# Premiere still mostly junky, IMHO...



## AbMagFab (Feb 5, 2001)

I've been a TiVo fanboy for most of my TiVo life. Not surprisingly, i ran out to get a premiere on the day is was released. I was horribly disappointed in it's performance and partial HD UI.

I was prepared to replace at least half of my TiVos with premieres, but that first week of experience was so bad, I just relegated it to my daughter's playroom.

I played with it over the next few weeks, to see if it got any better, but sadly, it did not. The HD UI was just awfully slow, and it covered only about 20% of the screens. The potential might be there, but it was far from being recognized.

I recently went back to see if it had improved, knowing a couple of updates have been applied, and perhaps other things settling in. Also with the apparent launch of the first "app" - surely I'd finally get to see why my beloved TiVo started down the apparent path of suicide. Surely this new app would make it clear that TiVo is innovative, and that they are again ahead of the pack!

But sadly, no. The performance is still horrible with the HD UI. The number of screens covered is still the same. And the new app is ridiculous and pointless (even if it worked properly).

We are very close to the point where the local cable company DVR offers a better and more complete channel and internet viewing experience than TiVo.

What has happened? And aside from the remaining fanboys (who will flame me a lot), am I alone here?


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## talanjs (Jan 20, 2003)

Mine been up and running for about a month or so and there's might be a little lag time while waiting for the internet images to load but nothing worth complaining about.


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## nrc (Nov 17, 1999)

AbMagFab said:


> We are very close to the point where the local cable company DVR offers a better and more complete channel and internet viewing experience than TiVo.


Not if the Comcast box that I used on vacation recently is any indication.



> What has happened? And aside from the remaining fanboys (who will flame me a lot), am I alone here?


It's pretty clear that you're not alone from the comments from like-minded individuals in other threads. Personally I'm disappointed that TiVo didn't have the Premiere more complete out of the box, but I'm glad that if my S3 dies today that I can buy the new generation hardware and enjoy all the new features once everything is sorted out.


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## AbMagFab (Feb 5, 2001)

Right, sorry. Comcast boxes are far worse. But FiOS is really good, to the point that I no longer recommend to customers to get a Tivo if they have FiOS. And DirecTV has been fairly good for a while.

Another big issue is the hard drive replacement. Until anyone technical enough can do this easily, they lost a really big advantage over the cable DVRs - namely, easy recovery from HD failure, and easy HD space upgrades. Adding an external drive actually doubles the HD failure chances, so that's a lousy option, IMO.

Anyway, I'm close to losing confidence in Tivo, which is a darn shame.


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## sthor (Oct 1, 2006)

I have been happy with my Premiere after switching to SD Menus even though I use it with a 50" plasma monitor.

I did not like the band of pictures across the top anyway.


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## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

I've had my Comcast boxes for a few months now and have next to no complaints.

WorldCup broadcast recordings have briefly cut out a few times. Not sure if that's a DVR or Comcast network or Live broadcast problem, but otherwise so far so good.


I am moving at the end of the month and will have FIOS at my new place so I may (read: probably will) switch to that.


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## Tony Chick (Jun 20, 2002)

I was a long time TiVo user but I've used the DirecTV HRxx boxes since they came out and am now trying to wean myself off them and back to cable by using the Premiere to save some money. Its a frustrating experience and I find myself running back to the HR after a couple of hours, so now I'm paying for both cable and satellite. This just isn't the TiVo I remember, everyone else seems to have not only caught up to but surpassed them.


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## robm15 (Feb 23, 2004)

Nope, you are not alone. I was a fanboy also and if you reviewed my old posts since the premiere came out, you'd see I was definitely a fanboy. I'm losing patience though... I'm willing to deal with it in the beginning since I know I was being a early adopter, but I expected more to show for the last 3 months that just went by than what we have seen. I find my series 3 a pleasure to use compared to the Premiere, and that is a disgusting testimony to what TiVo has become.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

I'm glad I replaceed all my Series 3 boxes with the Premiere. I can't stand using the S3 boxes anymore. The Premiere has been so much better. Mine have been just as rock solid as my S3 boxes and at least some of the menus are HD. I can't stand the SD menus any more.



