# are tivo transfers faster with wireless-g now?



## hoosxj (Jul 19, 2004)

i read somewhere a while back that even though wireless-g adapters are now supported, the transfer rate w/ them is still about the same as wireless-b. is this the case? i'm thinking of getting a wireless-g adapter for my second tivo (first one is hard-wired to the wireless-g router), but i'm not going to bother unless it will increase the transfer rate. both units are 240 boxes and are running v7.2.

sorry if this is a repost, but my searches didn't turn up an answer.


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## jkalnin (Jan 8, 2003)

I asked this question and the only unnofficial response was that remote viewing transfers should be faster. However, don't expect too much change in Tivo-to-go transfers because the bottleneck is muxing the files (converting a sound and a video file into one tivo file) which doesn't change.

We are still waiting for people to get the new adapters to give us the scoop.


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## rog (Jan 12, 2005)

An off-the-shelf wireless G adapter won't give you much of an improvement over an off-the-shelf wireless B adapter. In fact, some wireless G adapters actually perform worse.

However, the new official TiVo wireless G adapter offloads some of the TiVoToGo processing and may give a bit of a boost:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=278655


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## backermann (Mar 1, 2003)

I just received my Tivo Wireless Adapters today, and have connected to both of my Tivos (Pioneer 810 and Humax). I've found the MRV feature to be much, much improved, but still a bit less than realtime. I am reducing the record quality from fine to medium to see if that helps... should be able to get realtime MVR transfers with the lower quality, I assume.

TivoToGo transfers are dramatically improved as well.... it looks like these new wireless adapters are a good thing.


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## Stormspace (Apr 13, 2004)

backermann said:


> I just received my Tivo Wireless Adapters today, and have connected to both of my Tivos (Pioneer 810 and Humax). I've found the MRV feature to be much, much improved, but still a bit less than realtime. I am reducing the record quality from fine to medium to see if that helps... should be able to get realtime MVR transfers with the lower quality, I assume.
> 
> TivoToGo transfers are dramatically improved as well.... it looks like these new wireless adapters are a good thing.


I'm using off the shelf wireless B adapters now and get a little better than real time at basic. If you are getting real time transfers on medium with the new adapters thats a definate improvement.


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## chew42901 (Apr 29, 2004)

Is the usb port on tivo unit usb2.0 or 1.1? This could create a bottleneck.


Also, can I use MRV with wireless G?


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## beejay (Feb 3, 2001)

backermann said:


> I've found the MRV feature to be much, much improved


Can you give us an actual figure? (2x faster? Or what?)


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## megazone (Mar 3, 2002)

chew42901 said:


> Is the usb port on tivo unit usb2.0 or 1.1? This could create a bottleneck.
> 
> Also, can I use MRV with wireless G?


Except for the early 110/130/140 S2 units, which are USB1.1, all the S2 units have USB2.0. And yes, MRV works fine with 11g.


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## mcharkowski (Aug 11, 2004)

I don't understand why people around here keep telling others that 11g adapters don't make any real difference in speed. I went from a D-Link DWL-122(11B) where I was getting ~250k/s, to a D-Link DWL-G122(11G) and had my transfer rates just about double to ~475k/s. Granted, the whole network should be switched to G to achieve this performance, cuz as soon as you throw a B client on the network things will slow down. I think some people around here have had a bad experience and written off the transfer slowness to a bottleneck in the TiVo hardware, and that just ain't the case.


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## rog (Jan 12, 2005)

mcharkowski said:


> I think some people around here have had a bad experience and written off the transfer slowness to a bottleneck in the TiVo hardware, and that just ain't the case.


I should have clarified in my original post, but there *is* a bottleneck in the TiVo hardware that prevents an off the shelf 11g adapter from performing at its full transfer rates, and in fact, on some TiVo boxes limits 11g adapters to near 11b speeds. The newest 540 series boxes used a cheaper, less efficient network chipset to reduce cost, and the bottleneck on these boxes is pretty serious. (That is where the new "official" TiVo Wireless G adapter will come in handy -- it will offload some of the processing that the 540 is notably weak on).

