# 20.4.5 Release Notes (Premiere)



## TiVoMargret (Feb 3, 2008)

Here are some of the changes in our 20.4.5 update:

- Fixed some cases where audio was dropped going between full-screen video and menus.
- Fixed an issue related to launching a Web Video Hotlist show found through search.
- Fixed an issue related to occasional lack-of-audio in live TV or recordings.
- Fixed an issue where pressing the LIVE TV button while Netflix was buffering could cause a reboot.
- Fixed an issue where some WishLists werent recording on Premium Channels.
- Fixed the slow down of My Shows for those running SD Menus. (This is the same fix that was in 20.4.4b.)

This release does include VUDU and a new Amazon Instant Video app (with access to Prime Instant Video) for TiVo Roamio and TiVo Mini. At this time, I expect both VUDU and the new Amazon Instant Video app to be available on TiVo Premiere in the first half of 2015.

The priority list is still open if you want your Premiere to update soon: http://tivo.com/priority

Otherwise, I currently expect the full rollout to happen mid/late November.

Margret


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## spaldingclan (Aug 22, 2012)

should we assume the Amazon app on our Tivo Premieres will stay the same in the meantime?


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## Teeps (Aug 16, 2001)

Margaret,
Thanks for the heads up and the invitation to the priority list.
I prefer to wait and get updates as late, in the roll out, as possible.
That said; I applaud the early adopters...


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## ajwees41 (May 7, 2006)

TiVoMargret said:


> Here are some of the changes in our 20.4.5 update:
> 
> - Fixed some cases where audio was dropped going between full-screen video and menus.
> - Fixed an issue related to launching a Web Video Hotlist show found through search.
> ...


I also noticed on a premiere with a wireless connection but connected to the Tivo's ethernet port this update has made it more stable. Why the need to wait for the apps for premiere? I thought the summer update would have allowed for updates for both at the same time.


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## jeff92k7 (Jan 18, 2006)

ajwees41 said:


> Why the need to wait for the apps for premiere? I thought the summer update would have allowed for updates for both at the same time.


The cynic in me says it's because they want to "encourage" people to go buy a new device - much the same way apple arbitrarily stops updating older devices so you will be "encouraged" to buy a new one.


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## NorthAlabama (Apr 19, 2012)

ajwees41 said:


> Why the need to wait for the apps for premiere?




jeff92k7 said:


> The cynic in me says it's because they want to "encourage" people to go buy a new device...


other reasons could be to control support call volume, or track how different hardware handles the app. i can wait, and am glad premieres are still being updated. 

thanks for the list of fixes, margret, greatly appreciated! :up:


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## ajwees41 (May 7, 2006)

NorthAlabama said:


> other reasons could be to control support call volume, or track how different hardware handles the app. i can wait, and am glad premieres are still being updated.
> 
> thanks for the list of fixes, margret, greatly appreciated! :up:


I would like to see total Premiere users counting both the 2 tuner and 4 tuner vs the Ramio users.


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## CoxInPHX (Jan 14, 2011)

Are the two new Apps, showing up on Minis where a Premiere 4 or XL4 is the only Host DVR you have?

I do have a Roamio Pro, but if I select the XL4 as the Host DVR the new Apps are still available on my Mini.


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

I just happy we continue to get updates for the Premiere. At some point they must cut these off, and am thrilled how much these four year old boxes have improved even after the release of the Roamio. 

Testing on only one box probably made the update available sooner, thus letting this be a new feature to advertise prior to black Friday.


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## JWhites (May 15, 2013)

ajwees41 said:


> I would like to see total Premiere users counting both the 2 tuner and 4 tuner vs the Ramio users.


I have two Premieres and one Premiere 4 and a stand alone Stream.


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## NorthAlabama (Apr 19, 2012)

ajwees41 said:


> I would like to see total Premiere users counting both the 2 tuner and 4 tuner vs the Ramio users.


including those provided by cable operators? i suspect those numbers are the only reason premiere support continues at all.


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## nooneuknow (Feb 5, 2011)

NorthAlabama said:


> including those provided by cable operators? i suspect those numbers are the only reason premiere support continues at all.


I share your suspicions, as do quite a few others, from what I have seen.

If people need to feel all warm and fuzzy about the "kindness of TiVo" (or whatever they want to see it as), they can believe whatever they like, as to why TiVo keeps devoting resources to a product line they could have legitimately stopped adding new features to, and switched to mere bug fixes for. That's exactly where I'd expect the Premiere to be at, if not for the MSO units still deployed.

I originally had mixed feelings about the MSO partnerships, mostly feeling it would take away time and resources, that would otherwise be available for the retail customers. TiVo suffered a great loss of customer satisfaction, retail subs, and even loyalty, over their inability to litigate and "innovate" (using that term loosely here) at the same time. They marketed, sold, and shipped all those "One Boxes" half-baked, and let them stagnate, for years, until litigation was no longer their business strategy. Even with that said, the litigation left them sitting on a pile of money, which will likely be responsible for keeping them afloat, able to invest in their products, services, and keeping the pace going, for much longer than if they had chosen to not litigate, and instead focus on their originally anemic Premiere, which was nothing close to what they sold it as being, as remained as such for an unacceptable time.


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## Jed1 (Jun 18, 2013)

From my estimation, there is probably in the realm of 8 to 12 million series 4 units in use by the cable ops.
TiVo reports the cable ops numbers by household so it is possible that there is 2 or more units per house. Also the cable ops will purchase a bulk supply of boxes at a time so it is not known what number of boxes have yet to be deployed.

This is a whole new method that TiVo has to get used to as these series 4 units will been in use well beyond the end of this decade. Also there will have to be sometime of repair contract in order to repair damaged units.

I can say that in the circumstances of a small cable operator it takes around five years of rental fees to break even. The price of the rental includes the DVR service fee, guide fee, and maintenance and service fee.
Usually with equipment like this, it will be rented to loyal customers with good payment records first. After a while when the boxes get older then they will rent them to more riskier customers. This way if they are stolen or not recovered from lack of payment, the loses on the box will not be so high.
Lost, damaged, or stolen boxes usually add to the break even point. This is why the break even point is around five years.

My cable systems oldest box is the Motorola DCT 1700, which is now 13 years old. There is a large number of them still in use. Every HD DVR Motorola has made is still in use, The DCT 6208, DCT 6412, DCH 3416, DCX 3400 and the newer Pace RNG 200 which is now in wide use.
They recently choose the Arris (Moxi) whole home set up over the TiVo set up. The TiVo setup was too expensive and they had concerns over long term support and the health of TiVo financially in the long run.
Since Arris now owns Motorola and also provides them with their cable modems and head end gear it was easier and much cheaper to use Arris as the whole home set up.
Here is two regional cable ops in my area that are using TiVo. You can see how high the prices are.
http://www.brctv.com/tivo
http://www.rcn.com/lehigh-valley/digital-cable-tv/equipment

The reason TiVo did the Haxe rewrite on the Premiere is to see if the bugs would appear on both the Roamio and the Premiere at the same time. This proved to be true, just look at the bug fixes for the Winter update release notes for both units. The only exception is the fix for the SD menu and the exclusion of both apps for the Premiere.
Margret also never posted release notes for the Summer and Fall updates in the Premiere thread as she did not have to.
This way they can basically do bug fixes on the series 4 units that will be in use by the cable systems, by testing them on the consumer Roamio platform with out the need of consumer Premiere owners.
Since the apps will not be used by the cable ops there was no need to provide them to us Premiere owners. The only way we will get them is if a cable op wants them on their system, like RCN has the Netflix app.