AbMagFab said:


> I've been a TiVo fanboy for most of my TiVo life. Not surprisingly, i ran out to get a premiere on the day is was released. I was horribly disappointed in it's performance and partial HD UI.
> 
> I was prepared to replace at least half of my TiVos with premieres, but that first week of experience was so bad, I just relegated it to my daughter's playroom.
> 
> ...


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## truwarrior22 (Jul 1, 2010)

As a first time DVR owner, I think it's great, I no longer have to use my xBox to play music, vidoes, and moives from my PC. For me the Tivo really is the "one" box, just which I didn't have to have the tivo app open on the computer all the time time.


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## donnoh (Mar 7, 2008)

My Premiere has been rock solid since I changed it over to the "classic" UI. The HD experience from my perspective was crap, slow with a never ending circle of don't bother me I'm busy.
I like the faster networking, now when I go on a road trip I can move a few shows to my laptop in a couple of hours instead of a day.

Overall it was a poor implementation on Tivos part. Had they not had the option for changing back to the SD UI I would have had to take them up on the 30 money back guarantee.

I hope they get it right on the next release.


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## AbMagFab (Feb 5, 2001)

donnoh said:


> My Premiere has been rock solid since I changed it over to the "classic" UI. The HD experience from my perspective was crap, slow with a never ending circle of don't bother me I'm busy.
> I like the faster networking, now when I go on a road trip I can move a few shows to my laptop in a couple of hours instead of a day.
> 
> Overall it was a poor implementation on Tivos part. Had they not had the option for changing back to the SD UI I would have had to take them up on the 30 money back guarantee.
> ...


Right, i guess that's the point. If most people are switching to the SD UI, then it's just a S3, and a failure as the Premiere.

I'm not questioning the "rock solid" nature of the recording, but that's no longer a diffentitor like it was. At least the FiOS and DirecTV DVRs are now just as good at recordings and being "rock solid".

And even if the Premiere were working as (apparently) designed, the cableco DVRs would still be the same, or better (FiOS, DirecTV). With all the copy protection in place/coming, MRV is dead, and everyone *but* Tivo streams across DVRs.

Maybe the new AppleTV will be a cable-capable DVR with iOS and access to all the video apps, like Netflix, Hulu, ABC, iTunes, etc. Then I can just dump Tivo and keep only the happy memories.


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

Last night I almost turned on the TV connected to my TiVo Premiere to see if anything's gotten better. I really haven't used it more than a few times since I installed it and ran through all the functionality and decided the software on it was a collection of junk... figuring, I'll wait and one day turn it on an finally be impressed. 

Anyway, what's this app you speak of? If nothing else, I'm just curious to look into what features they're claiming to offer to app developers...

Maybe I'll turn it on tonight.


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## AbMagFab (Feb 5, 2001)

dswallow said:


> Last night I almost turned on the TV connected to my TiVo Premiere to see if anything's gotten better. I really haven't used it more than a few times since I installed it and ran through all the functionality and decided the software on it was a collection of junk... figuring, I'll wait and one day turn it on an finally be impressed.
> 
> Anyway, what's this app you speak of? If nothing else, I'm just curious to look into what features they're claiming to offer to app developers...
> 
> Maybe I'll turn it on tonight.


That FrameChannel thing? You can also get it on the S3s, but as an HME app. I'm assuming it's implemented "the new way" on the Premiere, but it's lame either way, and doesn't seem to really work right.


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## curiousgeorge (Nov 28, 2002)

AbMagFab said:


> Right, i guess that's the point. If most people are switching to the SD UI, then it's just a S3, and a failure as the Premiere.


