the sound – rather distorted. Will try again with a shorter programme – 40 mins of PanAm in HD is 1.64 GB (ouch!). • I’ve not looked into DLNA servers yet – as I have a Mac it seems to be a toss-up between Twonky and MediaLink – neither of which is free.

I’m going to look at Twonky first. Day 2 update.

The Humax actually has its own DLNA server – you turn it on in the same place you turn on the FTP server. Using this I managed to watch an SD (non-HD) recording made on the Humax back on my netbook using the free XBMC media player on the laptop. This doesn’t copy the file, it streams it off the Humax onto the laptop over my wifi network. Pretty cool – means I can watch recordings back upstairs, though it doesn’t work with HD programmes. With the custom firmware installed on the HDR Fox T2, it is possible though tricky to download de-crypted HD recordings to a Mac over a network connection, via the web interface.

In my case I’m using 500MB Powerline adapters. The largest file I’ve transfered so far is a whopping 5.16GB Rolling Stones gig!

(BBC 1 HD recording) The download will slow down to a halt regularly, but attempting to open the file in the Safari download window, prompts the downloader to start up again. When downloaded the file can then be ‘laundered’ via Handbrake. I then use MPEG Streamclip to edit as necessary. A further run through Handbrake to re-encode for Apple TV, and I can add the file to my iTunes library. I know this may all seem very geeky and troublesome to newbies, but if you take your time, read as much as you can on the subject, and take it it small steps you can do this.

And this kind of functionality blows Sky+ out of the water, as the recordings on that are locked down permanently. Update to my previous post. I’ve found that using an ftp client is much better than the download option in the custom web interface. The download will slow down over the duration of the transfer, but doesn’t stop. In my case it settles down at around 6.8 Mb/s. Mpeg Streamclip can’t cope with the HD Transport Stream files, so I have to use other means to convert those to MP4, and edit as necessary.

But this is still way better access and functionality than you’ll get on any other PVR. As yet there is no CFW for the ‘newer’ Humax boxes, but as soon as there is, thats where I’ll be going.