So for customers like me who paid almost full price for my two Premiere 4s a few weeks before the Roamio release, will be out of luck if I wanted these apps. I am not really confident that these apps will be offered in the future based on the reply I got from TiVo support. They stated that there is no ETA at all to if and when the apps will be offered. This is a stark difference as to what Margret posted in the release notes above.

Since I am not financially well off, replacement of my two Premieres is out of the question as I will have a long time to get my moneys worth out of these units. 
I really wanted the Amazon Prime app now but that is not going to happen. If I have to buy a Roku unit or something similar to stream, I am going to take the financial loss and dump my Premieres in the garbage and just rent the Arris unit from my cable system. This way if I decide to eliminate cable TV from my future I can just turn in the unit to my cable op and be done with it.

Why dump the Tivos in the trash? TiVo counts the consumer numbers by the number of units and not customers or households. Selling them will only keep them two units in the quarterly numbers released to shareholders. Discarding them eliminates them from the quarterly numbers.
If TiVo is going to treat Premiere owners as second class customers and BS us then let them try and BS the shareholders as to why the consumer numbers keep declining.
From my estimation I suspect that there maybe as little as 200,000 actual consumer TiVo owners. A lot of those posting on this forum all own multiple units, some as high as 7 devices, so the actual owners numbers is a lot less than the posted number of consumer owned units.


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## ajwees41 (May 7, 2006)

NorthAlabama said:


> including those provided by cable operators? i suspect those numbers are the only reason premiere support continues at all.


my question was based on if tivo still had a lot of premiere customers could they still cost effectively support those along with Roamios something like where the cable companies have one ipg/software running on sd/hd/HDdvrs, but with different features depending on the hardware.


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

Jed1 said:


> Since I am not financially well off, replacement of my two Premieres is out of the question as I will have a long time to get my moneys worth out of these units.
> I really wanted the Amazon Prime app now but that is not going to happen. If I have to buy a Roku unit or something similar to stream, I am going to take the financial loss and dump my Premieres in the garbage and just rent the Arris unit from my cable system. This way if I decide to eliminate cable TV from my future I can just turn in the unit to my cable op and be done with it.
> 
> Why dump the Tivos in the trash? TiVo counts the consumer numbers by the number of units and not customers or households. Selling them will only keep them two units in the quarterly numbers released to shareholders. Discarding them eliminates them from the quarterly numbers.
> If TiVo is going to treat Premiere owners as second class customers and BS us then let them try and BS the shareholders as to why the consumer numbers keep declining.


That has to be the dumbest reason to dump Tivo I've ever heard - 'I don't have a lot of money (and yet I have Tivos) and can't even spend $39 for a Fire TV stick to get Amazon Prime, so instead I'll trash the Tivos just to spite Tivo and rent crappy DVRs instead (which will cost way more than $39).'

Genius, pure genius.


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## NorthAlabama (Apr 19, 2012)

it's nice that tivo decided to let roamio users work out all the issues with the new vudu and amazon prime apps before opening them up to premieres - thanks! :up:


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## kherr (Aug 1, 2006)

Stopping support of the Premieres would send a signal to Romio buyers and prospective buyers that they'll stop support of Romios after only a couple few years when they send those out to pasture. It's letting buyers know that there will be support while discontinued boxes will be supported while most of them still have life. Heck my S2 still works ......


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## Jed1 (Jun 18, 2013)

slowbiscuit said:


> That has to be the dumbest reason to dump Tivo I've ever heard - 'I don't have a lot of money (and yet I have Tivos) and can't even spend $39 for a Fire TV stick to get Amazon Prime, so instead I'll trash the Tivos just to spite Tivo and rent crappy DVRs instead (which will cost way more than $39).'
> 
> Genius, pure genius.


In my third sentence that you quoted I mentioned about buying some type of streaming device.

The one thing you do not understand is I get a very small economic advantage of owning a TiVo over the cable company equipment.
When I bought my first Premiere I was saving $8.43/month over having their box. This amounted to a $101.16 savings over the first year. At that rate my ROI (return on investment) would have been 6 years to get my $600 purchase price back.
Unfortunately on my first year anniversary of having the TiVo my cable company hiked rates and changed their rate schedule which in turn reduced my monthly savings to $5.43/month.
Subtracting my first year of savings from my original purchase price:
$600-$101.16=498.84 left to pay off my purchase. Now divide that remaining value by $5.43/month and you now get a pay off point in 7 years and 6 months.

What must be noted here is that I own both of my CableCards which took 4 years to break even on the purchase of them. I broke even on the first one in 2008 and broke even on the second one in 2013. The purchase price was $132.50 each. They no longer allow customers to purchase cards so if I have to rent one in the future it will cost me $3.13/month.

Now if I buy a new Roamio just to get the apps here is the cost and RIO time period.
Currently I still need $498.84 to break even. Assume that I get $300 on reselling Premiere, $498.84-$300=198.84, assume I purchase new Roamio for $600, $198.84+$600=$798.84. Divide that by monthly savings over their equipment, $798.84/$5.43= 12 years and 3 months for ROI.
If CableCard will not work in new Roamio $5.43-$3.13= $2.30 monthly savings, then divide by $798.84/$2.30=29 years for ROI.

This is assuming that my cable company will not hike rates for 29 years and I get the new Roamio for $600. If I pay and extra $100 for new Roamio then it will now take 32 years and 6 months to get a ROI on the new Raomio. In this scenario I will break even in 2047 and I will be 81 years old. Do you think TiVo will be supporting the Roamio yet?

Now do you see why I am pissed? Even if I decided to sell the Premiere and get $300 for it I will still have to use it for another 3 years 6 months and then get $300 for it to recoup my ROI. Now this is just for the primary Premiere, I still have another one to. And again this is assuming that all prices remain static.

Also just because all of you have low expectations from TiVo does not mean that I also have to. Maybe if all of you owners would have applied more pressure on TiVo, they might have made better decisions in the past.
I suspect that all the subs they lost over the years got tired of TiVo not meeting their expectations so they bailed out. Since the rest of you sat around and took their nonsense TiVo figured they really did not have to apply themselves.
Heck TiVo probably could crap in a box and send it to some of you and you will be happy that they gave it to you. And on top of that, you all would publicly thank them for sending you a box full of crap.


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

Your initial math fails to account for residual value, so your 6 year estimates for savings are a few years too long. You talk about a residual value of 300 later on, so you almost have it. 

Expect what you want, but most products do not continue to add features after purchase. With that as a product requirement, you must have a hard time purchasing anything- none of my appliances gain features. Every platform has to end new product development at some point, you expect eternal improvements? S2s and S3s had a cut off date after around 3 years, and the Premiere, with its slow CPU, is clearly almost there. 

Why break even? If you want the new features, either wait for them, buy a new cheap box to enjoy it, or get a new product that has this feature. If you cannot afford it, then don't buy it.


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## puffdaddy (Mar 1, 2006)

Looks like the release notes omitted that tivo closed the shellshock vulnerability with software version 20.4.5: http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=10298927#post10298927

It's been a while since tivo's were software-only hackable. If you wanted to hack your unit to turn off the CCI bits, it might be good to make a backup of your unit *before *it upgrades to 20.4.5.


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## NorthAlabama (Apr 19, 2012)

has anyone seen duplicate recordings?

i deleted the sunday night ep of "the good wife", then scheduled a manual recording ending 33 minutes late (football overrun), and ended up with two recordings - one with the modified stop time, and the regular sp recording i had deleted. 

it also bumped another lower priority recording (tying up two tuners).