5-6x faster MRV transfers on the Premiere do not make it "just an S3". That huge speed boost is the main reason I kept my 3 Premires while they work out the mess of an HDUI. Once you transfer an hour of HD in 8 minutes, it's hard to go back to the painfully slow S3. We transfer a lot of shows.


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## Tony Chick (Jun 20, 2002)

curiousgeorge said:


> 5-6x faster MRV transfers on the Premiere do not make it "just an S3". That huge speed boost is the main reason I kept my 3 Premires while they work out the mess of an HDUI. Once you transfer an hour of HD in 8 minutes, it's hard to go back to the painfully slow S3. We transfer a lot of shows.


But you shouldn't have to transfer anything to do MRV, just stream like everyone elses implementations. Transferring is fine if you want it on you iPod or laptop but not for basic MRV, plus it runs afoul of Copy Protection. This is an example of how they are lagging behind the field.


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

Tony Chick said:


> ...just stream like everyone elses implementations. ..


Are you _certain_ that is how everyone else is doing it, or just Moxi, where there is at least some transparency into how things are done? In other words, what makes you believe that an SA/Moto/Dish/whatever DVR does streaming, and not that the software running on that piece of equipment is just set to ignore copy protection (since it is controlled by the cable operator) and uses the same or similar method that TiVo does?


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## jrnewquist (Dec 5, 2003)

If the Guide were in HD, I'd be a lot happier. I spend 90&#37; of my time on the current HD screens + the guide, and the SD guide is absolutely hideous by comparison.


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## Tony Chick (Jun 20, 2002)

orangeboy said:


> Are you _certain_ that is how everyone else is doing it, or just Moxi, where there is at least some transparency into how things are done? In other words, what makes you believe that an SA/Moto/Dish/whatever DVR does streaming, and not that the software running on that piece of equipment is just set to ignore copy protection (since it is controlled by the cable operator) and uses the same or similar method that TiVo does?


The DirecTV ones definitely stream, in fact you can use a non-DVR set top box as a client. UVerse and Fios are similar, you only need one DVR.


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## donnoh (Mar 7, 2008)

jrnewquist said:


> If the Guide were in HD, I'd be a lot happier. I spend 90% of my time on the current HD screens + the guide, and the SD guide is absolutely hideous by comparison.


Damn, you spend 90% of your time in menus? I spend 99.9% of my Tivo time watching shows recorded on my Tivo. My menu experience comprises 2 minutes a day tops.


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## Follow Who? (Jan 3, 2005)

jrnewquist said:


> If the Guide were in HD, I'd be a lot happier. I spend 90% of my time on the current HD screens + the guide, and the SD guide is absolutely hideous by comparison.


That is exactly the reason i canceled my order for 2 Premiere XLs. It seems to me that the guide is where you spend most of your time with the TiVo and if it is not going to be HD, then I have no desire to switch. I can't believe that was not the first thing they updated. All you are doing is re-skinning it for crying out loud. All the data handling code is already there. Just put a new face on it. I'll give the Premiere a shot as soon as they do that, but I'll stay on the sidelines till then.


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## caddyroger (Mar 15, 2005)

donnoh said:


> Damn, you spend 90% of your time in menus? I spend 99.9% of my Tivo time watching shows recorded on my Tivo. My menu experience comprises 2 minutes a day tops.


With mine using the HD menu you will spend 2 min changing each page in the now showing list or changing to the next menu.


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## RichB (Apr 2, 2003)

orangeboy said:


> Are you _certain_ that is how everyone else is doing it, or just Moxi, where there is at least some transparency into how things are done? In other words, what makes you believe that an SA/Moto/Dish/whatever DVR does streaming, and not that the software running on that piece of equipment is just set to ignore copy protection (since it is controlled by the cable operator) and uses the same or similar method that TiVo does?


They likely have different implementations, but by "Streaming" they do not make a copy (even if they buffer the bejesus out of it) thereby, side stepping the copy flags.

