TiVoToGo Reverse Engineered

I haven’t been following the Wiki lately, but it looks like TiVoToGo encryption has been cracked and a barebones (as in command line) conversion app is out. What does this mean? You don’t need TiVo Desktop software or a PC (!) to decrypt and playback TiVo shows. Had TiVo released Mac (and Linux) decryption and playback tools of their own, this may have been avoided… Snooze, you lose. As Megazone notes, a GUI is needed and is probably forthcoming. I haven’t yet tried this on Mac or Linux platforms, but stay tuned… (I’m not even sure if the C program has been compiled for OS X yet.)

In the grander scheme of things, should this get a decent amount of press, it’s a black eye for TiVo… Which could dissuade potential content providers from partnering and/or dissuade CableLabs from supporting multi-room viewing and TiVoToGo features on the Series3, despite protected media (TiVoCast, Macrovision flagged stuff) not being available for TTG transfers. Image is everything.

UPDATE: I can verify this works on Mac OS X. And it works fast! I’ll have the first draft of a step-by-step guide up tomorrow for those who need a little hand holding (as I did). Secondly, if you have a DVD-burning TiVo your output files (of 0.1.2) will not playback audio. However, the developer has provided me a patch which corrects that issue. I assume he’ll integrate it into the app or provide a separate download shortly. Lastly, I can’t imagine we’re more than a few days away from a Mac front-end — all it would need to know is where the program lives, where the .tivo file lives, and what you want to name the output file. Someone should be able to whip this up in an hour or so. Along those lines, I begged Leon to come out of retirement and integrate this functionality into Galleon.

UPDATE 2: I’ve posted a brief guide to get Mac users on track. We’ll probably only need this for a few days, until someone more clever than I automates this and/or creates a GUI front-end.

(Thanks, half.italian!)