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## tarheelblue32 (Jan 13, 2014)

Jed1 said:


> Since I am not financially well off....If I have to buy a Roku unit or something similar to stream, I am going to take the financial loss and dump my Premieres in the garbage and just rent the Arris unit from my cable system....Why dump the Tivos in the trash? TiVo counts the consumer numbers by the number of units and not customers or households. Selling them will only keep them two units in the quarterly numbers released to shareholders. Discarding them eliminates them from the quarterly numbers.
> If TiVo is going to treat Premiere owners as second class customers and BS us then let them try and BS the shareholders as to why the consumer numbers keep declining.


So, you're "not financially well off", but instead of selling your Premieres and recouping some of your money, you would rather trash them because you think this hurts TiVo somehow? Do yourself a favor and just sell them, because you won't hurt TiVo one bit by trashing them. All you are doing is reducing the potential supply of used Premieres by 2 units, thus raising the price of used Premieres by an unnoticeable fraction of a cent. The only person you will be harming is yourself....on second thought, just trash them.


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## jaj2276 (Dec 25, 2007)

Jed1 said:


> ...
> 
> Since I am not financially well off, replacement of my two Premieres is out of the question as I will have a long time to get my moneys worth out of these units.
> ...


You can replace one of your old Premieres or add to your two Premiere units by buying a lifetime'd Tivo Mini for $131 at Amazon. Then you'll have access to the Vudu/Amazing apps plus you'll be able to extend the Tivo experience to a third outlet.

I currently have a Tivo Premiere and a Tivo Mini. The Mini got the Vudu/Amazon apps last week and I can report it works fine even though the Premiere does not have those apps.


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## NorthAlabama (Apr 19, 2012)

i'm seeing a lot of recommendations in the discovery bar for sd channels not in my guide.

also, no feedback from last night's post:



NorthAlabama said:


> has anyone seen duplicate recordings?
> 
> i deleted the sunday night ep of "the good wife", then scheduled a manual recording ending 33 minutes late (football overrun), and ended up with two recordings - one with the modified stop time, and the regular sp recording i had deleted.
> 
> it also bumped another lower priority recording (tying up two tuners).


anyone else?


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## Jed1 (Jun 18, 2013)

jrtroo said:


> Your initial math fails to account for residual value, so your 6 year estimates for savings are a few years too long. You talk about a residual value of 300 later on, so you almost have it.
> 
> Expect what you want, but most products do not continue to add features after purchase. With that as a product requirement, you must have a hard time purchasing anything- none of my appliances gain features. Every platform has to end new product development at some point, you expect eternal improvements? S2s and S3s had a cut off date after around 3 years, and the Premiere, with its slow CPU, is clearly almost there.
> 
> Why break even? If you want the new features, either wait for them, buy a new cheap box to enjoy it, or get a new product that has this feature. If you cannot afford it, then don't buy it.


I am using the same accounting logic that most TiVo owners use on this forum. It is the premise that the money you save instead of leasing the cable company hardware pays for the purchase of the TiVo over a period of time.
Same logic is constantly used when selling a unit to get the newer model. A poster below you, blasts me with the same logic that I should just sell my TiVos to recoup some of the cost and lower my losses.
So the concept of breaking even is something that most forum members use and not something I came up with.

As for the upgradable appliance statement, I never known of such a thing being done. So I never had or will have the assumption that some company is going to upgrade a feature on my stoves, refrigerators, washers, or dryers.
I have had a part replaced on my washer by GE which was an upgrade from the original but the original was a defect.
With CE products that run on software I have had features added and even taken away on devices that I owned. Some were asked for and some were not.
Roamio owners did not purchase the unit with any knowledge that Vudu was going to be added. What if TiVo said to current Roamio owners that in order to have the new features you have to buy a new unit.

As for the Premiere line, it was never shown by TiVo that the CPU was to small. I recall reading a white paper about the dual core CPU in the Premiere. According to the article, TiVo software was not fully utilizing both cores of the chip. It is possible that the Haxe rewrite will finally take advantage of both cores.
Most of the problems that the Premiere line has and is suffering from is just plain old lazy and sloppy code writing. It seems TiVo has as many bug fixes as Microsoft does. 
It is apparent that the Roamio line suffers from the same problem as there is 71 pages of threads in one years time. Most threads are complaints about bugs with the unit. 
TiVo code writing is so bad that they have the public constantly beta testing their products.

As for the point of affording something or not, I do not have the resources to buy something like this every year or two just because TiVo wants to drive sales in newly sold units. And if I did have the resources I still would not upgrade, as I would say it is a waste of money as I am not really recouping the value of my investment from my purchase.
I suspect that this is the main reason why a lot of older customers bailed on them.
If TiVo wants to make throw away DVRs then I suggest that they make a much lower cost product. Say $100 and use for a year then throw away and get a new one with newer features.


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## Jed1 (Jun 18, 2013)

tarheelblue32 said:


> So, you're "not financially well off", but instead of selling your Premieres and recouping some of your money, you would rather trash them because you think this hurts TiVo somehow? Do yourself a favor and just sell them, because you won't hurt TiVo one bit by trashing them. All you are doing is reducing the potential supply of used Premieres by 2 units, thus raising the price of used Premieres by an unnoticeable fraction of a cent. The only person you will be harming is yourself....on second thought, just trash them.


Unfortunately it will hurt TiVo because they will never connect to the service again. That will be two units that TiVo will lose in the quarterly numbers and then have to make up just to get the numbers back to a previous level.
Oh and I will not be purchasing any future products again.
Share holders are very impatient people, they want to see improving numbers all the time.
Also their patents are going to expire in 2018, which is a little over three years from now.

They were also put on notice by RCN about the boxes spontaneously rebooting themselves.
The Vice President of Engineering was not amused by it.

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/519325437420650496
His October 8th 2014 reply on another forum:


> Yup you caught it, I wasn't happy.. There was a issue that got pushed out that caused some boxes to become unstable on monday night.. I was at the game working the issue with TiVo until resolution around 11PM. We are having meetings and discussions with them daily to ensure that what happened DOESN"T happen again.. Skins game didn't help things either.


http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r29569877-TiVo-RCN-TiVo-Fall-Update-Rolling-out-DC-is-complete
Notice that he capitalized the word DOESN'T.
The cable ops are not going to put up with TiVos nonsense and they also do not want their customers being used as beta testers.
TiVo may find themselves on the wrong end of a lawsuit if they are not careful.

The future is not so certain....


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## Jed1 (Jun 18, 2013)

jaj2276 said:


> You can replace one of your old Premieres or add to your two Premiere units by buying a lifetime'd Tivo Mini for $131 at Amazon. Then you'll have access to the Vudu/Amazing apps plus you'll be able to extend the Tivo experience to a third outlet.
> 
> I currently have a Tivo Premiere and a Tivo Mini. The Mini got the Vudu/Amazon apps last week and I can report it works fine even though the Premiere does not have those apps.


Unfortunately I only have two TV's so the need for a third unit is not necessary. Most of the shows I watch air on Sunday evenings and because of the over run of football on CBS I ended up needing 7 tuners to record all the shows I watch.
So selling a Premiere to get a mini would not work in my case.

Thanks for the tip on the apps being on the mini. I am kind of in the proverbial rock and a hard place with my situation. Everything right now points to purchasing more hardware of some sorts. This is what is ticking me off as I have enough of equipment filling up a shelf in my basement that got rendered obsolete by various reasons. The amount of money spent and lost is getting over whelming as I figure it to be on the plus side of 20 thousand dollars over the past ten years.


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## Jed1 (Jun 18, 2013)

NorthAlabama said:


> i'm seeing a lot of recommendations in the discovery bar for sd channels not in my guide.
> 
> also, no feedback from last night's post:
> 
> anyone else?


I am having a similar problem were I have SP set for programs and I watch and delete them but it forgets that then records the same programs again. This is on the unit that was rebooting from bad data. 
The unit I have upstairs does not do this but it did not suffer the rebooting issue.

