# Tivo+Netflix=worst implementation ever



## lowepg (Sep 21, 2005)

Did ANYONE test this?

Forget that it seems to perform FAr worse than an xbox (huh?), but it has crashed my series3 about 4 times in 10 attempts. This last time- I had to reboot the tivo 5 times for it to get past "Almost there."

Also found it comical that a google search reveals a support link on tivo for "series3 freezing at Almost there" ,but now the page cant be found.

Terrible Tivo, absolutely terrible.

One more buggy item that has made me regret being an early adopter of the series3 hd.


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## drew00001 (Jan 13, 2007)

Huh? Works without issue on both my Tivos, one S3 and one HD.


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## lowepg (Sep 21, 2005)

drew00001 said:


> Huh? Works without issue on both my Tivos, one S3 and one HD.


whoops. must be fine then.

Oh wait....


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## bradleys (Oct 31, 2007)

Really odd - works great on both my HD and S3. 

Just spitballing... How is your internet connection? Do you think you could be dropping packets?


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## mikesown (Nov 15, 2005)

My main complaint with the Netflix app is the fact that it's hosted remotely(this is true of Amazon and most other external apps on the tivo). This is a horrible design choice in my opinion(Tivo, you should be ashamed of yourself!). Designing the app to run natively without a VM would make much more sense and would make the app a LOT faster, since internet requests would be minimized to running searches, getting queue data and displaying video - it wouldn't require an internet request for every button press.

And, as long as we're at it, on my THD(which runs in 480i over component in 4:3 mode) the menus on the external applications are distorted(such as "please wait").

I have a very good internet connection, but it still takes a good 1-2 seconds to register a button press when using Netflix.


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## kevinivey (Nov 8, 2002)

I do not have any delays ,and HD playback is good. My connection is 2 up and 10 down.


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## RoyK (Oct 22, 2004)

I currently have 2 HDs on the same wired network - both with V11 software. Both subscribed both to TiVo and Netflix. One works fine with Netflix, the other crashes to a gray screen *every time* I try to view something from my Netflix instant queue.


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## bru_man (Feb 20, 2002)

Netflix works great for me, Have you considered that you might have a bad Tivo? getting stuck at almost there and random crashing sounds like a bad hard disk or memory? 
You know how how electronics are they generally fail with in the first week or run for years.


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## gqkull (Oct 12, 2004)

I figured out one thing. You cannot watch movies at the same time on 2 systems. Bandwidth is there for one only. I am on Roadrunner turbo with like 15 MB down, and I still have issues with 2 systems trying to do shows at the same time...


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## Mindflux (Jan 16, 2008)

lowepg said:


> whoops. must be fine then.
> 
> Oh wait....


Works on my THD, no probs. So it's not just one person having good experiences.


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## magnus (Nov 12, 2004)

I've had a few lockups but I would not say it's the worst ever. You are a bit out of line with that. I'm sure that they tested but just missed the fact that some people have different internet connections that possibly can't handle the load.



lowepg said:


> Did ANYONE test this?
> 
> Forget that it seems to perform FAr worse than an xbox (huh?), but it has crashed my series3 about 4 times in 10 attempts. This last time- I had to reboot the tivo 5 times for it to get past "Almost there."
> 
> ...


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## shaun-ohio (Jun 21, 2003)

have no problems with mine on my series 3 hd


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## Mindflux (Jan 16, 2008)

magnus said:


> I've had a few lockups but I would not say it's the worst ever. You are a bit out of line with that. I'm sure that they tested but just missed the fact that some people have different internet connections that possibly can't handle the load.


The quality meter will and can change if your connection is shaky. I had one movie start at 10 bars (I think there's 11) and it paused for a moment and dropped to 8 bars to stream properly. They obviously thought of varying connectivity with this feature.


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## lowepg (Sep 21, 2005)

Mindflux said:


> Works on my THD, no probs. So it's not just one person having good experiences.


lol.... i wasnt inferring that either. But if you look around here - you will see a multitude of threads on netflix.

I have a 8mbps link, with pretty solid connections. 5 tivos on the network - 1 wired, 4 wireless.

But even if if my internet was flaky or slower speed- crashing to a point where a reboot is required is absolutely terrible design for a dropped net connection. I cant imagine anyone who would disagree?

Im also disappointed that my xbox360 seems to handle this netflix business much more smoothly. Tivo (as a purpose-built tv/video box) should be embarrassed....


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## Mindflux (Jan 16, 2008)

lowepg said:


> Im also disappointed that my xbox360 seems to handle this netflix business much more smoothly. Tivo (as a purpose-built tv/video box) should be embarrassed....


Sorry, your xbox is nothing more than a PC in a small shell. It's got horsepower (high end cpu) and much more memory (RAM). The fact that the TiVo uses a Broadcom CPU and relies pretty much solely on the tuner card gpu(or cpus) to display a solid picture with no stuttering gives reason to believe that there may be kinks to work out launching a *remote* java application off a Netflix server to be a bit shaky especially within the first few weeks of launch. Java, is very CPU intensive for whatever reason.. and the TiVo doesn't have much of one to begin with.


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## bluetex (Apr 24, 2005)

I'd say it's not the worst implementation ever. I will also say it isn't as good as the netflix : xbox360 implementation.


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## lowepg (Sep 21, 2005)

Mindflux said:


> Sorry, your xbox is nothing more than a PC in a small shell. It's got horsepower (high end cpu) and much more memory (RAM). The fact that the TiVo uses a Broadcom CPU and relies pretty much solely on the tuner card gpu(or cpus) to display a solid picture with no stuttering gives reason to believe that there may be kinks to work out launching a *remote* java application off a Netflix server to be a bit shaky especially within the first few weeks of launch. Java, is very CPU intensive for whatever reason.. and the TiVo doesn't have much of one to begin with.


sorry?

No need to apologize- I'll leave that to TiVo. 

Pointing out tiVo's weak hardware still doesnt excuse a shoddy design. Deciding to launch this remotely off the netflix site may have been a poor choice.

Tivo Fanboys- have at it, but I still stand behind criticizing my $800 tivo hd being put to shame by my $250 xbox ....for watching a tv show! Comical.


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## lowepg (Sep 21, 2005)

magnus said:


> I've had a few lockups but I would not say it's the worst ever. You are a bit out of line with that.


Let me explain why I think its THAT bad.

We had a storm knock out internet for a few hours the other day. As luck would have it- my kids were watching a streamed netflix movie.

The Tivo crashed and required a hard reset. However, since the tivo couldnt get onto the internet, it cannot complete the reboot when recovering from this netflix crash. Tv rendered useless by internet outage?

Network came back up, but I needed to recycle the wireless connection for the tivo.... So, tivo was unusable.... I evenutally figured this all out- but Tivo was ZERo help. For the "average joe" using tivo (or my wife and kids JUST trying to watch tv) this is a mess.

Granted this poor design is only exposed when a net connection drops- but its not like thats some incredibly rare possibility. Wasnt a net drop situation tested?

THAT is why I think its THAT bad. Im not even considering how much better the quality is across my xbox- just the absolutely terrible error recovery.


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## rocko (Oct 29, 2002)

lowepg said:


> sorry?
> 
> No need to apologize- I'll leave that to TiVo.
> 
> ...


Not to be an apologist here but if I have zippo problems with my S3 and THD and others have major problems with essentially the same boxes what's the difference that causes the problem? Networks - ISP, routers, etc.

Doesn't fix the problem but gives us a direction in which to look.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

some may simply be saying that "worst implementation ever" is overstating the issues. If no one was reporting good performance than that is one thing but I hav seen plenty of working great for me mixed in.

In testing any app like this there are numerous parts that will vary based on where the end use is and what they use. TiVo has a beta program you can sign up for so I would think they tested this - but can you get enough volunteers to cover all the areas and all the ways things are configured? Most likely not.

Also the business side most likely was pushing to have this out before Christmas shoppers made choices. Netflix may have been holding TiVo to some time frame as well.

In the history of software releases there have been numerous 1.0 versions that people look on with dismay. Routinely, most smart IT shops would never use the latests Microsoft OS until at least the first Service pack is out for it.

so I find this far from the "worst implementation ever" and after seeing different userids saying basically the same thing am starting to wonder where all this over the top hyperbole is in fact coming from.


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## thespacepope72 (Jan 25, 2005)

OP, you are wrong, TiVo + Rhapsody = Worst implementation ever.

Rhapsody has been on TiVo for over a year and it still only works right part of the time.


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## lowepg (Sep 21, 2005)

ZeoTiVo said:


> so I find this far from the "worst implementation ever" and after seeing different userids saying basically the same thing am starting to wonder where all this over the top hyperbole is in fact coming from.


I was referring to worst from Tivo.... Ive certainly lived through worse from other technology companies (pre-warp os/2, most windows versions that start with 3, etc).

Again, it earns my worst rating by offering a minor addon which can render the tivo unusable based on ones internet connection. If there's a more dumb rollout from tivo- let me know what it is....

Tivo has finally ackowledged this problem, so those trying to challenge whether its out there are wasting their breath... the simple fact that its worked fine for SOME SOFAR is not the correct test 

As an extreme example (always love beating old car analogies), there were plenty of people who's old 70's GM pickup trucks didnt explode from side collisions, but this didnt mean everything was ok! 

(Now the GM AND Tivo fanboys/apologists can band together in a shrill duet to defend this design flaw/bug)


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## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

sethjvm said:


> OP, you are wrong, TiVo + Rhapsody = Worst implementation ever.
> 
> Rhapsody has been on TiVo for over a year and it still only works right part of the time.


I was just about to post that.  Netflix is rock solid compared to the sorry excuse for an application that is the current Rhapsody software.

Also, those who complain about the app being hosted remotely, this is NOT the problem in and of itself. It's no different than, say, a web browser, which also executes the majority of code remotely when using a website.


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## TolloNodre (Nov 3, 2007)

lowepg said:


> lol.... i wasnt inferring that either. But if you look around here - you will see a multitude of threads on netflix.


If you were already aware of the 'multitude' of threads about this issue, why did you waste everyone's time making yet another one?


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## web1b (Oct 3, 2006)

lowepg said:


> Did ANYONE test this?
> 
> Forget that it seems to perform FAr worse than an xbox (huh?), but it has crashed my series3 about 4 times in 10 attempts. This last time- I had to reboot the tivo 5 times for it to get past "Almost there."
> 
> ...


It is bad.

I have had Netflix on the system for a couple weeks and I tested it out for a few minutes by putting movies in the instant queue and playing a few minutes of each movie and it seemed fine.

I finally got around to sit down and watch an entire movie tonight and the system is unusable for watching Netflix movies. About 1 hour into the movie, the entire system froze and the remote could not do anything.
I had to cut power to the Tivo by turning off the surge protector so the Tivo could reset.
This has never happened with any other aspect of the Tivo. Amazon Unbox movies worked fine. Only Netflix service has this horrendous problem.
I have a fast cable modem internet connection ranging from 8Mb to 19Mb speeds.
The movie does not stutter or drop frames from a slow connection. The entire Tivo locked up completely.


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## lowepg (Sep 21, 2005)

TolloNodre said:


> If you were already aware of the 'multitude' of threads about this issue, why did you waste everyone's time making yet another one?


flash! new feature in the forums- you dont have to read OR respond to a thread that doesnt interest you!

unconfused?


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## Fab2004 (Feb 22, 2007)

I have a Series 3 and I use Netflix daily to play shows and movies for kids.
I have seen problems, but IMO they are not with Tivo's implementation, but rather with the encoding of some shows. I.E. certain shows/movies work perfectly (and they do 100&#37; of the times) other ones don't.
I have comcast cable, only 8M down -- I think tivo's implementation is perfectly fine.


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## web1b (Oct 3, 2006)

Fab2004 said:


> I have a Series 3 and I use Netflix daily to play shows and movies for kids.
> I have seen problems, but IMO they are not with Tivo's implementation, but rather with the encoding of some shows. I.E. certain shows/movies work perfectly (and they do 100% of the times) other ones don't.
> I have comcast cable, only 8M down -- I think tivo's implementation is perfectly fine.


I saw one person post here that his Tivo occasionally locked up playing Netflix movies, but he thought that was no big deal.
It is a big deal especially when a Tivo takes so long to restart.
Completely freezing and locking up to the point of need to unplug the unit to restart it when all you are doing is watching the programming as designed is not perfectly fine.

I don't know what you mean by "only" 8M down when that is well above average broadband speed and much more than fast enough to meet the requirements where this service is supposed to work properly. People on faster connections like Verizon FIOS and other fiber services are a very small fraction of the people online.


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## Brainiac 5 (Aug 25, 2003)

Fab2004 said:


> I have comcast cable, only 8M down -- I think tivo's implementation is perfectly fine.


Well, I love my TiVo but I have to admit that we know it's not perfectly fine. Apparently losing your network connection while viewing Netflix can cause the TiVo to lock up. That's not a problem with the encoding of the program; it's a problem with the TiVo software. And I agree with web1b, that's a big deal - what if you're recoding something? You're going to miss part of it when you reboot.


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## pmrowley (Apr 4, 2002)

Personally, I would agree with the OP. Any piece of software that forces me to have to hard reset my Tivo box after it glitches out, because the entire system has frozen solid, has no place on a box that is supposed to be running 24x7.

I find NetFlix on Tivo completely useless right now, because the ONLY time we will risk watching a NetFlix stream is when we know FOR SURE that Tivo isn't about to start recording, isn't in the middle of recording something, or isn't going to be recording anything in the next several hours, just in case NetFlix glitches out and we have to hard-reset the box a couple of times to get it running again. Of course, that means we're basically never in a safe window to watch NetFlix.

My S3 has been rock-solid since I bought it 2 years ago. Zero issues other than a forced divorced external drive due to a flaky external power supply. I've upgraded it to 2 TB, and it's wired to a network switch with plenty of internet bandwidth to spare. Since NetFlix hit this box, I've had to unplug it more times in 2 weeks than I had in the entire time I've owned the unit.

That's super that other people haven't experienced issues yet, like a hard-lock that interrupts a recording that was only showing one time all season, or one that the resultant power-cycle ends up killing one of the drives. But from the evidence on the forums, it might only be a matter of time until NetFlix kills your machine too...


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## sinanju (Jan 3, 2005)

TolloNodre said:


> If you were already aware of the 'multitude' of threads about this issue, why did you waste everyone's time making yet another one?


Isn't it obvious? The other threads had subjects that were insufficiently hyperbolic.


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## berkshires (Feb 22, 2007)

For those having problems, be patient. They certainly will get fixed over the next 3-6 months. There might even be a patch sooner for a more severe problem if they can find it sooner.

When Netflix does start working well for you, you will find it a wonderful addition - and one that a year ago we had little hope would ever come to TiVo.

Once working solidly, Netflix on TiVo will be a game changing service for the industry.


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## lowepg (Sep 21, 2005)

Fab2004 said:


> I have seen problems, but IMO they are not with Tivo's implementation, but rather with the encoding of some shows.


Ahhhh, if that were the only problem.

The real problem lies in the fact that an internet interuption can hang the tivo requiring a power cycle (or four).

Im thrilled that some of the rose-colored commentary has come (most likely) from folks who's connection has not happened to blink during playback..... but guess what- it'll happen eventually. Hope your favorite episode of Surreal Life isnt recording at the time....


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## berkshires (Feb 22, 2007)

lowepg said:


> Ahhhh, if that were the only problem.


I would imagine some of the problems are related to TiVo's handling of video streams which is fairly new software on the units, and perhaps even playback of MP4 based content which also hasn't been around that long.


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## Brainiac 5 (Aug 25, 2003)

berkshires said:


> I would imagine some of the problems are related to TiVo's handling of video streams which is fairly new software on the units, and perhaps even playback of MP4 based content which also hasn't been around that long.


Some the problems, yes. But the problem with the TiVo crashing if there's a network interruption is a pretty serious one that isn't.


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## Resist (Dec 21, 2003)

bluetex said:


> I'd say it's not the worst implementation ever. I will also say it isn't as good as the netflix : xbox360 implementation.


I know, wonder why that is.


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## diskus (Sep 22, 2004)

Ive watched a couple movies and shows now and the netflix app works well on my Tivo some out of synch voices but if I do a skip back it synches up.

My big complaint is selection of instant watchable material, Im hoping they will work on that quickly or Im out

Specifically I would expect a title available for download on Amazon to be available for instant que on Netflix. But sadly its far short of that, I wonder if its just an issue of cost to tivo on newer titles either way its poor at this point


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## TolloNodre (Nov 3, 2007)

sinanju said:


> Isn't it obvious? The other threads had subjects that were insufficiently hyperbolic.


LOL - and if it's one thing TiVo owners are good at, it's self-righteous indignation!


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

Fab2004 said:


> I have a Series 3 and I use Netflix daily to play shows and movies for kids.
> I have seen problems, but IMO they are not with Tivo's implementation, but rather with the encoding of some shows. I.E. certain shows/movies work perfectly (and they do 100% of the times) other ones don't.
> I have comcast cable, only 8M down -- I think tivo's implementation is perfectly fine.


ETA - exp,anation on crash from TiVoStephen


TiVoStephen said:


> * Issues regarding freezes and reboots
> 
> If you lose network connectivity (for example, if your router is unplugged or your ISP has a hiccup or the cat chews through the Ethernet cable) while watching a Netflix video, you may experience a rare issue with your DVR becoming completely unresponsive to the remote.
> 
> ...


Is this bad? Of course! Testing was most likely *not* done with *every* single configuration of broadband out there in every part of the country. That is what users are doing though and for some it is borking up into a lock state and if that lock hits just right then it looks like the bork makes the reboot problematic.

So TiVo and Netflix have a gremlin to chase down and figure out how to stop at Netflix end and in TiVo code. The Xbox probably use a version of the more mature Microsoft PC player code. Not sure what the Roku is using but it is a one trick pony of only doing the streaming. The TiVo of course still has its 2 real time streams to record at all times and someone might fire up an MRV or TiVo to PC download at the same time. So yes this version 1 or 2 of streaming for TiVo and I think the changes somehow effected Rhapsody at the same time. TiVo typically has these problems with 3rd party deals that rush them on a deadline external to the software development cycle and the final call to release is pressured by business influence instead of by testing flagging it as ready.

this is no apology for TiVo, I am sure they would like to have put out an error free app and not had to deal with all this hassle over Christmas break. However they have problems that are being tracked down and will over time get things straightened out. Rhapsody had worked great for me until the Netflix traffic slammed their server adn they may well have updated Rhapsody on the back end along with Netflix changes.

so sure be upset it does not work. If the create a S3 that wont boot up, then get on the phone and hold them to fix it. First line CSRs are not your answer there, firm and polite until you get to the right person is the wya to get it fixed. But all in all this is the life of a 3rd party standalone DVR where one company does not maintain every aspect of the system.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

diskus said:


> Specifically I would expect a title available for download on Amazon to be available for instant que on Netflix. But sadly its far short of that, I wonder if its just an issue of cost to tivo on newer titles either way its poor at this point


the content comes from Netflix
the download or DVD license is distinct from the streaming license. Cost to Netflix may be an issue but I suspect it is more one of the content owners not jumping at deals but trying to figure out how to do it themselves an cut out the middleman.

TiVo has no say nor does it pay directly for any content. TiVo probably gets a slice based on new Netflix subs attributed to TiVo or else just did a pay for R$D deal with Netflix and TiVo gets a marketable feature.


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## web1b (Oct 3, 2006)

ZeoTiVo said:


> ETA - exp,anation on crash from TiVoStephen
> 
> Is this bad? Of course! Testing was most likely *not* done with *every* single configuration of broadband out there in every part of the country.


That's really no excuse. That's what beta testing is for. It is not as if this only happens with people who use very obscure ISPs and off-brand routers that might have been missed even in a beta test. 
They obviously did not do a wide enough beta test and now regular customers are unwitting beta testers who are having their Tivos lock up while they view Netflix movies


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## magnus (Nov 12, 2004)

You don't want to be 'unwitting beta tester', then just don't use it.



web1b said:


> That's really no excuse. That's what beta testing is for. It is not as if this only happens with people who use very obscure ISPs and off-brand routers that might have been missed even in a beta test.
> They obviously did not do a wide enough beta test and now regular customers are unwitting beta testers who are having their Tivos lock up while they view Netflix movies


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## Adam1115 (Dec 15, 2003)

drew00001 said:


> Huh? Works without issue on both my Tivos, one S3 and one HD.


+1


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## web1b (Oct 3, 2006)

magnus said:


> You don't want to be 'unwitting beta tester', then just don't use it.


The whole blame the customer mentality of "if you don't like it, shut up and just don't use it" or "they didn't test your backwoods ISP and Frankenstein network, so it isn't their fault" is really annoying.
They should have just labeled the release as beta from the start and people would then have reason to have different expectations. If it worked without problems, great. If it locked up your system, then you submit feedback or stop using it and wait for the next update and you wouldn't have any reason to be upset since you know it's just beta testing.


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## RoyK (Oct 22, 2004)

Backwoods ISP? Just try using the highly touted Netflix on a new TiVoHD before it realizes that you set Transfers allowed (or didn't set it) on the TiVo website. You know - you bought your TiVo and want to try out one of the features you bought it for and that is so hightly touted on TiVo's website.Crashes to a locked gray screen EVERY TIME. Reboot required - with no hint of why. 

YouTube downloads at least doesn't crash and it gives you a hint at what the problem might be.
It took two days (with many many TiVo service connections on each day) before it realized that Transfers were allowed on my new one.
Wanna tell me it was tested???? If it wasn't - shame on TiVo. If it was tested and released in its present state SHAME ON TiVo!!!


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## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

Adam1115 said:


> +1


Same here, except for the first day, it has worked fine on my Series 3. Though there were some encoding issues on a few titles, but that wasn't TiVos fault (there were user comments on Netflix's site mentioning this from before TiVo launched this app).

But I agree that maybe they should have just called it a "public Beta" and warned before using... obviously a lot of users have unacceptable problems.


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## eric_n_dfw (Jul 15, 2003)

I've been playing with the NetFlix Tivo integration since the day it went public and I've not seen too many problems. The worst I've seen is that it has drop back to live TV unexpectedly a couple times, (I'm guessing a network issue) but have never seen a lock up.

The first day or two after they announced the service, it failed to show me my queue, but it hasn't done so since then. (Guessing their servers were being pummeled with all of the Tivo HD/S3 users trying it out those first few days)

FWIW: I have a 6 month old, unmodified Tivo HD with a wired (not using WiFi) UVerse DSL 6/1 connection and only OTA tuners in use (no cable cards).

PS: We use it a lot, watching a movie every other night on average and little kids stuff multiple times daily.


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## kjmcdonald (Sep 8, 2003)

lowepg said:


> I have a 8mbps link, with pretty solid connections. 5 tivos on the network - 1 wired, 4 wireless.


4+ devices on even a wireless G network won't necessarily be able to give a significant portion of that 8Mbps to even one Tivo. A G wireless network is supposed to be up to 54Mbps under great conditions, and *1* device. 4 or more devices is going to lower that quite a bit, even if all the devices aren't using it all the time. Reception issues only make this worse.

Were the problems you've seen on the wireless or wired Tivo?



> But even if if my internet was flaky or slower speed- crashing to a point where a reboot is required is absolutely terrible design for a dropped net connection. I cant imagine anyone who would disagree?


I won't disagree. Software is rarely bug free, but bugs that cause a full blown crash and reboot should be very few and far between. That said, these symptoms can also be caused by marginal or failing hardware. High network activity can increase the power consumption by the network chip, the bus controller, and even the CPU and memory (or all of these at once) and a PS that is on it's way out may not be able handle the load. As the power it can supply dips, eventually the machine will reboot if it gets low enough.

That's a type of problem that software can't handle, and no amount of QA testing can find beforehand.

-Kyle


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## yunlin12 (Mar 15, 2003)

My personal experience with Netflix has been great, streamed half season of a TV show and a couple of movies in HD, most everything went smoothly, only one minor annoyance is when I do skip back, or rewind, and play again, it would jump some frames, but if I just pause it a couple of seconds, and start playing again it works fine. This is by no mean perfect, but I have been lucky and not be locked up once. I have >6Mbps down and wired connection to my Tivo.

That being said, the design for Tivo/Netflix streaming should take into account the variability in people's network speed and reliability, as well as the quality of the MPEG stream. I hear that XBox 360's implementation is a buffer based one, so if network drops packets, XBox 360 would just pause and buffer. Tivo's implementation is to not pause, but go with reduced quality when network speed is down. I wonder what happens if the network is completely cut. It may be a more complex implementation to get right, but network outage should probably have been one of the top "what can go wrongs" that should have been designed and tested thoroughly, but it doesn't appear to be the case for now.

