Dec 10th, 2:38 am

By:
Mike

TiVo to Zune Guide

A few people have been asking how to get their favorite TV shows from their TiVo to their Microsoft Zune. For those people that have not been able to work it out, here are the few easy steps that will help you out.

First thing to do is download and install the TiVo Desktop software (install guide here)Once all set up and installed, the software makes it simple to transfer your recorded TV shows from your TiVo box to the home PC, granted its connected to the home network.

Now thats set up, us the TiVo Desktop program to grab the recorded shows you want and get them onto your PC. Its now time to encode the video files into a format the Zune will read, to do this we will use a video converter. There are plenty of free ones out there, but by far the best one I have found is TMPGEnc 4.0
However, this encoder is going to set you back some cash, but it does offer you a free trial so you will know exactly what the program is like before forking over the money. There is also a great guide to using this program forund here

I hope this helps, and if any one out there has a better method or knows another good program to use, let us know.

Update: 

Thanks to stepleon how has posted another option for this:

You can also use the Tivo Desktop “Plus� version which is the same used for the iPod and PSP. If I recall correctly the setting I used was MPEG 4 but I am guessing the one marked for iPod use will likely work as well.

This will also cost you some money to purchase the key from Tivo to upgrade to the plus version but this solution only requires the installation of the one product. This was important for us since it was installed on my wife’s work laptop since the Zune software is not compatible yet with Vista.

Thanks Stepleon!