I recently got a TiVo and was thrilled when I could use TiVo Transfer in Toast to take my recordings from the TiVo to my Mac and export to other devices like my iPod or burn to DVD to watch on another TV via a dvd player. Toast 8 has this ability and so does Popcorn. The big new feature in Toast 9 is that it allows you to edit the video before you do something with it--like cutting out unwanted parts such as commercials or extra footage before and after a show. I was really excited about this new ability, which is the same feature people have had with EyeTV all along.

Using the video editing and exporting to my iPod works great in Toast 9 although it does take a very long time to export the video. The problem I am having is that when I want to put the TiVo recordings onto a DVD to watch in any dvd player--many of my efforts have come out with the audio and video out of sync. And all of the the DVD Video output are downgraded in quality. The video looks great watching it from the TiVo and not too great after Toast 9 gets done with it.

I decided to try Popcorn (since I have it) to put some TiVo video onto a DVD. I cannot edit any of the video using Popcorn but I did find out that by going into the Encode settings and telling Popcorn to NEVER reencode, it will multiplex the video rather than encode it. I end up with good quality video that plays just fine on my DVDs. Plus it is very quick.

I tried to use the same setting in Toast 9 to NEVER reencode, but it just ignores it. It encodes and takes a very long time and downgrades the quality. And there is a very good chance the audio and video will be out of sync.

So, as far as I am concerned--the best reason to get Toast 9 would be for the ability to edit video in Toast Video Player (from TiVo files). But if I end up with crappy quality output, I may as well just use Popcorn which costs about half the price. On the other hand, if I mostly wanted to export edited video from TiVo to my iPod, then it seems to work pretty well.