Tivo tip: Shut down everything to transfer shows off a TivoHD

For a while now, I’ve been trying in vain to move a copy of the film Notting Hill off my TivoHD and onto my iPod. It’s all legit. The TivoHD allows such a transfer using a Mac and Toast’s Tivo Transfer software. The Tivo itself is networked with one of Netgear’s Powerline HDX101 adapters, which in theory run at 200 megabits per second. But every time I tried to copy the movie, the process dragged on for days (!!!) and eventually died without completing.

It’s especially weird because moving things off our older second-generation Tivo always works fine. That guy is also connected with an identical Powerline HD adapter and is considerably farther away in the house from my Mac. It was a total mystery. I tried rebooting the adapters and the Tivo and reconnecting all the cords multiple times. No help. I switched Netgear adapters from one Tivo to the other. Still no better.

Then, today, I was trolling around on the very fine Tivo users site Tivo Community and found this thread of people discussing similar problems. It appears that my hyper, super duper, fancy pants, third-generation TivoHD doesn’t like to walk and chew gum at the same time. The Tivo gurus recommended setting both channel tuners to non-functioning channels and making sure the Tivo wasn’t recording or downloading anything else.

So I tuned the tuners to a couple of music-only channels and, as Jerry Pournelle likes to say, Bob’s your uncle (actually, Bob’s my dad, but you know what I mean). Tivo transfered the entire movie, over 2 gigs, in a little under an hour. We’re still not setting any speed records but that’s totally acceptable. Now I’ll export for the iPod and have portable Roberts and Grant banter where ever I roam. Nice.