Also when I got the winter update and it rebooted it then recorded all the shows that I watched and deleted again. It seems when it reboots, it forgets what it recording between reboots and records everything again.

I wonder if this is related as in your case you deleted a SP and it thinks that it never did.

I do not think Margret is looking at this thread as she was logged onto this forum around 3:30 PM this afternoon. This is 2 hours after you made this post. Maybe she doesn't think the Premieres are important anymore.

Also some of the apps in the apps section do not work. When you click on them you get to a splash page and then it just sits there. This is happening on both my units.


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## lgnad (Feb 14, 2013)

In my math for the value of Tivo's, its worth a buck or two every time I dont have to use an AWFUL Comcast Motorola or X1 box. Using my calculations my Tivo's paid themselves off in mere weeks, or maybe a few months.

Tivo enabled the second core on the Premiere a couple years ago, (late 2011.. 14.9.2) but publicly stated several times before and when enabling it that the dual cores shared so many internal resources that there would be little benefit, and there indeed was only a small benefit when it was released.

They have also commented on the performance of the Premiere platform not being up to expectations, even highlighting that that platform received a 30% performance increase with the massive investment of the Have conversion. 

Every software and hardware product has massive amount of bugs. Big companies products, like Intel processors have always had huge lists of errata, some with software patches in bios, some causing hardware features to be disabled, with a few of these publicly/spectacularly ...And pretty much every product has both internal and external product testing? 

Compare Tivo's performance to the "competition". Last time I peeked into the Comcast X1 forums, they were full of many thousands of posts like "It worked for one day again, and its been out for another week" "How come you cant even tell what its recording?" "Why is there no conflict resolution for recordings... it just aborts one of them at random with no notification if theres not enough tuners!" "Its been several months, they still haven't enabled the streaming between boxes". Comcast's primary fix for the problems was to kill threads in the forums when they got too long. Basically, the biggest(?) cableco in the world rolled out a platform that was in like early alpha for like two years and charged people full price before even basic DVR functionality was working.... 

The Premiere hardware platform was released 4.75 years ago, and continues to get major feature and functionality updates. I bought an above the middle of the line Smart TV from the #2 seller of Tv's about a year ago that costs more than a Roamio+Lifetime, its a 2013 model and its essentially abandoned. It has gotten a couple of software updates, mainly to shut down tertiary "smart" features/functions that are being abandoned. What else the updates have done are a mystery because they have had NO transparency, unlike Tivo with their release notes.

People have noted that the Amazon app has some performance hitches running on the Roamio hardware. The Roamio hardware per Tivo has up to 2.5x the performance, and that (running on the old actionscript platform) it averaged about 1.7x faster. Since the new Haxe-based platform is still an early version, its likely that there is code that is needed to be written to support the functionality more efficiently that the Roamio might currently be using raw horsepower to push through, vs elegant coding.

Should they have held back this (secondary) functionality on the Roamios for several months until it was ready to run on all the hardware?


p.s. lol there's a post on here from 1pm today about X1 outages.


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## Jed1 (Jun 18, 2013)

lgnad said:


> In my math for the value of Tivo's, its worth a buck or two every time I dont have to use an AWFUL Comcast Motorola or X1 box. Using my calculations my Tivo's paid themselves off in mere weeks, or maybe a few months.
> 
> Tivo enabled the second core on the Premiere a couple years ago, (late 2011.. 14.9.2) but publicly stated several times before and when enabling it that the dual cores shared so many internal resources that there would be little benefit, and there indeed was only a small benefit when it was released.
> 
> ...


The white paper I read was a few years old and was done by Broadcom. I thought I downloaded and saved it but I did not. I tried to locate it but most of the tech journals were removed. I do remember about the software not running the two cores properly. I do not know if that is what you quoted here or not so I will not speculate on it.
One thing that must be noted is not to assume any information on this site that is not officially quoted by TiVo as to be true. So if any mention about the chip in the Premiere came from non TiVo sources then it must be assumed that it is speculation.

The problem with making a comparison to the problem the X1 is having is it not really an apples to apples comparison. With the X1 you did not buy it and then have to agonize on customer support in order to get your 600 plus dollar investment fixed.
With the X1, or any cable/sat box, if you are not satisfied with it then you just give it back and be done with it. The problem will be with the provider as they lose money and not the customer.
With the TiVo it is all your money so you can not easily walk away from it when things go wrong.

I actually had no issues with the Pace RNG 200 that I got from my cable provider. I was actually pissed as they raised my rates by nine dollars a month. So I decided to invest in two Premieres since I actually owned two M cards. The one benefit I did gain over their box is I gained two extra tuners per box.

My cable op was testing both the Premiere and the Arris (Moxi) set up and then decided on the Arris set up since they did not like the pricing and the questionable stability of TiVo. I actually owned the Moxi and Mates in 2010 but I sent the set up back when I found out Arris bought Moxi.
I did like the Moxi UI at that time but it appears Arris did not do any updates to it.
I am thinking of making arraignments with my cable provider to try it out for a few months and see how I like it.

I agree with you that they should have held back the apps if there is actually a problem. I would have been the fairest approach to all TiVo customers.

The way they did this and then leaving a vague statement, only lead to some of the Premiere owners who wanted these apps to have animosity towards TiVo. Now it appears that Tivo is treating them a second class owners.
The only reason they are upgrading the series 4 units is to cover the large volume of series 4 units used by the cable ops. If it wasn't for that we would have not gotten the Haxe rewrite.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

lgnad said:


> What else the updates have done are a mystery because they have had NO transparency, unlike Tivo with their release notes.


TiVo hasn't always been so transparent with release notes. Check this:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=8891583#post8891583

I guess you could say they are still learning how to do it. At least they are trying.


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## Jed1 (Jun 18, 2013)

I noticed that the Huffpost, Techcrunch, and Moviephone apps do not work on both my Premieres. The only thing that happens is you get to a splash screen and then it just sits there. 
I have tried them at differnet times over the past two days and nothing changes.
I wonder of these services have been discontinued. If so TiVo might as well remove them if they don't work anymore.


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## NorthAlabama (Apr 19, 2012)

i'm getting seemingly endless blue circles. 

very weird - now, when exploring a show and looking for upcoming airings, tivo is making up channel numbers. if i select the airing, the channel number updates to the correct channel, but the initial listing includes channel numbers not even used in my market. this is strange.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Jed1 said:


> I noticed that the Huffpost, Techcrunch, and Moviephone apps do not work on both my Premieres. The only thing that happens is you get to a splash screen and then it just sits there.
> I have tried them at differnet times over the past two days and nothing changes.
> I wonder of these services have been discontinued. If so TiVo might as well remove them if they don't work anymore.


TiVo - same as you (3 different errors including 504)
Sony 2011 TV - all work
Sony 2014 Blu-ray - only Techcrunch fails


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## Jed1 (Jun 18, 2013)

JoeKustra said:


> TiVo - same as you (3 different errors including 504)
> Sony 2011 TV - all work
> Sony 2014 Blu-ray - only Techcrunch fails


I did not get any errors, but mine just stops at a slpash screen. The tech cruch goes to a splash screen but then it looks like it will load a page but the screen just goes black.
It seems like the web address for each app is wrong or outdated.

My sister says if they were trying to maintain software uniformity between the two platforms. they now screwed that up as they added additional programming, the apps, to one platform and not the other. It is possible that each platform will now have its own unique set of software errors and each platform will now have to be beta tested separately.
She also said if the Premiere is the slower of the two, they should have optimized the apps to run on the Premiere first then port them over to the Roamio. This would have been easier and cheaper.