TiVo copies. The solution has been evident for many years. However, before the Premier, TiVo hardware was not up to the task. FIOS is turning on Copy flags. What will you do TiVo, what will you do? 

- Rich


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## AnotherBostonGuy (May 6, 2010)

Tony Chick said:


> I was a long time TiVo user but I've used the DirecTV HRxx boxes since they came out and am now trying to wean myself off them and back to cable by using the Premiere to save some money. Its a frustrating experience and I find myself running back to the HR after a couple of hours, so now I'm paying for both cable and satellite. This just isn't the TiVo I remember, everyone else seems to have not only caught up to but surpassed them.


You know, this is why I got my Premiere as well - and my experience mirrors yours.

Sure, I'll use my TiVo to record the odd item, but the HR, with PiP, more than covers everything.

As a matter of fact, I've placed an order for another HR24 as it's really quite fast, which was really the only last item on my checklist of annoyances.

I find it humorous that some have the opinion that the Premiere is better than even an HR20, based on the similar features. Sure, if you're into transferring shows, then only your TiVo will do - but most of us, and our families just time shift - and to compare a Premiere with an HR2x really doesn't even work anymore - the HR's just work, which is what TiVo used to do - now they're just slow and dated.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

caddyroger said:


> With mine using the HD menu you will spend 2 min changing each page in the now showing list or changing to the next menu.


I had my first page loading wait yesterday at my girlfriends on the Premiere I took over there. instead of the normal quick page change it took a laboriously long 20 seconds for the page to change and I got that green circle. It ended up being the wireless connection. It seemed to be down for some reason, so I initated a connection to TiVo and it went back to the normal quick page changes like I'm normally used to.

Otherwise everything has still been solid. No missed recordings or anything else. Overall I am very glad I dumped my S3 units. Especially with the transfer rates between them.
I transferred many hours of HD to my Premiere box quickly before taking it over to my girlfriends. If it had been an S3 box it would have taken the entire day to transfer what I did in a short time. I actually saw my fastest transfer rates. The Network diagnostics showed that I hit a 94mbs transfer rate. Typically when I check it, the rate is between 90mbs and 92mbs. But I also put all boxes on vacant channels before trasnsferring to that Premiere.


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## caddyroger (Mar 15, 2005)

aaronwt said:


> I had my first page loading wait yesterday at my girlfriends on the Premiere I took over there. instead of the normal quick page change it took a laboriously long 20 seconds for the page to change and I got that green circle. It ended up being the wireless connection. It seemed to be down for some reason, so I initated a connection to TiVo and it went back to the normal quick page changes like I'm normally used to.
> 
> Otherwise everything has still been solid. No missed recordings or anything else. Overall I am very glad I dumped my S3 units. Especially with the transfer rates between them.
> I transferred many hours of HD to my Premiere box quickly before taking it over to my girlfriends. If it had been an S3 box it would have taken the entire day to transfer what I did in a short time. I actually saw my fastest transfer rates. The Network diagnostics showed that I hit a 94mbs transfer rate. Typically when I check it, the rate is between 90mbs and 92mbs. But I also put all boxes on vacant channels before trasnsferring to that Premiere.


I lost 15 min of recording last night i thought i would try the HD menu again. but pressed the tivo button. Nothing but a black screen. Unplugged the tivo and rebooted it and waited the 7 mins then right after it got done it hard rebooted. Again waited 7 mins. This time it started ok. Went into the setting and put it back on the SD menu. 
If Moxi was able to transfer programs like tivo I would buy the moxi today and throw the premiere in the trash.
I might just forget about transferring programs if they do not get the HD menu fixed or they work on putting more HD menu on the premire then fixing the speed of the HD menu. All of the HD menu's are not worth 2 cents if you are using the SD menu's.


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## gamo62 (Oct 12, 2002)

And THAT is why I sent mine back and decided to wait until everything was operational. I'll stick with my THD for now.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

gamo62 said:


> And THAT is why I sent mine back and decided to wait until everything was operational. I'll stick with my THD for now.


