TiVo Desktop 2.5 is now available for download. This update officially supports Windows XP with Service Pack 2 as well as Windows Vista.

If you’re already upgraded a WinXP box to Vista with Desktop 2.4 installed, TiVo also released a utility to fix the installation before installing 2.5. Make sure to run that before attempting the 2.5 installation.

TiVo recommends having the following software installed to take advantage of the features in TiVo Desktop 2.5:

• Windows Media Player 11.
• Apple® QuickTime 7.1.3 or above.
• Java Runtime environment 1.5.0_06 or higher if running Windows XP or Java Runtime environment 1.6 or higher if running Windows Vista. You may check the version installed on your machine by going to http://java.com/en/download/installed.jsp and clicking on the ‘Verify Installation’ button.

In addition to adding Vista compatibility, 2.5 adds the following new features:

• Adds ‘Apple iPod’ to the list of portable devices. Converted files are added directly to your iTunes library.
• Supports transfer and playback of .AVI or .Divx files encoded with the DivX codec (version 4 or higher) or with the Xvid codec. No other video formats are supported within .AVI files.
• Allows conversion of previously transferred TiVo recordings by selecting the recording and then selecting ‘Convert for …’ from the Action menu.
• Converts recordings for portable devices sequentially.

Note that all of these features require the purchase of the TiVo Desktop 2.5 Plus upgrade for $24.95. If you’ve previously purchased a ‘Plus’ upgraded under 2.3 or 2.4, it will carry over to 2.5 and you do not need to purchase it again. The only transcoding that works without the Plus key is for WMV, as that is handled by Windows Media and not TiVo Desktop.

Note that TTG (TiVoToGo – Moving video from a TiVo to a PC) and TTCB (TiVoToComeBack – Moving video from a PC to a TiVo) are not yet supported on the TiVo Series3 or TiVo HD, only on the Series2 and Series2DT. TiVo as told me they plan to enable TTG/TTCB on the S3 & TiVo HD later this year.

Desktop 2.5 does include the HD Photos application that allows you to view photos on your S3/HD at a higher resolution (720p) than the old photo application which was limited to SD output. You need to enable the HD Photos application under the TiVo Server Properties in TiVo Desktop, and it does require Java. When it is enabled, both the old (SD) and new (HD) photo application will appear in the list on the TiVo.

Existing plug-ins for TiVo Desktop appear to still function. My favorite is Dan203′s audio plug-in which allows TiVo Desktop to support just about any audio format that works on Windows – AAC, WMV, FLAC, etc. Download it here. (Mac users can accomplish much the same thing with TiVo Desktop 1.9.3 using LAME.) Dan’s plug-in still can’t play protected files like ITMS purchases, but this can help with that.

One, IMHO unfortunate, change in 2.5 is that the encoder profiles are no longer stored in an XML text file. By default the conversions performed by TiVo Desktop Plus are set to 320×240 at best. There is no way to change these settings in TiVo Desktop to tweak them for your device, or to convert to a different format without reducing the resolution. However, in previous versions of TiVo Desktop the encoder profiles were stored in an XML file that could be edited. It was possible to change the existing profiles, even add new profiles to the file.

However, that XML file is gone in 2.5. It looks like the profiles are now stored within the ‘tivotrans.dll’ file, which is a compiled file and not readily editable. Developers with access to tools such as Visual Studio can edit the file, and perhaps directly editing the file in a binary editor like emacs might work. You can also use a resource editor, such as this free one, to edit the file and change the settings. Make a copy of the file first, of course, just in case the edits break it.

What I’d like to see is someone decompile this DLL and create a new version which reads from an external XML file. Then less-geeky users could simply drop that DLL in place and edit the profiles in the XML file in any text editor. I’d be willing to host the DLL for download – but I’m not really a Windows developer. Maybe one of my friends can do this, we’ll see.

Below are the current encode profiles I pulled out of tivotrans.dll:
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Casey, thank you for the TiVo Rewards Referral.

Here’s an interesting summer promo from TiVo. Buy an 80-hour Series2DT for $99.99 ($150 off MSRP) and commit to 3-years of service – pre-paid ($299) or monthly ($12.95/month) (I recommend pre-paying, it breaks down to $8.31/month) – and save $100 off an Orbitz 4-night vacation package. So, effectively, if you’re going to take a trip anyway, you get the TiVo for free as the $100 savings offsets the cost of the box. Get all the details here.