One more thought on these convergence devices, where one box does everything, is that somewhere down the line someone in the accounting and marketing are going to say "lets cut cost and development cycle and release it, there are so many features on the box to lock in our customers, what's one glitch in one minor feature?" I just hope Tivo can get this one perfect eventually.


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## yunlin12 (Mar 15, 2003)

kjmcdonald said:


> That said, these symptoms can also be caused by marginal or failing hardware. High network activity can increase the power consumption by the network chip, the bus controller, and even the CPU and memory (or all of these at once) and a PS that is on it's way out may not be able handle the load. As the power it can supply dips, eventually the machine will reboot if it gets low enough.
> 
> That's a type of problem that software can't handle, and no amount of QA testing can find beforehand.
> 
> -Kyle


I hope that Tivo has at least tested the things you just mentioned off the top of your head. It's impossible to catch everything, but it's not a completely new thing. Testing computer HW (which is what Tivo basically is) under real world stress and marginality is something that a lot of people who's built a computer from ground up understand.

The relevant stat here is how many people are actually having issues, there is no way to tell besides seeing quite a few people on here, but then again people with problems tent to post more. I wish Tivo can be better than the rest, but in the day and age where companies like Blackberry and Apple would release a new phone with buggy firmware, and in BB Storm's case, leading to 40-50% return rate, and NVidia can release whole lines of unreliable graphics cards, and never feel the burden to tell consumers, or even HP or Dell, I don't have much hope that Tivo will be different.


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## bizzy (Jan 20, 2004)

I've probably watched 4 or 5 programs off Netflix now, and suffered a hard hang once, on my second try. That was slightly disappointing, but I've come to expect Tivo's software to generally suck.

What was more disappointing for me was discovering (after signing up for Netflix) that the selection available for viewing on my Tivo is dismal. Just about every movie my wife asked about was not available- leaving me to look like a dope wasting $10 a month for the ability to watch the complete catalog of "Earnest goes to (place)" films.

What is really the saddest aspect of this Netflix deal, which I just discovered in this thread, is that Tivo has introduced a dependency on network connectivity to _simply boot_. That really is just pathetic. Way to go Tivo, you are at least consistent in your shameless ability to release code that never should have gotten to QA.


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## szurlo (Jul 11, 2002)

I never got through program 1 on NetFlix. I don't know if I would have had hangs etc like others here because I didn't let it play that long. Once I heard the bizarre chipmunk vibrato audio that borks all device audio until you play a non Netflix video (live TV, recording etc), I just bailed. I hear this can be "fixed" by going to composite cables, but getting my plasma off the wall to get to the jacks is a 2 man job. Plus I dont feel like I should have to do that. If it can play live TV correctly over HDMI, it should play NetFlix correctly over HDMI. And I made this TivoHD purchase decision based partly on the Netflix feature. The WAF on this purchase is steadily declining....


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## magnus (Nov 12, 2004)

Blah blah blah. Lighten up Francis. I don't think it's right to expect that things go perfect all the time. It's not like we're talking about heart surgery or something, it's only TV.



web1b said:


> The whole blame the customer mentality of "if you don't like it, shut up and just don't use it" or "they didn't test your backwoods ISP and Frankenstein network, so it isn't their fault" is really annoying.
> They should have just labeled the release as beta from the start and people would then have reason to have different expectations. If it worked without problems, great. If it locked up your system, then you submit feedback or stop using it and wait for the next update and you wouldn't have any reason to be upset since you know it's just beta testing.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

lowepg said:


> Network came back up, but I needed to recycle the wireless connection for the tivo.... So, tivo was unusable....


Hang on. Is your X-box also wireless?


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## pmrowley (Apr 4, 2002)

magnus said:


> Blah blah blah. Lighten up Francis. I don't think it's right to expect that things go perfect all the time. It's not like we're talking about heart surgery or something, it's only TV.


When you've spent several grand on your entertainment system, it ceases to be "only TV." When an add-on piece of software locks up the expensive device that is supposed to be functioning 24x7, which then bricks itself when it has to be unplugged and restarted, it is not a minor inconvenience.

To expect that interrupting the MPEG stream won't cause a $1400 device (original S3 with 2 upgraded hard drives at $250 a pop) to freeze and possibly self-destruct is not "expecting that things go perfect(ly) all the time."


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

kjmcdonald said:


> 4+ devices on even a wireless G network won't necessarily be able to give a significant portion of that 8Mbps to even one Tivo. A G wireless network is supposed to be up to 54Mbps under great conditions


Actually, not. It's true the layer 1 bit rate can under ideal conditions be as high as 54 Mbps, but wireless networking has a huge amount of layer 1 overhead. Don't forget, it's also essentially half duplex. Getting a single TCP connection of 25 Mbps over 802.1g wireless is doing pretty good. Getting a 30 Mbps UDP stream running reliably is also doing quite well. Even running as low bandwidth an application as wireless audio streaming over a network with nodes only 20 feet apart, I still often got drop-outs and aborts when using a wireless music player.



kjmcdonald said:


> Were the problems you've seen on the wireless or wired Tivo?


A pertinent question. No matter what the symptopms, whenever a wireless network is involved, I'm reticent to move on with troubleshooting until the wireless element has been eliminated.



kjmcdonald said:


> I won't disagree. Software is rarely bug free, but bugs that cause a full blown crash and reboot should be very few and far between.


Note that, at least according to the official statement, it is rare.


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## magnus (Nov 12, 2004)

Maybe then If a person is that worried about it... they should wait until it's working better then, eh???

It's easily repaired and is really not that big a deal and again... if it is then don't use it... simple as that.



pmrowley said:


> When you've spent several grand on your entertainment system, it ceases to be "only TV." When an add-on piece of software locks up the expensive device that is supposed to be functioning 24x7, which then bricks itself when it has to be unplugged and restarted, it is not a minor inconvenience.
> 
> To expect that interrupting the MPEG stream won't cause a $1400 device (original S3 with 2 upgraded hard drives at $250 a pop) to freeze and possibly self-destruct is not "expecting that things go perfect(ly) all the time."


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

pmrowley said:


> When you've spent several grand on your entertainment system, it ceases to be "only TV."


No, it doesn't. You will not suffer any significant impact to your long term health and well-being - nor will your friends and family - if your entire entertainment system were permanently disabled ten seconds from now. I've spent well over $50,000 on my entertainment system, and aside from its partial use in my home office and my use of it to check weather and traffic conditions, it is still "only TV."

Nor has the level of my expenditure gauranteed the availability of my entertainment system. Both my video server and its backup system had massive failures over the last 2 weeks (and they contain vital tax and financial information, critical source code, and irreplaceable personal and business data), requiring endless hours of troubleshooting and repair on my part. I'm still working on recovering some of the content, although nothing critical any longer. It happens.



pmrowley said:


> When an add-on piece of software locks up the expensive device


While not exactly inexpensive, a TiVo is not excessively expensive. I've had to deal with far more exasperating (and expensive) failures on devices exceeding $5 million in purchase price.



pmrowley said:


> that is supposed to be functioning 24x7, which then bricks itself when it has to be unplugged and restarted, it is not a minor inconvenience.


Oh, boy. In the grand scheme of things, it definitely is. If this were a heart pacemaker or an elevator about which you were speaking then your level of exasperation would be valid and your statements would represent something other than hyperbole. As it is, you are having a temper tantrum over a very minor issue whose temporary resolution is at worst a momentary annoyance.

Oh, and BTW, a device whose failure mode only requires rebooting is not "bricked". A "bricked" device is one which cannot be made operational again. Even in it's loosest connotation, a device which has been "bricked" cannot be recovered simply by rebooting. At a minimum, such a device would require professional level debugging or repair. In this case, the device simply locked up, as many Windows workstations do daily.



pmrowley said:


> To expect that interrupting the MPEG stream won't cause a $1400 device (original S3 with 2 upgraded hard drives at $250 a pop)


That you were an early adopter means you obtained a value from being an early adopter and were willing to spend the additional money for that privilege. It is neither what TiVo (or its retailers) charges for its DVRs, what people generally pay for the device, nor what your device is worth at this time. You have already received the benefits of being an early adopter and are no longer due any additional benefits or consideration for those expenditures. I also find it unlikely TiVo sold you the hard drives. Finally, those hard drives are not only worth less than $130 today, they are also not in and of themselves impacted by this issue. They continue to work flawlessly (or not) irrespective of any issues related to TiVo, their software, or that of their partners.



pmrowley said:


> to freeze and possibly self-destruct is not "expecting that things go perfect(ly) all the time."


True, but your level of invective suggests you are likely to react in the same way no matter how small the aberration, and the level of hyperbole in your posts would seek to elevate the importance of the issue far, far beyond its genuine impact. I would be positively ecstatic if every day I had no issue more problematic than this one. Heck, I'm happy if any day only has nothing more than a few such issues.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

Over the last 3 days we have been going through a marathon of Tivo/Netflix streaming using my S3s and shockingly I have not had a single issue to complain about. No spontaneous re-buffering, no network glitches, no Tivo freezes, no audio problems, not even audio/video sync issues that I have noticed. Titles have mostly been 10/11 bars or HD and quality while mostly not as good as DVDs or HD broadcast was very reasonable viewing on my 47" LCD.
So while this in no way excuses Tivo for releasing this apparently prematurely, the list of issues being discussed here certainly don't apply to everyone.

This feature has been by far the most exciting to me since MRV/TTG was first enabled for S3s and while I won't go as far as highly recommending it to others based on serious issues being posted here, I will continue to use it extensively.


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## pmrowley (Apr 4, 2002)

lrhorer said:


> No, it doesn't. You will not suffer any significant impact to your long term health and well-being - nor will your friends and family - if your entire entertainment system were permanently disabled ten seconds from now. I've spent well over $50,000 on my entertainment system, and aside from its partial use in my home office and my use of it to check weather and traffic conditions, it is still "only TV."
> 
> Nor has the level of my expenditure gauranteed the availability of my entertainment system. Both my video server and its backup system had massive failures over the last 2 weeks (and they contain vital tax and financial information, critical source code, and irreplaceable personal and business data), requiring endless hours of troubleshooting and repair on my part. I'm still working on recovering some of the content, although nothing critical any longer. It happens.
> 
> ...


I am flabbergasted at the extent that people are bending over backward to defend Tivo's obviously buggy software that has, in spite of your fanboi defense, has BRICKED people's units (Bricked=nonfunctional, had to send back because it failed to reboot after a freeze. Go back and look over the forums for how many peoples' units have failed to reboot that one particular time. Personally, I cringe whenever my unit has to reboot, because this one time might just be the one that it doesn't recover from.)

When the netflix software works, it works. I've watched two movies with it, and I had to reboot afterwards both times. When it doesn't, people run the risk of having their expensive hardware damaged beyond repair. How in the world can anyone think this is okay? Regardless of the original purchase price of the unit? As for being an early adopter, if Tivo is going to, as a part of the contract that we entered into and that I pay for on a monthly basis, release software that changes the behavior of the unit, I should be certain that it has been tested to the point that it's not going to damage it.

My system has worked basically flawlessly for the two years I have had the unit. Yes, I'm an early adopter of the S3, but since I'm an early adopter, that somehow makes it okay that Tivo is issuing faulty software that can permanently damage the unit? What part of a monthly contract don't you understand?

For the record, I'm not the original poster, nor am I having a temper tantrum regarding this feature. I'm not using it because I don't feel it's worth the risk to either lose recordings, or brick my unit. This Tivo has resulted in marital bliss, which I would call "more than TV." But to call someone else's complaint unfounded because an addition runs the risk of damaging their unit is a bit harsh, wouldn't you say? When exactly did we start accepting shoddy worksmanship in anything we buy or use? I have Craftsman tools that are 25 years old. If I broke one tomorrow on a frozen bolt, Craftsman would bend over backwards, apologizing all the way, to get me a replacement. Is it really so unreasonable to expect that a new feature was tested sufficiently that it wouldn't have an adverse effect to a device that has been humming along for 2 years without issue? Wow, we've really become the industry's *****es, haven't we?


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## yunlin12 (Mar 15, 2003)

pmrowley said:


> When exactly did we start accepting shoddy worksmanship in anything we buy or use?


Probably when the typical expected lifetime of consumer electronics went from 10-15 years to 3-5 years. Everyone no longer has years to design and test something, but most likely ~ 1 year only. If you take too long the market has changed and moved on, and what you are working on is obsolete. Look at the Moxi DVR. Or the Comcast Tivo. If Comcast and Tivo really wanted to wait for newer boxes that are up to running Tivo, we'd still be complaining why they haven't released it 2 years after announcing it.

Worse yet, after you releasing something in a hurry to catch the market and placate your die hard fans, you realize 1 year later that there are new stuff that you want to do, do you start from scratch and make a new box, or do you try to shoe horn new stuff into it, and eventually crippling it?

Maybe Tivo should just take a page from Google and call this a beta. It's not like they are charging people extra to get this.



> I have Craftsman tools that are 25 years old.


I'm glad your Craftsman came with firmwares that worked perfectly


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## PaJo (Dec 17, 2001)

Netflix has been a great bargain for us, our average cost is about $.80 a dvd and when we got the HD Tivo for $208 a few days ago the Netflix bargain became even more pronounced. We did have one Bret Maverick TV show without sound, and a couple times we had pixilation and even color distortion. However this also happened with Comcast "On Demand" shows so I tend to blame Comcast more than the Tivo or Netflix. It's not perfect but probably as good as Comcast "On Demand" as far as quality and the Netflix selection is far better. I keep a big queue so we can later browse for something to watch. As I posted previously, Rhapsody was worthless for us - when it first came out we signed up for several months and it was never dependable, but that was with a S2DT, maybe the HD DVR will be better.


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## TiVo Steve (Nov 8, 2005)

yunlin12 said:


> Maybe Tivo should just take a page from Google and call this a beta. It's not


When I called TiVo (for the second time), the CSR called ME a beta-tester!


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## magnus (Nov 12, 2004)

I'm flabbergasted by the extent that you are going to complain about something that you are no longer using.

If you feel that using Netflix is causing undo risk for you then keep doing what you are doing... just don't use it. This solves your issue, you won't have to worry about about a supposed 'bricked box'. However, you do realize that the box is not bricked in the situation? At worse, the Tivo software might have got corrupted and prevented a reboot. Also, if you take TivoStephen's word then it has to do with a network issue and you need to make sure that your network is up when you try to reboot.

At the very worst, you could re-image your box and that would not require you to send it to Tivo at all. Many people may have sent theirs back to Tivo but in my opinion that's not the best option.

Shoddy worksmanship???? So, you really think that Tivo intentionally released something that would detract from the user experience like this??? Come on, you've got to be kidding.



pmrowley said:


> I am flabbergasted at the extent that people are bending over backward to defend Tivo's obviously buggy software that has, in spite of your fanboi defense, has BRICKED people's units (Bricked=nonfunctional, had to send back because it failed to reboot after a freeze. Go back and look over the forums for how many peoples' units have failed to reboot that one particular time. Personally, I cringe whenever my unit has to reboot, because this one time might just be the one that it doesn't recover from.)
> 
> When the netflix software works, it works. I've watched two movies with it, and I had to reboot afterwards both times. When it doesn't, people run the risk of having their expensive hardware damaged beyond repair. How in the world can anyone think this is okay? Regardless of the original purchase price of the unit? As for being an early adopter, if Tivo is going to, as a part of the contract that we entered into and that I pay for on a monthly basis, release software that changes the behavior of the unit, I should be certain that it has been tested to the point that it's not going to damage it.
> 
> ...


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## RoyK (Oct 22, 2004)

magnus said:


> I'm flabbergasted by the extent that you are going to complain about something that you are no longer using.
> 
> .......
> At the very worst, you could re-image your box and that would not require you to send it to Tivo at all. Many people may have sent theirs back to Tivo but in my opinion that's not the best option.


Give me a break. A TiVo DVR is marketed to Joe Consumer. You really expect he/she is going to/ is capable of re-imaging a hard drive? You have to be kidding.



magnus said:


> Shoddy worksmanship???? So, you really think that Tivo intentionally released something that would detract from the user experience like this??? Come on, you've got to be kidding.


No. I think they were just plain sloppy to release and advertise something utterly dependent on internet availability which crashes the machine simply due to a network/internet glitch.


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## mikeylikesit33 (Dec 18, 2004)

Umm... is it just me or is there absolutely nothing available from Netflix via Tivo that is worth watching?

Old movies I've seen 10 times, nothing new at all, small selection at that... 

I signed up, looked around and cancelled the Netflix trial in about 10 minutes.

I couldn't find even one thing to watch on a boring day.

Now, if they load up their entire library, I might try it again. Until then, please don't bother us with less content than we can get at Hulu.com

Thank you for listening...


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## magnus (Nov 12, 2004)

I did not say that Joe consumer should. I said that if you aren't capable of doing that then you should just not use Netflix until it's more stable.

I'm sure that the Tivo CSRs are now given the information that TivoStephen has shared and that should prevent anyone from having to do a worse case scenario. You guys really need to lighten up, it's not the end of the world, it's only TV.

Oh, and BTW the initial issues that I had (which were the same as the ones listed in this thread) are no longer there. So, maybe they have already fixed it.... who knows. I've not had a problem with this in the past few weeks.



RoyK said:


> Give me a break. A TiVo DVR is marketed to Joe Consumer. You really expect he/she is going to/ is capable of re-imaging a hard drive? You have to be kidding.
> 
> No. I think they were just plain sloppy to release and advertise something utterly dependent on internet availability which crashes the machine simply due to a network/internet glitch.


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## Brainiac 5 (Aug 25, 2003)

magnus said:


> I did not say that Joe consumer should. I said that if you aren't capable of doing that then you should just not use Netflix until it's more stable.


Most TiVo users are not on this forum and have no idea that they "should just not use Netflix" yet. Of the people on this forum, many may have begun trying it before the problems were talked about.



> You guys really need to lighten up, it's not the end of the world, it's only TV.


I haven't tried Netflix yet myself, but I understand the frustration of people who have. If TiVo is so unimportant, why have one at all? I can see the people at TiVo wincing at this line of argument that the benefits of their product are so small that it hardly matters whether it works or not.



> Oh, and BTW the initial issues that I had (which were the same as the ones listed in this thread) are no longer there. So, maybe they have already fixed it.... who knows. I've not had a problem with this in the past few weeks.


There have been a few similar posts, so things do seem to be improving, although it sounds like there are still people having problems.

This will all calm down when they eventually get the feature more solid. (Except perhaps for those who had to exchange their TiVo...).


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## RoyK (Oct 22, 2004)

Brainiac 5 said:


> .......
> This will all calm down when they eventually get the feature more solid. (Except perhaps for those who had to exchange their TiVo...).


Exactly! The "it's only TV, chill" argument just isn't true. In some cases it's $$$!


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## modnar (Oct 15, 2000)

mikeylikesit33 said:


> Umm... is it just me or is there absolutely nothing available from Netflix via Tivo that is worth watching?


Their selection is far from ideal, but I've found plenty of interesting stuff to add to my instant queue.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

pmrowley said:


> I am flabbergasted at the extent that people are bending over backward to defend Tivo's obviously buggy software


I'm flabbergasted you didn't bother to read my post. I didn't defend anything. Please quote even one phrase from my original which defended anyone or anything. There wasn't one.



pmrowley said:


> that has, in spite of your fanboi defense, has BRICKED people's units (Bricked=nonfunctional, had to send back because it failed to reboot after a freeze.


True or not, that's not what I understood you to say. You said:



pmrowley said:


> ... which then bricks itself when it has to be unplugged and restarted, it is not a minor inconvenience.


Re-reading your original statement, I can see how you might have meant the TiVo would not restart after being unplugged, but to me it looked as if you were saying the TiVo was "bricked" because it had to be restarted.

And once again, I did not defend anyone or anything.



pmrowley said:


> Go back and look over the forums for how many peoples' units have failed to reboot that one particular time.


Why would I do that? I don't use NetFlix, and I am completely unconcerned about a drive failure. If you mean I should be worried about rebootng the TiVo for any reason, forget it. I've rebooted dozens of Tivos hundreds of times. None ever froze from just a reboot. In the extremely rare case of it happening, I'll just fix it.



pmrowley said:


> Personally, I cringe whenever my unit has to reboot, because this one time might just be the one that it doesn't recover from.)


You really do need to take a breath. First of all, you clearly stated that you have done internal drive upgrades to your TiVo. That being the case, replacing a corrupted drive should not be anything even remotely daunting for you. Unless you foolishly did something else with the original drive, you should still have it on hand, but even if not, re-imaging the drive is not difficult, and purchasing an imaged drive from Weaknees of DVRUpgrade is dead easy.



pmrowley said:


> When it doesn't, people run the risk of having their expensive hardware damaged beyond repair.


'Again with the hyperbole. Nothing is damaged beyond repair. At worst, the hard drive needs to be replaced or re-imaged.



pmrowley said:


> How in the world can anyone think this is okay?


No one said it was OK - certainly I didn't, but you act as if it's worse than being told you have ALS or an inoperable brain tumor.



pmrowley said:


> Regardless of the original purchase price of the unit?


I am uncertain to what this refers.



pmrowley said:


> As for being an early adopter, if Tivo is going to, as a part of the contract that we entered into and that I pay for on a monthly basis, release software that changes the behavior of the unit, I should be certain that it has been tested to the point that it's not going to damage it.


Being an early adopter has noting to do with the fact, as I already pointed out. You are no more entitled to any particular level of support than someone who bought their TiVo for under $200. That said, it's true TiVo should make every reasonable effort to test their software to the point where they believe in all good faith it is reliable. What evidence do you have they did not do this? The fact the system breaks under conditions for which they were unaware needed to be simulated in no way constitutes malfeasance on their part. Assuming for the moment the failures about which we have heard and which you have experienced are indeed due in part to TiVo's software, then they need to fix it.



pmrowley said:


> My system has worked basically flawlessly for the two years I have had the unit. Yes, I'm an early adopter of the S3, but since I'm an early adopter, that somehow makes it okay that Tivo is issuing faulty software that can permanently damage the unit?


Nowhere in my post did I say anything even remotely close to this. Your original post strongly suggested the amount of money you had put into your system due to being an early adopter combined with monies spent on devices other than the TiVo itself entitled you to some level of support or some additional level of technical excellence. It doesn't. In this respect you deserve and should expect nothing more than the fellow who paid less than $200. And yes, to fend off the oncoming tirade, the $200 TiVo owner does deserve a functional TiVo.



pmrowley said:


> What part of a monthly contract don't you understand?


The part where it has anything to do with this conversation. If your TiVo suffers down time, ask for a refund for the days out of service.



pmrowley said:


> For the record, I'm not the original poster


I never said you were, nor did I reference any of his statements. I responded to your post. That is all.



pmrowley said:


> nor am I having a temper tantrum regarding this feature.


If not, it will certainly do until something closer comes along.



pmrowley said:


> But to call someone else's complaint unfounded


Please quote the passage where I called your complaint unfounded or any synonym thereto.



pmrowley said:


> When exactly did we start accepting shoddy worksmanship in anything we buy or use?


I don't and I never suggested I do or anyone else should. There's a big difference between demanding quality goods and services from vendors and having a screaming fit when encountering a problematic device or piece of software.



pmrowley said:


> I have Craftsman tools that are 25 years old. If I broke one tomorrow on a frozen bolt, Craftsman would bend over backwards, apologizing all the way, to get me a replacement.


Yet even more hyperbole. Sears will replace, free of charge, any broken Craftsman tool. That is all. Furthermore, you admit Craftsman tools can be broken, but in the same breath criticize TiVo because their device can be broken. If this is a failure of TiVo's software (or NetFlix as their agent), then TiVo needs to rectify the situation, including fixing any TiVos that get totally hosed by the software. That is all.


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## Brainiac 5 (Aug 25, 2003)

lrhorer said:


> That said, it's true TiVo should make every reasonable effort to test their software to the point where they believe in all good faith it is reliable. What evidence do you have they did not do this? The fact the system breaks under conditions for which they were unaware needed to be simulated in no way constitutes malfeasance on their part.


It would be interesting to know exactly what those conditions are. If it's just losing network connectivity, that is something they should be quite aware that they need to simulate. (Although I'm not implying that "malfeasance" would be the right word to describe it.)