I've never seen that issue with my boxes. I've never lost any recordings and run HD menus on all my Premieres.


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## lujan (May 24, 2010)

The fact that the TiVo Premiere is still pretty buggy is the reason I only did one year subscription rather than lifetime. I don't want to be stuck with it after a year if it doesn't get any better.


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## AbMagFab (Feb 5, 2001)

curiousgeorge said:


> 5-6x faster MRV transfers on the Premiere do not make it "just an S3". That huge speed boost is the main reason I kept my 3 Premires while they work out the mess of an HDUI. Once you transfer an hour of HD in 8 minutes, it's hard to go back to the painfully slow S3. We transfer a lot of shows.


*Well, that's just not possible.* The Premiere has a 100mbit port, and a 10-15MB file (1 hour HD) would have to transmit at 170mb/s to 250mb/s in order to transfer in 8 minutes!

The Premiere is maybe twice as fast MRV as the S3/HD, at best. And the S3/HD over hardwire transfers HD at 1.2-1.5x real time, which is way more than enough for pretty much anything. Not sure what you're watching that would require more than 1.2-1.5x real time transfers anyway?

Also, MRV is dead, with all the copy flags being added everywhere. Streaming device to device is becoming a requirement, and Tivo is way behind.


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## matguy (Jul 20, 2004)

AbMagFab said:


> *Well, that's just not possible.* The Premiere has a 100mbit port, and a 10-15MB file (1 hour HD) would have to transmit at 170mb/s to 250mb/s in order to transfer in 8 minutes!
> 
> The Premiere is maybe twice as fast MRV as the S3/HD, at best. And the S3/HD over hardwire transfers HD at 1.2-1.5x real time, which is way more than enough for pretty much anything. Not sure what you're watching that would require more than 1.2-1.5x real time transfers anyway?
> 
> Also, MRV is dead, with all the copy flags being added everywhere. Streaming device to device is becoming a requirement, and Tivo is way behind.


An hour of "HD" in 8 minutes, sure that's possible. It all depends on the content and how compressed it was. Remember, a lot of cartoons compress -real- well and some cable companies compress things tighter than others. I transferred 1/2 hour of a cartoon taped from Comcast in 1080i a while ago that came out to almost exactly 2GB (2.01), multiply that by 2 and you get just over 4GB per hour. I could see that transfering pretty quick. Even with another movie I transferred, it was just under 9GB for 1.5 hours, so even that's 6GB/hour. At ~30MB/s transfer, I could get that in less than 8 minutes. Just because you don't see it in your situation doesn't make it impossible for -everyone-.

I understand you're annoyed, but there's no reason to call someone a liar.


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## RichB (Apr 2, 2003)

Transfers could be quite a bit faster. After all, the HD's could barely keep up with 1080i transfers. That puts it at effectively 8 to 10 megabits plus overhead. It was an unimpressive to say the least.
With a bar that low, it not surprising that the Premiere could be 4 to 5 times faster with a 100mb connection.

I understand that individual users with lots of TiVo's may be happy with MRV.
But as you say, it is an obsolete technology. All content including protected content can be streamed. End points do not have to be DVR's and should not required hard drives. (Green folk should be appalled at MRV's wastefulness).

I suspect, that TiVo ignored this because they only sell DVR's and the HD hardware was too underpowered to support it. Clearly, this should have been a prime reason for the Premiere's existence.

DLNA would be a way to get ahead of the curve and become a much more open platform. My gut tells me that the mentality that selected Flash (lite) for the Premiere is not compatible with this line of thinking. However, I would love to be wrong. 

