TiVo Windows Media Library Support

Current version: 1.5 (13-Aug-2004). Download: Installation Setup

What is this?

If you have a TiVo box with the Home Media Option, and you have successfully connected it to a local area network so that you can play music and view photos from your PC, then read on.

As it stands, the TiVo Desktop software allows you to navigate your music only by folders or a few playlist types. It relies on either you or your media player organizing music files nicely on your file system.

With this plug-in, you can navigate your music in the same way that Windows Media Player does: by Album, Artist, Genre, static and auto Playlists. You no longer have to export playlists into m3u format in order for TiVo to read them. Just make sure Windows Media Player indexes all your music and playlists.

In addition, this plug-in allows the TiVo software to recognize Windows playlist files (.wpl extension) on the file system, should you wish to continue to navigate by folders.

What this isn't?

This plug-in is not a format converter: it does not do the job of transcoding Windows audio files into mp3s. There are other plug-ins that do this. Search the TiVo Community Forum to find such a plug-in.

Requirements:

I have only tested this plug-in with the following on Windows XP Pro:

• TiVo Series II with Home Media Option
• TiVo Desktop 1.0 or 1.1 running on a PC
• Windows Media Player 9 (with or without security patches)

Installation details:

Download and run the setup.exe. The plug-in is just a small DLL (WindowsMediaLibrary.dll) that is placed in the TiVo Desktop folder along with a plug-in support DLL (plugins.dll) supplied by TiVo. If you have installed TiVo Desktop to a different location to the default, you will have to alter the path (I haven't figured out how to tell during the install process).

The setup optionally installs a file called Windows Media Library.wml into your My Music folder. Edit this file to your taste and publish it to gain access to the Windows media library. See details of use below. It doesn't matter where this file resides. Updating the plug-in may overwrite this file, so you might want to take a copy and edit that instead.

Details of use:

With this plug-in, the Tivo software sees a .wml file as a gateway into the Windows Media Library. The contents of a .wml file determines what media library folders you see. The default one that is installed shows Artist, Album, Genre, My Playlists and Auto Playlists. All you need to do is publish the .wml file or a folder that contains such a file.

You cannot publish individual sub-folders under the top-level .wml file. Instead, you might want to edit the .wml file and comment out those sub-folders you don't want to see or you could create and publish several different .wml files, each exposing different media library folders. For example, you could create one file called Music.wml, which has just Artist, Albums and Genre, and another file called Playlists.wml with My Playlists and Auto Playlists. You could even publish a file called Classical Music.wml which contains the line Genre/Classical.

Look inside the default .wml file for a description of the format together with some other examples.

So, the quick and easy steps are:

1. Stop the TiVo server (right click tooltray icon and choose Exit).
2. Install the plug-in, including Windows Media Library.wml
3. Run TiVo Publisher.
4. Browse to the .wml file and publish it.
5. If you want to, edit the .wml file to your taste. You can test it by viewing it in TiVo Publisher.
6. Start TiVo server.

Known (or anticipated) issues:

Since this is an early version, there are a few glitches:

• If you make changes to the media library, such as adding new albums, change playlists, etc, the changes may not be reflected on the TiVo unless you stop and restart the server or come out of Music and Photos, wait a while, and then go back in. I'm working on this.
• I'm facing a problem in deciding what to do with non-native playlist types, such as .m3u. By default, this plug-in attempts to enumerate the contents of any playlist that is known to Windows Media Player, but this will not work for entries that reference streaming media. Instead, I need to let the relevant TiVo plug-in handle such a file. Unfortunately, the Windows Media Player interface I'm using gives me no way of getting at the filename of a playlist, so I'm relying on some registry keys to decide which playlist types to hand off to their own plug-in and where to find them on the filesystem. If you want m3u and asx playlists to work correctly, you'll have to download a registry file (see Download section below) and edit the path to where you store your playlists. Edit the Windows registry at your own risk!
• Some of the default auto playlists select music based on the time it was played and a rating system. When music is played via the TiVo, it may not update this information, certainly not the auto-rating mechanism.
• This plug-in may not work if the TiVo Server is run as a service.
• I can't seem to control the order in which the publisher or TiVo lists the media library folders. It's always in alphabetical order, not the order in which the folders appear in the .wml file.
• Shuffle appears not to be working properly and I need to investigate.
• I've been informed that the .wml extension is used for wireless markup files. Don't worry, there's no conflict with this use of a .wml file. The plug-in merely registers the extension internally with the TiVo software, not in Windows, so your existing programs will be unaffected.

Future possibilities:

• Much better sorting and filtering options.
• The format of the top level .wml will likely change to an XML file.
• Get streaming media working properly with any type of playlist, thus eliminating the registry hack.

Download:

Download the Installation Setup.

For the m3u, pls and asx playlist fix, download this registry file, edit the path to point to where you store your playlists and then merge the file into the Windows registry. You do this at your own risk.

Personally, I publish just two files: Music.wml and Playlists.wml as well as a separate Download folder holding mp3's that are not indexed in WMP.

Version history:

Version	Date released	Change log
1.5	13-Aug-2004	Fixed a problem when the .wml file type is registered with a ContentType in the registry. Before this fix, The plug-in would not recognize .wml files.
1.4	09-Aug-2004	Minor tweak to work with TiVo Desktop 1.1.
1.3	04-Nov-2003	Fixed names that contain special characters: forward or backward slash, ampersand, question mark. Corrected 'Unknown' attribute searches
1.2	30-Oct-2003	Fixed a bug where the WML file wasn't being recognized unless it had a lowercase extension. Oops!
1.1	29-Oct-2003	Fix the display of names with a period. Periods are replaced by spaces. Fix to list music by Unknown artist. Restructured code to cache lists. This fixes the auto playlist problem. Fixed a horrible space leak. Enhancement to path specification to allow filters as well as override of display name.
1.0 (again1)	24-Oct-2003	Protect against changes to media library during playback. Minor improvements to the installation.
1.0	23-Oct-2003	Initial release

Contact:

Please send all feedback, suggestions and complaints to

I hope this plug-in works for you!
Jeremy Goss.