Engadget podcasts on your Tivo
Have you ever wanted to listen to any podcast away from your computer? Is it Tuesday and you want to listen to the new Engadget weekly podcast but someone inconsiderate is tying up the pc? Ever wish u can just listen to any podcast using your remote control? Well in this how-to I will show you how to get the engadget podcast downloaded directly to your Tivo without using a pc to download it. This procedure also allows usage without using any hacks or 3rd party apps. Well if you think its hard, don’t! Its really easy, even an infant can do it. In the first part were going to run down the basics of what you need to get this setup. (if you have your series 2 Tivo networked already skip to step 3).
1.) First you need a series 2 Tivo. These are the ones Tivo is selling right now so you can find them anywhere. You may be even able to find it free after a $150 mail-in rebate. For the best offer I suggest searching for one on a deal site like slickdeals.net or fatwallet.com. If there is a good deal out there chances are someone posted it on one of those sites.
2.) After you get your Tivo and got it all set up and running you need to get a usb network adapter. One of the negative things about Tivo I didn’t like is a Ethernet port is not built in. I guess it would’ve been too confusing for the average Joe in setting one up seeing as a dial-up port and a network port look similar. You can find one of these adapters for about $30 at Best Buy or CompUSA. You can also find them cheaper on ebay. Here is a list of working adapters, you can get wired or wireless. I prefer wired especially if you don’t mind running a network cable to where your TV is. Some people might even have one there already for their gaming console. I personally recommend Netgear fa120, it’s the one with a best port as opposed to the Linksys usb200m which pops out and is easily breakable.
Here is a how-to on how to network your Tivo. Tip: if you’re not seeing the network option under phone and network setup screen try connecting to the Tivo service using dialup as in my case I had to download additional software to get it working.
3.) Now that we got our Tivo’s networked next comes the waiting part. I know how much we hate waiting but its necessary. So now you have to signup for Tivo’s new online service offering which is part of their Yahoo partnership. You can sign up here. Just have to enter your Tivo service number, which is found on your Tivo, online on the account manage page or on the box it came in. After you sign up it will take about a week, that is how long it took me, to get provisioned. You may even get it faster!
4.) After it is provisioned on your box you will get a message advising you of its availability in your messages screen. You just need to head over to Music, Photos and More from the Tivo Central screen and you’ll see a list of new services from yahoo.
Some of which are cool, but this how-to is about podcasts on your Tivo. So in the list you see scroll down to Podcaster and select it.
Then scroll down to Enter a Url and select. Now this is where you enter the url, but you may ask which url.
Well basically it can be any rss/xml url which is dedicated to podcasts, in this case were using the rss url for the engadget podcast “http://podcasts.engadget.com/rss.xml”
Make sure you type it in and looks exactly like that (without the quotation marks of course). Also make sure you put the “s” after podcast, I kept forgetting it. Once that’s done simply go to the main Podcaster screen and select favorites, then Engadget podcasts, select the latest one and play. You can even listen to past podcasts incase you missed one.
Well by now you should be enjoying the hearty voices of Ryan Block and Peter Rojas right from your television. Woot! For more info on things you can do on your Tivo I suggest visiting the online Tivo Community.
