TiVo Desktop 2.4 Review

TiVo released TiVo Desktop 2.4 last week after a pretty long public beta cycle.

While Desktop 2.4 is for Windows. Vista is not yet supported. (Vista sucks anyway!) It requires a TiVo Series2 or TiVo Series3 DVR with active service. You'll also need the TiVo to be networked on the same network as the computer you'd like to use with TiVo Desktop.

TiVo Desktop allows you to transfer videos from your TiVo to your computer and back. You can also view photos on the computer through your TiVo.

With the TiVo Desktop Plus upgrade you can watch video podcasts and other videos you have downloaded from the internet on your TiVo. It supports Windows Media Video (.wmv), QuickTime Movie (.mov), MPEG-4/H.264 (.mp4, .m4v, .mp4v), and MPEG-2 (.mpg, .mpeg, .mpe, .mp2, .mp2v, .mpv2). NOTE: Files with digital rights management (DRM) or other copy protection are not supported.

Without the upgrade the features are pretty limited and even still, I wouldn't pay for TiVo Desktop Plus. After playing with it for a week I went back to using the free and open source TiVo.net. I've also recently learned of the free, open source, Galleon. Galleon's feature list is very impressive. Will have to check it out ASAP!