It is not a myth, this entire thread is full of posters who report slower (or equivalent) transfer rates when switching from 11b to 11g. Even TiVoBill chimed in with his comment that users should not expect much of a performance boost with off the shelf 11g adapters. And filbay summed it up pretty nice at post 161:



filbay said:


> Only way to find out is to try. In my case... [my] Dlink G adapter is actually slower than my B adapter.
> 
> Some reports with G adapter transfers improved a little, some reports it's the same, and then some (like me) G is slower.


Seriously, we aren't making this stuff up. But if you have an older box, a 140 or 240, you stand a better chance with off the shelf 11g adapters.



mcharkowski said:


> I went from a D-Link DWL-122(11B) where I was getting ~250k/s, to a D-Link DWL-G122(11G) and had my transfer rates just about double to ~475k/s. Granted, the whole network should be switched to G to achieve this performance, cuz as soon as you throw a B client on the network things will slow down.


The difference between a "g only" and "mixed mode" wireless network is almost negligible, but I suppose it does add up with large file transfers (like video!). See my post here, back from March 2005, where I did some experiments with "g only" vs "mixed mode" that showed a gain of ~0.2 - 0.3 Mbps when the network is in "g only" mode.

Of course, YMMV.

Myself, I will be trying out the new "official" wireless G adapter, as I suspect it will give me the gains that a normal, off the shelf 11g adapter could not.


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## wgary (Nov 22, 2003)

I am using "g" game adapters with the USB ethernet adapters and get substantially better than real-time transfers on HQ recordings. This allows the network to run at full "g" speed, and the Tivo recognizes this as an ethernet connection. Not the cheapest solution, but not unreasonable.


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## Jumpin_Joe (Dec 26, 2003)

mcharkowski said:


> I don't understand why people around here keep telling others that 11g adapters don't make any real difference in speed. I went from a D-Link DWL-122(11B) where I was getting ~250k/s, to a D-Link DWL-G122(11G) and had my transfer rates just about double to ~475k/s. Granted, the whole network should be switched to G to achieve this performance, cuz as soon as you throw a B client on the network things will slow down.


I was going to start a whole new thread on this but this seems like a relevant place to post my results.

For years I've been running an old Linksys BEFW11S4 Ver 4 on 802.11b using WEP128 - just for the Tivos in the house. The laptops were running on a separate "G only" Linksys WRT54GS V1.1 with WPA.

Yesterday I got rid of the BEFW11S4 (it's on Ebay now) and created a "B only" network on a Linksys WRT54GS V2.0. (Both WRT54Gs are running firmware 4.70.6)

I never used MRV much due to the low transfer speeds. Much to my surprise, using an updated router really increased my throughput! On a show without any commercials (e.g. public television), I could start the transfer (recorded at medium speed), wait maybe 10 minutes, and never have to wait for further transfers!

[Edit to add medium speed detail]


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## dayo (Jan 4, 2006)

I've read numerous posts saying that the real reason for the slow transfer speeds is because the audio and video must be muxed together prior to (during) transfer. I suspect my laptop/desktop PCs are much faster than Tivo processor (haven't checked the specs of the Tivo); is there a way to transfer the A/V files seperately and mux them on my faster machines? I think this would cure the slow transfers and the complaints of poor record quality during a transfer.


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## rog (Jan 12, 2005)

dayo: I'm not 100% sure, I think the answer is "maybe". But it would definitely require you to hack your TiVo, so that you'd be able to extract video directly off the TiVo, bypassing TiVoToGo. It isn't supported in any way, and that's about all I can say on this forum.

Even if you did extract the video directly, I'm not sure if the muxing is already done or not?


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## john123 (Nov 18, 2002)

I'm curious, why do the audio and video have to be muxed together of they're going to another TiVo? Can't they just transfer the two files simultaneously?


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## rog (Jan 12, 2005)

john123: I'm not sure they are muxed for MRV. I assumed dayo was talking about TiVoToGo transfers, where the delays are usually more significant.


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## Aflat (Aug 29, 2005)

At best quality, even a wired network is just a bit slower then realtime, not much. To transfer an hour program, I have to wait about 2-5 minutes before playing the video to not have to pause in the middle for more of the file to transfer more. 

So if the new wireless adapters are getting this speed, then it is a huge improvment.


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