Convert TiVo files to AVI/MP4/Divx/Xvid/MPEG/MKV with Tivo Converter

TiVo files are  saved by digital video recorders in their proprietary format with copyright  protection, so it's technically impossible to play recorded TV programs on other  players without format conversion. I often record some wonderful parts of TV shows  while watching them with my TiVo HD DVR. I guess you guys may do the same thing  as I do. Recording is easy, but playing these TiVo files on some portable  devices is totally unavailable due to the copyright and format issues.

Because of  this, I have to look for a video converter to do format conversion. After  tested approximately 10 products, I finally purchased Pavtube Tivo Converter. The  reason that I chose it is that among all the products I’ve tried, it is the  only one that worked well on my Windows 7 64bit, and consistently synchronized  audio and video channels correctly, while other programs always have problems  one or another, like giving me error messages time and time again, or only have  audios in the resulted files. Pavtube does not have these issues, so it won my  appreciation. I would like to share my own experience on how to using it to convert  TiVo files to other video formats, like MP4, WMV, AVI, FLV, etc. in this post.

Requirements:

1. TiVo Desktop

2. Pavtube Tivo Converter

First of all,  you should transfer your recorded files which you want to convert to other  formats from your TiVo box to your personal PC via TiVo Desktop.

Open TiVo Desktop, click "Pick  Recordings to Transfer" to transfer TV shows to your PC. The TiVo Desktop  will prompt when the transfer is finished.

Then do as the  following instruction shown:

Step 1: Run  Pavtube Tivo Converter, and import TiVo files to it

Once you run  this program, you will see the main interface as below. You are allowed to  click "Add" button to load TiVo files into this utility.

Step 2: Select output format and set save path

Click the  drop-down list of "Format" to select an output format according to your end use  of the output files: add to iPhone for playback, you can select MP4 or MOV;  import to BlackBerry for entertainment, you can choose AVI, WMV, or MP4; insert  to PPT for presentation, you can select WMV or MPG; upload to your personal  blogs or video-sharing website, you can select FLV, etc. All in all, you can  choose whatever format as you like. Here I choose the .mp4 format for my PS3 as  an example.

Meanwhile, you  can click the folder icon at the end of "Output" to specify where to locate the  output files. If you want to combine all the TiVo files you added into this  program to be as a single file, you can tick the checkbox "Merge into one file".

Step 3: Set advanced settings

If you want to  adjust the audio and video parameters of your TiVo files, you can click "Settings"  button to do it. The following pop-up window allows you to change codec, the  figures of bit rate, frame rate, sample rate, etc. so that you can do advanced  settings according to your own requirements. Generally speaking, the larger  figures generate larger file size but better quality; the smaller values  produce smaller file size but inferior image quality. If you are not good at  this step, you can totally skip it.

Step 4: Start converting with Tivo Converter

As soon as the  above mentioned steps are finished, you can click "Convert" button to start  conversion, and the output files can be found via click "Open" button after  conversion task is done.

Well, again, my  pleasure to share my own experience here, hope it is helpful.