Tivo Hacks. 100 Industrial-strength Tips Tools 2003

Hack 45 Save Multiple Shows at a Time to Your VCR

Dumping multiple shows in succession to your VCR is impossible with the default TiVo interface, but this is nothing a little hacking can't get around .

Ever want to save more than one television show from your TiVo to your VCR? You have to save one, wander off for the length of the show, come back, save the next . . . lather, rinse, repeat. All you really want to do is set your VCR to record for 8 hoursthe length of a VHS tape at EP qualitytell your TiVo to play those 8 one- hour shows in succession, and leave the TiVo and VCR alone. With the default TiVo interface, you just can't do that.

But using a little hacking in the form of a batch save script, you can.

The program to make this happen has gone through many hands to reach its current state. The code was originally Mike Baker's (of TiVoVBI fame [Hack #42]), but it has since been taken over by a developer known as SuperZap. In essence, the script creates a new program that points to all the programs you want to queue up. When one program in the queue ends, it points to the next, and the next, and so on, and TiVo's never the wiser.

Grab yourself a copy of batchsavesz1.zip (http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/attachment.php?s=&postid=90390) and unzip it on your PC. Inside, you'll find a file named BatchSavesz1.tcl ; rename it to batch.tcl for short and copy it over [Hack #36] to the /var/hack/bin directory on your TiVo. Make it executable:

bash-2.02# chmod 755 /var/hack/bin/batch.tcl

Because the authors of the script don't really have things set up on their TiVos in quite the same way as us, we'll have to make one quick change to get this hack working.

If you take a look at the batch.tcl file, you'll notice that in a few places it is trying to call a program called text2osd from the /var/hack directory. That's an older version of newtext2osd we encountered while putting text on the screen [Hack #41] a little earlier in this chapter. To make this hack work, you have two choices: either edit the script, changing all instances of /var/hack/text2osd to /var/hack/bin/newtext2osd , or create a symlink (symbolic link), effectively making text2osd into newtext2osd , like this:

bash-2.02# ln -sf /var/hack/bin/newtext2osd /var/hack/text2osd

Either way will work just fine.

Now for some juggling. The script needs to run from the command prompt, but it also requires you to use your remote control; so, you'll have to drive with one hand and point-and-click with the other. Navigate to the Now Playing menu using your TiVo remote control, and then run the script at the Bash prompt:

bash-2.02# batch.tcl

From the Now Playing list, select (highlight it and press the Select button) the program you want to save first, bringing up its description. Press the 9 button on the remote, and your command-line session should say something like this:

adding 1694436/-1

Your television screen will show something akin to Figure 3-11. The script is remembering the stream IDs for all the programs that you want to record, so it can create a metastream a little later.

Perform these same steps for all the television shows you want to queue up. Once you're done, press the 7 button on your remote. You'll see a confirmation that the various streams associated with the shows you've selected are being merged:

merging: 1694436/-1 1692481/-1

Your TV screen should now look something like Figure 3-12. Press the 1 button on the remote to leave the script.

Navigate to your Now Playing list again, and you'll see a new program called multipart (see Figure 3-13). Pop your VCR tape in, select the program and Save to VCR , and go have yourself a nice nap before moving on to the next chapter.