> Assuming for the moment the failures about which we have heard and which you have experienced are indeed due in part to TiVo's software, then they need to fix it.


TiVo has stated that there are problems due to the software, so we don't have to assume. I applaud them for telling us that much, it gives me more confidence in them. If they were denying there were any problems, I'd be very concerned that nothing would get fixed.


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## jgerry (Aug 29, 2001)

I was using the Netflix service mostly on my Xbox 360, but since it died a couple of weeks ago, I've been using the service on my Tivo HD. I have had some issues. 

I have had none of the crashing issues that others are experiencing.

It works pretty well most of the time on the Tivo. Not great, but OK for a first effort. Compared to the 360, the controls are sluggish, but once I've started a stream, I have very few problems. The video quality seems equivalent to the 360.

I do have some issues with audio quality on the Tivo HD. I have had some very severe audio sync issues on some programs that will not resolve themselves. No amount of restarting the streams will fix some programs. I have not had a chance to test those same programs on my 360 yet. 

Example: I tried to watch episode 1 of "Hotel Babylon", a BBC program. Totally, thoroughly, completely unwatchable due to audio sync issues. Every 5-8 seconds, the audio drops completely for 2-3 seconds, then comes back. It's always .5 to 1 second off from the video, which makes it even worse. 

As for the people complaining about the selection -- yeah, it's not great, but there's plenty of stuff to watch. If you click on the "Watch Instantly" tab on the Netflix site and browse around, you'll find lots of interesting things. Tons of documentaries, lots of indie stuff, and a decent smattering of TV shows, especially older stuff. Hopefully one day, we'll be able to watch everything this way, but for now, it's better than nothing. And since I pay for a Netflix and Tivo subscriptions anyway, it's totally free.


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## magnus (Nov 12, 2004)

I'm just saying for those that are too afraid that their box will be broken beyond repair... that they should just not use it.

In general, I would agree, most users do not go to this forum and would not know and therefor would just call into Tivo about the problem. To which, I would think a CSR would explain the situation and would be able to tell them how to repair it (until they can fix the software problem).



Brainiac 5 said:


> Most TiVo users are not on this forum and have no idea that they "should just not use Netflix" yet. Of the people on this forum, many may have begun trying it before the problems were talked about.


I did not say not important at all, I'm just saying in the grand scheme of things, it's not that important. If you compare Tivo's software not working quite right.... to say something very important going wrong.... like open heart surgery.

So, it's not that it's completely unimportant but it is that it's not so important that it would affect someone to the point of death.



> I haven't tried Netflix yet myself, but I understand the frustration of people who have. If TiVo is so unimportant, why have one at all? I can see the people at TiVo wincing at this line of argument that the benefits of their product are so small that it hardly matters whether it works or not.


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## Brainiac 5 (Aug 25, 2003)

magnus said:


> To which, I would think a CSR would explain the situation and would be able to tell them how to repair it (until they can fix the software problem).


Let's hope they begin doing that, because so far the posts from people who've gotten into that situation have said that the CSR told them they needed to exchange the box for $150.


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## lowepg (Sep 21, 2005)

magnus said:


> At the very worst, you could re-image your box


lol. Oh yes- that IS a covenient option. Cant beleive I missed that....



magnus said:


> Shoddy worksmanship???? So, you really think that Tivo intentionally released something that would detract from the user experience like this??? Come on, you've got to be kidding.


Since when did intent have anything to do with whether its poor workmanship? I dont give a rats arse what they intended...


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## magnus (Nov 12, 2004)

Then just don't use it. How is it not that simple?? Are you that thick??

Where did I say it was a convenient option?? I just said it was a worse case scenario.

Did you bother to be part of the beta?? Are you even registered to be a beta tester?? If you're not, then you really have no reason to complain this damn much. Get over it, they will fix it. Move on.



lowepg said:


> lol. Oh yes- that IS a covenient option. Cant beleive I missed that....
> 
> Since when did intent have anything to do with whether its poor workmanship? I dont give a rats arse what they intended...


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## proudx (Sep 16, 2008)

All these fan boys defending tivo are insane. It seems like every time they release software I fear for the worse! One bug might get fixed while another is introduced and some bugs flat out not fixed at all. The S3 has to be the most frustrating consumer electronics product I have ever purchased in my life. Absolutely embarassing for Tivo inmo. Its obvious they rush software out without proper internal testing. Fan boys will respond with "my unit works great from day 1", "I don't mind rebooting if once in a while if it locks up on netflix", "Get over it, all devices have bugs, if you don't like your s3 get rid of it on ebay" "I don't worry about the bugs the s3 is great!". "tivo can't possilby test every configuration". My response is some of these bugs over the past few years like this netflix one are OBVIOUS, and I am tired of being the beta tester for tivo.

If you owned a one year-old car that worked fine most days, but perhaps one day every 6 months the car inexplicably decided not to function for a period of 8 hours, would you still say the car worked "damned well"?

What's worse, during this whole time you're paying "protection money" to Tommy TiVo, the guy who sold you the car. He stops by periodically and fiddles under the hood. You dread Tommy's visits, because whenever he fixes one glitch in the car, he inevitably creates another. Of course you don't notice the new glitch until the next week. And it goes without saying that Tommy *never* tells you exactly what he's doing to your car.

But try not paying Tommy his protection money for a few months. Then he'll make damned sure that your car is almost completely unusable until you pay up.

Go ahead, try calling Tommy TiVo for help. He employs legions of minions (who barely speak English) in the far reaches of the "flat earth" to screen your calls from Tommy or anyone on his staff who has the knowledge and ability to help you, or to even understand your problem.

But there's even more to the story. Occasionally one of Tommy's minions drops by with a note either saying that your problems aren't that serious (and so won't be fixed at all) or will be fixed the next time Tommy comes by (in 6 months).

Living with TiVo is like living with a dysfunctional family. Complete with plenty of family members who are more than willing to defend and excuse the bad behavior.

Sometimes I wonder if a lot of these folks defending tivo on these forums are tivo employees!

If Tivo goes out of business it's because they failed to satisfy their customers (still SD menus, no widescreen guide, dated interface, bugs galore. "really want me to list all of them, that would take two pages" , ads galore, and multiple broken features. Its obvious they are too busy trying to satisy their advertisers by throwing ads up on users' screens to keep floating.

If they want to survive they better start satisfying the consumer because competition is coming.


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## magnus (Nov 12, 2004)

I bet that you work for Dish. 



proudx said:


> Sometimes I wonder if a lot of these folks defending tivo on these forums are tivo employees!


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## pdhenry (Feb 28, 2005)

Just wanted to say that my Netflix experience has been mostly positive so far. A bit of pixellation on the first title I watched, and one title apparently wasn't stored where it was supposed to be (I could stream it on my PC but got a file not found sort of error on the TiVo). The image quality over a streamed connection has been surprisingly good, and I have a vanilla Comcast Internet connection.

I can see running out of interesting content pretty soon as a risk but I think Netflix is working on that, given the investment they're making to roll out the service.


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## berkshires (Feb 22, 2007)

proudx said:


> All these fan boys defending tivo are insane. It seems like every time they release software I fear for the worse! One bug might get fixed while another is introduced and some bugs flat out not fixed at all. The S3 has to be the most frustrating consumer electronics product I have ever purchased in my life. Absolutely embarassing for Tivo inmo. Its obvious they rush software out without proper internal testing.


There has been noticable improvement in recent times over what it was the prior couple of years.


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## lowepg (Sep 21, 2005)

magnus said:


> Then just don't use it. How is it not that simple?? Are you that thick??


Name-calling? Nice- soooo defensive.  But, that wasnt even the dumbest thing you posted....lol...



magnus said:


> Did you bother to be part of the beta?? Are you even registered to be a beta tester?? If you're not, then you really have no reason to complain this damn much.


Please re-read your comments and then realize how stupid they are. Done yet?

So, unless I sign up to be a beta tester, I cant complain when the released products dont work? LOL. I must have missed that in the advertisment. It's not like you have to hack your tivo to try to use Netflix- it pops up for ALL to use right on screen.

"Dad, the tivo is frozen and I cant get it to work"
"Ok, well, its TiVo- lets try a reboot"
"Its been stuck on this screen for an hour now, it wont work"
" Oh, DAMNIT, it's my fault- I didnt signup for the beta"
" I guess we can listen to the radio till TiVo fixes it?"

Your comments are foolish and fanboy extreme. Beta tester.... L O L!

Thanks though, silliest reply Ive seen all week.... Another poster I can safely put onb the ignore list.

lol...beta tester!


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## magnus (Nov 12, 2004)

You keep complaining but the point is that you don't do a damn thing to help Tivo test. So, you complain about how they test and yet you really don't know what they do to test.

Again, show me where I said that it was a convenient option.... I said it was a worse case scenario.

Yes, as a consumer you do have the right to complain about this but you've taken it too far (and you never do anything to try to help the situation because you're not a registered beta tester). It's not the end of the world, the sky is not falling and it's time for you to move on.

I'm sure that Tivo knows how serious this issue is and they are working to fix it. Maybe you might even sign up to beta test it. 



lowepg said:


> Name-calling? Nice- soooo defensive.  But, that wasnt even the dumbest thing you posted....lol...
> 
> Please re-read your comments and then realize how stupid they are. Done yet?
> 
> ...


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## lowepg (Sep 21, 2005)

magnus said:


> You keep complaining but the point is that you don't do a damn thing to help Tivo test. So, you complain about how they test and yet you really don't know what they do to test.


Yeah, actually I do know how beta testing works. I choose not to. However, I dont NEED to help them test- I took that other option called PAYING. 



magnus said:


> Maybe you might even sign up to beta test it.


It looks like we all have inadvertantly signed up to beta test this feature.

And, you make the same mistake many do who frequent these boards: A very small percentage of users are "power users" who make 1000+ posts to a consumer products discussion board! 

Im not the only TiVO user in my household, I have 5 different units, and one of the things I (usually) love about tivo is how intuitive it is for ALL users. I have an 8yr old and 9 yr old who use tivo daily.... they are pretty smart- but I odnt think they should have to know how to re-image the tivo to be able to download a movie.

And by the way, please note this Netflix feature wasnt rolled out as some alpha-stage product that was expected to be buggy and for the brave-at-heart only.....


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## magnus (Nov 12, 2004)

Whatever, yet again you miss the point. I'm sure that Tivo does more to test things than just have a beta testing group but it seems like people like you (that demand perfection) would be willing to do official beta testing. 

It's not the end of the world. and you don't have to re-image to fix it.


Again, show me where I said that it was a convenient option.... I said it was a worse case scenario.


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## mtchamp (May 15, 2001)

Brand new Netflix customer. You can add me to the happy list. I almost cancelled the Netflix trial. Maybe Netflix should give a free month, because I really can't watch too much TV everyday and it's been particullay busy for the holidays. I didn't like having to go to a computer to set up instant shows and didn't find enough time to do a good amount of searching.

I'm now in a habit of going to a computer anytime anywhere, even by phone. I thought the available movie titles were not enough I'd want to watch again, then I found Historical Documentaries that really pleased me. I also got used to navigating the Netflix website. I will keep it, get my one free DVD at a time. I watched Iron Man last night and it's worth $8.99 a month.


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## Videodrome (Jun 20, 2008)

My experience with tivo so far, has be "throw it on the wall and see if if sticks" programming. The fact that netflix crashes with a network interruption, shows the lack of care of these programmers . A network interruption is expected and is normal, even Firefox, and IE work with network issues, because anyone who has ever worked online, knows memory has to be unlocked for a network program or the system will hang indefinely. 

The other problem is menu transition, the extremely slow rate to change a menu, and no revert option if you make a mistake. I swear Tivos attitude is where it, too bad.


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## magnus (Nov 12, 2004)

I agree with most of your statements. I'm much happier knowing that Tivo knows about the reboot issue and has identified what to do about it. I sure hope they are relaying that to the CSRs.

I initially had planned to cancel my trial but found that once they identified the issue that it was something that:

1) does not happen often
2) is easily remedied

I am on the almost happy list. There are still a few issues that I have:

1) reboot problem (but not in the past few weeks) 
2) crackling audio when coming back from Netflix to live tv
3) crackling and out of sync audio when watching some Netflix titles



mtchamp said:


> Brand new Netflix customer. You can add me to the happy list. I almost cancelled the Netflix trial. Maybe Netflix should give a free month, because I really can't watch too much TV everyday and it's been particullay busy for the holidays. I didn't like having to go to a computer to set up instant shows and didn't find enough time to do a good amount of searching.
> 
> I'm now in a habit of going to a computer anytime anywhere, even by phone. I thought the available movie titles were not enough I'd want to watch again, then I found Historical Documentaries that really pleased me. I also got used to navigating the Netflix website. I will keep it, get my one free DVD at a time. I watched Iron Man last night and it's worth $8.99 a month.


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## dwsutton (Jan 19, 2008)

mikeylikesit33 said:


> Umm... is it just me or is there absolutely nothing available from Netflix via Tivo that is worth watching?
> 
> Old movies I've seen 10 times, nothing new at all, small selection at that...
> 
> ...


Wow, my thoughts exactly. IF they put up recent TV shows that possibly I missed OR some movies that were worth watching, it might be a great addition. Im planning on canceling my new Netflix due to lack of content.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

For those complaining about lack of instant titles it's important to remember that you also have option to get latest DVD or Blu Ray via snail mail (which also gives you much higher quality), so it's not like you are limited to just instant titles with Netflix/Tivo. I also wish the selection was much broader and hopefully over time will improve, but I'm happy to have the snail mail option as well for latest movies. I use instant mostly for older movies or TV series I missed as a nice complement to snail mail.


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## Brainiac 5 (Aug 25, 2003)

magnus said:


> Whatever, yet again you miss the point. I'm sure that Tivo does more to test things than just have a beta testing group but it seems like people like you (that demand perfection) would be willing to do official beta testing.


I'm not lowepg, who you were responding to, but: I think *you* are missing the point. If it really only takes a network interruption to cause these problems to happen, then TiVo really could and should have found that in testing. Their customers have a right to complain. I don't think TiVo would tell you otherwise - when they've posted on these boards they've apologized and said they're working on fixing things, which is all they can really do.

Complaining that a feature crashes the machine, and in some cases corrupts it in some way so that it won't boot anymore, is not demanding "perfection" - those aren't minor problems.

As for beta testing, many people don't volunteer to beta test because they want to keep their TiVos reliable. They pay TiVo to do whatever testing is needed to make the release reliable before it is sent to their boxes.



> It's not the end of the world. and you don't have to re-image to fix it.


Some people's TiVos have been rendered inoperable, apparently by the Netflix app. The only way to fix it seems to be to get a replacement from TiVo or re-image the drive.

I don't know what the problem is with just admitting that TiVo unfortunately didn't catch some problems in their testing that they should have. It happens; all a company can do in such a case is accept that there'll be some criticism and try to fix things as soon as possible, which TiVo is doing.


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## magnus (Nov 12, 2004)

I guess my real point is that at some point you should stop beating them up for making a mistake. Yes, they need to fix it and need to do it soon but I don't think that just because the guy says it's the worst implementation ever that it makes it so. Or that stating that it make boxes inoperable helps at all. That's just simply not true.

Also, if the guy has 5 Tivos! Then you would think that he could spare one of them to do some beta testing every once in a while. Exactly, how do you expect Tivo to have every configuration out there? How do you expect that they are to do this testing that needs to be done? Maybe there are not enough beta testers and if you guys helped out every once in a while, then maybe just maybe, there would not be such big issues when they roll things out.

I wonder if you guys somehow missed this post.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=413339



Brainiac 5 said:


> I'm not lowepg, who you were responding to, but: I think *you* are missing the point. If it really only takes a network interruption to cause these problems to happen, then TiVo really could and should have found that in testing. Their customers have a right to complain. I don't think TiVo would tell you otherwise - when they've posted on these boards they've apologized and said they're working on fixing things, which is all they can really do.
> 
> Complaining that a feature crashes the machine, and in some cases corrupts it in some way so that it won't boot anymore, is not demanding "perfection" - those aren't minor problems.
> 
> ...


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## ciper (Nov 4, 2004)

It annoys me that we got YouTube (crappy low quality videos of people falling off bikes) and Netflix (able to destroy the machine and only stereo sound) instead of QAM mapping. Way to go Tivo


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## proudx (Sep 16, 2008)

magnus said:


> You keep complaining but the point is that you don't do a damn thing to help Tivo test. So, you complain about how they test and yet you really don't know what they do to test.


like others have said, why should a paying customer have to work for free on his personal time "beta testing" products for a company?

I don't think its unreasonable at all for a consumer to expect Tivo to fully test products sold before putting them on the market broken.

Magnus, you highlight the problem with Tivo Fan Boys. Defending them to no end. Tivo fan boys are nearly as bad as Mac fan boys.

Just curious, are you employeed by Tivo?


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## lowepg (Sep 21, 2005)

magnus said:


> I guess my real point is that at some point you should stop beating them up for making a mistake.


And what is your motive for the incessant, illogical defense of this poor implementation. Even TiVo isnt defending these problems- why are you?



magnus said:


> but I don't think that just because the guy says it's the worst implementation ever that it makes it so.


Ok, well I've been using TiVos for almost 10 years... had almost every model from old blue moon 14-hrs to DSR6000's to series2, 3, HD, etc. In all that time this is the only "upgrade" they've released that can render the box useless. Please tell me a worse implementation from TiVo and I will recant.



magnus said:


> Or that stating that it make boxes inoperable helps at all. That's just simply not true.


 It is true. READ. If a network connection cannot be established after a crash- the tivo will NEVER complete the boot. Joe Average who uses TiVo and gets this crash will think his tivo is blown-up. (not everyone comes here- you know?). In fact, as recently as last week- CSR's at TiVO still dont seem to be able to diagnose this correctly.... maybe they all dont surf these boards either? 



magnus said:


> Also, if the guy has 5 Tivos! Then you would think that he could spare one of them to do some beta testing every once in a while.


odd, Tivo keeps charging me for all 5 

back to this silly argument... I laugh out loud everytime I read it. Part of me thinks you're just trolling and not serious. I dont think YOU kow what beta testing really is. I've beta'd various software from old BBS software (!!!!) to Os/2 Warp to MS Products to online games, etc. Its not just "playing around with new stuff" its pretty intensive and time consuming when done right. I dont choose to do that with TiVo. My damn series3 has been flakey enough!



magnus said:


> Exactly, how do you expect Tivo to have every configuration out there? How do you expect that they are to do this testing that needs to be done?


lol... it's not like they are testing software that needs to run on 1000's of permeutations of software/hardware/drivers/etc. Tivo controls the hardware AND software platforms here. It appears they didnt test the "unusual" situation of a net drop during playback? Does that seem like some obscure situation that would be hard to anticipate?

Didnt think so. TiVo got this wrong. They already apologized - so I ask again, why are you defending what they already admitted is a problem. Bored or troll?


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## bru_man (Feb 20, 2002)

lowepg said:


> In all that time this is the only "upgrade" they've released that can render the box useless. Please tell me a worse implementation from TiVo and I will recant.


MMM, the worst release for me was the last the one before the current v11 one, that one meant both my s3 and HD stopped recording programs till I reordered the season pass, but that is partially self inflicted since it seemed to affect people with upgraded drives.

Actual now that I think about it, the worst one I had was one of the direct TV HD releases where the menus were very very slow when you had a lot of programs stored on the TV.


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## magnus (Nov 12, 2004)

And people like you that complain that the sky is falling.... what about those people????

No, I don't work for Tivo. Do you work for Dish?



proudx said:


> Magnus, you highlight the problem with Tivo Fan Boys. Defending them to no end. Tivo fan boys are nearly as bad as Mac fan boys.
> 
> Just curious, are you employeed by Tivo?


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## avatarhands (Jan 2, 2009)

Wow.

Count me as one of those insensitive, over-demanding customers who expect the poor lads at TiVo to not release an update until it can at least be shown to do no harm to the box.

I just got off the phone with customer service--no, they don't acknowledge their software has caused a problem, and NO, they won't replace my now-completely-dead S3 at no charge. That'll be 150 bucks, ma'am, thank you for your loyal patronage all these years, we'll send you a refurbished machine to replace the one we executed with our half-baked software...

My S3 is BRICKED. As in, no, I can't get it to function, no matter what the CSR asks me to do with it. And now, I get to pay to have it replaced, money I can ill-afford. End of the world? No. Just damned poor customer care, and lousy service.. :down:


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## eeg0323 (Sep 12, 2003)

I gave up on Netflix and deauthorize the S3. Tried to watch 4 different movies last night and none would go. Every one of them got all the bars to the HD quality, but if they played at all it was for only 15-20 seconds and then have to stop and recieve more. A couple played only the audio with grey scree for video. 
This has to be one of TIVO's worst ever implementation. Will monitor these boards and see if any patch is offered that may eventually make this an application worth using


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

lowepg said:


> lol... it's not like they are testing software that needs to run on 1000's of permeutations of software/hardware/drivers/etc. Tivo controls the hardware AND software platforms here. It appears they didnt test the "unusual" situation of a net drop during playback? Does that seem like some obscure situation that would be hard to anticipate?


oh? so TiVo controls the cable cards, the routers, the wireless setups, the internet companies and their proxy servers/hardware.
TiVo controls the content providers and the source files that Netflix converst to the files used to stream? They control that conversion process? They control the Netflix software that serves that up?

Perhaps TiVo developers had not found the solution to how to deal with a permanent net drop. Perhaps they met with Netflix and Netflix pointed to the contract that said release by this date, and then Netflix said the net drop is your problem and deal with it.

This would be no defense of TiVo and I am sure they are looking to fix this bad bug.

I am amazed all the time though at people who work in software or have tested and always seem to forget how tough a job it is to forsee all the permutations and events that will have to be endured by the product. Please name for me the products that have been free of major bugs since DOS 3.3?

Heck the iPhone did not work correctly on 3G networks when it came out - are you going to say that Apple does not know how to do good QA testing? Or that Apple did not test the 3G capability of the iPhone?


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## magnus (Nov 12, 2004)

Sorry to hear that you had the problem. Did you happen to take a look at this thread? Perhaps this will fix your issue.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=413339



avatarhands said:


> Wow.
> 
> Count me as one of those insensitive, over-demanding customers who expect the poor lads at TiVo to not release an update until it can at least be shown to do no harm to the box.
> 
> ...


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## bru_man (Feb 20, 2002)

eeg0323 said:


> Tried to watch 4 different movies last night and none would go. Every one of them got all the bars to the HD quality, but if they played at all it was for only 15-20 seconds and then have to stop and recieve more.


who is your ISP, I have read reports of Time Warners rate limiting kicking in for netflix streams

http://community.netflix.com/forum/...93323:Comment:541571&x=1#1993323Comment541571


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## avatarhands (Jan 2, 2009)

magnus said:


> Sorry to hear that you had the problem. Did you happen to take a look at this thread? Perhaps this will fix your issue.
> 
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=413339


Yes, I did see that thread, and posted in it. There isn't anything in there that 1) I didn't try with CS, or 2) isn't beyond my scope as an "average" consumer.

I realize there is a debate as to whether the problems have been caused by the Netflix situation, but the coincidence is hard to ignore, esp. since I'm reading other folks having similar problems.

And, for the record, I'm a TiVo fan. I love TiVo. I've had one since the very olden days, and actually reduced myself to going back to CABLE of all things just so I could keep my TiVo when the DirecTV thing went belly up. But product quality is a field I've worked in for many years, and right now TiVo just isn't doing right by their customers. End of rant.


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## RoyK (Oct 22, 2004)

ZeoTiVo said:


> ....
> 
> I am amazed all the time though at people who work in software or have tested and always seem to forget how tough a job it is to forsee all the permutations and events that will have to be endured by the product. Please name for me the products that have been free of major bugs since DOS 3.3?


I am amazed all the time at the excuses some make for incompetence and sloppiness.


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## lacsap (Feb 13, 2005)

On a more positive tone - I have seen improvement overall with the NetFlix streaming experience. I am no longer witnessing stutters during playback that I witnessed in the first weeks of deployment. I still stumble across miscoded content - I really wish that TiVo would have an option to report these errors on the web from the instant queue or from program screen on TiVo. It would make identifying these bad apples more seamless.


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## magnus (Nov 12, 2004)

Did you see this particular post in that thread? He might be able to help you out.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=6921720#post6921720

Did they have you try to kickstart it? You might try that.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=6916846#post6916846

Also, it was pointed out in that thread that cause was most likely a bad drive. Have you given any thought to the possibility that it might be a malfunctioning drive?

