How to Transfer Shows Faster Between Tivo DVRs

Tivo DVRs have many capabilities that digital video recorders offered by cable companies just don't offer, which is one of the reasons why they are so popular. Features like "Tivo suggestions" (which are shows Tivo records that it thinks you might like whenever you have some free storage space) along with many other really help Tivo stand out from the crowd when it comes to DVRs. Among these special features is the ability to transfer shows that you have recorded on one Tivo to another Tivo box connected to the same home network. It is great to be able to watch shows wherever you want, but often the process of transferring shows from one Tivo to another is painstakingly slow, taking up to several hours to complete.

One day, I was really frustrated by how long it was taking to transfer shows between Tivo boxes, so I headed to the internet to see if anyone had any suggestions as to how I might be able to make the transfer process go faster. I found a very helpful piece of information buried deep in the "Help" section of the Tivo website: if you connect your Tivo DVRs to your router by ethernet cable instead of via a wireless connection, the transferring process will go faster. Both of my Tivo digital video recorders were on the same level in my house, so this was easy enough to do. I plugged an ethernet cable directly into the back of my Tivo boxes and ran both of the cables directly to my router. Now it was time to put transferring shows to the test: I found an hour long program, which would normally take 70 minutes to transfer from one Tivo to another via my wi-fi connection.

Sure enough, instead of taking 70 minutes, my hour-long program transferred in just twenty minutes, which was less than 1/3 of the time. It was unbelievable! Even if you can only connect one Tivo box to your router with an ethernet cable, the transfer process will still go faster than if both Tivos are connected to a wireless network. Newer Tivo boxes have an ethernet port built into the box, while older Tivo DVRs need an ethernet USB dongle which you can pick up online for less than $15. Connecting your Tivo to your network with a cable will let you download digital content like Netflix movies faster as well, so it really is worth it to have a wired connection whenever you can. For more information about how to connect your Tivo to your home network, visit the Tivo website listed in the resources section of this article.