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## Jed1 (Jun 18, 2013)

NorthAlabama said:


> i'm getting seemingly endless blue circles.
> 
> very weird - now, when exploring a show and looking for upcoming airings, tivo is making up channel numbers. if i select the airing, the channel number updates to the correct channel, but the initial listing includes channel numbers not even used in my market. this is strange.


Now that you mention this I seen this same thing a little over a week ago when exploring a show. I had about 8 different channels listed for a future showing and none were mine.
This happened right after the box went through the spontaneous reboots the other week. I haven't checked this recently since I got the winter update. I may still have this problem as I haven't done any exploring lately.

I have kind of gave up on reporting issues anymore as I am tired of doing this all the time. I just want to enjoy my life and not be troubleshooting stuff that I paid good money for.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Jed1 said:


> I did not get any errors, but mine just stops at a slpash screen. The tech cruch goes to a splash screen but then it looks like it will load a page but the screen just goes black.
> It seems like the web address for each app is wrong or outdated.


I'm waiting for somebody to tell me it must be my TiVo or ISP causing the problem since it works for them. The alternative is scary: nobody uses these apps and/or they were never tested.


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## NorthAlabama (Apr 19, 2012)

Jed1 said:


> I noticed that the Huffpost, Techcrunch, and Moviephone apps do not work on both my Premieres.





JoeKustra said:


> ...same as you...





Jed1 said:


> I did not get any errors, but mine just stops at a slpash screen. The tech cruch goes to a splash screen but then it looks like it will load a page but the screen just goes black.





JoeKustra said:


> I'm waiting for somebody to tell me it must be my TiVo or ISP causing the problem since it works for them. The alternative is scary: nobody uses these apps and/or they were never tested.


i just checked my pxl - i get a splash screen for moviefone, techcrunch, and huffpo. i received a "network error" quickly from moviefone and huffpo, black screen with techcruch (i hit clear, tired of waiting for an error).

this may or may not be related, my weather4us opera app stopped working, too. could someone else test it for me? thanks.


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## Jed1 (Jun 18, 2013)

NorthAlabama said:


> i just checked my pxl - i get a splash screen for moviefone, techcrunch, and huffpo. i received a "network error" quickly from moviefone and huffpo, black screen with techcruch (i hit clear, tired of waiting for an error).
> 
> this may or may not be related, my weather4us opera app stopped working, too. could someone else test it for me? thanks.


I use the Accuweather app in the Opera store and that works. I tried it two ways. First by going into the app store and then by using my favorite Opera apps. I know that these did work before the winter update as I tried the HuffPost app about two weeks ago.
Of course the HSN app works as they get a kick back from HSN if you buy something while using the app.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

NorthAlabama said:


> i just checked my pxl - i get a splash screen for moviefone, techcrunch, and huffpo. i received a "network error" quickly from moviefone and huffpo, black screen with techcruch (i hit clear, tired of waiting for an error).
> 
> this may or may not be related, my weather4us opera app stopped working, too. could someone else test it for me? thanks.


I had no problem with weather4us, but it seems to be based on data from NOAA or NWS, so it could be a temporary thing. My feed is always going down, especially in bad weather.

Weather4us worked on my Blu-ray also, and at least twice as fast as my Premiere.


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## NorthAlabama (Apr 19, 2012)

JoeKustra said:


> I had no problem with weather4us, but it seems to be based on data from NOAA or NWS, so it could be a temporary thing. My feed is always going down, especially in bad weather.


thanks, then it's my app. i have no issues with any other opera app - weather, news, music, games, video...they all work for me, just not the weather4us nws app, which i used to use daily. oh, well.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

NorthAlabama said:


> thanks, then it's my app. i have no issues with any other opera app - weather, news, music, games, video...they all work for me, just not the weather4us nws app, which i used to use daily. oh, well.


Try a different zipcode. It could just be the feed from your local NWS office.


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## NorthAlabama (Apr 19, 2012)

JoeKustra said:


> Try a different zipcode. It could just be the feed from your local NWS office.


i can't, it locks up immediately at launch. it paints the background, then nothing - no error, and no way to navigate to change the settings. clear exits back to opera.

i once did receive a network error at launch, and took the opportunity to delete my 3 saved zip codes. when it was re-launched, it requested and i entered the home zip code, then it locked up again, and has behaved the same ever since. i'll try a different zip code if i ever see another network error at launch.

if i was having trouble with other opera apps, i'd say it was my tivo, network, or corrupt software on my end, but this is the only opera app issue i'm having.


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## Jed1 (Jun 18, 2013)

NorthAlabama said:


> i'm getting seemingly endless blue circles.
> 
> very weird - now, when exploring a show and looking for upcoming airings, tivo is making up channel numbers. if i select the airing, the channel number updates to the correct channel, but the initial listing includes channel numbers not even used in my market. this is strange.


I asked about this on the Roamio forum and this started with the fall update. It is likely bad data from Tribune and it will clear it self up.


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

I just noticed my Premiere XL4 was rebooting constantly and remembered reading about disconnecting the ethernet cable; that didn't help until I also powered it off and on again; then it booted up OK.

My Premiere XL4 is on 20.4.5-01-2-758


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## Jed1 (Jun 18, 2013)

I can report that the TechCrunch app is working. HuffPost and Moviefone ends up with a message that says, App failed to load. Please check your connections and try again. This is a slight improvement than yesterday were I only got to the splash screen.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Jed1 said:


> I can report that the TechCrunch app is working. HuffPost and Moviefone ends up with a message that says, App failed to load. Please check your connections and try again. This is a slight improvement than yesterday were I only got to the splash screen.


All three are working on my TiVo, Blu-ray and TV this morning. Now I can go back to ignoring them. But they are pretty.


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

Jed1 said:


> I can report that the TechCrunch app is working. HuffPost and Moviefone ends up with a message that says, App failed to load. Please check your connections and try again. This is a slight improvement than yesterday were I only got to the splash screen.


Why do you care? Are you the lone person using these apps? Just wondering if I'm missing something between the initial launch and now.


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## ajwees41 (May 7, 2006)

jrtroo said:


> Why do you care? Are you the lone person using these apps? Just wondering if I'm missing something between the initial launch and now.


they were launched awhile ago and they still don't work on our premiere's and the reason you should care is if it's broke and the Tivo service is the issue it could cause total guide or Tivo service loss.


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

But that is not the issue, they are third party apps. I found the quality of content low and the experience slow and uneven when they were first released. Thus, if a crappy app that nobody uses is broken, who cares? 

If the speed has improved, or the content, then great. However, third party apps are different than the core function of the box and tivo service.


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## NorthAlabama (Apr 19, 2012)

techcrunch back up for me, too, will try moviefone and huffpo later.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

jrtroo said:


> But that is not the issue, they are third party apps. I found the quality of content low and the experience slow and uneven when they were first released. Thus, if a crappy app that nobody uses is broken, who cares?
> 
> If the speed has improved, or the content, then great. However, third party apps are different than the core function of the box and tivo service.


If TiVo would make them an optional display item, like video providers, fewer would notice. I would never notice the failure of AOL or Amazon, but they don't jump out at me unless I allow it. They are pretty slow, on that we agree.


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## Jed1 (Jun 18, 2013)

NorthAlabama said:


> techcrunch back up for me, too, will try moviefone and huffpo later.


As of 11:00 AM this morning all three apps are working again.


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## Jed1 (Jun 18, 2013)

jrtroo said:


> Why do you care? Are you the lone person using these apps? Just wondering if I'm missing something between the initial launch and now.


They are a service that is part of the series 4 and series 5 units. This is included in the price we all pay for the units. Even though some people do not use certain features, all features should work and work properly.

I will from time to time, go through all the menus and see if everything is working as it should be even though I may not use some of the features.