- Rich


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## matguy (Jul 20, 2004)

RichB said:


> Transfers could be quite a bit faster. After all, the HD's could barely keep up with 1080i transfers. That puts it at effectively 8 to 10 megabits plus overhead. It was an unimpressive to say the least.
> With a bar that low, it not surprising that the Premiere could be 4 to 5 times faster with a 100mb connection.
> 
> I understand that individual users with lots of TiVo's may be happy with MRV.
> ...


Remember, transfering between Tivos is depending on an unknown factor, home networks. With the customer base, compared to some of the other devices thare are generally purchased by somewhat technical people and/or rely on their own interconnection (FIOS) I can understand Tivo wanting to keep the MRV standard for the time being. Depending on and supporting peoples' personal home WiFi for a datastream that can -easily- saturate a good Wireless "B" network (or a fringe "G" or even "N"; hell a 10/100 with a crappy switch) that some people may be on, I can see the reasons for at least dropping back to MRV... although, I would think that starting with a stream and falling back to MRV if the bandwidth won't support it would be a solution... that they may be working on.

Before the copy protection flag became an issue, MRV in Tivo land wasn't so bad, was it?


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

AbMagFab said:


> *Well, that's just not possible.* The Premiere has a 100mbit port, and a 10-15MB file (1 hour HD) would have to transmit at 170mb/s to 250mb/s in order to transfer in 8 minutes!
> 
> The Premiere is maybe twice as fast MRV as the S3/HD, at best. And the S3/HD over hardwire transfers HD at 1.2-1.5x real time, which is way more than enough for pretty much anything. Not sure what you're watching that would require more than 1.2-1.5x real time transfers anyway?
> 
> Also, MRV is dead, with all the copy flags being added everywhere. Streaming device to device is becoming a requirement, and Tivo is way behind.


One hour of HD is variable. In the nine years I've been recording HD, I've seen hour long HD shows take up as much as 8.5GB and as little as 2GB.
The premiere easily hits 90mbs transfer rates between Premieres. The fastest I've seen is 94mbs with mine.

The fastest HD stream you might possibly see is 19mbs, but that is very rare. So if it's really 15mbs which is still rare nowadays, you would transfer the hour long recording in 1/6 realtime which would be around 10 minutes.

But in reality it will usually be less than 10 minutes, like 7 or 8 minutes since the HD bitrates are typically between 10mbs and 13mbs.


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## RichB (Apr 2, 2003)

matguy said:


> Remember, transfering between Tivos is depending on an unknown factor, home networks. With the customer base, compared to some of the other devices thare are generally purchased by somewhat technical people and/or rely on their own interconnection (FIOS) I can understand Tivo wanting to keep the MRV standard for the time being. Depending on and supporting peoples' personal home WiFi for a datastream that can -easily- saturate a good Wireless "B" network (or a fringe "G" or even "N"; hell a 10/100 with a crappy switch) that some people may be on, I can see the reasons for at least dropping back to MRV... although, I would think that starting with a stream and falling back to MRV if the bandwidth won't support it would be a solution... that they may be working on.
> 
> Before the copy protection flag became an issue, MRV in Tivo land wasn't so bad, was it?


FIOS uses MOCA and that still requires good wiring which is not the case in most older installations.

And before we had cars, I would have been happy with a horse. 
It is time to move on.

- Rich


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## curiousgeorge (Nov 28, 2002)

AbMagFab said:


> *Well, that's just not possible.* The Premiere has a 100mbit port, and a 10-15MB file (1 hour HD) would have to transmit at 170mb/s to 250mb/s in order to transfer in 8 minutes!
> 
> The Premiere is maybe twice as fast MRV as the S3/HD, at best. And the S3/HD over hardwire transfers HD at 1.2-1.5x real time, which is way more than enough for pretty much anything. Not sure what you're watching that would require more than 1.2-1.5x real time transfers anyway?
> 
> Also, MRV is dead, with all the copy flags being added everywhere. Streaming device to device is becoming a requirement, and Tivo is way behind.


