My review copy of Toast 8 Titanium arrived this week. Unfortunately, my only Mac is still running 10.3.9… and is not supported. I expect to have this rectified (running Tiger on something) in the next few weeks. Until then, check out iLounge’s review of the TiVoToGo features. Jeremy seemed generally pleased with Roxio’s ability to transfer TiVo shows for burning and playback, though he took issue with conversion times and the 320×240 output (same as Windows TTG) when converting for the iPod and PSP.
Toast 8 Titanium lists for $100, though prices are coming in under $50 after rebate in many cases — it pays to shop around. If you buy in, be sure to download the TiVo DVD menu theme. I’m still holding out hope that the TiVo Transfer portion of the app will be given away by TiVo/Roxio at some point. Though, for those who want to save a few bucks, the unofficial TiVoDecode Manager is free and will transfer, decrypt, and convert.
Bonus Coverage: GearLive shot a video interview of TiVo’s project manager Amir Gharaat and Toast in action at the Digital Experience press event at CES.
Dave, can you comment on the quality of the video DVD’s encoded by Toast.
At my house, we still have Toast 6 for the Mac, and it’s DVD encoder leaves a lot to be desired. It actually has bugs that introduce checkerboard and shutterblind artifacts into the DVD. We use Nero on the PC to master all our video DVD’s because Toast is so unreliable.
Have they fixed this problem in Toast 8? (We skipped 7 entirely, since it just looked like a money grab on the part of Roxio). The other compelling feature would be to get the software as a Universal binary.
I use Toast 6 because of it’s ability to burn (in a fair use way) DVD’s that have copy protection. TDM is great, but it’d be nice if the MPEG-2’s were QT compatible so I could import then into FCP.
I just used Toast 6 to burn my Emmy submission, so it ain’t so bad.
Dave, you should get a review copy of Tiger from Apple!