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## NorthAlabama (Apr 19, 2012)

Jed1 said:


> As of 11:00 AM this morning all three apps are working again.


yup, same here. :up:


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

But, do you use it?


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## Jed1 (Jun 18, 2013)

jrtroo said:


> But, do you use it?


Yes. Mainly Huffpost.


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

Jed1 said:


> I am using the same accounting logic that most TiVo owners use on this forum.


There is no such accounting logic where the option chosen is to trash $1300 worth of hardware and then start renting different hardware to replace it. The kicker is that the replacement hardware isn't going to have the missing Amazon app either. It's funny you never mentioned what your break even point is for this option, but at least you will be able to deny Tivo 2 subscriptions from their financial reports.


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## Jed1 (Jun 18, 2013)

shwru980r said:


> There is no such accounting logic where the option chosen is to trash $1300 worth of hardware and then start renting different hardware to replace it. The kicker is that the replacement hardware isn't going to have the missing Amazon app either. It's funny you never mentioned what your break even point is for this option, but at least you will be able to deny Tivo 2 subscriptions from their financial reports.


The sentence you quoted was a tiny part of a response to another poster trying to argue that no one here buys a TiVo and mentions about saving money by not renting a STB.

Here is the post that I made that you snipped the sentence from:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=10300169#post10300169
This is the original post about the accounting methods used by most TiVo owners and how it works out for me:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=10298872#post10298872

If you read these posts I explain the number of options and the costs associated with them. As you can see the economic advantage of me owning a TiVo over renting a STB is very small and my ROI is very long.

I can not estimate the value of the apps right now as I do not have them. I do buy a lot from Amazon and I do watch a lot of older TV shows so the Prime streaming option would be a benefit.
But the current reality is the apps are not on the Premiere so I can not realize the value of them. If the apps never appear then I can never realize the benefit of having them.
Since I do not watch any sports and I mainly watch programming on HBO, Showtime, and CBS and Time Warner commercial channels, TV is becoming less valuable to me. So the DVR portion of the TiVo is beginning to lose its value to me.

And with the recent announcements that CBS and Time Warner are going to offer a streaming option, this may severely reduce or eliminate the value of the DVR portion of the TiVo for me.

Right now I am suspicious of why the apps were not offered to Premiere owners since they never gave a reason why they did not add them. And then on top of that they use ambiguous language about adding them.
If TiVo's object was to get me to spend more money to upgrade then TiVo does not value me as a customer. So then I will not value them as a company.
That's why they will get destroyed.


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## Erminatr (Nov 12, 2014)

Why the talk of accounting principles? ...and there is absolutely no ROI to debate here...becauses there is no investment. These are consumable goods, and they'll not ever appreciate in value. ...so let's consume already. Geez...how long do you guys research a can opener before finally turning loose of the $45?


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

Jed1 said:


> But the current reality is the apps are not on the Premiere so I can not realize the value of them.


Another current reality is that the app won't be available on the cable company DVR either, and you will have trashed two lifetime premieres with significant resale value.



Jed1 said:


> Right now I am suspicious of why the apps were not offered to Premiere owners since they never gave a reason why they did not add them. And then on top of that they use ambiguous language about adding them.


If they were trying to get you to upgrade, they would tell you the app is never going to be available on the Premiere. Tivo makes money off of the app, so they have a financial incentive to make it available.



Jed1 said:


> If TiVo's object was to get me to spend more money to upgrade then TiVo does not value me as a customer. So then I will not value them as a company.


The main purpose of adding the apps is to get you to spend more money. LOL!



Jed1 said:


> That's why they will get destroyed.


And lose the money you could make selling them. Another sound accounting principle.


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

Pretty obvious that he doesn't care about how stupid it is for him financially, at this point it's just spite.


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## Jed1 (Jun 18, 2013)

Maybe a little history will help you guys understand my anger.
I was always a Audio/Video enthusiast and when I started down the road to HD I went into this gung-ho. 

I got in very early but got burned on two RCA DLPS. First one failed inside of one year and I got the run around and the infamous "World Wide Search for Parts". My dealer managed to get them to replace the TV with a newer model but eventually that unit failed after two years (less than 4000 hours). RCA was already sold to the Chinese, TCL.
My losses totaled around $4000, which included the TV and a RCA HDD recorder that used a fire wire to record. The newer RCA lacked this port. I did eventually get the TV repaired but at a cost of $500. That repair lasted about 2000 hours. It still had its original lamp in it. I also had a RCA DVD recorder with HDMI fail and a RCA Home theater system fail in this time frame. Both lost their power supplies and there was no parts to repair them. The cost there was over $1000.

In the mean time I got in on the ground floor of the format war and of course I choose HD DVD. I had the RCA HD DVD player, Toshiba A2 and then the XA2, and finally the LG BH200 Super Blu player. I had at least $3000 invested in players and thousands more in discs. Of course we all know how this ended.
Also I bought a $1800 Pioneer receiver, but unknown to me it had issues playing DTS Master Audio. I suffered a so called DTS bomb and it blew out my to front speakers. Right before this issue I bought two Pioneer Kuros that cost $5100 each. In the case of the receiver, Pioneer blamed LG and LG blamed Pioneer. So I ended up buying a Onkyo HTiB just to try the LG and Master Audio and it played with no issues. Pioneer refused to make good on the receiver, even after buying the two TVs, so I threw it in the garbage.

But as this misery was going on LG decided to abandon the 6 month old $1000 BH200 and hang us owners out to dry. They did manage to fix some disc issues, but if you complained they always tried to tell you to buy the BH 300 and then the BH390. They tried to renege on the Profile 2 update claiming the player hardware would not support the update. Then they offered a $75 refund. But some owners decided to try a class action lawsuit and it was amazing how quickly LG back peddled. With in 2 days the update was available. The nonsense about the hardware was all BS.

Oh it is worth mentioning that the receiver that came with the HTiB was the SR606 which is prone to HDMI board failure. This is a problem that plagues Onkyo up until this year. Onkyo finally decided to reengineer the HDMI boards and replace them free of cost up until the year 2018 but they started with the model after the 6 series. Go figure.

At this point I gave up on the early adopter idea and decided to no longer buy the latest and greatest. Unfortunately I ended up buying the OPPO BDP 83 a month before the 93 series came out. OPPO did do some updates to the player but you had to wait until all the issues of the 93 were worked out.
Now there is an increasing number of movies that won't play and of course it is recommended to upgrade to the 103. 

The last device I bought is these two Premiere 4s. And of course the month after I buy these for over $1300 the Roamios come out.

As for recording HDTV, as I have mentioned I had a RCA HDD recorder. In 2007 I used WMC with extenders. I then moved to the Moxie and Mate in 2010. I sent this back to Amazon as soon as I found out that Arris bought Digeo. I then had a stint with the Sony DHG, but that ended with the shut down of TVGOS. And now I finally ended up with TiVo.

With the exception of the two Kuros and the OPPO, everything I bought in the past ten years was nothing but a headache. I have heard about every excuse under the sun that these companies can dish out. And at the end of the day it was all just BS.
I did have to repair my one Kuro this spring as the main assembly board failed. The part cost $883 and I had to do the work myself. Hopefully the TV will last another five years.

As you can see from what I endured in the past ten years and a monetary loss of around 20 thousand dollars, it does not take much to set me off.
The way I see it, I managed to live my first 47 years with out TiVo and if I live to 70 I can easily manage with out a TiVo for my last 21 years. 

As for spite, I can tell you after smoking a pack a day for 20 years, I quite smoking cold turkey because the Commonwealth of PA decided to balance their budget by raising the tax on cigarettes to a dollar a pack. That was back in 2002. I never smoked again and the state has raised the tax on cigarettes up to around $3/pack.