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=6963101#post6963101



avatarhands said:


> Yes, I did see that thread, and posted in it. There isn't anything in there that 1) I didn't try with CS, or 2) isn't beyond my scope as an "average" consumer.
> 
> I realize there is a debate as to whether the problems have been caused by the Netflix situation, but the coincidence is hard to ignore, esp. since I'm reading other folks having similar problems.
> 
> And, for the record, I'm a TiVo fan. I love TiVo. I've had one since the very olden days, and actually reduced myself to going back to CABLE of all things just so I could keep my TiVo when the DirecTV thing went belly up. But product quality is a field I've worked in for many years, and right now TiVo just isn't doing right by their customers. End of rant.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

> ZeoTiVo said:
> 
> 
> > I am amazed all the time though at people who work in software or have tested and always seem to forget how tough a job it is to forsee all the permutations and events that will have to be endured by the product. Please name for me the products that have been free of major bugs since DOS 3.3?
> ...


yet you did not tell me of the companies able to do everything perfectly.

I distinctly said


ZeoTiVo said:


> This would be no defense of TiVo and I am sure they are looking to fix this bad bug.


But why would you actually read my posts versus just replying with some knee jerk reaction to the userid.

Even the Xbox/Netflix has had issues. We all know that if you want perfection in version 1.0 then you end up doing the Duke-Nukem wait forever. This would be *faint praise* of TiVo as I ma basically stating that TiVo has moved from the breakthrough part of making the rock solid DVR internals and into the much, much harder world of making features work with multiple vendors involved with only the typical results of most companies and not the rock solid world of the earlier days of TiVo. The point I am making though is that few companies do multiple vendors features without hassles, and such an expectation for TiVo would ignore the reality. We want these new features without paying more and we want them within aggressive timelines, and we want them rock solid. The old adage of you can have 2 out of 3 of these applies here just like everywhere else.
I certainly agree that we should all be looking for a far better Netflix release in TiVo version 11.x.

PS - I really like the idea of being able to reprot a bad conversion file right from the TiVo interface :up:
Being able to easily see what movies have been watched already would be helpful as well in multiple people households.


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## RoyK (Oct 22, 2004)

ZeoTiVo said:


> yet you did not tell me of the companies able to do everything perfectlyt in your perfect world.
> 
> Even the Xbox/Netflix has had issues. We all know that if you want perfection in version 1.0 then you end up doing the Duke-Nukem wait forever.


Q.E.D.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

RoyK said:


> Q.E.D.


so how did I make excuses for TiVo then? All I was doing was exploring the actual reality of software testing and delivery versus the "I tested stuff for ages and never saw these kind of bugs get through" which I find hard to believe if comparing apples to apples


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## avatarhands (Jan 2, 2009)

Magnus, your suggestions are appreciated. Unfortunately, no, CS did NOT have me do the kickstart thing, nor did they suggest any other creative solutions. The most creative was one CSR who had me take out the cable cards and try to reboot that way. She was the sixth CSR I had spoken with that day, btw. 

And now my S3 is packed up and labeled for UPS. I guess I can unpack it and struggle through the kickstart deal, to see if it reboots the system successfully. Though, if it's a hardware problem, as some swear, that won't get me a working box. Would have been nice, though, to have CS try some of those things with me.

But hey, why teach your CSRs the little secrets, etc., when you can charge $150, get the S3 box back, fix it, and have it ready for the next guy with a problem who can give you $150? Nice system.


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## Langree (Apr 29, 2004)

avatarhands said:


> But hey, why teach your CSRs the little secrets, etc., when you can charge $150, get the S3 box back, fix it, and have it ready for the next guy with a problem who can give you $150? Nice system.


Nothing new here.


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## BiloxiGeek (Nov 18, 2001)

I've been having a rather nice experience with NetFlix on my Tivo HD. Watched a few movies and the first 3 seasons of MI-5. So far I've only seen 2 problems.

While watching John Carpenter's The Thing twice the stream stopped and I ended up back at TiVo Central screen. In both occasions it was within the first week after I discovered I had the NetFlix stuff enabled and during a Friday or Saturday evening. When network load was likely at it's highest.

On two episodes of MI-5 I lost the audio about 40 minutes into the show. I was able to finish watching on my computer and then called into NetFlix about it. The CSR I talked with told me that it was a known issue with two specific episodes and they were working on re-encoding those two and getting the current version replaced.


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## rdodolak (Dec 18, 2008)

BiloxiGeek said:


> While watching John Carpenter's The Thing twice the stream stopped and I ended up back at TiVo Central screen.


I had a similar experience. I had my wireless router reboot 2-3 weeks ago and the TiVo locked up and the only way around it (even after the internet connection was reestablished) was to unplug the TiVo and wait for it to reboot. However, I experienced another router reboot 2 days ago and the TiVo popped me back to the TiVo Central screen.

This morning I've had a number of wireless disconnects. I can't confirm if the router rebooted but the connections were dropped. I knew this because the connection on my computer also dropped while my wife was watching a movie on Neflix. The stream froze for 5-10 seconds until the connection was reestablished and the movie continued where it left off.

At least in my experience it seems something has changed from a few weeks ago and progress is being made.


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## lowepg (Sep 21, 2005)

rdodolak said:


> At least in my experience it seems something has changed from a few weeks ago and progress is being made.


Maybe just more people are giving up on it.....


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## Shanezam203 (Jul 28, 2007)

I have watched a few videos using Netflix without any delay.

Audio and Video are fine using HDMI.


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## bkdtv (Jan 9, 2003)

Shanezam203 said:


> I have watched a few videos using Netflix without any delay.
> 
> Audio and Video are fine using HDMI.


I've found that the delay with buffering can vary quite dramatically. There are times I use the Netflix application when it only has to buffer for ~3 seconds. Other times, it has to buffer for 10-15 seconds.


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## jeffw_00 (Sep 19, 2000)

Shanezam203 said:


> I have watched a few videos using Netflix without any delay.
> 
> Audio and Video are fine using HDMI.


Ditto - this is all probably VERY dependent on your broadband connection, and Netflix can't do much about that.


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## cadmium (Nov 14, 2007)

Well I've officially been bitten in the ass by the Tivo Netflix feature. Lost internet for a few minutes while watching superbad and it locked up the Tivo completely. I lost the last 5 minutes of 2 of my favorite shows. Add to that at least 1/2 of the stuff I've tried to watch still has audio sync issues.

Nevermind "free", the Netflix feature is downright offensive. No internet dependent feature on any device should ever have the ability to bring down the whole system. I get that it originally had a few bugs, but it's been like 5 months now. There's no excuse for how poorly this is implemented.


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## pdhenry (Feb 28, 2005)

At least your TiVo will now reboot in the absence of a working connection to Netflix. If you think you were burned - many people have been burned worse in recent weeks.

The Netflix servers went down one recent Saturday night - if you were watching Netflix at the time your TiVo was essentially bricked until it could re-establish a connection with Netflix on the subsequent reboot. Since the servers were still down the tiVos would not reboot. A recent software update cured this little issue.


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## cadmium (Nov 14, 2007)

pdhenry said:


> At least your TiVo will now reboot in the absence of a working connection to Netflix. If you think you were burned - many people have been burned worse in recent weeks.
> 
> The Netflix servers went down one recent Saturday night - if you were watching Netflix at the time your TiVo was essentially bricked until it could re-establish a connection with Netflix on the subsequent reboot. Since the servers were still down the tiVos would not reboot. A recent software update cured this little issue.


That's ridiculous. I love my Tivo, I love Netflix and it should be the best feature ever added but it is perhaps the worst.


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## daveak (Mar 23, 2009)

Maybe I'm lucky... but I have never had an issue. I have been a Netflix sub for several years and bought my TiVo as it seemed to be one of the better options out there for making Netflix streaming a part of my Theatre system. I have been very happy (esp now that I have a DVR, can't see how I ever lived life w/o one).

Just in case you want to know, I have a Series 3 (original, unmodified) connected to my network with a Cat 5e cable. My router is a Belkin 'N' wireless (it also has cable ports) behind a firewall to a 3Mbs DSL. Works great. I've never had Netflix HD, but all the bars consistently light up and the PQ is certainly acceptable. Certainly not Blu-ray, but at least standard DVD quality.

We all know network issues can be intermittent, especially with wireless. For those of you with trouble, you may want to try an actual cable (and yes, they can become damaged I had one a desktop was connected to and it was a nightmare to diagnose - I only found it cause I moved the desktop and needed a longer cable and my connection problems went away) and make sure everything else on your network is turned OFF. 

If you have to stay wireless, not only make sure everything is off, but make sure your network is fully secure and not being used by someone else. If you are not using network security on a wireless system and have occasional issues with streaming or downloading, you may not be the only person using your account. Older routers, especially those with firmware that has never been updated, are vulnerable - even if they have network security. Anything less than WAP2 security on a wireless router leaves you vulnerable.

These are good issues to take care of before you spend a lot of time trying to troubleshoot your internet provider or Netflix.


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## angel35 (Nov 5, 2004)

I have two tivos.The HDXL does not show Netflicxon the other hd tivo it does.Why one but not the other??? This is on the now playing list


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## bkdtv (Jan 9, 2003)

angel35 said:


> I have two tivos.The HDXL does not show Netflicxon the other hd tivo it does.Why one but not the other??? This is on the now playing list


Sounds like someone in your household removed it.

You can re-enable it under Video On Demand -> Netflix.


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## grenex (Feb 6, 2002)

I use it often. The interface is a bit slow, but it has NEVER crashed on me at all.


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## Oldandslow (Nov 8, 2002)

cadmium said:


> Well I've officially been bitten in the ass by the Tivo Netflix feature. Lost internet for a few minutes while watching superbad and it locked up the Tivo completely. I lost the last 5 minutes of 2 of my favorite shows. Add to that at least 1/2 of the stuff I've tried to watch still has audio sync issues.
> 
> Nevermind "free", the Netflix feature is downright offensive. No internet dependent feature on any device should ever have the ability to bring down the whole system. I get that it originally had a few bugs, but it's been like 5 months now. There's no excuse for how poorly this is implemented.


Couldn't agree more. I've given up on watching Netflix with my Series 3 and now use my Xbox 360 for that feature. The Xbox 360 never has a problem with Netflix. Now, if I could do something about the noise the Xbox 360 makes when watching movies!


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## plateau10 (Dec 11, 2007)

I can't believe how long this has continued to be a problem. I've had TiVo (through DirecTV) since 2000 and it's been rock solid. I suspect my DSR6000 would still work like a champ if I hooked it up. I'm shocked that there's a fairly common scenario that completely locks up the box and hasn't been fixed in all this time. 

The WAF of the TiVo HD took a huge hit yesterday when my kids were watching a Netflix stream and it locked up the box (I'm actually fairly well convinced the TiVo is what took out the network--the wired desktop couldn't even get to the router's admin page until I reset the router. That's happened twice now since the TiVo has joined the network less than two weeks ago).


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## parzec (Jun 21, 2002)

Been reading this thread for some time, and never experienced a problem until last night. Had trouble starting up a movie -- long pause until I finally gave up. Backed out of the Netflix App and was able to use other Tvo features just fine. Started a movie this morning just fine but after hitting pause it wouldn't start up. Tried several times but would get "error connecting to Netflix server" message. Backed out of the app then did a reset from the menu -- at which point got stuck at Powering Up/Wait a few Minutes More loop. Pulled the plug, rebotted - same thing. Pullled plug again and fit inally booted up. Netflix is working now and i m currently watching a movie, but obviouly the problem that existed in 12/08 is still a problem today.


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## proudx (Sep 16, 2008)

parzec said:


> Been reading this thread for some time, and never experienced a problem until last night. Had trouble starting up a movie -- long pause until I finally gave up. Backed out of the Netflix App and was able to use other Tvo features just fine. Started a movie this morning just fine but after hitting pause it wouldn't start up. Tried several times but would get "error connecting to Netflix server" message. Backed out of the app then did a reset from the menu -- at which point got stuck at Powering Up/Wait a few Minutes More loop. Pulled the plug, rebotted - same thing. Pullled plug again and fit inally booted up. Netflix is working now and i m currently watching a movie, but obviouly the problem that existed in 12/08 is still a problem today.


We have been problem free until last night when the stream froze and the s3 rebooted, lucky for us it didn't get stuck on boot up but this has me concerned.

Does tivo have a plan to fix this?


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## davidwadesmith (Nov 28, 2007)

Here in the last few weeks, I've noticed for Netflix HD content streaming, it might pause / re-buffer once to three times during the show, but otherwise, things were ok.

Last night, on the 6th pause (never seen it pause so much), the picture blanked, and after several minutes, I saw a "Please wait..." kind of dialog, but several minutes later, it still hadn't budged. The Tivo was unresponsive to any remote command, so I figured it was locked up.

Since removing the power, the unit has been stuck in a reboot loop that occassionally makes it to a stuttering Tivo menu, but eventually reboots again. I've only tried kickstart 57 so far, but after 20 mins or so, it looked like it was back to rebooting, and I had to leave the house.

I remembered reading a post about the netflix server not being able to make a connection, or networking being down as being a potential cause for the reboot loop, but it doesn't seem to be the case here. After rebooting the Tivo, I went to my other TivoHD to finish the show, and everything was peachy there (except that it didn't remember where I was in the stream -- no big deal).

I'm hoping I'll be able to recover with a kickstart at most. I can't imagine that Netflix killed my Tivo / hard drive, and I don't want to think my 1TB drive is trying to meet its maker. Crossing fingers for tonight's troubleshooting foray.

Are others seeing the pausing / re-buffering behavior for HD content streaming lately?


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## wackymann (Sep 22, 2006)

All of these horror stories has convinced me not to join Netflix. If/when I stop hearing these stories, I will probably become a member. I know it's probably more Tivo's fault, but whatever - there's no way I am willing to risk messing up my Tivo. I have come to depend on my Tivo S3 - coming up on 3 years since I bought it.


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## davidwadesmith (Nov 28, 2007)

Hmm... Maybe this doesn't have anything to do with Netflix after all. I've tried Kickstart 57, 58, 52, and 54, all to no avail. TivoHD starts to boot, gets to green screen for 5 seconds or so, then reboots, rinses, and repeats.


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## diskus (Sep 22, 2004)

davidwadesmith said:


> Hmm... Maybe this doesn't have anything to do with Netflix after all. I've tried Kickstart 57, 58, 52, and 54, all to no avail. TivoHD starts to boot, gets to green screen for 5 seconds or so, then reboots, rinses, and repeats.


Never had a problem, dont use it much though simply because of lack of HD content


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## jtreid (Jan 12, 2006)

davidwadesmith said:


> Here in the last few weeks, I've noticed for Netflix HD content streaming, it might pause / re-buffer once to three times during the show, but otherwise, things were ok.
> 
> Last night, on the 6th pause (never seen it pause so much), the picture blanked, and after several minutes, I saw a "Please wait..." kind of dialog, but several minutes later, it still hadn't budged. The Tivo was unresponsive to any remote command, so I figured it was locked up.
> 
> ...


At this point, I'm practically giving up on Tivo/Netflix. I have Comcast 25mbs and for the last several nights, I can sometimes get Heros S3 going HD for a few minutes, the thing stops, rebuffers, I lose a few bars on the PQ and then I get a stretched screen that is barely watchable. That is, when I can even get the thing playing in the first place. Sometimes I have to watch something else, go back and then start Heros and it will sometimes work. Last night it even booted me back to the NP menu twice. I had two reboots out of the blue while watching netflix one night this past weekend. I finally got a show going and paused for a quick break, came back, it rebuffered and the same horrible PQ. All the stuttering, rebuffering, rebooting and ridiculously bad PQ is a waste of my time.

I agree with the title of this thread that this is the most ridiculous implementation I've ever seen too. I just can't watch it anymore. I got Netflix for this new feature and it has been a crap shoot ever since if it will work when I want to watch something. With the limited HD content and the fact that I get this bad PQ, I'm having more pain than not. I'm at my wits end and I'm tired of my family asking why it's not working.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

No problems here with netflix on the two TiVoHD and two S3 boxes I'm using it with.
My other two boxes are 360's that i use it with.


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## daveak (Mar 23, 2009)

davidwadesmith said:


> Hmm... Maybe this doesn't have anything to do with Netflix after all. I've tried Kickstart 57, 58, 52, and 54, all to no avail. TivoHD starts to boot, gets to green screen for 5 seconds or so, then reboots, rinses, and repeats.


Bet if you replace your HD things will work out for you...

Signed.... A happy and content NetFlix user on TiVo.


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## jadziedzic (Apr 20, 2009)

wackymann said:


> All of these horror stories has convinced me not to join Netflix. If/when I stop hearing these stories, I will probably become a member. I know it's probably more Tivo's fault, but whatever - there's no way I am willing to risk messing up my Tivo.


Netflix is not the issue here, so don't blame them. For $99 you can buy a Roku player that basically just *works* - plus, it has a much better user interface than TiVo. Or you can buy an LG or Samsung Blu-Ray disc player that includes Netflix streaming capability. I've abandoned TiVo in favor of the Roku player (which I owned before I bought my TiVo S3).

Tony


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## Sapphire (Sep 10, 2002)

jtreid said:


> At this point, I'm practically giving up on Tivo/Netflix. I have Comcast 25mbs and for the last several nights, I can sometimes get Heros S3 going HD for a few minutes, the thing stops, rebuffers, I lose a few bars on the PQ and then I get a stretched screen that is barely watchable. That is, when I can even get the thing playing in the first place. Sometimes I have to watch something else, go back and then start Heros and it will sometimes work. Last night it even booted me back to the NP menu twice. I had two reboots out of the blue while watching netflix one night this past weekend. I finally got a show going and paused for a quick break, came back, it rebuffered and the same horrible PQ. All the stuttering, rebuffering, rebooting and ridiculously bad PQ is a waste of my time.
> 
> I agree with the title of this thread that this is the most ridiculous implementation I've ever seen too. I just can't watch it anymore. I got Netflix for this new feature and it has been a crap shoot ever since if it will work when I want to watch something. With the limited HD content and the fact that I get this bad PQ, I'm having more pain than not. I'm at my wits end and I'm tired of my family asking why it's not working.


Are you sure it's not Comcast throttling you back? I know they have some funky new network management stuff now.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Raj said:


> Are you sure it's not Comcast throttling you back? I know they have some funky new network management stuff now.


That problem certainly doesn't occur on my FIOS connection. Even my girlfriends slow DSL connection works fine with the TiVo and Netflix.(although her DSL speed is only 768kbs so she can't get HD, but the quality is consistent unless you try downloading something else with another device on the INTERNET connection, then it drops down to the lowest quality.)


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## Brainiac 5 (Aug 25, 2003)

Raj said:


> Are you sure it's not Comcast throttling you back? I know they have some funky new network management stuff now.


Even if it is jtreid's internet connection, that still leaves some problems that shouldn't happen, like rebooting. A bad or slow connection certainly should not cause the TiVo to reboot!

Also, there are people reporting the same problems who can stream fine with the Roku player, XBox, etc., just not the TiVo.


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## jtreid (Jan 12, 2006)

Raj said:


> Are you sure it's not Comcast throttling you back? I know they have some funky new network management stuff now.


They don't throttle me back when I stream it to my PC. It works wonderfully on the PC. In fact, I can stream something and surf at the same time with no issues at all.

And like was stated earlier, this is not the only problem and I'm not the only one having it. Further, throttling has nothing to do with just starting the stream and I shouldn't be getting all the connection errors. It's just a hokey implementation .


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## Resist (Dec 21, 2003)

I have Charter Cable and the last few days of using the Netflix stream with my Tivo have been terrible. It must has stopped to retrieve 10 times during each 1 hour movie. It was so frustrating and I was so mad last night I was ready to cancel Netflix! 

The funny thing is I don't have this issue at all when using Netflix via my XBox 360. So it seems to be a Tivo issue and not so much a Netflix or Charter problem. 

Tivo if you can't properly support the technology, then get out of that business! Maybe you ought to just stick with what you do well.


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## chazas (Jan 18, 2007)

I have had Netflix refuse to connect - which has then frozen most of the Tivo features - a couple of times, where a reboot was required. I have encountered a couple of movies with bad sound synchronization, but have not checked on the computer to see if the issues were specific to TiVo. Other than that, I've had no problems with my S3 - with FIOS I never get any pauses for buffering. I really like having such a large catalog of programming available on demand.


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## davidwadesmith (Nov 28, 2007)

daveak said:


> Bet if you replace your HD things will work out for you...
> 
> Signed.... A happy and content NetFlix user on TiVo.


 I took out the hard drive, and have run many diagnostic tests on it while attached to a computer (ATA Firmware Self Tests, RWRCs, Verify tests, etc.). Every test passes.

In the meantime, I've restored my original TivoHD image onto a different drive, and have been testing the rest of the Tivo hardware. So far, no problems.

I intend to put the 1TB drive back in tonight, hoping it was just image corruption on the drive that spun it off into the ditch. I wonder if a recent problem with my power lines could be a contributing factor. About a month ago, the power went out for a while, then came on again, and repeated about 6 times over the next hour. The Tivo was attached to a UPS, but I wonder if the UPS was somehow in a weakened state, and not providing as much protection as it otherwise might have (because the battery may have been too low to keep the Tivo up with the constant cycling -- not sure -- couldn't get myself out of bed to check it out  )

The question I'm facing now is whether I think that the drive may have some intermittent flakiness about it, or whether the power situation may have been a quasi-freak accident, or whether the Netflix lockup may have caused some corruption. I don't want to re-install this freshly re-imaged drive, only to have to face a similar problem in the future...


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## rocko (Oct 29, 2002)

davidwadesmith said:


> I took out the hard drive, and have run many diagnostic tests on it while attached to a computer (ATA Firmware Self Tests, RWRCs, Verify tests, etc.). Every test passes.
> 
> In the meantime, I've restored my original TivoHD image onto a different drive, and have been testing the rest of the Tivo hardware. So far, no problems.
> 
> ...


My experience suggests that drive problems aren't *always* physical in nature - the contents gets corrupted somehow. I've had drive problems in the past that I solved by restoring an image instead of replacing the drive.

That's not to say that all problems are corruption-related - that's just my personal experience.


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## daveak (Mar 23, 2009)

Let us know if it works, cycling on and off like that (assuming your UPS battery did not have enough juice to keep up) is not exactly a recipe for drive health, or even other components. We all know (don't we ) that it's a bad idea to repeatedly hard cycle a computer like that - and your TiVo is basically a computer - good to see you are protecting it with a UPS like you would a computer.



davidwadesmith said:


> I took out the hard drive, and have run many diagnostic tests on it while attached to a computer (ATA Firmware Self Tests, RWRCs, Verify tests, etc.). Every test passes.
> 
> In the meantime, I've restored my original TivoHD image onto a different drive, and have been testing the rest of the Tivo hardware. So far, no problems.
> 
> ...


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## Resist (Dec 21, 2003)

After using Netflix on my XBox 360 last night, I didn't have one issue. Even rewind and fast forward were much more responsive. I will never watch Netflix movies on my Tivo Series 3 again. I don't understand why Tivo can't fix the connection issues with Netflix. Had it not been for my XBox 360, I would have canceled my Netflix streaming service because my experience with it and Tivo have been terrible.

Tivo are you listening?


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## cogx (Sep 23, 2006)

Resist said:


> After using Netflix on my XBox 360 last night, I didn't have one issue. Even rewind and fast forward were much more responsive. I will never watch Netflix movies on my Tivo Series 3 again. I don't understand why Tivo can't fix the connection issues with Netflix.


Yep, same story in my house and both my TiVo and 360 run ethernet to my router, so it isn't a wireless problem. The Xbox 360's Netflix streaming code appears to just be superior to TiVo's current implementation and I've read that the upcoming Xbox software update is going to make it even better. Unfortunately, compared to my S3, the 360 is a noisy beast with an annoying green glow in the dark.


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## Resist (Dec 21, 2003)

I have an early XBox 360 that isn't noisy. I must have lucked out. 

I really wish though that Tivo would stop dragging their feet and fix the Netflix issue.


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## BarryD99 (Mar 30, 2002)

NetFlix on my TivoHD works ok 95&#37; of the time.

I think the worst Tivo implementation is Rhapsody. Both companies should be ashamed.