Nope. I had S3 units just before this. An hour of HD took about 30-40 minutes. With S4's it takes 8-9 minutes. *The math works out - you're completely off.* I get 95-98Mb/s according to the network diagnostic. Series 4 is 5-6x faster. It's a HUGE leap, but only S4 to S4. Mix it up with different units and it slows down.

1 Hour HD = ~6000MB (6 gigs)
6000/8(minutes)=750MB/min
750MB/60(seconds per min)=12MB/sec
12MB * 8 (bits per byte) = 96Mb/sec


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

I'm getting around 24mbps from HD to HD, so I would say the S4 is around 4 times faster based on your numbers. But since 24mbps is at least 1.5x realtime speed, it's plenty enough to watch a show without delay across boxes. I just wish Tivo would implement streaming so I don't have to wait for a show to finish recording before I can watch it (and avoid all the nasty CP issues that others have).

The real slowdown is in transferring external video from a PC to the HD.


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## RichB (Apr 2, 2003)

Comcast announce 500GB AnyRoom DVR: Engadget.

Boy, who could have seen this coming.

Let's see, Verizon, Comcast, DirectTV all have Streaming DVR's to their set-top-boxes.

I am not sure Dish has one. Worry not, if they try it, TiVo will sue them 

- Rich


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Only 500GB for multiple rooms? That is at a minimum 50&#37; of what it really needs to be.

Although 500GB for one room is good. I wish the regular Premiere had a 500GB drive instead of a 320GB drive.


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## RichB (Apr 2, 2003)

aaronwt said:


> Only 500GB for multiple rooms? That is at a minimum 50% of what it really needs to be.
> 
> Although 500GB for one room is good. I wish the regular Premiere had a 500GB drive instead of a 320GB drive.


I think you missed the point. 

- Rich


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

RichB said:


> I think you missed the point.
> 
> - Rich


The point for me is that none of those other DVRs allow me to transfer the recordings to a PC like the TiVo does. Which for me, right now is more important than streaming. Of course this could easily change in the future.

WHo knows, with the Premiere, TiVo now has hardware that can easily do streaming. The Series 3 platform was too slow for that. If you had two shows recording, one previous recording being watched and one also downloading, all concurrently, all HD. The Series 3 boxes might have had issues streaming a show to other boxes in that situation without dropping any frames. 
With the Premiere boxes, it should not have any issue. It is robust enough to handle streaming in that extreme situation So maybe TiVo will announce streaming capability at some point in the future on the Premiere boxes.


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## RichB (Apr 2, 2003)

aaronwt said:


> The point for me is that none of those other DVR's allow me to transfer the recordings to a PC like the TiVo does.
> 
> WHo knows, with the Premiere, TiVo now has hardware that can easily do streaming. The Series 3 platform was too slow for that. If you had two shows recording, one previous recording being watched and one also downloading, all concurrently, all HD. The Series 3 boxes might have had issues streaming a show to another box in that situation without dropping any frames.
> With the Premiere boxes, it should not have any issue. It is robust enough to handle streaming in that extreme situation So maybe TiVo will announce streaming capability at some point in the future on the Premiere boxes.


TiVo Streaming Possibilities


DLNA is used to stream to any device including a PC's.
DLNA is used to support play lists to AV Devices (AVR's and such)
TiVo supports Steaming to other Premieres.
TiVo supports Streaming to HD/S3's.

DLNA would be huge for TiVo since unlike the Cable/FIOS/SAT providers they do not sell STB's. DLNA would allow for connection to other devices both Audio and Video. You know sort of One Box'ish.

- Rich


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

aaronwt said:


> none of those other DVRs allow me to transfer the recordings to a [computer] like the TiVo does.


Unless you are on a cable company that starts turning on the copy protection for everything (or lots of stuff). Then you can kiss your transfer-to-computer goodbye in addition to kissing the multi-room transfer goodbye.



> Which for me, right now is more important than streaming. Of course this could easily change in the future.