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## ej42137 (Feb 16, 2014)

Jeez, I guess it makes more sense why you're so touchy now. My sympathies.


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## Teeps (Aug 16, 2001)

Jed1 said:


> Maybe a little history will help you guys understand my anger.
> <SNIP>


WoW! Is all I can say... But, I would like to thank you and all the early adopters for your enthusiasm and suffering.

I learned of the perils of early adopting of any new technology back in the '80s.
And, to this day avoid purchasing the first of anything new... just say'n.

Happy Friday fellow TiVo folks!


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

The early adopter tax in action, case in point. But, as for the Tivo, someone has to be last when the new stuff comes out. Just dumb luck on that one.


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## plazman30 (Jan 23, 2005)

I'm guessing that the Premiere just can't handle the Amazon app. The Netflix app on the Premiere does give us the new UI now. But it's painfully slow. So slow, that I hop on over to the Roku 3 to watch my Netflix.

I'm hoping my pending Roamio upgrade will fix that for me.

Now if they only released Plex for TiVo...


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## UCLABB (May 29, 2012)

Jed1 said:


> Maybe a little history will help you guys understand my anger. snip


Well, I feel great now knowing that my $3400 expenditure for a new plasma years ago pales against what you have spent over the years.


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## NorthAlabama (Apr 19, 2012)

UCLABB said:


> Well, I feel great now knowing that my $3400 expenditure for a new plasma years ago pales against what you have spent over the years.


i remember the first plasma tv i saw in a showroom in '99, i think it had just been reduced from $30,000 to $22,000.


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## Jed1 (Jun 18, 2013)

With the Pioneer receiver, I ended up in arbitration with them. I spoke with a lady from their legal department, and for 40 minutes she threw every excuse under the sun that it was somehow my fault. I held my ground as I debunked every reason. At the end of the call she blurted out that Pioneer was going through realignment and ended the call there.
About 3 weeks later Pioneer officially announced they were exiting the TV business. I gave up and threw the receiver in the trash the following week as I was tired of the nonsense. All this was going on at the same time with the nonsense from LG over the BH 200.

I did receive some good news today as OPPO has convinced MediaTek to go back and see if they can do something to fix some of the disc issues that the BDP 83s are having. The problem they uncovered is the studios have not been following their own standards they set for encoding the Blu ray discs. OPPO actually has to see if they can loosen the standards for the MediaTek chip in the player.

It would be nice if TiVo follows through with the apps but I am not holding my breath. It would be nice if they do as I will not have to buy any new equipment. Still pulling for that all in one box.


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## wlexx (May 14, 2010)

Premiere two nights ago finally updated to 20.4.5 after re-adding it to the 'priority' list for the third time (first couple of times was when the link first went live).
The next day I noticed another pending reboot and restarted. Took almost 30 mins to apply this update.
Version is now 20.4.5c. 
Anyone know what the second update fixes?


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## CybrFyre (Mar 25, 2008)

Wonder if this is y my mini is C501'ing, now.


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## NorthAlabama (Apr 19, 2012)

tivo margret posted into the roamio 20.4.5 release notes thread today:



TiVoMargret said:


> We have begun the full rollout of 20.4.5c. All retail Roamio, Premiere, and Mini boxes should receive it by Thanksgiving.
> 
> The "c" version includes two additional bug fixes:
> 
> ...


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## ajwees41 (May 7, 2006)

NorthAlabama said:


> tivo margret posted into the roamio 20.4.5 release notes thread today:


since the premiere doesn't have the VUDU app why the need to update premieres?


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## NorthAlabama (Apr 19, 2012)

ajwees41 said:


> since the premiere doesn't have the VUDU app why the need to update premieres?


reported future release, 2015.


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## NJ Webel (Dec 8, 2004)

ajwees41 said:


> since the premiere doesn't have the VUDU app why the need to update premieres?


It was/is speculated that Premiere models were set to be 'end of lifed' with the Vudu update, and Tivo changed their minds in order to appease many vocal device owners.

As they made the decision late to include this update, it was/is further speculated that instead of blindly pushing it out and hoping for the best, they instead are using their beta testers to head off potential issues ahead of the wide release to the Premieres in 2015. Hence a mini update to fix issues with what the beta testers may have reported back.

But again, this is unconfirmed speculation.


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## ajwees41 (May 7, 2006)

NJ Webel said:


> It was/is speculated that Premiere models were set to be 'end of lifed' with the Vudu update, and Tivo changed their minds in order to appease many vocal device owners.
> 
> As they made the decision late to include this update, it was/is further speculated that instead of blindly pushing it out and hoping for the best, they instead are using their beta testers to head off potential issues ahead of the wide release to the Premieres in 2015. Hence a mini update to fix issues with what the beta testers may have reported back.
> 
> But again, this is unconfirmed speculation.


well since the 20.4.5 upgrade for premiere didn't even include vudu or amazon prime streaming still no need to push it to premieres.
I understand that, but if the premieres weren't supposed to get the vudu and amazon streaming apps until first half of 2015 why not wait and bundle this update with that instead of sending it out now in case they change their minds and end up not launching them for premiers?


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## Jed1 (Jun 18, 2013)

ajwees41 said:


> well since the 20.4.5 upgrade for premiere didn't even include vudu or amazon prime streaming still no need to push push it to premieres.
> I understand that, but if the premieres weren't supposed to get the vudu and amazon streaming apps until first half of 2015 why not wait and bundle this update with that instead of sending it out now in case they change their minds and end up not launching them for premiers?


The only realistic answer to this is the two apps are all ready on the Premieres, but are hidden. It would be insanely stupid to push a patch to fix a bug on an app that wasn't even on the platform.
That leaves the question as to why TiVo will not let us Premiere owners use the apps now. The only answer is they want to push Roamio and mini sales over the holiday.

I do not buy into the thought that it was a last moment change of heart to add these to the Premiere line. They had to get permission to put these apps on these platforms so they negotiated for both series at the same time.
It is possible since TiVo sells units at both Walmart and Amazon, that they agreed to hold back the apps on the Premieres until after the holidays.

Also I do not believe that there is different apps for each platform. If the apps are different, then the coding is different. You will not use the same patch to fix a bug if the platforms use different coding.

I think the series 5, the series 4, and the minis share the same software. The only possible exception would be for the SD menu system. But it is also possible that this is hidden on the series 5 and minis. This would make things really easy and cheaper for TiVo as it relates to their support for the cable operators.


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## XIBM (Mar 9, 2013)

I think it makes since to push c to Premieres so that only have only one code base to debug and support.


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

Most likely the bug causing VuDu to crash isn't in the VuDu app, but either in support code that the VuDu app, among others, uses, and/or that is a result of something not being correctly handled as a result of something the VuDu app has done or used. It doesn't have to be a code fix within the app code itself.


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## Jed1 (Jun 18, 2013)

I mentioned somewhere on this forum recently that my sister has been doing this type of work since the mid 1970s and she suspects that the Premiere, Roamio, and Mini use the same code base. TiVo just hides certain features for each device that would not be needed for that unit.
She agrees with me that the two apps are on the Premiere units but are hidden. The fact that they offered a patch for Vudu, and applied that fix to the Premiere, indicates that Vudu is on the Premieres.


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## ajwees41 (May 7, 2006)

Jed1 said:


> I mentioned somewhere on this forum recently that my sister has been doing this type of work since the mid 1970s and she suspects that the Premiere, Roamio, and Mini use the same code base. TiVo just hides certain features for each device that would not be needed for that unit.
> She agrees with me that the two apps are on the Premiere units but are hidden. The fact that they offered a patch for Vudu, and applied that fix to the Premiere, indicates that Vudu is on the Premieres.


can they still update it if hidden?