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## jakerome (Nov 29, 2002)

Add my voice to those that suffer from never-ending problems with TiVo/Netflix. Freezes for minutes at a time, requires a reboot, then doesn't connect to Netflix. F'in A! It's embarrassing for me, since I've recommended to friends that they get TiVoes because of the NetFlix. Never again-- I'll tell them to buy a Roku.

Halfway through an episode tonight, it crashed my TiVo. Now it won't reconnect. TiVo is supposed to make life easier, not more complicated.


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## Langree (Apr 29, 2004)

Just to balance things, I've had it since beta w/o an issue.


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## bitpusher (Aug 27, 2008)

Heavy streaming Netflix user on my TiVo HD and 5Mbps DSL (mostly the old shows and documentaries that aren't HD anyway). 

I've had a few reset problems early on when TiVo first offered the service, but no problems since. I think TiVo could make the interface faster and as user-friendly as the rest of the TiVo content, but it works well enough for me to sell my Roku and use TiVo exclusively for streaming.

It sounds there's a wide variety of experiences using this feature.


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## chedlin (Apr 13, 2003)

Having problems tonight. I tried to load netflix and it sat for 5-10 minutes on the please with screen. I rebooted the TiVo and then it kept getting an error trying to load the netflix queue.

Eventually it loaded the first few pages of the queue, but wouldn't let me scroll down without and error.. I moved what we wanted to watch to the top, and tried to play it. It has been on a grey screen for 15 minutes now.

My DSL connection is a tad unreliable. We have been getting long pauses, and they almost always correlate to the CRC error counter incrementing by 1 on the DSL modem, although I would hope the system would be able to recover a bit faster than it does. Sometimes it kicks me out of the show.

I never had a problem before I moved (had 15mbps cable before).


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## WelshSage (Oct 17, 2007)

chedlin said:


> Having problems tonight. I tried to load netflix and it sat for 5-10 minutes on the please with screen. I rebooted the TiVo and then it kept getting an error trying to load the netflix queue.


I'm having the same problem. I tried deactivating the DVR from my Netflix account, but now I can't even activate it. It keeps throwing up error messages. This must be on Netflix's end.


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## sniperlv (Jan 17, 2001)

chedlin said:


> Having problems tonight. I tried to load netflix and it sat for 5-10 minutes on the please with screen. I rebooted the TiVo and then it kept getting an error trying to load the netflix queue.
> 
> Eventually it loaded the first few pages of the queue, but wouldn't let me scroll down without and error.. I moved what we wanted to watch to the top, and tried to play it. It has been on a grey screen for 15 minutes now.
> 
> ...


Same problem here.


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## nguyej1 (Jul 28, 2006)

chedlin said:


> Having problems tonight. I tried to load netflix and it sat for 5-10 minutes on the please with screen. I rebooted the TiVo and then it kept getting an error trying to load the netflix queue.
> 
> Eventually it loaded the first few pages of the queue, but wouldn't let me scroll down without and error.. I moved what we wanted to watch to the top, and tried to play it. It has been on a grey screen for 15 minutes now.
> 
> ...


I have same problem last night. It seems the problems is in Netflix side.


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## apercer (Mar 14, 2003)

I am pretty happy with the Netflix service. It will occasionally take my system down, but it works 95% of the time. It is great for watching TV series. I just wish they had a bigger selection.

What problems I do have seem to be Netflix issues or issues stemming from the type of Netflix content. Dexter season 2, episode 1 will always crash my Tivo. And then there is a host of content where the encoding is screwed up and the show plays fast then slow then stop then fast then slow. Really annoying and causes me to watch on the computer where it works, or actually get the DVD in the mail.


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## Brainiac 5 (Aug 25, 2003)

apercer said:


> What problems I do have seem to be Netflix issues or issues stemming from the type of Netflix content. Dexter season 2, episode 1 will always crash my Tivo.


If watching something crashes your TiVo, it's a TiVo issue. That particular show may trigger the problem, but what has to be fixed is the TiVo software - nothing you watch should make it crash.


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## DougJohnson (Dec 12, 2006)

chedlin said:


> Having problems tonight. I tried to load netflix and it sat for 5-10 minutes on the please with screen. I rebooted the TiVo and then it kept getting an error trying to load the netflix queue.


I had my first-ever freeze, forcing a reboot on my S3 while watching Netflix last night. The Netflix menu and queue was slow to come up. When I selected a episode of MI-5, it was slow to start, then about 3 minutes into it, everything froze. The image on the screen was frozen, TiVo would not respond to the remote (not even flash the little light on the front panel), and the front panel clock froze. It was still frozen this morning. I pulled the plug and it rebooted just fine. -- Doug


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## rocko (Oct 29, 2002)

It looks like it was a Netflix-wide problem last night - I tried for a few hours around 11:00PM before giving up.

My S3 hung forever and I had to pull the plug. Not my favorite experience. I agree that TiVo needs to do some work with bandwidth management and glitch handling but most of the time it's been great.

Now if they could expand the streaming selection ...


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## Allanon (Nov 2, 2005)

Last night I was watching a Netflix show and it kept stopping and going back to the main Tivo menu. I would resume the Netflix show and everything would be fine for a while then it would do it again. It did this 4 times but the last time instead of going back to the Tivo menu it froze with a black screen. I had to pull the plug on the Tivo and reboot. Sadly, I was recording 2 shows at the time and they are now missing about 5 minutes because of the reboot. I've never really had any problems with Netflix in the past but the only thing I did differently this time was pause the Netflix show for a while do to a phone call. After that all the jumping to the main menu and freezing started. Wonder if that is what caused the problems?


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## pwhite8314 (Jan 2, 2002)

My Netflix was screwy over the weekend as well. A movie on Saturday night jumped back to the main Netflix screen 3 or 4 times, then last night trying to browse the Netflix queue it locked up the TiVoHD. A reboot fixed it, but it did exactly the same thing when I retried a little later. I left it overnight with the "please wait" banner, which was still there this morning. Have since rebooted and everything else is fine, but I've not gone back into Netflix.

Aside from that, never had any issues with Netflix.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

Netflix had a streaming outage last night.

This effected Xbox 360, Roku, TiVo, etc. The difference between the other platforms and TiVo is that the other platforms don't lock up when Netflix has an outage.


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## sriggins (Feb 21, 2005)

I must say, I've given TiVo enough time. My subscription is up in april, and I will be looking at options.

My new XBOX 360 is much better at Netflix, and that sucks  Every TiVo user I know hates the Netflix software, it is awful, it jerks, it lags, it pixelates, it crashes. And this is August, 2009. 

Very, very bad black eye.

Add to that no email support on tivo.com (I came here instead!), really slow tivo search beta that still has not shipped as far as I can tell, goofy switching to other apps (the other search stuff) makes me believe the people who crafted the little box we loved have left the company.

I am not saying Comcast box or FIOS box are better, but I'll definitely be taking a look at them again. The main reason I'd likely stay on my S3 is that I have 750gb of space (500 external) which is very handy with HD.

I'd rather have fewer features that worked flawlessly. I'd also like to get rid of every #*&@*@&@* ad in the UI. That annoys me to no end.


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## bitpusher (Aug 27, 2008)

I have a TiVo HD and an xbox360. The only reason I don't use the xbox360 for Netflix streaming is its obnoxious fan noise. That is the xbox360's fatal flaw qua HTPC in my opinion.

Maybe Amazon will buy TiVo along with Netflix.


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## Resist (Dec 21, 2003)

I hate Netflix on my Tivo and will NEVER use it again! From now on I will watch Netflix on my XBox 360. And yes it sucks that Tivo doesn't have email support, as it makes no sense in this day and age.


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## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

sriggins said:


> Every TiVo user I know hates the Netflix software, it is awful, it jerks, it lags, it pixelates, it crashes. And this is August, 2009.


This is a huge overstatement. I have never had any streaming issues except when Netflix itself is having problems. In that case, my XBox can't stream either. I certainly have never seen jerks or pixelation. If you are seeing something like this, then the problem is in the encoding of the video. My guess is if you are seeing constant problems, then many of them are probably caused by your setup or your ISP. The crash problem is certainly a huge issue that TiVo needs to fix ASAP. However, I have never found a video that my XBox can stream at a better quality than my TiVo.


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## sriggins (Feb 21, 2005)

bitpusher said:


> I have a TiVo HD and an xbox360. The only reason I don't use the xbox360 for Netflix streaming is its obnoxious fan noise. That is the xbox360's fatal flaw qua HTPC in my opinion.
> 
> Maybe Amazon will buy TiVo along with Netflix.


I agree, even the jasper is too noisy but we moved everything into a vented closet lol, no more ps3, xbox, tivo external drive noise.


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## sriggins (Feb 21, 2005)

rainwater said:


> This is a huge overstatement. I have never had any streaming issues except when Netflix itself is having problems. In that case, my XBox can't stream either. I certainly have never seen jerks or pixelation. If you are seeing something like this, then the problem is in the encoding of the video. My guess is if you are seeing constant problems, then many of them are probably caused by your setup or your ISP. The crash problem is certainly a huge issue that TiVo needs to fix ASAP. However, I have never found a video that my XBox can stream at a better quality than my TiVo.


Sorry, look at the other two posts above you, the rest of this thread, and the four tivo s3 owners I know, they all hate it, and have all had issues.

And what you claim is BS - Just two nights ago tivo could not play anything, so we turned on the xbox and it worked flawlessly for three hours.


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## daveak (Mar 23, 2009)

sriggins said:


> Sorry, look at the other two posts above you, the rest of this thread, and the four tivo s3 owners I know, they all hate it, and have all had issues.
> 
> And what you claim is BS - Just two nights ago tivo could not play anything, so we turned on the xbox and it worked flawlessly for three hours.


TiVo does a great job from where I sit. Never have I had the issues you are talking about, and NetFlix + TiVo is why I have a TiVo - I was deciding between TiVo and the Roku. Spent the extra money and never looked back. I have no idea why some people keep having streaming problems, and maybe it somehow is TiVo's fault. NetFlix has always been great on my original style S3.

Either it is a manufacturing or part problem on some boxes or internet problems upstream from some subscribers. I would think if it was software we all would have it?


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## Langree (Apr 29, 2004)

sriggins said:


> Sorry, look at the other two posts above you, the rest of this thread, and the four tivo s3 owners I know, they all hate it, and have all had issues.
> 
> And what you claim is BS - Just two nights ago tivo could not play anything, so we turned on the xbox and it worked flawlessly for three hours.


So if the TiVo is having problems and your XBox is not, it must be TiVo.. tho many of us who post here have zero issues..

No way it could be a router setting issue, or a connection difference between the two, or interferrence from other equipment, all of which have proven to be culprits in the past.


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

sriggins said:


> Sorry, look at the other two posts above you, the rest of this thread, and the four tivo s3 owners I know, they all hate it, and have all had issues.
> 
> And what you claim is BS - Just two nights ago tivo could not play anything, so we turned on the xbox and it worked flawlessly for three hours.


I have an S3, and use Netflix quite often with movies and TV series. I just got done watching the BBC version of The Office, and I'm in the middle of watching Heroes Season 3 with no issues. I did have a problem with "Joe Rogan: Live" awhile back where the audio was missing, but a call to Netflix, not Tivo, fixed it (eventually).

Of course it's going to look bad when checking out these forums, because people don't usually post things saying "Everything's A-OK!" Citing the example of those who posted in this thread entitled "Tivo+Netflix=worst implementation ever" would probably NOT represent the majority of people that use Tivo + Netflix. So your (and most that posted to this topic) setup sucks. That's too bad.


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## Brainiac 5 (Aug 25, 2003)

daveak said:


> Either it is a manufacturing or part problem on some boxes or internet problems upstream from some subscribers. I would think if it was software we all would have it?


No, that doesn't follow. From the reports, it sounds like the problem may be related to network problems (as you say). However, network problems are hardly rare events that you would never expect - the TiVo should be able to deal with them, certainly in some way that's better than crashing. It seems it may be the case that if your network is working perfectly then everything is fine, but if not, the TiVo software can't recover or fail gracefully. That is a problem in the software.


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## Brainiac 5 (Aug 25, 2003)

orangeboy said:


> So your (and most that posted to this topic) setup sucks. That's too bad.


But even if the people who are having problems have a "setup that sucks," many of the problems they describe are things that SHOULD NOT HAPPEN, regardless of, for instance, network problems. Crashing because there was a network problem is a bug, plain and simple. It sounds like you're trying to blame the people who have problems, which is ridiculous.

Of course the TiVo Netflix software works for most people; if it was failing all the time, TiVo would have been able to fix it long ago (the more reproducible the problem, the easier it is to fix). But clearly the problems are there and affect enough people to at least fill up this thread...


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## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

sriggins said:


> Sorry, look at the other two posts above you, the rest of this thread, and the four tivo s3 owners I know, they all hate it, and have all had issues.


That makes no sense. Of course people that post here are going to be the ones with problems. Just look at the thread title.


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## Allanon (Nov 2, 2005)

Brainiac 5, I agree with you that the Tivo should handle errors better instead of crashing but you need to remember the Tivo was not built to be a Netflix streaming device like the Roku, it was an after thought. Also the Tivo isn't a powerful computer like the Xbox 360 so it might have to cut corners on the data checking in order to keep streaming speeds up. It takes time and CPU power to check all the data to make sure it is not flawed and maybe they needed to cut corners in order to get decent streaming speeds and not put a burden on the Tivo's CPU. Note that this is just a guess.


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## Brainiac 5 (Aug 25, 2003)

Allanon said:


> It takes time and CPU power to check all the data to make sure it is not flawed and maybe they needed to cut corners in order to get decent streaming speeds and not put a burden on the Tivo's CPU.


That's possible, but if that's the reason then I'm not sure it was wise to put out the Netflix feature. Network errors _will_ happen, it's just a matter of how often. So everyone would likely experience flaky behavior at some point (and in fact, there are posts by people saying it worked for months then stopped, or it almost always works but fails very occasionally).

On the other hand, I'm not sure why it should be so difficult. They already must be checking for errors in digital TV streams, since the TiVo never crashes when there's a glitch while watching TV.


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## jafi (Jun 16, 2009)

Langree said:


> So if the TiVo is having problems and your XBox is not, it must be TiVo.. tho many of us who post here have zero issues..
> 
> No way it could be a router setting issue, or a connection difference between the two, or interferrence from other equipment, all of which have proven to be culprits in the past.


I have both a S3 Tivo and a Roku Netflix box. My Tivo locked up and had to be rebooted. The Roku continued to work just fine, it would just tell me the movie wasn't available. I rebooted my router just in case, but it made no difference the Tivo promptly locked up when I accessed Netflix again. The Roku was streaming fine. My laptop wasn't having issues either though my understanding is Netflix streams from a different set of servers for web browser access.

The other thing the Tivo was having problems with were the podcasts and Listen365. It didn't lock up but they either weren't available or after they started playing I was suddenly dumped back in the main Now Playing menu.

Everything is running fine today and I haven't touched anything.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

Brainiac 5 said:


> On the other hand, I'm not sure why it should be so difficult. They already must be checking for errors in digital TV streams, since the TiVo never crashes when there's a glitch while watching TV.


My take on this (whether it's right or wrong), is that the TiVo simply takes in the incoming stream and dumps it directly to the decoder chip as is. The avc/h.264 decoding processing doesn't seem all that resilient, in that feeding it improperly encoded video or no video at all will cause the TiVo to simply lock up. This was demonstrated when programmers were trying to figure out how to write programs to stream to the TiVo. You can also demonstrate this by unplugging your router while streaming Netflix (this will almost definitely lock up the TiVo box).

Despite the lack of any 11.0x code being released, I think TiVo still runs linux. To lock up a linux box, you need to cause a hardware failure, driver failure or kernel panic. I think the TiVo reboots in the case of a kernel panic (at least I hope it would), so that would indicate a hardware or hardware driver failure. I would think it would be the decoder chip or its drives, but I've also seen lockups occur during downloads of Amazon HD video (even though the video isn't being played back). That would seem to indicate it might even be a network driver issue.

Whatever it is, I wish TiVo would make fixing it a high priority or tell us it can't be fixed (like was done with the S3 M-Card issue).


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## Brainiac 5 (Aug 25, 2003)

morac said:


> Whatever it is, I wish TiVo would make fixing it a high priority or tell us it can't be fixed (like was done with the S3 M-Card issue).


Agreed!


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## daveak (Mar 23, 2009)

Brainiac 5 said:


> No, that doesn't follow. From the reports, it sounds like the problem may be related to network problems (as you say). However, network problems are hardly rare events that you would never expect - the TiVo should be able to deal with them, certainly in some way that's better than crashing. It seems it may be the case that if your network is working perfectly then everything is fine, but if not, the TiVo software can't recover or fail gracefully. That is a problem in the software.


Something is wrong somewhere, we can agree on that.

I have wondered if it couldn't be some sort of hardware problem though. It might be interesting if people started comparing manufacture or refurbish dates (mine is a refurbished S3 from Jan 09, maybe one that was returned to TiVo because it kept crashing with NetFlix and they fixed it? who knows...).

A slightly different chip or other issue? I know this may be a far out idea , but if there is some hardware weakness or problem that only shows up when there is a network issue - maybe that is something to look at. The TiVo is like an older computer in performance (and apparently design), trying to run newer software. Maybe hardware limits are being exposed by running the NetFlix app?


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

daveak said:


> Something is wrong somewhere, we can agree on that.
> 
> I have wondered if it couldn't be some sort of hardware problem though. It might be interesting if people started comparing manufacture or refurbish dates (mine is a refurbished S3 from Jan 09, maybe one that was returned to TiVo because it kept crashing with NetFlix and they fixed it? who knows...).
> 
> A slightly different chip or other issue? I know this may be a far out idea , but if there is some hardware weakness or problem that only shows up when there is a network issue - maybe that is something to look at. The TiVo is like an older computer in performance (and apparently design), trying to run newer software. Maybe hardware limits are being exposed by running the NetFlix app?


Made in Mexico, November 2, 2006. Original S3 (not refurb'ed). No issues.


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## spolebitski (Mar 30, 2006)

First let me say that I think the netflix / tivo idea is great. I have watched several movies and tv shows on it. However there needs to be more HD content! In addition i have had several issues of the tivo freezing during a movie or right after I stop using netflix. Anyone else have issues with netflix freezing the system?


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

spolebitski said:


> Anyone else have issues with netflix freezing the system?


This might be one of the most blatant smeeks I've ever seen 

Try reading the posts on this page (or any other page) in this thread.


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## Resist (Dec 21, 2003)

spolebitski said:


> Anyone else have issues with netflix freezing the system?


Is this a serious question? Have you not been reading all the previous threads?

Tivo + Netflix = FAIL


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## daveak (Mar 23, 2009)

Resist said:


> Is this a serious question? Have you not been reading all the previous threads?
> 
> Tivo + Netflix = FAIL


TiVo + NetFlix = :up:


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## Brainiac 5 (Aug 25, 2003)

daveak said:


> TiVo + NetFlix = :up:


I think that's exactly why the people with problems are upset about it. They'd _like_ to use it because it's a great feature, but it doesn't work for them.


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## rocko (Oct 29, 2002)

morac said:


> This might be one of the most blatant smeeks I've ever seen
> 
> Try reading the posts on this page (or any other page) in this thread.


Meeker must be *so *proud


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## daveak (Mar 23, 2009)

Brainiac 5 said:


> I think that's exactly why the people with problems are upset about it. They'd _like_ to use it because it's a great feature, but it doesn't work for them.


I agree. I think it is a great feature. And it works great for me. As for why it does not work for some users  My brain says there must be some logical reason, ideally some common reason between the TiVo users having a problem. I have not seen one or heard of one, except maybe some possible network issues, that seem nearly impossible for these users to resolve - And it even may be something they can do nothing about.


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## sriggins (Feb 21, 2005)

daveak said:


> I agree. I think it is a great feature. And it works great for me. As for why it does not work for some users  My brain says there must be some logical reason, ideally some common reason between the TiVo users having a problem. I have not seen one or heard of one, except maybe some possible network issues, that seem nearly impossible for these users to resolve - And it even may be something they can do nothing about.


DOn't forget that several of us experiencing issues can use the 360 at the *exact same time* with no issues, so maybe the TiVo connects to Commodore 64s while the XBOX has better servers, but unless it is something as silly as that, it is *not* network related.


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## Brainiac 5 (Aug 25, 2003)

daveak said:


> My brain says there must be some logical reason, ideally some common reason between the TiVo users having a problem. I have not seen one or heard of one, except maybe some possible network issues, that seem nearly impossible for these users to resolve - And it even may be something they can do nothing about.


Indeed, there must be a logical reason.

Clearly though, part of it is something wrong with the TiVo software. Whatever is going on in the network, or anything else external to the TiVo, should not be able to make it crash. If network problems are bad enough that the streaming simply cannot work, the TiVo should still be able to fail gracefully.

Some have suggested that TiVo may have had to take shortcuts to get Netflix working on the existing hardware, and they are unable to make it more robust because of this. If that's the case, it just means there's a bug they can't fix, it doesn't mean the problem isn't a bug.


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## daveak (Mar 23, 2009)

sriggins said:


> DOn't forget that several of us experiencing issues can use the 360 at the *exact same time* with no issues, so maybe the TiVo connects to Commodore 64s while the XBOX has better servers, but unless it is something as silly as that, it is *not* network related.


True, I have not forgotten about that ( I knew I should have mentioned about people who can stream it good to another device in their home, but not their TiVo). The XBOX may have better hardware and/ or software to enable it to better compensate for possible network issues.

I still think (though I may be really reaching) that the older and slower hardware in the TiVo, trying to run the newer NetFlix app software could be the culprit. It simply may not have the speed or resources to compensate and/ or recover like newer & faster hardware running today's software.

Assuming there is a common issue (and I know very well what can happen when you assume) causing this problem, then finding the cause will solve it for most users.

Though on the server issue you mentioned - don't TiVos have a different connection point? And don't we all have at least a different connection path to whatever servers are being used - which can introduce all sorts of issues for slower, older computers (i.e. TiVo) trying to decode and reproduce digital images?


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

daveak said:


> I have wondered if it couldn't be some sort of hardware problem though. It might be interesting if people started comparing manufacture or refurbish dates (mine is a refurbished S3 from Jan 09, maybe one that was returned to TiVo because it kept crashing with NetFlix and they fixed it? who knows...).





orangeboy said:


> Made in Mexico, November 2, 2006. Original S3 (not refurb'ed). No issues.





daveak said:


> I still think (though I may be really reaching) that the older and slower hardware in the TiVo, trying to run the newer NetFlix app software could be the culprit. It simply may not have the speed or resources to compensate and/ or recover like newer & faster hardware running today's software.


Only (2) people replied with manufacture dates: me and you. Although I'm sure Tivo could determine dates from the TSNs, maybe there is a pattern that they don't want to publicize? With the (original) S3 model no longer being manufactured, a recall for faulty hardware would put them in a very bad spot. Replace 3-4 year old S3s with similar priced models? That _should_ be the HD XL. Or wait for an S4 and hope/bet that early S3 adopters become early S4 adopters? I would think the latter...


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

daveak said:


> I still think (though I may be really reaching) that the older and slower hardware in the TiVo, trying to run the newer NetFlix app software could be the culprit. It simply may not have the speed or resources to compensate and/ or recover like newer & faster hardware running today's software.


Technically the TiVo's CPU has very little to do when streaming Netflix. The video/audio decoding, which is the most processor intensive task, is all done in dedicated hardware. The TiVo should have no more trouble streaming than a Roku box since they have similar CPU speeds. Here's the S3's two chip specs and here's the HD/XL's one combined chip spec.


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## nolanski (Mar 27, 2006)

No matter how you try to justify that Netflix works well it doesn't period.
It should be PLUG and PLAY not PLUG and experiment.
We have lives...families and jobs.


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## mvnuenen (Jun 1, 2007)

Sorry to hear you guys are having Netflix issues. My S3-Netflix experience has been fantastic from the day it appeared. On the same 1080i PDP I have also connected a PS3, and just for gigs and giggles I purchased (and installed) the PlayOn MediaMall plug-in. Well, the Netflix PQ thru the PS3 was far inferior compared to Tivo's Netflix PQ. I also have an XBX 360 but the noise drives me crazy. So, a big hooray from me for Tivo-Netflix

Oh, my S3 is 2 yrs old


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

nolanski said:


> No matter how you try to justify that Netflix works well it doesn't period.
> It should be PLUG and PLAY not PLUG and experiment.
> We have lives...families and jobs.


