AltEPG

Me - I can cope, it's the wife who has problems

To transition seamlessly, between the old and the new, I bought a spare TiVo, dropped in a shiny new drive and set it up ready to go, whenever the fateful day arrived. As you all know - that was yesterday.

On trying to set it up seamlessly, I've realised, that I only have 2 scart sockets on the back of my TV - 1 for the TiVo and one for my freeview HD recorder.

Both are networked so that isn't a problem and I know that I can use mfs_ftp to get stuff off the old and put it it on the new - but are there any other "hacks" for being able to watch shows off one tivo on another? Would an automatic scart switcher be the better option?

Any ideas?

You can daisy-chain two TiVos into a single SCART on the TV. One TiVo to the TV are per usual setup. Second TiVo's TV output goes to VCR input on first TiVo. Enable the auto switches. However I'm fairly certain you'll only get PAL (ie composite) video, not RGB, from the second TiVo.

Actually you get full RGB from both. The VCR input passes full RGB through

Now, why didn't I think of that!


Probably, because it's wa-a-a-a-ay to simple for my highly tuned technical mind.

Thanks...

Now is there a complicated answer?

<I'll get me coat..>

Welcome! I have 4 RGB devices all daisy-chained into a single RGB scart on my TV.

Surely you would actually make life much easier for yourself to just convert all your Season Passes to Wishlists with Mike's Tivoweb module and then re-run Guided Setup to the Alt EPG. You would then have all your existing recordings plus the AltEPG on the one Tivo without all that hassle with extraction and insertion and so on and/or having two Tivos hooked up to your television.

I know that to the techies amongst you the idea of a "clean install" seems a hallowed idea but having shuffled back and forth between the Tivo EPG and the Alt EPG on my dialup Tivo there seem to be no issues in doing so as you clear thumbs and the program data. There is no need to clear out all your existing recordings to convert over an existing Tivo.

Also as the AltEPG is currently only in Alpha Test mode and may change again substantially before it has progressed to Beta and then fully operational mode the quest for perfection sought by those of you doing "clean installs" in my opinion seems rather misplaced at this stage in proceedings.

Pete77 wrote:Having shuffled back and forth between the Tivo EPG and the Alt EPG on my dialup Tivo there seem to be no issues in doing so as you clear thumbs and the program data. There is no need to clear out all your existing recordings to convert over an existing Tivo.

That's as clean as my switch will be. It's important that MFS is clean; existing recordings keep their own orphaned channels, showings etc but these all get wiped when each recording object is rubbished and garbage collected after the recording deleted and its disc space has been used for something else. The end result is virtually the same as someone who did a "clear and delete everything".

As for wanting to start with a clean image, I'm sure that is because such a lot of hard work has gone into making a nice image with lots of utils pre-installed that many people didn't do themselves before. Wanting to take advantage of that is perfectly understandable.

Pete77 wrote:Surely you would actually make life much easier for yourself

Possibly - however, my twin 120GB drives are now about 6 years old. so I felt it was time to replace them. Additionally, I have a whole load of SPs which are obsolete/broken (yes, I know they all are - but you know what I mean)

And yes, I know I could pick through them by hand....

mrtickle wrote:... such a lot of hard work has gone into making a nice image with lots of utils pre-installed that many people didn't do themselves before. Wanting to take advantage of that is perfectly understandable.

It's certainly a contributing factor. I shan't miss having to reinstall the hacks every so often....