This tutorial will show you a lossless way to convert TiVo to MOV files for convenient playback on Mac (El Capitan included), iPad, iPod, Apple TV and more.

As a digital video recorder, on the birth of TiVo, it becomes the pursuit of more and more people who are getting bored with endless and annoying ads. If you have recorded some TV shows or movies, you want to transfer them to your computer to enjoy them on your computer or transfer them to your iPad, iPhone, iPod for playback. As you know, TiVo is an encrypted video format, and few media players can play it well and some freeware can’t handle it. However, after converting TiVo to other video formats like MOV, you can play, edit or share them effortlessly on your Mac or iOS devices as you like. And here I will quickly walk you through how to convert TiVo to MOV videos without quality loss.

To change TiVo HD video files on Mac OS X (El Capitan included), more than one people recommend Brorsoft Video Converter for Mac, which can help you change TiVo shows to MOV as well as AVI, WMV, FLV, MP4, MPG, etc. and allows you to manually adjust encoding settings to customize the output video quality and file size. In addition, if you want to edit videos, set subtitles, select audio track, add text or image watermark to videos, all these can be easily achieved with this powerful tool. By the way, if you use Windows computer, please check the Windows version. See below how to transfer TiVo files to Mac and then convert TiVo to MOV on Mac with 3 simple steps.

Part I. Transfer Tivo recordings to Mac with TivoDecode Manager

TivoDecode Manager (TDM) is a free program to download Tivo recordings to your computer and decoding them into MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 files.

Step 1. Connect the Tivo box to network.

Please make sure that the Tivo is on your home network.

Step 2. Launch TivoDecode Manager

Run TivoDecode Manager and enter Tivo IP address in “Tivo IP Address” box. Then click on the button “Prefs” in bottom right corner and fill in the Media Access Key.

Step 3. Transfer Tivo recordings to Mac

Then you can see a list of videos on your Tivo in the “Now Playing” list.
Select the Tivo recordings you want to transfer to Mac, and click “Add Show to Queue.” And then click “Download Location” to set the folder where you want to save the Tivo video files.

Pick up an output format by clicking “Download Format” dropdown menu and select a format from “MPEG-2 (native),” “QuickTime MPEG-4 (iPod)” and “QuickTime MPEG-4 (Custom).”

How to convert TiVo to MOV on Mac with 3 simple steps

Step 1: After downloading the software, install and run it. Click “Add” to import all .tivo files. This video converter supports batch conversion.

Tips: When first loading, Brorsoft TiVo Converter for Mac will ask you to input your Media Access Key. Simply enter your Media Access Key, and click “OK” to confirm.

Step 2: From the drop-down list of “Format” > “Common Video”, you can select MOV – QuickTime (*.mov)” profile in the drop-down menu as the output format.

Tips: If you want to convert TiVo to MOV for Final Cut Pro, iMovie, you are recommended to directly choose “Final Cut Pro > Apple ProRes 422(*mov)” for FCP; “iMovie and Final Cut Express > Apple InterMediate Codec(AIC)(*mov)” for iMovie, FCE.

Tip: To adjust video and audio parameters like codec, aspect ratio, bit rate, frame rate, sample rate, you could click on “Settings” button.

Step 3: Click Convert button to start transcoding TiVo to MOV. Once the conversion finished, click the Open button and you can locate the output files effortlessly. And then you can play, share, stream, edit the converted TiVo shows on Mac, iPad, FCP, iMovie etc, with ease.