If Tivo+Neflix doesn't work (period), then how do you explain me and other posters that state it works, and works well? There are alternatives to wireless that DON'T require running new wiring. I honestly didn't trust my Linksys to provide a strong, stable signal to my S2, S3, Xbox, Wii and PC that I have in the living room. I live in an apartment complex with at least a dozen wireless networks surrounding me. I borrowed my bro-in-law's Powerline adapters, as well as a Linksys Range Expander, and found both still not doing the job. I finally happened onto a MoCA thread and went that route, and haven't looked back. So yes, I did do some experimenting before I did research (must be some impulsive nature in me), but I found a solution that IS plug and play for my environment. I could have saved myself a step had I done my research first. BTW, did you get a good price for your Tivo?


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## Brainiac 5 (Aug 25, 2003)

orangeboy said:


> If Tivo+Neflix doesn't work (period), then how do you explain me and other posters that state it works, and works well?


I'm not the person you're asking, but I'd like to point out that it works fine under many conditions, but there are conditions in which it does not. That's a bug - and that bug is there in your software too, whether it ever gets triggered or not. It seems like a lot of people are saying "it works for me, so there's no problem with the software." There clearly IS a problem with the software, it just doesn't affect the majority of people, or if it does, it's not often. I do see how it would be quite irritating for the people who experience it all the time.


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

Brainiac 5 said:


> I'm not the person you're asking, but I'd like to point out that it works fine under many conditions, but there are conditions in which it does not. That's a bug - and that bug is there in your software too, whether it ever gets triggered or not. It seems like a lot of people are saying "it works for me, so there's no problem with the software." There clearly IS a problem with the software, it just doesn't affect the majority of people, or if it does, it's not often. I do see how it would be quite irritating for the people who experience it all the time.


With broad, sweeping statements like "No matter how you try to justify that Netflix works well it doesn't period.", it is quite irritating to me when people want to include me in such a statement. If it doesn't work for you, that's fine. Rant your head off. For me, *Netflix works well. Period.* Did it always? No way! When using a wireless solution, I had problems with Tivo & Netflix working together. But I also had problems with my wireless PC and laptop as well. I remedied the situation with (temporary) trial and error with a powerline serup, and then more research. I now have MoCA adapters servicing (via a switch) 2 tivos, a PC, an XBox and a Wii. I may very well have the same bug that afflicts a minority/majority of people, but I've done my part to inoculate my Tivo from it!


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## Brainiac 5 (Aug 25, 2003)

orangeboy said:


> With broad, sweeping statements like "No matter how you try to justify that Netflix works well it doesn't period.", it is quite irritating to me when people want to include me in such a statement.


Point taken. The other poster was certainly overstating the problem.



> I may very well have the same bug that afflicts a minority/majority of people, but I've done my part to inoculate my Tivo from it!


True. What gets to me is that some people in the thread seem to blame the problems on the people having them. While some, such as yourself, may have been able to fix things by improving their network setup, not everyone may be able to get things to a point where Netflix always or almost always works. There can be problems in the network beyond your house that you have no control over. Any software that uses the network has to take into account that there can be errors, or that there may be delays in receiving the data. They are perfectly correct to place the responsibility for things like crashes on TiVo - those are bugs in the software that need to be fixed, regardless of whether or not they'd happen with a faster network.


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## Langree (Apr 29, 2004)

While I was streaming netflix last night it cut off and went to my now playing list, no brick, no restart, no lockup....


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## BenW (Mar 29, 2008)

Langree, I have had that same experience. That AND freezes. An i think my gripe is not that it doesn't work. When it works its great (aside from no 5.1), but my gripe is that it seems inconsistent. Sometimes no problems, sometimes hangs, has frozen the system a few times, sometimes goes back to now playing list, etc.


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## cogx (Sep 23, 2006)

For those with cable modems, our bandwidth is often going to fluctuate based on what our neighbors with the same service are doing. Where I live, Sunday evenings are a particular rough time for me to stream movies and sometimes I'll even have problems playing games over Xbox Live (although rarely, given that video games don't need near the bandwidth as streaming a movie). 
Now, in terms of Netflix streaming, I have both my Xbox 360 and TiVo S3 connected via ethernet cables to my router, so the whole issue of the unpredictability of wireless can be disregarded in my case.
When I am having problems with Netflix streaming on my TiVo S3, to get it to play more than a couple seconds at a time, I have found that I can watch that same video on the Xbox 360 and it is able to figure itself out after just stopping once and "adjusting". Whatever Microsoft's code is doing to compensate for the fluctuations in my connection, it appears to be far more sophisticated than TiVo's code. (I don't know about the Roku, I gave mine to a friend to use a few months ago.) 
It's up to TiVo to figure out how to improve their code to handle bandwidth fluctuations. If they believe their code is good enough for the majority of their customers, then that's that. However, I would hope if nothing else it would just be a matter of pride for the TiVo developers to be up for the challenge to make their Netflix streaming implementation as good as Microsoft's


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

Microsoft's Silverlight player can adjust to bandwidth fluctuations on the fly. If the bandwidth goes down the player will switch to a lower bandwidth stream, if the bandwidth goes up, the player will switch to a higher stream. Microsoft may have incorporated this into their XBox Netflix player.

TiVo on the other hand will only automatically drop to a lower stream quality if the bandwidth drops, but it will never automatically switch to a higher stream quality. Though that can be triggered using an instant replay.

I'm not sure what Roku does, but unlike TiVo, they are constant updated their player. They recently added 5.1 audio (for Amazon streams) and they plan to add the same new interface that was added on the 360 which allows users to add videos directly from the box.

TiVo tends to implement something on their box and then never change it unless it breaks as seen with the Rhapsody issues people are having. As such I doubt we'll ever see an update to the Netflix player as long as it works for most people. As an example, they blamed the problems that people had the other weekend (freezes, hangs, etc) on the Netflix outage.


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## sriggins (Feb 21, 2005)

cogx said:


> \ If they believe their code is good enough for the majority of their customers, then that's that. However, I would hope if nothing else it would just be a matter of pride for the TiVo developers to be up for the challenge to make their Netflix streaming implementation as good as Microsoft's


Right, this is exactly my point. My series 1 just worked, etc, and now I'm seeing buggier and buggier stuff show up, not well designed, crammed into a minimalistic box to try and maximize profit.

I think, sadly, TiVo rested on its laurels of being a household brand and forgot why we all love TiVo; Stability and "just works" I bet many TiVo lovers are also iPod/iPhone fans, for the same reason.

The problem with success is keeping ahead of yourself, so others don't have a chance to catch up. The nextflix application is TiVo's Apple TV, which works for some, is awful for others and just not very good compared to the competition.

Whatever the issues are, TiVo should resolve them, not be quiet about it for almost a year.


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## eht123 (Jul 17, 2008)

FWIW, I have no problems with the stuff I stream from Netflix, almost all of which is HD. I did have problems at one point when I tried using OpenDNS as opposed to my ISP DNS. I believe the reasons for this and solutions have been discussed previously.

I do wish they would add 5.1 audio, though. That in itself is enough to make me check out the Roku player...


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

eht123 said:


> I do wish they would add 5.1 audio, though. That in itself is enough to make me check out the Roku player...


In case I wasn't clear, Roku only does 5.1 audio for Amazon VoD, not Netflix. As far as I know Netflix streaming doesn't support 5.1 audio.


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## davidwadesmith (Nov 28, 2007)

Just following up from my last post (a couple or three pages back)...

Since laying down a fresh image on my 1TB drive, I have not had any problems of any kind. Seems like a corruption issue of some sort must have happened, though it could have been a hardware issue on the drive, where some bad sectors ended up getting remapped.

I'm really not sure what caused the problem to begin with. It could have been the power cycling that had happened earlier, or it could also have been something to do with the network. I have DSL, and it occassionally does lose its place, have to reset, and takes a minute or so to come back up. I would hope though, that the Netflix software would not have the ability to do such damage in such a case.

Whatever the case, Tivo and Netflix are back to their usual high performing levels for me, and I haven't had a problem since.


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## SheliaP (Jul 29, 2005)

I only recently got a HD and as soon as I get my cablecards- I am sure I will love it even more. I didn't get it to stream Netflix- that has been a perk! And a nice one.

So far I have been able to see the first season of The Tudors. Since I don't subscribe to premium movie channels- this was great! And bring up some old movies my husband was eager to watch (Pink Panther with Peter Sellers!!) plus a few other things - and now my instant queue is quite long. 
So far no problems- it has performed very well, and unlike Amazon- I don't have to pay for it, rent it and watch within 24 hours, or wait till it downloads to my unit.

I like it- it is nicer that it hasn't had any glitches for me. But I look at it as bonus stuff- that I didn't have before.


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

SheliaP said:


> I only recently got a HD and as soon as I get my cablecards- I am sure I will love it even more. I didn't get it to stream Netflix- that has been a perk! And a nice one.
> 
> So far I have been able to see the first season of The Tudors. Since I don't subscribe to premium movie channels- this was great! And bring up some old movies my husband was eager to watch (Pink Panther with Peter Sellers!!) plus a few other things - and now my instant queue is quite long.
> So far no problems- it has performed very well, and unlike Amazon- I don't have to pay for it, rent it and watch within 24 hours, or wait till it downloads to my unit.
> ...


Right on, Sheila! :up:
I'm glad to hear it working for you


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## MPSAN (Jun 20, 2009)

I, too, have gotten a lot of use out of Netflix. When we got our 3 THD's I did not think that I would as we watch mostly BluRay DVD's. However we found a lot of older stuff (and some not so old stuff) is on SD only anyway. We especially like the TV stuff, however I wish we could eliminate an episode without removing the whole series. It makes it hard to remember where we left off!

We just had our first issue last night. We tried to see Numbers and it said there was an error. OK, so we tried a different episode and still got the error. So we tried CSI and still got the error message. So, then we tried Season 1 of The Office, episode 3 and all was OK.

After that we tried NUMBERS again to see what would happen and the TiVo locked up. Even pressing a key on the remote did not show on the TiVo LED. We then went to bed and in the morning it was still locked up. Did a power cycle and all was OK this AM...even NUMBERS. I have no doubt that Netflix had an issue with those 2 TV series last night but do not know why it locked up.

Anyway, it has been fine except for those 2 shows last night!


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## jlb (Dec 13, 2001)

So I finally took netflix up on their offer to come back for a trial. Mostly did it so we could get Entourage S5 before my library request takes forever. I tossed Zohan into the instant queue to try it. Seemed ok. Then went up and dumped about 10 titles into the instant queue. 

Once I did that I went back to the VOD menu. Let me correct that...tried to go to the VOD menu. Sits at please wait for a few minutes then goes back to the NPL. Tried removing stuff from my IQ and still no go.

Sits at please wait and then back to npl. At least it is not locking up the whole system, but it seems like Netflix IQ has broken my entire VOD menu...youtube...jaman...etc.....


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## brnscofrnld (Mar 30, 2005)

we used netflix with no issues last night on our TIVOHD but tonight can't watch anything either. I'm getting the same result as jlb.


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## jlb (Dec 13, 2001)

Can't stream or can't get into the VOD menu?

Looking on the bright side, if there is a widespread problem, at least I am not alone. On the downside, another poor performance item.


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## chedlin (Apr 13, 2003)

VOD and Netflix menus both dead on this end. On hold to complain. I haven't called them in 2 years....


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## jlb (Dec 13, 2001)

I called netflix. This was before I had seen others responding after my post. Thinking that it was a netflix problem. That it is affecting multiple people and not just the netflix option but the entire VOD menu tells me that I should get on the horn with tivo too to complain.


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## jlb (Dec 13, 2001)

Called TiVo. They are aware of a "global" VOD issue and working on it. Estimate (whatever that means) is 2 hours. At least they are aware of it.....


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

jlb said:


> Called TiVo. They are aware of a "global" VOD issue and working on it. Estimate (whatever that means) is 2 hours. At least they are aware of it.....


I'll just point out that Netflix can't "break" the VoD menu since they are two separate applications. If the VoD application is down though you can't get into Netflix that way.

You can set up the TiVo so that Netflix shows up at the bottom of your Now Playing List. If you do that then you can run Netflix without going into the VoD menu. You need to get into the VoD menu at least once in order to set that up though.


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## jlb (Dec 13, 2001)

is that a straightforward easy thing to setup...right from the menu? I assume so.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

jlb said:


> is that a straightforward easy thing to setup...right from the menu? I assume so.


It's fairly straightforward.

If you go into the VoD menus and choose Netflix, there's an menu item that lets you change the option to display the Netflix icon in the NPL. Simply go in to it and set it to enabled. The next time your TiVo makes a connection, the icon will show up in the NPL. To disable it, simply repeat the process and choose disabled instead.


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## Groovy32 (May 29, 2005)

Tivo still locks up grey screen "Please wait" when you select the Netflix from the now playing screen.


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## jlb (Dec 13, 2001)

or still locks selecting the main VOD menu.


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## chedlin (Apr 13, 2003)

Just finished watching the Lost season 1 finale (we had already watched part 1 last night, so TiVo's timing was painful. Watched part 2 on computer while waiting.)

It works. I think the software is fine when it works, but it threw us out of the video at 33 minutes requiring us to start it again (it picked up where it left off).


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## Fourway (Sep 23, 2001)

In netflix on a tivo hd paused for a number of minutes about 18 minutes into The Elephant Man spontaneous crash into green screen with *extremely* loud rapid beeping.

I haven't found any references to this exact problem online. Has anyone else experienced it?


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

Fourway said:


> In netflix on a tivo hd paused for a number of minutes about 18 minutes into The Elephant Man spontaneous crash into green screen with *extremely* loud rapid beeping.
> 
> I haven't found any references to this exact problem online. Has anyone else experienced it?


I'll add it to my queue and give it a try! However, I suspect there's a interface somewhere that may be timing out the connection after such a long pause. It may or may not be reproduceable by me due to geographical disparity, different ISP, and the likelihood of reaching Netflix via a different route. I'll give it a shot though!


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

OK, I ran it past the 18 minute mark, and paused it for about 30-35 minutes. When I came back, the movie resumed without a hitch. I then paused it again for about 45 minutes, and resumed without issue. It's not much of a test, but it does eliminate that movie as a culprit.


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## jtreid (Jan 12, 2006)

OK, so I had almost given up on the Tivo+Netflix thing when I read about someone having much better luck with wired vs. wireless connection. I bought the Netgear powerline ethernet kit (http://www.amazon.com/Netgear-XAVB1...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1250873349&sr=8-1) and hooked it up last night. I must say that it is 1000% better. I still had the occassional resync, a couple of pixelations and one drop back in quality, but through 4 Heros episodes, it was pretty much full bars and HD the whole time. Watching the lights on the adapter, it was switching between 50-85Mbps to greater than 85Mbps. I didn't notice anything strange during this switching and didn't notice anything on the adapter during the very occassional glitches. I did pause once for about 2 minutes and it jumped back to live TV for some reason. It's interesting how the streaming works watching the lights. When you pause, the streaming pauses. I would think Tivo would work a bit better if it buffered up a little before playback to avoid the occassional network hiccup. Mybe it does, but if it does, it's not enough.

Anyway, I can live with it now. For those having problems with a wireless connection, going wired or at least with the powerline adapters may help. Keep in mind that I read that the powerline adapters work best when both are on the same phase of your house wiring. I didn't check if mine is, but it works.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

The problem with powerline adapters is they don't work when the power goes out (duh) and they can't be connected to a UPS. With my current setup I could technically continue streaming Netflix even if the power goes out, though my TV would quickly drain the UPS.


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## vurbano (Apr 20, 2004)

I gave netflix a shot. My conclusion is? You gotta be kidding me. Their instant watching movie selection is a joke. I cancelled that nonsense a couple of days after activating it. I just do not undersand that. If netflix has a bluray they can mail you then why can't they have that same movie for rent via internet download?


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

vurbano said:


> I gave netflix a shot. My conclusion is? You gotta be kidding me. Their instant watching movie selection is a joke. I cancelled that nonsense a couple of days after activating it. I just do not undersand that. If netflix has a bluray they can mail you then why can't they have that same movie for rent via internet download?


Ask the studios. They control what content can be delivered digitally and what format it can be in. Netflix has no control over that.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

vurbano said:


> I gave netflix a shot. My conclusion is? You gotta be kidding me. Their instant watching movie selection is a joke. I cancelled that nonsense a couple of days after activating it. I just do not undersand that. If netflix has a bluray they can mail you then why can't they have that same movie for rent via internet download?


Because Netflix doesn't _own_ the movies. They only license copies of them to rent, from the owners of the movies (the production companies and/or distributors of the movies). Those copyright owners have the right to determine the best distribution strategy for the movie, to be serve their own interests. It would be patently illegal for Netflix, or anyone, to essentially make a Blu-ray Disc available for streaming or download, if that isn't what the production company and/or distributor of the movie has given permission for.

One other note: I think Watch Instantly is ostensibly considered as a bonus for Netflix subscribers, accompanying their disc rental. While eventually they envision it replacing disc distribution, that's not the way things are now.


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## jstrazz (Jan 21, 2007)

morac said:


> The problem with powerline adapters is they don't work when the power goes out (duh) and they can't be connected to a UPS. With my current setup I could technically continue streaming Netflix even if the power goes out, though my TV would quickly drain the UPS.


Most UPSs are not designed for watching TV when the power goes out. They're designed to give uninterrupted power during a brief power interruption. If your UPS is draining too quickly, then you need a bigger UPS. However, you still need to shut down your equipment if your power goes out and does not come back quickly.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

jstrazz said:


> Most UPSs are not designed for watching TV when the power goes out. They're designed to give uninterrupted power during a brief power interruption. If your UPS is draining too quickly, then you need a bigger UPS. However, you still need to shut down your equipment if your power goes out and does not come back quickly.


I've never had a problem powering the eight HD sets I've owned and a couple of old Tube TVs with a UPS. I get several hours of runtime and have never had any problems.

All my electronics are on a UPS so I can watch TV or be online for at least several hours during a power outage.


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## NotVeryWitty (Oct 3, 2003)

aaronwt said:


> I've never had a problem powering the eight HD sets I've owned and a couple of old Tube TVs with a UPS. I get several hours of runtime and have never had any problems.
> 
> All my electronics are on a UPS so I can watch TV or be online for at least several hours during a power outage.


If you're on Fios, your internet service (and I believe the TV service) will not stay up during a power outage -- the Fios battery backup only powers the phone line. You could still watch stuff already recorded on the Tivo, but I don't think you could be online.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

jstrazz said:


> Most UPSs are not designed for watching TV when the power goes out. They're designed to give uninterrupted power during a brief power interruption. If your UPS is draining too quickly, then you need a bigger UPS. However, you still need to shut down your equipment if your power goes out and does not come back quickly.


I'm not using my UPS to watch TV when the power goes out, though I do have the TV plugged into the UPS to give me time to shut things down properly.

That main purpose of the UPS is to keep things like the TiVo and my router running during a power outage. During a normal power outage, cable TV continues to work as does Internet since my modem is also plugged into a UPS.

So, assuming the power outage doesn't last more than about an hour, I can stay online using my laptop and not lose any recordings.


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## bowlingblogger (Oct 2, 2007)

> For those having problems with a wireless connection, going wired or at least with the powerline adapters may help.


I was having trouble streaming HD over wireless and tried the same powerline adapter, but nothing improved. I had to run an ethernet cable to get the "Retrieving" issues to go away.


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## slngsht (Oct 28, 2008)

I watched a couple movies last night, and everything ran just fine right up until the tivo dumped to the main menu for no reason about five times. It would resume where I was in the movie no problems, but still, that was like


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

slngsht said:


> I watched a couple movies last night, and everything ran just fine right up until the tivo dumped to the main menu for no reason about five times. It would resume where I was in the movie no problems, but still, that was like


What's your setup like? Wireless? Powerline? MoCA?


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## stuck23235 (Jun 13, 2009)

NotVeryWitty said:


> If you're on Fios, your internet service (and I believe the TV service) will not stay up during a power outage -- the Fios battery backup only powers the phone line. You could still watch stuff already recorded on the Tivo, but I don't think you could be online.


Put the battery b/u on a UPS. I can keep my internet (and VoIP phone) up for hours if needed.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

NotVeryWitty said:


> If you're on Fios, your internet service (and I believe the TV service) will not stay up during a power outage -- the Fios battery backup only powers the phone line. You could still watch stuff already recorded on the Tivo, but I don't think you could be online.


My FIOS connection(Internet and TV, I dumped my landline from FIOS last year) is good for between 15 and 20 hours during a power outage. ALL my electronic devices are on a UPS. From my FIOS ONT(the FIOS BBU is connected to an APC UPS with an extended runtime battery) to my SVS subwoofer, to my Denon Receiver, to all my TiVos, to all my PCs, to all my TVs, to my alarm clocks, to my Xbox 360s, etc.
All my electronic devices can be in use during a power outage from several hours to 20 hours depending on the device and the UPS it's connected to.


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## vurbano (Apr 20, 2004)

aaronwt said:


> Ask the studios. They control what content can be delivered digitally and what format it can be in. Netflix has no control over that.


fair enough. But it doesnt change the fact that its little more than a gimmick at this time. Something to say they have. Its not even a 1/2 a## service yet. IMO, Its even less than that at this point.


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## jtreid (Jan 12, 2006)

I spoke a little too early. While the quality remains high with full bars most of the time, this weekend I got dumped back to the NPL multiple times out of the blue. We watched about 8 Heros episodes. Yes, I could resume playback after reconnecting to Netflix, but it was quite annoying that it would just jump back for no apparent reason. I had one occassion where the quality dropped to 4 bars (completely unwatchable!!!). I rewound quickly so it would resync and it came back to full bars.

I still say the powerline adapters make things much more stable. And, yes, on a power-outage I will lose the network (and it did blink once this weekend with all my A/V on UPS). I still believe there should be better buffering on Tivo's end to handle these brief network glitches.


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## lordbah (Apr 19, 2003)

I also got bumped out to NPL 3 times on Sunday during the course of 2 movies. It's the kind of thing where I just find it a nuisance when I'm alone (as long as it quickly lets me resume), but if I had company over I would be embarrassed for Tivo.


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## DougJohnson (Dec 12, 2006)

lordbah said:


> I also got bumped out to NPL 3 times on Sunday during the course of 2 movies. It's the kind of thing where I just find it a nuisance when I'm alone (as long as it quickly lets me resume), but if I had company over I would be embarrassed for Tivo.


My wife and I had that happen maybe half a dozen times over the weekend. But last night, we watched two shows flawlessly. No freezes, rebuffering, or bumps to NPL. Maybe they've fixed something. -- Doug


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## Resist (Dec 21, 2003)

I have had another great Netflix viewing experience using my XBox 360. It is so much more pleasant than when I had used my Tivo! Now I noticed I can pick the movies via the XBox and not have to use my computer to pick movies, that is so cool!

Tivo could have ruled this market with Netflix, but I think they screwed up. Finally Microsoft did something right! Using Netflix on the XBox is reason enough for non-gamers to get the XBox, granted it isn't a BlueRay player but the DVD player works fine.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

Resist said:


> I have had another great Netflix viewing experience using my XBox 360. It is so much more pleasant than when I had used my Tivo! Now I noticed I can pick the movies via the XBox and not have to use my computer to pick movies, that is so cool!
> 
> Tivo could have ruled this market with Netflix, but I think they screwed up. Finally Microsoft did something right! Using Netflix on the XBox is reason enough for non-gamers to get the XBox, granted it isn't a BlueRay player but the DVD player works fine.


If all you want is a Netflix player, the Roku box is cheaper. It's $99 and it's getting the same features that the XBox currently has.

In case you don't know, you can't pick any movies on the 360's Netflix player. You can only pick recently released movies. There's no search capability.


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## Resist (Dec 21, 2003)

morac said:


> If all you want is a Netflix player, the Roku box is cheaper. It's $99 and it's getting the same features that the XBox currently has.
> 
> In case you don't know, you can't pick any movies on the 360's Netflix player. You can only pick recently released movies. There's no search capability.


True a Roku is less expensive than an XBox, but an XBox is also a DVD player. Besides, I already had the XBox so for me getting a Roku would be an added expense.

Yes I know I can't search for movies on the XBox yet, but being able to pick recently released movies on it is better than what Tivo can do.


