There are many ways to set this up. In my case, I have a server on my home network that polls my TiVos for the now playing list every 1/2 hour (since that’s when programs tend to start).

I am using a Linux server that is always on so updates can always happen. The update is scheduled through cron.

The server runs a shell script to fetch the now playing list with a command like this:
curl --anyauth --insecure --user tivo:**TiVo MAK** --output tivo_nowplaying.xml "https://**TiVo IP address**/TiVoConnect?Command=QueryContainer&Container=%2FNowPlaying&Recurse=Yes&ItemCount=50"

Replace **TiVo MAK** and **TiVo IP address** with the values for your tivo. Both of these should be available through the TiVo menus, but I don’t remember exactly where. You should be able to find out from the TiVo support site or The Google; just search “tivo mak” and “tivo ip address”.

The shell script then runs:
php tweettivo.php tivotwitterid tivotwitterpw
TweetTivo is here: http://www.mrbalky.com/wp-content/uploads/tweettivophp.txt

You will need the curl application (or maybe wget) to poll your TiVo. PHP is required to run the actual code. You will also need class_tivo_xml.php to parse the specific TiVo XML, which I found over on the tivo community site long long ago: http://archive2.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/printthread.php?t=218365&pp=50

It is definitely possible to do schedule this on a windows machine. Binaries for curl and php are available, and scheduling would be done via the scheduled tasks section of control panel.

It’s also worth noting that this is an incredibly quick and dirty application, with barely any testing. It grew out of the script I was already using for the “now playing” page on this site, so it really could all be wrapped up into the same php script. If you know how to use curl from within php, it’d probably be better to skip the exec.

Sorry; that probably doesn’t help much. I just threw this together in a few minutes and I’m afraid I don’t have much time for this script anymore.