[M T]

TiVo (this is the TiVo HD box) has cable-company owned tuning cards in it to decode the cable signal (ie, no separate cable box), so the TiVo takes that signal in.  TiVo writes an encrypted MPEG-2 to its disk.  It provides a mechanism by which those files can be transferred to a computer, and a way to decrypt them.  That part works fine (for this channel & others).  But MPEG-2 isn't a convenient format, so one typically transcodes it to other formats.  The Apple Quicktime MPEG-2 plugin doesn't seem to be able to handle the video, but only for this one channel.  The latest VLC player (which usually plays most anything) seems to play some of the recordings but has problems.  With the s/w that I'm using (1 of several) to download & decode the TiVo files, has various transcoding capabilities, but the ones I've tried generate an output file but the players reject that file for PAC-12 recordings.  I've tried running ffmpeg directly to transcode, but that has failed, possibly due to operator error.

TiVo respects a "Do not transfer" flag on programs that disallows it from sending the video out its auxiliary output (perhaps to a DVD recorder).  I believe I'm unable to transfer such files to a computer as well.  This is not the issue here.

I'll continue to ask around.  It is useful to know that at least one person is able to get a good copy by another means.  Thanks!

[M T]

TiVo (this is the TiVo HD box) has cable-company owned tuning cards in it to decode the cable signal (ie, no separate cable box), so the TiVo takes that signal in.  TiVo writes an encrypted MPEG-2 to its disk.  It provides a mechanism by which those files can be transferred to a computer, and a way to decrypt them.  That part works fine (for this channel & others).  But MPEG-2 isn't a convenient format, so one typically transcodes it to other formats.  The Apple Quicktime MPEG-2 plugin doesn't seem to be able to handle the video, but only for this one channel.  The latest VLC player (which usually plays most anything) seems to play some of the recordings but has problems.  With the s/w that I'm using (1 of several) to download & decode the TiVo files, has various transcoding capabilities, but the ones I've tried generate an output file but the players reject that file for PAC-12 recordings.  I've tried running ffmpeg directly to transcode, but that has failed, possibly due to operator error.

TiVo respects a "Do not transfer" flag on programs that disallows it from sending the video out its auxiliary output (perhaps to a DVD recorder).  I believe I'm unable to transfer such files to a computer as well.  This is not the issue here.

I'll continue to ask around.  It is useful to know that at least one person is able to get a good copy by another means.  Thanks!