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## Airhead315 (Jun 11, 2009)

jtreid said:


> I spoke a little too early. While the quality remains high with full bars most of the time, this weekend I got dumped back to the NPL multiple times out of the blue. We watched about 8 Heros episodes. Yes, I could resume playback after reconnecting to Netflix, but it was quite annoying that it would just jump back for no apparent reason. I had one occassion where the quality dropped to 4 bars (completely unwatchable!!!). I rewound quickly so it would resync and it came back to full bars.
> 
> I still say the powerline adapters make things much more stable. And, yes, on a power-outage I will lose the network (and it did blink once this weekend with all my A/V on UPS). I still believe there should be better buffering on Tivo's end to handle these brief network glitches.


I had to login to post this...I have recently been encountering the exact issue you are describing. Part way into the show it will suddenly go gray screen for a second then the NPL will pop up. I have to go back into netflix and select replay on the episode we were watching...The reason I logged in to make this post is that we were also watching heros! Season 1. I wonder if there is something specific to the stream for this show...


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## Allanon (Nov 2, 2005)

Had an odd thing happen last night, I used Netflix to watch Splinter and everything was fine until the last few minutes of the movie. The audio started making a loud ticking sound instead of the audio for the movie. I pressed the Live TV button to make sure my audio equipment wasn't to blame. I then resumed the movie but the ticking continued. I tried pausing, rewind, and fast forward but nothing helped. So I watch the last few minutes of the movie on mute so my speakers wouldn't be damaged by the loud ticking. The sound returned at the very end of the movie but the strange part was during the credits the audio for the part of the movie that had the loud ticking could faintly be heard playing in the background. 

Anyone experience this when watching Splinter or any other movie?


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## CrispyCritter (Feb 28, 2001)

Airhead315 said:


> I had to login to post this...I have recently been encountering the exact issue you are describing. Part way into the show it will suddenly go gray screen for a second then the NPL will pop up. I have to go back into netflix and select replay on the episode we were watching...The reason I logged in to make this post is that we were also watching heros! Season 1. I wonder if there is something specific to the stream for this show...


Or it could be just that the Netflix server that has this particular show was having problems.

I tend to think it's Netflix server problems, since most reports seem to be over the weekend, and also it happens to me much more often over weekends and in prime time than the other times I watch.

I'm not saying that TiVo can't improve how it handles the network glitches, but that the base cause is probably on the Netflix server side.


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## wxperson (Sep 7, 2009)

I just installed this tivo and have noticed the same problem as you folks.. dumping to the netflix menu and having to get back to the program to resume.

Having used the XBOX interface and a PC interface to netflix... it appears the the TIVO device does very little buffering and when there is a brief slow down... boom.. it jumps back to the menu.

If you pause a netflix show and watch your wireless connection, you will see that it pretty much stops receiving data at the same time.. This is why I believe it is a buffering issue. 

If tivo changes their software to buffer a bit more and better handle slow downs, this problem can probably be corrected via software.


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## Resist (Dec 21, 2003)

wxperson said:


> If tivo changes their software to buffer a bit more and better handle slow downs, this problem can probably be corrected via software.


Don't hold your breath for Tivo to do this anytime soon, as they haven't make any attempt to fix the issue since Tivo got Netflix.


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

Resist said:


> Don't hold your breath for Tivo to do this anytime soon, as they haven't make any attempt to fix the issue since Tivo got Netflix.


Hey! That's the spirit!


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

I've had the movie stop and drop back to the instant queue list a few times myself. Then when I select the movie again it picks up where it left off. 

One time the picture froze on a movie but the sound kept playing. I kept retrying but the movie picture would not advance past the same point.


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

I've actually noticed issues with Netflix starting this prior week with me. I'm not sure if it's because I dropped cable television from my BHN account and kept RoadRunner, and now have a trap in-between the source and my cable modem. I've noticed a difference in normal web browsing, for sure. What I've noticed with Netflix, there were 2-3 times where I've gotten the "Retrieving..." message in the middle of the content, when the streaming continued, it continued a few seconds earlier then where it stopped. Kind of like over-shoot correction when FF'ing or RR'ing. Sometimes the "correction" doesn't happen, and I miss a bit of dialog. Has anyone else seen this type of "correction" behavior? Should it be expected all the time?


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## DougJohnson (Dec 12, 2006)

Resist said:


> Don't hold your breath for Tivo to do this anytime soon, as they haven't make any attempt to fix the issue since Tivo got Netflix.


Well, we don't know what they have attempted. We do know they have not rolled out a fix. My take is that either it is not all that easy, or it is not in TiVo's control.

I had something similar happen watching Netflix on an LG blu-ray player. I got kicked out to the menu. The next time I tried watching the movie, the player froze and wouldn't restart, even after multiple power cycles. LG support declared it dead.

Now, it's likely the brand new LG player just picked that moment to die. It's also possible that the Netflix death ray works on more than just TiVos.

-- Doug


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## jtreid (Jan 12, 2006)

You can go back a read about my frustration with the Tivo/Netflix implementation, but suffice to say, I was about ready to give up...well I did. I bought an LG BD390 and installed it Last Friday afternoon. It is connected on the same powerline ethernet interface with a 4 port switch: one port for the Tivo; one for the BD390. I watched an episode of Heros and about 10 episodes of Lost this weekend and DID NOT WITNESS ONE PROBLEM!!!! In fact, every episode showed full bars and the HD symbol. WOW! This is the experience I wished for. It is so different than watching shows hoping that it doesn't just stop for no reason or go to low-def for no reason. Tivo can learn a thing or two from the other Netflix devices out there.


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## Distortedloop (Dec 6, 2007)

My NetFlix on TiVo experience:

Horribly slow. It takes 90 seconds to 2 minutes for any menu to come up (video can be posted on YouTube if desired). This means a minimum of 2 minutes to just get to the first page of the watch instantly queue. 2 more minutes of painful waiting to get the next page of listings if your selection isn't on the first page.

Playback for me is typically pretty good, with full bars and no dropouts or crashes, but on some movies (Karate Kid 2 most recent example), it just won't play right, you get 10 seconds, then jump ahead a few minutes on its own, 10 seconds play, jump ahead, etc, etc). The same movie plays perfectly over the web on my laptop or Mac Mini home theater.

It was really embarrassing to try to have friends over to watch NetFlix the other day with this kind of behavior.

What I'm wondering is if the slow time to load menus is typical for other users. I've read the last several pages of this thread going back to July complaints, but mostly see issues of poor video quality.

My hardware is a Series 3 purchased new in December 2007, using cablecards. I am on an internal hardwired gigabit Ethernet LAN, which goes to a Verizon FIOS 20/5 WAN line. The TiVo's Ethernet cable is CAT 6 and goes through one hub/switch before hitting the router. The Router is MOCA attached to the ONT. I have a Mac Mini home theater attached to the same network switch and it has no networking issues to the outside world (hulu, netflix, downloads, trailers, etc), so I doubt networking is the issue.

What on earth could be taking 2 minutes to load a lousy menu. It seems like forever (I am just impatient..?). Is the Series 3 just that underpowered a CPU?

Any ideas I may have missed in the thread to speed things up?


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

Menus are pretty fast coming up for my original S3. I only have about 40 entries in Instant Queue though.
With the original S3 it has been well established now that the H.264 & WMV decoders are sub-par compared to the newer THD hardware - there are some movies that will not decode/play properly with original S3 but in most cases work fine on THD. Despite numerous complaints and examples given to Tivo & Netflix nothing seems to be done about it however. It seems to me that Tivo has chosen to ignore this issue for the minority original S3 owners unfortunately...
I have to resort to using my laptop for those movies that don't play properly on the S3. However for movies that do work I have had no slowness or quality issues or too many dropouts to complain about.


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## jtreid (Jan 12, 2006)

Distortedloop said:


> What I'm wondering is if the slow time to load menus is typical for other users.


Actually, I don't believe I've ever had to wait more than about 15 seconds for my Instant Queue to show up. I also see this on my BD390 Blu-ray. As for starting a show, Tivo seems to want to keep things a secret and just appears to be negotiating network speed. On the BD390, it shows a progress bar titled "Loading" which would indicate that it is buffering the show.

I'm using a powerline ethernet adapter and here is an observation. On the front are three LED's. One indicates activity. If I stream a show on Tivo, the activity light flashes the entire time while playing. If I pause, it stops after a second or so. This indicates that Tivo is contantly loading the stream and never filling it's buffer. If I watch the same show on the BD390, the activity light stops flashing on occasion and especially when there is little detail or change on the screen which would indicate that the BD390 is able to fill it's buffer at times. Obviously, Tivo is able to decode the stream fast enough, but it is not requesting data fast enough to keep the buffer full or the handshake between Tivo and the Netflix server is broken/poorly implemented. Someone had indicated previously that there were a lot of bad/retried/out of sequence (can't remember what they observed) packets. I also believe that Tivo's buffer is too small. However, when beginning a stream, both the Tivo and the BD390 take about the same amount of time.

.....just my observations.


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## Distortedloop (Dec 6, 2007)

jtreid said:


> Actually, I don't believe I've ever had to wait more than about 15 seconds for my Instant Queue to show up.
> .....just my observations.


Thanks for that. I really want to get a feel for what the "norm" should be for navigating through the menus and movie selections on things like this. Which TiVo do you have? Maybe this is a Series 3 issue?

15 seconds even sounds like a long time, but at least that would be tolerable considering you're essentially just a hitting a web-page, and I can load that web page in under 5 seconds and have the movie actually playing within 20 seconds on a computer attached to the exact same network/routers/switches.

Check out this YouTub video I posted (



) of my TiVo loading NetFlix, then paging through one menu, then starting a movie. It takes 78 seconds just to get NetFlix app loaded, 72 seconds to get to the second page of movies in my queue, and 45 seconds for the movie to load and start once play is hit. Last night it took 4:17 from the time I hit the TiVo button to actually have a movie load. Not a huge amount of time in the overall scheme of life but still annoying.

Why on earth would it take less time for a movie to buffer and start then for a stupid text menu to load? and then 4:00 minutes.

If 78 seconds doesn't sound like a long time, try staring at the blank black screen in the YouTube upload while waiting for the system to respond, knowing that you're gonna have to go through it again to see the next menu page.

Since 15 seconds is achievable on other hardware, I'm open to suggestions on things to try. I've already tried rebooting the TiVo. I doubt it's networking, but any router settings that might help?


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## Brainiac 5 (Aug 25, 2003)

Distortedloop said:


> I really want to get a feel for what the "norm" should be for navigating through the menus and movie selections on things like this. Which TiVo do you have? Maybe this is a Series 3 issue?


I don't use Netflix, but it's an HME application like Swivel Search, Amazon Video on Demand, etc., right? On my TiVos, any HME application is almost unusably slow, like what you describe. It's odd because I know those things work fine for many people. I think the "norm" is faster, but for some of us it is consistently slow - unfortunately I don't know why.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

jtreid said:


> I'm using a powerline ethernet adapter and here is an observation. On the front are three LED's. One indicates activity. If I stream a show on Tivo, the activity light flashes the entire time while playing. If I pause, it stops after a second or so. This indicates that Tivo is contantly loading the stream and never filling it's buffer.


This doesn't really give you the whole picture, for that you'll need to look at a bandwidth monitor on your router. I have done so and what happens is that the TiVo will try to download the stream data as fast as it can at first until the buffer fills up and then it slows down the download stream to trickle in just enough to keep the buffer near full. So while it is continuously downloading, it's just doing so to keep the buffer full.

I've actually found that there is about a 20 to 30 second buffer. I can't remember if this was for SD or HD though.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

Distortedloop said:


> Check out this YouTub video I posted (
> 
> 
> 
> ) of my TiVo loading NetFlix, then paging through one menu, then starting a movie. It takes 78 seconds just to get NetFlix app loaded, 72 seconds to get to the second page of movies in my queue, and 45 seconds for the movie to load and start once play is hit. Last night it took 4:17 from the time I hit the TiVo button to actually have a movie load. Not a huge amount of time in the overall scheme of life but still annoying.


Has it always been like this?

That's definitely not normal for a S3. Navigating the Netflix menus on my S3 is fairly quick and I'm using a wireless connection.

It looks like either there is an issue connecting to the TiVo servers from your TiVo DVR or there is a communication issue between the TiVo servers and the Netflix servers.

Here's a few things you can test:

1. Does the YouTube application behave the same way or does it load quickly? If it loads quickly, the problem is most likely between TiVo and Netflix. If YouTube is slow, then the problem is most likely between you and TiVo.

2. If YouTube is fast, try deactivating and re-activating your Netflix account on your TiVo.


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## jtreid (Jan 12, 2006)

Distortedloop said:


> Last night it took 4:17 from the time I hit the TiVo button to actually have a movie load. Not a huge amount of time in the overall scheme of life but still annoying.


4:17 

That is ridiculous. I would not be acceptable at all for me.

While I am certainly not a network guru, simple process of elimination can go a long way.

The only thing different between your setup and mine is you're using a gigabit ethernet and DSL. I have a Linksys WRT54GS running DD-WRT firmware and comcast cable and modem.

I wonder if Verizon (I assume) is causing some issue with the handshake between the Tivo and Netflix. I've read that the Tivo uses a different server and possible app to stream than that of PC's.

Is there something on your network that may be causing issues? I'm don't know how the handshake works, but it might be worth unplugging everything, but the Tivo on your network and try it.

If unplugging everything but the Tivo doesn't change anything, maybe find another cable to go from the Tivo to the router. I know you said after streaming starts things are pretty stable, but that can be deceiving.

Maybe before you try all that, you should connect your PC to the same connection as the Tivo or move the Tivo to a different port on your router. Could be the switch in the router is having some issues. I've seen switces do strange things when they are dying.

Good luck.


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## jtreid (Jan 12, 2006)

morac said:


> This doesn't really give you the whole picture, for that you'll need to look at a bandwidth monitor on your router. I have done so and what happens is that the TiVo will try to download the stream data as fast as it can at first until the buffer fills up and then it slows down the download stream to trickle in just enough to keep the buffer near full. So while it is continuously downloading, it's just doing so to keep the buffer full.


Good point. I hadn't considered that. It certainly sounds like a plausible method to buffer the stream. I would then assume that the BD390 must trickle a little faster or have a smaller hysteresis since I see the activity light stop on occasion.

I guess there must be some other reason that Tivo is so susceptable to network changes. I mean I can count on one hand how many episodes of Heros and Lost I've watched on Tivo that didn't either renegotiate to uwatchable resolution, stop playing, lock-up or simply throw me back to the NPL. I've not seen one, again, not one of these things happen with the BD390. I'm no longer afraid to pause, FF or REW with my current setup.


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## jtreid (Jan 12, 2006)

morac said:


> 1. Does the YouTube application behave the same way or does it load quickly? If it loads quickly, the problem is most likely between TiVo and Netflix. If YouTube is slow, then the problem is most likely between you and TiVo.


Excellent suggestion!



morac said:


> 2. If YouTube is fast, try deactivating and re-activating your Netflix account on your TiVo.


I read that this corrected a problem for someone related to not being able to play anything. Again, certainly worth a try.


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

Distortedloop said:


> My NetFlix on TiVo experience:
> 
> Horribly slow. It takes 90 seconds to 2 minutes for any menu to come up (video can be posted on YouTube if desired). This means a minimum of 2 minutes to just get to the first page of the watch instantly queue. 2 more minutes of painful waiting to get the next page of listings if your selection isn't on the first page.


What you describe here is very similar to the problem you are having with Tivo Search Beta. Because the issues are so similar, I don't know if I'd suspect either app at this time.



Distortedloop said:


> Playback for me is typically pretty good, with full bars and no dropouts or crashes, but on some movies (Karate Kid 2 most recent example), it just won't play right, you get 10 seconds, then jump ahead a few minutes on its own, 10 seconds play, jump ahead, etc, etc). The same movie plays perfectly over the web on my laptop or Mac Mini home theater.


I have the same problem with the BBC Television series "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". I reported the problem to Netflix awhile back, but the episodes still exhibit the same behavior.


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## Distortedloop (Dec 6, 2007)

orangeboy said:


> What you describe here is very similar to the problem you are having with Tivo Search Beta. Because the issues are so similar, I don't know if I'd suspect either app at this time.


That's a good point! Two different apps behaving the same points to something other than the app. Now it sounds a bit like network, or an overall TiVo problem after all. I'd pretty much had my fill with TiVo last night after the Search Beta did it's number on me.

Someone else mentioned Swivel Search; that application works just fine for me.

I'll have to try YouTube when I get home tonight. It's not something I generally use on TiVo, but I think I've used it before and I don't remember being so frustrated. I'll also check out the podcast app.



orangeboy said:


> I have the same problem with the BBC Television series "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". I reported the problem to Netflix awhile back, but the episodes still exhibit the same behavior.


NetFlix used to send me an email asking how the video quality was on streamed videos, but I haven't gotten one of those in a while. I guess they've stopped(?). {edit: just got one on Casablanca play back for the test I did, but never got one for KK2. Maybe they don't do it for all plays.}

Why don't you try loading Karate Kid 2 (even if you have to hold your nose to do so, LOL), and I'll try Hitchiker's Guide and we can report back here if we had the same problem. That might reveal if they're just bad videos, or it's a random issue. KK2 played fine for me on the laptop, so it's TiVo related, but I'm curious if it's my TiVo, or all TiVos.


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## Distortedloop (Dec 6, 2007)

Network tests in the TiVo setup menu always check out fine, but I'll do more network tests as suggested below.

Could my attached eSATA extra hard drive at all impact this? How could it? I'd be afraid to let the TiVo boot up past the warning it gives when it doesn't sense the external drive, as it warns you could lose recordings.



morac said:


> Has it always been like this?
> 1. Does the YouTube application behave the same way or does it load quickly? If it loads quickly, the problem is most likely between TiVo and Netflix. If YouTube is slow, then the problem is most likely between you and TiVo.
> 
> 2. If YouTube is fast, try deactivating and re-activating your Netflix account on your TiVo.


I'll give those a try tonight.



jtreid said:


> 4:17
> If unplugging everything but the Tivo doesn't change anything, maybe find another cable to go from the Tivo to the router. I know you said after streaming starts things are pretty stable, but that can be deceiving.
> 
> Maybe before you try all that, you should connect your PC to the same connection as the Tivo or move the Tivo to a different port on your router. Could be the switch in the router is having some issues. I've seen switces do strange things when they are dying.
> ...


I've already got a Mac Mini computer hooked up to the same switch, so the only thing that might be different would be the actual physical cable between the TiVo and the switch. I'll try swapping it out just in case.

The only other thing I can think of trying is finding a really long cable and bypassing the switch altogether. After that I can try to borrow my neighbor's wireless connection to see if it behaves better. He's on TWC, I am on Verizon FIOS.


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## anuyag (Apr 18, 2006)

I am surprised at so many negative experiences with Netflix on Tivo. I have to say that my experience has been the opposite. I just love it and it works brilliantly for me.

I recently upgraded to TivoHD and I have to say that apart from HD recording, which are nice but not nearly as nice as the ability to see Netflix movies instantly. I have to say that I am a very satisfied customer.

I am not sure if this makes a lot of difference, probably makes some at least, but my Tivo is wired rather than wireless to the internet.


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## Brainiac 5 (Aug 25, 2003)

anuyag said:


> I am not sure if this makes a lot of difference, probably makes some at least, but my Tivo is wired rather than wireless to the internet.


It does seem that the quality of the network connection affects how well Netflix works. It's intended to degrade gracefully based on what your connection can handle, but that aspect seems to have some problems.


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## Distortedloop (Dec 6, 2007)

The frustration continues. No improvement to the system after trying the following:

1 - logging out and back into NetFlix. 

2 - switching from gigabit wired network to 802.11n wireless network.

3 - changing the network settings from manually assigned to DHCP.

YouTube, Internet Videos, Amazon are all slow as well, with frequent freezing, long delays between menus, delayed response to button inputs, etc. 

NetFlix remains the worst, but interestingly, tonight, AFTER a menu page has been loaded, it loads up almost instantly, which indicates the data is cached, and points further to some kind of networking connectivity issue, right?

Last thing to try is to try to borrow some neighbors wireless connection to take my own router and Verizon completely out of the picture, but that's going to be a bit of a pain to setup, so I'm not up to it tonight.


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## Distortedloop (Dec 6, 2007)

orangeboy said:


> I have the same problem with the BBC Television series "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". I reported the problem to Netflix awhile back, but the episodes still exhibit the same behavior.





Distortedloop said:


> Why don't you try loading Karate Kid 2 (even if you have to hold your nose to do so, LOL), and I'll try Hitchiker's Guide and we can report back here if we had the same problem. That might reveal if they're just bad videos, or it's a random issue. KK2 played fine for me on the laptop, so it's TiVo related, but I'm curious if it's my TiVo, or all TiVos.


FYI - Hitchhiker's Guide (the 1981 series) exhibits the same playback issues for me. Definitely something wrong with NetFlix's encoding for TiVo.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

Distortedloop said:


> YouTube, Internet Videos, Amazon are all slow as well, with frequent freezing, long delays between menus, delayed response to button inputs, etc.


This would seem to indicate a network issue between you and TiVo. If you feel like doing some work, you could connect your TiVo directly to the modem. This would bypass any possible router or other issue, though if I remember correctly the router is the modem for FIOS so that might not work.

The other thing you can try is pinging the TiVo servers to see what kind of latency you are getting. You could throw in a trace route as well. Unfortunately I don't know the TiVo server ip address off-hand. You can either packet sniff for it or possibly look it up in the forums.

Your idea to piggy back on your neighbors wi-fi is a good idea, especially if he doesn't have Verizon.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

A good idea until you blow past his HSI cap.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Distortedloop said:


> Thanks for that. I really want to get a feel for what the "norm" should be for navigating through the menus and movie selections on things like this. Which TiVo do you have? Maybe this is a Series 3 issue?
> 
> 15 seconds even sounds like a long time, but at least that would be tolerable considering you're essentially just a hitting a web-page, and I can load that web page in under 5 seconds and have the movie actually playing within 20 seconds on a computer attached to the exact same network/routers/switches.
> 
> ...


That's very slow. It's only a few seconds for me.
But it could also be the size of the Instant Queue. I only have 26 titles in my Instant Queue. ANd the connection might be a factor. I'm on FIOS for my INternet.


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## rocko (Oct 29, 2002)

FIOS may or may not be a piece of the puzzle. I've mentioned that my Netflix behavior is similar to the above (slow menus, degraded playback) if there is other intensive activity on the network. When downloading a full-thottle torrent Netflix is practically useless on either of my 2 TiVos. 

There would appear to be bandwith management issues, either with FIOS, TiVo or both.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

bicker said:


> A good idea until you blow past his HSI cap.


I didn't mean permanently or to stream Netflix. I meant just to test loading the Netflix or any other app. That should use a few KB at most. You're also assuming that his neighbor's HSI has a cap.

Also I would assume that he would have to ask his neighbor first since, at least from what I've seen, most people encrypt their wireless network these days.


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## Distortedloop (Dec 6, 2007)

Distortedloop said:


> The frustration continues. No improvement to the system after trying the following:
> 
> 1 - logging out and back into NetFlix.
> 
> ...


Well, it gets weirder and weirder. NetFlix working perfectly now (still). I can't complain with the speeds. 4-5 seconds tops to get to a menu.

To sum up the changes I made that seem to have fixed it:

Change network settings from static to DHCP.

Logout of NetFlix on the TiVo and log back in.

Swapped network cable with a new one, and used a different port on the network switch.

Added *NetFlix* to the Now Playing List.

24 hours later, all still working great, so I decided to try to see which of the items might have actually been the culprit.

I put back my manual static IP addresses. Put back the original Ethernet cable, and plugged back into the original jack on the switch. Everything still nice and snappy. How can this be?

The only thing different than the original configuration now is that I have NetFlix showing as a red folder in the NPL screen.

The only idea I have left at this point is that putting NetFlix in the NPL somehow keeps the connection to TiVo live, or it periodically (frequently) phones home to see what's in your queue. It would have to be very frequently because I moved a movie to the top of the queue on my laptop, and in the amount of time it took me to grab the remote and hit NetFlix on the TiVo, the movie was in the top of the TiVo queue. On the other hand, when I added some new movies to the bottom of the queue, they didn't immediately show when I paged to the bottom, but when I forced a page down a second time, they showed within 5 seconds. While typing all that, though, I did one more test, and while paging rapidly through my instant queue pages, a couple of them took 4-5 seconds to show, and on one of them I got an actual "error communicating with NetFlix, try again" message. That means the data is refreshed live.