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## Jed1 (Jun 18, 2013)

ajwees41 said:


> can they still update it if hidden?


Yes as it is part of the software. Maybe some wayward TiVo employee will allow the apps to appear before TiVo wants them to appear.


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## nooneuknow (Feb 5, 2011)

ajwees41 said:


> can they still update it if hidden?


They can. Code doesn't care if it is, or isn't, displayed in the menu UI.

Before the official teaser announcements went out for the Roamio, about vudu and amazon prime, I had been in my Roamio logs, and saw the maintenance and monitoring log messages for a process called "vuduhost".

Upon reporting this find, I was schooled on how this is common practice. TiVo usually tries to do a better job of using a process name that doesn't expose it, though, in the event somebody peeks in the logs (something innocuous and inconspicuous).

So, essentially, TiVo is using us for testing, before they flip the switch to let the UI display the menu selection for launching the foreground app. Any always running background processes, will still report "health" monitoring, and the results of the maintenance routines for it.

I don't have a Premiere around to examine for such log events. Even if "vuduhost" is present on Premieres, it's no guarantee it will ever get turned on. If TiVo opts to not let Premiere users have it, they may shut down the background, monitoring, and maintenance processes for it, but the code itself will probably remain, dormant and invisible, even within the logs.

It's easier to use a unified codebase, and simply let the TiVo Service tell the code what processes to run, or not, than to remove code not deemed workable on an older platform. Even if this is done, there's nothing stopping TiVo from updating dormant code.


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## Jed1 (Jun 18, 2013)

nooneuknow said:


> They can. Code doesn't care if it is, or isn't, displayed in the menu UI.
> 
> Before the official teaser announcements went out for the Roamio, about vudu and amazon prime, I had been in my Roamio logs, and saw the maintenance and monitoring log messages for a process called "vuduhost".
> 
> ...


+1:up: Your explanation is a grand slam home run. The Haxe rewrite made all this possible.


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## nooneuknow (Feb 5, 2011)

Jed1 said:


> +1:up: Your explanation is a grand slam home run. The Haxe rewrite made all this possible.


High praise, given that I couldn't code my way into a wet paper bag, even if my life depended on it. 

ETA: Just because I can't code, doesn't mean I can't understand the concepts surrounding code (mostly thanks to those on TCF who do code, who schooled me on how it works).


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

Jed1 said:


> That leaves the question as to why TiVo will not let us Premiere owners use the apps now. The only answer is they want to push Roamio and mini sales over the holiday.


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## gigaguy (Aug 30, 2013)

I can see where jed is pissed, but I don't expect full support for older machines? Premieres are slow. I can see things Tivo did but overall I think they have kept the Premieres supported pretty well, even if only for cablecos and not buyers. Try not to adopt so early I guess if the costs bother you.

Luckily for my needs, the Sony DHGs were perfect, and when they were dropped and discounted 75% (to $250) I used them for almost a decade till TVGuide os died. Some I got off ebay for $75. Best DVR hardware I've ever used.

I went to used Tivo Premieres in early 2013. I was able to acquire a base Premiere and an XL4 for about $450 total, both lifetimed. (Tivo $99 lifetimed my craigslist Premiere I had had for 2 months when I activated a unused craigslist lifetimed XL4 I got at a steal for $225, (it's still under ext warr) 

As I do not use internet video with them (too slow), I am happy. I'm only posting cause I am contemplating moving to a Roamio and looking at the costs. I am balking, even tho the Roamio basic is $449 and I can get the Plus for about $650.. and sell a Premiere, we'll see.


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## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

wlexx said:


> Premiere two nights ago finally updated to 20.4.5 after re-adding it to the 'priority' list for the third time (first couple of times was when the link first went live).
> The next day I noticed another pending reboot and restarted. Took almost 30 mins to apply this update.
> Version is now 20.4.5c.
> Anyone know what the second update fixes?


That's interesting, because after a recent reboot of my Premiere, there was no update to the software version (still at 20.4.5 and no "c")...


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Bierboy said:


> That's interesting, because after a recent reboot of my Premiere, there was no update to the software version (still at 20.4.5 and no "c")...


That's strange. Both of mine were pending, I did a power cycle, and they came up with the "5c". I would ask Margret if it matters.


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## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

Mine now is "C"....


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

JoeKustra said:


> That's strange. Both of mine were pending, I did a power cycle, and they came up with the "5c". I would ask Margret if it matters.


Why did you do a power cycle?


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

lpwcomp said:


> Why did you do a power cycle?


I don't trust TiVo to wait until 2am. I record late night talk shows and I saw the Pending status, so at 11pm I forced the update to be applied. BTW, I also do a reboot on the 1st of every month. These are old boxes I bought used on eBay. I've never had a unscheduled reboot with this procedure. Also, I do a lot of transfers between boxes and was, at first, getting a reboot every few weeks. I learned.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

JoeKustra said:


> I don't trust TiVo to wait until 2am. I record late night talk shows and I saw the Pending status, so at 11pm I forced the update to be applied. BTW, I also do a reboot on the 1st of every month. These are old boxes I bought used on eBay. I've never had a unscheduled reboot with this procedure. Also, I do a lot of transfers between boxes and was, at first, getting a reboot every few weeks. I learned.


What I was asking was why you did a "power cycle". Sounds like what you actually did was a restart. A power cycle means that you actually removed power from the TiVo, usually by pulling the plug (snd plugging it back in of course after waiting a bit for the disk to spin down) There are times when that is the only way to "unfreeze" a TiVo.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

lpwcomp said:


> What I was asking was why you did a "power cycle". Sounds like what you actually did was a restart. A power cycle means that you actually removed power from the TiVo, usually by pulling the plug (snd plugging it back in of course after waiting a bit for the disk to spin down) There are times when that is the only way to "unfreeze" a TiVo.


Sorry I wasn't clearer. I pulled the plug. I forgot to mention I power cycle my TV every month also. Since everything is on a UPS, it's a simple process. For the Pending, I just did the TiVo (both). Since everything has reservations, my IP addresses don't change either even with DHCP enabled. Did I mention my mild case of OCD?


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## rjspring (Jul 16, 2008)

Not sure if anyone else has experienced this same upgrade experience.

I initially installed my premier about 3 weeks ago, was gifted to me by a family member and has been offline for quite a while. Not sure what software version it was on (I want to say 20.X.X) but I noticed a lot of screen tearing when watching sports (this is on a brand new 55" Vizio) but none when watching other shows. I initially thought that the problem was compression on the cable co's side (Comcast) as some channels were worse than others when watching sporting events.

The unit updated last week to 20.4.5 and all screen tearing is gone. The only other thing I've done is upgrade my cable modem from an old DOCSIS 2.0 to a DOCSIS 3.0 after getting harassed by the auto dialer comcast message on a daily basis.

All in all, upgrade went off without a hitch and the video quality seems to be much improved. Love my Tivos, can't imagine TV life without them.


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## jaydro (Oct 19, 2003)

NorthAlabama said:


> has anyone seen duplicate recordings?
> 
> i deleted the sunday night ep of "the good wife", then scheduled a manual recording ending 33 minutes late (football overrun), and ended up with two recordings - one with the modified stop time, and the regular sp recording i had deleted.
> 
> it also bumped another lower priority recording (tying up two tuners).


Sorry for the late reply, but I just got 20.4.5c last week, and yesterday was the first time I modified a recording in the TDL, this time a WL recording I added time to. Today it had reverted back to the WL recording settings--and also added a simultaneous recording on another channel, though I don't have it set to record duplicates. I deleted both and then just manually selected the program to record from the guide, with added time. :down:


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