Could we categorize every tool?

[jemenake]

I just started reading about the extraction process a few days ago, 
but I'm still pretty confused. There seem to be several tools that 
all do the same (or similar) job. Which one you choose seems to 
depend upon what OS you ultimately want the video files to end up on 
and what format you want them in. Also, I'm a little unclear as to 
where the extraction and/or conversion happens. Some people seem to 
use their TiVoNet cards to get the videos over the net, while some 
other people speak as though they're just pulling the drive out of 
their TiVo on occasion and popping it into another Linux box and 
extracting there. So, I'm a little confused.

Now, keep in mind that, in my mind anyway, once you get the TiVo 
video files into some "standard" format (AVI, mpeg, divx, whatever), 
then we're done. The TiVo video extraction is complete. Conversion 
from one of the standard video formats another (VCD, SVCD, quicktime, 
whatever) is a problem that is outside of the scope of TiVo video 
extraction.

So, with that in mind, I thought of some categories. Each category 
has a letter (T, L, or W for whether it happens on the TiVo, a Linux 
box, or a Windows box) and a number for what general step it is in 
the process. Here's what I came up with:

THINGS THAT CAN HAPPEN ON A TIVO
================================
T0 - "Prepping" it for the rest of the set-up (installations of vim, 
tnlited)
T1 - Reading the audio/video from the TiVo hard drive
T2 - Initial converting/transcoding/muxing/demuxing the raw TiVo 
video data
T3 - Sending videos over the net (to a Linux or Windows box) (Things 
like httpd.tcl and netcat fall in this category, I imagine)

THINGS THAT CAN HAPPEN ON A LINUX BOX
=====================================
L1 - Reading the audio/video from the TiVo hard drive (assuming you 
pulled the drive from your TiVo and have it in your Linux box)
L4 - Fetching the videos from the TiVo (lynx? netcat?)
L5 - Final converting/transcoding/muxing/demuxing the video data 
(which is either raw or in some intermediate format) to get a 
standard format.

THINGS THAT CAN HAPPEN ON A WINDOWS BOX
=======================================
W4 - Fetching the videos from the TiVo
W5 - Final converting/transcoding/muxing/demuxing the video data 
(which is either raw or in some intermediate format) to get a 
standard format (like the Tmpgenc template that I've seen floating 
around).

Now, a few observations:
- Not all steps are necessary. Although there might be some processes 
that use steps T2 *and* L5 or W5, but either step could do all of the 
conversion, eliminating the need for the other step.
- L1 and L4 are mutually exclusive.

So, what are the various tools out there and what category do they 
all fall into. Also, what sequence of steps is everyone using?