So what the heck changed that now I have no issues? I suppose I should just be happy it's working and leave it be.

I'm going to try to remove the NetFlix folder from the NPL screen to see if that's what makes it faster, as it's the only thing different from my original setup at this point. TiVo says this can take 24 hours to come off the NPL, so I may not be able to test again until tomorrow.

Regarding my overall TiVo experience with NMEs:

YouTube still seems slow, it takes 8 seconds to load its first screen, but it's 45 more seconds before it's responsive to input from the remote.

TiVo search is still barely useable. 8 sec to load, but then 105 seconds to become responsive at all. I still don't get more than one or two icons at the top for suggested, and it takes 10-30 seconds for data to show in the listings when I move the cursor around on the top. This was like this before I put my system back into its original configuration, so the issues here are different than whatever was killing the NetFlix experience.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

Distortedloop said:


> To sum up the changes I made that seem to have fixed it:
> 
> Change network settings from static to DHCP.
> 
> ...


None of these things are likely to have any effect on network performance. DHCP definitely will not. DHCP is merely a means of obtaining the network addresses, including the IP address, the default gateway, and the DNS addresses. Once obtained, DHCP is unused until the lease expires or the Ethernet port is taken down.

I would not expect logging in and out of NetFlix on the TiVo to have an effect, but it's possible. While unlikely, it's certainly the most likely of the three.

It's also possible a bad network cable could cause performance issues, especially if the cable causes the auto-negotiation to fall back to 10M and / or half duplex (sometimes seen if the cable is straight when it should be flipped or vice-versa), but otherwise this is extremely unlikely. Disregarding duplex mismatches and cable gender issues, in general either the ports and cable will work or they won't.



Distortedloop said:


> Added TiVo to the Now Playing List.


Huh? How does one add a TiVo to the NPL?



Distortedloop said:


> I put back my manual static IP addresses. Put back the original Ethernet cable, and plugged back into the original jack on the switch. Everything still nice and snappy. How can this be?


'Simple, actually. Probably none of these things were the problem. I would have bet heavily against all of them at the outset.


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## net114 (Dec 29, 2000)

I didn't read through the entire thread, but just an FYI that my experience improved dramatically after I moved to a N router instead of a B/G router. The newer router just seems to handle the high traffic better.


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

I'm not sure if this happens on consumer grade equipment, but I've seen an switch at work shut down a port after taking too many network errors. A network engineer had to "dial in" to the switch and reset the port. Perhaps the act of the OP switching ports broke the association of Tivo's interface with that particular port, and any error counters were reset to zero. This may be a stretch that the expectation of a consumer grade switch has such intelligence. I just don't know!


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## ebockelman (Jul 12, 2001)

Could someone add Doctor Who Season 2 to their Netflix instant queue and post if the episodes work from your Tivo? It doesn't work on my S3 but works fine from the Xbox.


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## Distortedloop (Dec 6, 2007)

lrhorer said:


> None of these things are likely to have any effect on network performance. DHCP definitely will not. DHCP is merely a means of obtaining the network addresses, including the IP address, the default gateway, and the DNS addresses. Once obtained, DHCP is unused until the lease expires or the Ethernet port is taken down.


I'm aware of the function of DHCP, yet several here insisted this must be a networking problem, and DHCP vs manually input settings are about all you can change on the TiVo itself. Read my earlier posts and you'll see I insisted it couldn't be networking because a Mac Mini on the exact same switch/router path has zero issues with NetFlix or YouTube speeds. Since this was easy enough to change, why not test it out? Note that DHCP gives you the router for DNS servers, whereas I had manually input OpenDNS servers, so DHCP vs manually input static info certainly can impact networking if you make a typo or pick a bad DNS address.



> I would not expect logging in and out of NetFlix on the TiVo to have an effect, but it's possible. While unlikely, it's certainly the most likely of the three.


Sounded unlikely as well, but it took two minutes to do, and others reported it has fixed issues for them, so again, why not try it?



> It's also possible a bad network cable could cause performance issues, especially if the cable causes the auto-negotiation to fall back to 10M and / or half duplex (sometimes seen if the cable is straight when it should be flipped or vice-versa), but otherwise this is extremely unlikely. Disregarding duplex mismatches and cable gender issues, in general either the ports and cable will work or they won't.


Again, my belief as well, but when you're out of ideas on your own, and the group suggests try this, and it takes three seconds to try, why not?



> Huh? How does one add a TiVo to the NPL?


Aw, c'mon, gimme a break. Clearly I meant I added *NetFlix* to the NPL and just made a typo there as indicated by my comment four paragraphs later where I said:



DistortedLoop said:


> The only idea I have left at this point is that putting NetFlix in the NPL somehow...


I'll edit the original post so that it's not misunderstood by others who haven't read it yet. _I actually think this is the problem, but I'll post that in another message so it doesn't get lost in the noise of this one._



> Probably none of these things were the problem. I would have bet heavily against all of them at the outset.


Okay, so you don't think that any of the above was/is the problem/solution, yet I see no suggestion from you as to what the problem was, or what you would have done to try fixing it.

What would you have tried? What do you think the issue was?

Clearly one of the things above impacted this on my system, since after playing with the above, it worked quite well for 24 hours, or are you suggesting that after a year of slow NetFlix app loading and screen paging that it's just coincidental that the evening I actually try to resolve the issue it suddenly appears to start working well? I doubt it's just coincidence. What's your theory?


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## Distortedloop (Dec 6, 2007)

Distortedloop said:


> To sum up the changes I made that seem to have fixed it:
> <snip>
> Added *NetFlix* to the Now Playing List.
> <snip>
> ...


So this morning the NetFlix folder is gone from the NPL, and I test NetFlix from the VOD menu.

Similar lousy performance/behavior as before. It took about 45 seconds to load the app, then well over a minute to get the first screen of NetFlix queued movies. Each subsequent screen took between 45 and 70 seconds to load up. Once loaded though, even after exiting NetFlix and returning to it, the same screens loaded up in a few seconds.

There seems to be some kind of cacheing going on here.

It's interesting that the fast performance lasted 24 hours while the NetFlix folder was in my NPL, but it was gone less than 12 hours later when the NetFlix folder was removed from the NPL.

This is going to take more testing to confirm the NPL is somehow improving performance, but I'm not sure what the best test would be at this point, leave the NPL off to see how long the fast speeds last without NPL, or leave NPL on to see if waiting 36 hours or more loses the speed.

I'm wondering if anyone reading this doesn't have the NetFlix folder in the NPL, and if they have good speeds or not. Any feedback on that appreciated.


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## jtreid (Jan 12, 2006)

I was checking out the latest DD-WRT firmware V24 and saw that it seemed to have a lot more features that I wanted to play with. I was on V22. I decided to flash my Linksys to V24 and that was not a good idea. After doing so, I started have all sorts of Netflix playback problems with jumping and skipping and audio sync issues while watching Lost on my BD390. I had never seen it before even on Tivo. I could usually correct the problem by rewinding and causing a rebuffer, but it continued to happen. After a little while, I decided to revert, but couldn't quickly locate my older version (dummy me didn't have a .bin anywhere). So I relfashed with Tomato. I don't know what happened but I'm now accessing Netflix in about 8 seconds where it was about 12 before. I also don't seem to have the skipping, jumping and sync issues any longer.

Note the title of this post and the word "Seems". I could go back the DD-WRT V24 and see if it happens again, but I don't want to. Things are stable now and I'm not so excited about experimenting anymore.


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## something (Feb 21, 2009)

When accessing movies in Netflix my Tivo would constantly freeze. Some movies not at all, some movies multiple times. 

I changed the security setting to basically make the connection not secure and added a network access key to the Tivo. Absolutely no issues since then. It doesn't even do the pause and stream then resume thing it used to. This is with a wireless connection by the way.


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

ebockelman said:


> Could someone add Doctor Who Season 2 to their Netflix instant queue and post if the episodes work from your Tivo? It doesn't work on my S3 but works fine from the Xbox.


I was able to play the first 2 minutes of "The Christmas Invasion" with no issues. I'm not a Doctor Who fan, so I didn't watch more of it. Was there a specific episode that had issues? I found that problem with some series'. I think 1 or 2 episodes in Lost Season 4 gave me problems.


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## SheliaP (Jul 29, 2005)

I thought, perhaps incorrectly- that you *had* to have the Netflix in your Now Playing List for the queue to work. I lost it from the NPL on a reboot after power outages- and it didn't seem to work, until I got it back. I have no problems with load times and *very* seldom does it lose the program while I am watching, and very quick to catch it back up. With Netflix and Amazon VOD I am a happy camper. Especially as Netflix is *free *extra content along with my DVD membership.


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

I've yet to receive a DVD via mail. My Netflix account is strictly for streaming. It'd be nice to have a streaming only account.


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## Puppy76 (Oct 7, 2004)

orangeboy said:


> I was able to play the first 2 minutes of "The Christmas Invasion" with no issues. I'm not a Doctor Who fan, so I didn't watch more of it. Was there a specific episode that had issues? I found that problem with some series'. I think 1 or 2 episodes in Lost Season 4 gave me problems.


I watched that specific episode that way, because my local PBS station didn't air it (it being an episode 0, I guess), and it worked just fine, even with my absolute-cheapest-avilable-broadband connection.

My (very brief) experiences with Netflix on Tivo HD have been very positive too. I mean it's still lamer than watching on disc, or recorded, but it did work surprisingly well, and I ues even the jump back button works, and it remembers your position, etc.

It's something I don't really use, but don't mind having it there!


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## JimPa (Oct 25, 2006)

The last time that I checked in on the Netflix feature, it seemed that certain TIVO models did just fine where the S3, the model that I have, continued to have problems.

Is that still pretty much the state of things for the S3?

By the way, I looked at the last couple of pages of post and its not clear in most of the post who has what model Tivo.


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## shiffrin (Aug 23, 2000)

JimPa said:


> The last time that I checked in on the Netflix feature, it seemed that certain TIVO models did just fine where the S3, the model that I have, continued to have problems.
> 
> Is that still pretty much the state of things for the S3?
> 
> By the way, I looked at the last couple of pages of post and its not clear in most of the post who has what model Tivo.


I have a S3 and used to have a lot of problems with Netflix pausing, etc. I was using a wireless connection. I changed the wireless to a powerline adapter and since then my Netflix has worked perfectly. We have watched at least 5 shows from Netflix without any pausing and the quality is good.


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## Distortedloop (Dec 6, 2007)

SheliaP said:


> I thought, perhaps incorrectly- that you *had* to have the Netflix in your Now Playing List for the queue to work. I lost it from the NPL on a reboot after power outages- and it didn't seem to work, until I got it back. I have no problems with load times and *very* seldom does it lose the program while I am watching, and very quick to catch it back up. With Netflix and Amazon VOD I am a happy camper. Especially as Netflix is *free *extra content along with my DVD membership.


NetFlix in your NPL is an option. You can also get it via the VOD menu, along with your Amazon, YouTube, etc.

Not sure why you wouldn't want it in your NPL, but I didn't for quite some time, partly because NetFlix on my Series 3 is such a painful experience.


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## Distortedloop (Dec 6, 2007)

Distortedloop said:


> So this morning the NetFlix folder is gone from the NPL, and I test NetFlix from the VOD menu.
> 
> Similar lousy performance/behavior as before. It took about 45 seconds to load the app, then well over a minute to get the first screen of NetFlix queued movies. Each subsequent screen took between 45 and 70 seconds to load up. Once loaded though, even after exiting NetFlix and returning to it, the same screens loaded up in a few seconds.
> 
> ...


Okay, 48 hours later, haven't touched NetFlix on my TiVo other than adding it back to the NPL 48 hours ago.

It sucks again. 45 seconds to load the application, 66 seconds per page to load my Queue. My queue isn't particularly large at 67 titles, though many of those are TV series with multiple sub-titles within the season folder.

This supports my previous theory that my brief periods of acceptable speed were only due to some kind of cacheing of the data or connection if I'd accessed NetFlix recently.

To bring those just joining in the discussion up to speed on my setup: 2 year old Series 3, external esata drive, hardwired Ethernet connection going through one dumb switch to the router, which is a Verizon Westell with a MOCA connection to a 20/5MB/s connection. Bypassing the switch makes no difference, new cable makes no difference. Changing network settings makes no difference. All TiVo self tests and network connection tests report no issues. A Mac Mini with the same network connection has zero issues with any Internet activity, including NetFlix which loads and starts instantly.

YouTube is pretty darn slow as well, and the new TiVo search beta is so slow as to be unusable.

At this point, base on a few comments here and a comment on my YouTube video demonstrating the behavior (http://www.youtube.com/comment_servlet?all_comments&v=8J0lD8A-k2E), I'm almost ready to throw in the towel and just say the Series 3 is a lemon, and since it's probably out of warranty, I'm screwed. At $800 for the darn thing, I'm not pleased. :-(

I suppose I should go through the motions of calling TiVo support and see what they have to say.


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## Langree (Apr 29, 2004)

For me it's 5 seconds to load the application and less then a second to page my queue.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

shiffrin said:


> I have a S3 and used to have a lot of problems with Netflix pausing, etc. I was using a wireless connection. I changed the wireless to a powerline adapter and since then my Netflix has worked perfectly. We have watched at least 5 shows from Netflix without any pausing and the quality is good.


Shows that have problems with the S3 don't pause or have quality issues, they simply don't play correctly. For example the audio/video will be out of sync or my "favorite" where it plays fine for a few seconds and then skips ahead a few minutes into the video and then plays fine, skips, plays, repeat.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

JimPa said:


> The last time that I checked in on the Netflix feature, it seemed that certain TIVO models did just fine where the S3, the model that I have, continued to have problems.
> 
> Is that still pretty much the state of things for the S3?
> 
> By the way, I looked at the last couple of pages of post and its not clear in most of the post who has what model Tivo.


 That's correct. The original S3 has different H.264 & WMV decoder hardware & firmware and is not as robust as the THD units. Despite numerous reports of problem shows to both Tivo and Netflix (by me and I assume at least some others experiencing the problem) the problem shows never seem to get fixed so it would seem that neither Tivo or Netflix have an interest if fixing the problems for original S3 owners.
I have to resort to playing those shows on my laptop instead of via S3.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

Distortedloop said:


> At this point, base on a few comments here and a comment on my YouTube video demonstrating the behavior (http://www.youtube.com/comment_servlet?all_comments&v=8J0lD8A-k2E), I'm almost ready to throw in the towel and just say the Series 3 is a lemon, and since it's probably out of warranty, I'm screwed. At $800 for the darn thing, I'm not pleased. :-(
> 
> I suppose I should go through the motions of calling TiVo support and see what they have to say.


I still believe you have some kind of network or server related issue, but without another test reference point such as you having another TiVo to test with or trying a different ISP there's no way to tell for sure. I highly doubt it's cache related since HME applications don't cache, at least not on the client (TiVo box) side.

All signs point to either a communication issue with the TiVo servers or a problem with TiVo server itself. There's nothing that makes me believe your S3 is malfunctioning since the Netflix, YouTube, TiVo Search, etc apps all run on the TiVo Servers. Your TiVo is just acting as a dumb terminal.


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## Distortedloop (Dec 6, 2007)

morac said:


> I still believe you have some kind of network or server related issue, but without another test reference point such as you having another TiVo to test with or trying a different ISP there's no way to tell for sure. I highly doubt it's cache related since HME applications don't cache, at least not on the client (TiVo box) side.
> 
> All signs point to either a communication issue with the TiVo servers or a problem with TiVo server itself. There's nothing that makes me believe your S3 is malfunctioning since the Netflix, YouTube, TiVo Search, etc apps all run on the TiVo Servers. Your TiVo is just acting as a dumb terminal.


Are you sure there's no cacheing? Not arguing, it's just too coincidental that it works fine for some time after paging a screen, but 24-48 hours later it's back to unacceptable times. Also, NetFlix improves with recent use, but YouTube and TiVo Search don't, suggesting that NetFlix acts differently. However, I did point out the other day that changes made to my queue order were reflected instantly in the TiVo, so that points against cacheing.

My pings to what I believe are the TiVo servers ip address were 22ms, and traceroute only a a dozen hops if I recall correctly. (Does anyone have a definitive ip address for the TiVo servers? All I could get with a google search seems like it might actually be tivocommunity site, not the actual VOD servers.)

No other TiVo here to test, but you've convinced me I do still need to try another network connection. The best I can do in that regard is try to tap into my neighbors wireless, but my attempt to do that the other day was unsuccessful (old Linksys I had won't act as a bridge). I'll have to re-task my Apple Airport that's next to the TiVo to give it a try.


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## DocNo (Oct 10, 2001)

I like the controls and the potential of the functionality of Tivo's implementation, but like most things on my original S3, the interface is so slow as to basically make it unusable 

I have a new Tivo HD I just scored yesterday so I may give it a whirl again.

Performance wise it works perfectly on the Xbox360 - but the controls aren't near as nice as Tivo's - and I have to find the Xbox remote or use the controller. I would love the convenience factor of Tivo if it just worked worth a flip.

Plus the recent update to the Xbox360 that lets you browse for movies outside of your instant que is very, very nice....


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

Distortedloop said:


> Are you sure there's no cacheing?


I'm not 100% certain, but the TiVo has a limited out of memory and it wouldn't make sense to waste that caching the Netflix queue. The Netflix queue could be cached on the server side, but since the queue can change (like you said) that doesn't make much sense either.

Also ping/traceroute would only tell you if there's a problem between you and the TiVo Servers. There's other problems that could occur. To give you an example, I was having horrible download times with Amazon VoD. I'm talking 8 hours to download a 2 hour movie. Pings and traces were all fine. It turned out that there was an issue on the return path from the Limelight server I was downloading from. Once that was fixed I could download even HD faster than real-time.

If you haven't tried contacting TiVo, I'd do so since they might be able to check if there is a problem on their end.

Edit:

I just remembered a way you can test if it's your connection or not. Add the Apps.tv HME application and some of its applications and see how fast they load. If it's quick, then you know it's not a problem on your end.


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## Distortedloop (Dec 6, 2007)

morac said:


> I'm not 100% certain, but the TiVo has a limited out of memory and it wouldn't make sense to waste that caching the Netflix queue. The Netflix queue could be cached on the server side, but since the queue can change (like you said) that doesn't make much sense either.


Well, there's definitely some kind of cacheing someplace, whether it makes sense or not. I haven't touched this stuff for a week or so, and same old problems. First time I load NetFlix or TiVo it takes 90 seconds or so to get the app loaded, but if I exit back to live TV, then go back to the web app, any screen I looked at before loads up pretty quickly.

Maybe the cache is on the hard drive, not the memory...?



morac said:


> If you haven't tried contacting TiVo, I'd do so since they might be able to check if there is a problem on their end.
> 
> Edit:
> 
> ...


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## Brainiac 5 (Aug 25, 2003)

Distortedloop said:


> I posted this link in another thread, but it seems that this slowness is not uncommon: http://www.zatznotfunny.com/2009-07/twitter-users-agree-tivo-search-is-slow/


Unfortunately, I think HME was a huge mistake. Because it has to go to the net for every button press, HME is very laggy for many people.


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## Distortedloop (Dec 6, 2007)

Distortedloop said:


> My NetFlix on TiVo experience:
> 
> Horribly slow. It takes 90 seconds to 2 minutes for any menu to come up (video can be posted on YouTube if desired). This means a minimum of 2 minutes to just get to the first page of the watch instantly queue. 2 more minutes of painful waiting to get the next page of listings if your selection isn't on the first page....


I'm back to report that this issue has finally been resolved. NetFlix and the TiVo Search beta are both snappy and a pleasure to use now.

Believe it or not, all it took was to go to the settings screen and RESTART the TiVo from that menu!

Please note that I had rebooted the TiVo on more than one occasion by pulling the plug out of the wall when the system was so slow to respond that it appeared locked up. Why a RESTART rather than a POWER OFF reboot was required blows my mind, but there it is.

I suggest anyone with this issue who might come across this thread try a RESTART.

It was the TiVo support phone number that gave me the idea. I didn't actually talk to anyone, but while on hold waiting in the queue the recording advised most issues can be fixed by restarting from the restart menu. I figured I better try it that way before a real life person asked if I had. Glad I did; sorry that I assumed power off was same as programmed restart.

Thanks to everyone who responded trying to help me figure this out.


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## Puppy76 (Oct 7, 2004)

Huh. I wonder what on Earth happened? You'd think it would process anything the same, although of course restarting might have shut down tasks it does before hand that don't get done otherwise, or something.


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## Distortedloop (Dec 6, 2007)

Puppy76 said:


> Huh. I wonder what on Earth happened? You'd think it would process anything the same, although of course restarting might have shut down tasks it does before hand that don't get done otherwise, or something.


Yep, that would seem to be the difference, or just dumb coincidence.

What annoys me most about myself is that the first thing I tell any friend who calls with computer, iPhone, DVR, etc problems is "Try rebooting and see if that fixes it," and I feel like somehow I didn't follow my own advice.

Although in my own defense, I considered a power cycling to be a reboot. LOL


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## vccat (Oct 21, 2009)

Tested Netflix on my Tivo HD today. It locked up solid the first time. The 2nd try worked, but the interface is really bad when compared with my Xbox 360!!! 

I think I will stick with using the 360 for Netflix...


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## net114 (Dec 29, 2000)

vccat said:


> Tested Netflix on my Tivo HD today. It locked up solid the first time. The 2nd try worked, but the interface is really bad when compared with my Xbox 360!!!
> 
> I think I will stick with using the 360 for Netflix...


Yeh, the 360 with it's "cover flow" like implementation is way slick, but for those people who don't have a 360, let's hope Tivo continues to improve the interface.


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## Puppy76 (Oct 7, 2004)

I thought the interface was excellent, and it tries to still support jump back and things like that.


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## redtiger (Feb 6, 2010)

I'll never buy Tivo, again.  I recently upgraded my router from a D-Link 802.11b router to a Belkin 802.11g router, and now my Netflix queue takes 30-45 seconds to load each page. That is unacceptable.

Just to vent on other problems, before I got HD channels, my Tivo would constantly get a gray screen and need to be restarted to work. I called Tivo multiple times, and they always said they were working the issue and should have it fixed in a few weeks.

I also saw in this forum that someone had problems watching Netflix movies, and Tivo told them to periodically try again over the next few weeks.

Seriously, Tivo?!? Do they only have one programmer who's working on getting his high school diploma working issues for them? I will never buy a Tivo DVR, again. :down:


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

redtiger said:


> I'll never buy Tivo, again.  I recently upgraded my router from a D-Link 802.11b router to a Belkin 802.11g router, and now my Netflix queue takes 30-45 seconds to load each page. That is unacceptable.
> 
> Just to vent on other problems, before I got HD channels, my Tivo would constantly get a gray screen and need to be restarted to work. I called Tivo multiple times, and they always said they were working the issue and should have it fixed in a few weeks.
> 
> ...


K then. Bye!


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## Langree (Apr 29, 2004)

redtiger said:


> I'll never buy Tivo, again.  I recently upgraded my router from a D-Link 802.11b router to a Belkin 802.11g router, and now my Netflix queue takes 30-45 seconds to load each page. That is unacceptable.


Wait...what?

"I changed my router and my TiVo's net load time got slower, I blame the TiVo."

You work for the Geek Squad? Supervisor?


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

I'm seeing problems with TiVo's servers tonight. For example VOD and Search Beta are taking forever to load. Netflix loads pretty quickly, but it might be affecting using Netflix.


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## Puppy76 (Oct 7, 2004)

Langree said:


> Wait...what?
> 
> "I changed my router and my TiVo's net load time got slower, I blame the TiVo."
> 
> You work for the Geek Squad? Supervisor?


Yeaaaaaaaah.... 

Both of my Tivos (Series 2 and HD XL) have been running flawlessly for years. I will say I had bad luck with Netflix, but then I didn't buy my HD XL for Netflix, and there are far cheaper devices I can run that on if I wanted to.


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## Langree (Apr 29, 2004)

Puppy76 said:


> Yeaaaaaaaah....
> 
> Both of my Tivos (Series 2 and HD XL) have been running flawlessly for years. I will say I had bad luck with Netflix, but then I didn't buy my HD XL for Netflix, and there are far cheaper devices I can run that on if I wanted to.


Point being, he changed out his router and blamed his TiVo for the increased load times.


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## Puppy76 (Oct 7, 2004)

Right, yeah, I was attempting to convey my confusion over blaming the Tivo :-D


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