John's Blog

Recording Netflix movies to a non-networked Series1 Tivo

So we've have had the same two movies from Netflix since March - we've been rather busy moving. Last week, I finally got around to replacing the dead hard drive in my Tivo with a new drive from Weaknees.com. (What a great product - no linux boot disks or image copying - just a drop in replacement that takes under 10 minutes.)

Then I had the bright idea that I could copy netflix movies onto my new 95 hr Tivo and sent them back. But how can you do this without a networked tivo? (If you've networked your Series1, you can just use TivoBack)

Here's what I came up with:

1. Hook the cable to the RF input
   
2. Hook the DVD player up to the S-video input
   
3. Rerun guided setup - select cable *and* satellite
   
4. Set the cable to the RF input
   
5. Set the satellite to the S-video input
   
6. Delete all the satellite channels except one - I picked NASA TV
   
7. That's it!

To record the DVDs, the process is simple:

1. Turn on DVD and tune to the single satellite channel
   
2. Set Tivo to manually record time/channel
   
   • pick a starttime on the next 5 minute interval
     
   • pick a stoptime that is long enough to get the whole movie
     
   • hit select
   
   
3. Cue up DVD to the beginning of the movie and hit pause
   
4. Tune to any other channel - this way, you can go do something else, as Tivo will alert you when it wants to change channels to start recording
   
5. After tivo starts recording, unpause
   
6. Turn off the TV - in 2 hours you'll have a copy and can mail the DVD back to Netflix

---