Indeed it can, and with the flip of a switch at your cable company, which is why it is really crazy that TiVo has not addressed DLNA at all. The Premiere is not at all innovative. It is just a faster S3 (which is automatic with any new hardware) and some chunks of slow HD menus. It is not what 3-4 years of research should have brought.


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## TomJHansen (Nov 6, 2000)

curiousgeorge said:


> 5-6x faster MRV transfers on the Premiere do not make it "just an S3". That huge speed boost is the main reason I kept my 3 Premires while they work out the mess of an HDUI. Once you transfer an hour of HD in 8 minutes, it's hard to go back to the painfully slow S3. We transfer a lot of shows.


This is a huge difference for me as well (coming from an S2). Granted I'm connected through ethernet to the computer I'm transferring to - but 2 hour SD shows transfer in a few minutes. I with the copy protection flag was off on the SD versions of the pay channels, but I can live with fast transfer for the network shows only.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Tony Chick said:


> But you shouldn't have to transfer anything to do MRV, just stream like everyone elses implementations. Transferring is fine if you want it on you iPod or laptop but not for basic MRV


MRV (and iPod or laptop) is not the only reason people transfer. I transfer some stuff to get it off of the Tivo to make room -- e.g. keep the musical performances from some talk shows. Eventually I will likely transfer the audio to an iPod but that's not the instantaneous reason -- the instantaneous reason is to get it off of the Tivo to make room.


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## RichB (Apr 2, 2003)

mattack said:


> MRV (and iPod or laptop) is not the only reason people transfer. I transfer some stuff to get it off of the TiVo to make room -- e.g. keep the musical performances from some talk shows. Eventually I will likely transfer the audio to an iPod but that's not the instantaneous reason -- the instantaneous reason is to get it off of the TiVo to make room.


Streaming is bi-directional. 
Nothing is lost by adding Streaming.
However, now you can stream from your PC and not necessarily store it on your TiVo.

I would prefer an option to store all programs on my NAS where I have terabytes in a RAID 

- Rich


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

RichB said:


> Streaming is bi-directional.
> Nothing is lost by adding Streaming.
> However, now you can stream from your PC and not necessarily store it on your TiVo.
> 
> ...


I have access to over fifty terabytes of network storage for my TiVos. Either Directly through my WHS which will pull it from the TiVos. Or through my PC that is running software to push/pull the content to/from the TiVos.


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## DCIFRTHS (Jan 6, 2000)

AbMagFab said:


> I've been a TiVo fanboy for most of my TiVo life. Not surprisingly, i ran out to get a premiere on the day is was released. I was horribly disappointed in it's performance and partial HD UI.
> 
> I was prepared to replace at least half of my TiVos with premieres, but that first week of experience was so bad, I just relegated it to my daughter's playroom. ...


I haven't been here in a while. I stopped by to see if anything had changed with the new boxes, and unfortunately it hasn't.

I held off on the new boxes when they were released because of the reports of slowness and the incomplete interface.

C'mon TiVo, make me want to buy your stuff...


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## AbMagFab (Feb 5, 2001)

Three more months later, and not much has changed. The HD UI is still too slow - while it's barely usable, it's ridiculously slow for something released after 1999.

The HD UI is still very incomplete, with not even the on-screen banner, play bar, (or guide?) changed.

The "Discovery" bar is still weird, and annoying, but this is more subjective.

And can the internal drive be upgraded by yourself yet?

Anyway, nothing has changed to make me want to move my Premiere from my daughter's playroom to a TV that actually uses a Tivo. And worse for Tivo, nothing has changed to make me want to buy one, or recommend one.

*I was about as big a Tivo fanatic as there was, and I now am looking for how to get rid of all my Tivos. That's a big indication of the failure of the Premiere.*

Aren't we pushing 8 months or so since this silly thing was released? And that after 3-5 years of development?


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## oosik77 (Nov 22, 1999)

I finally got one a few weeks ago. And while the HD interface could be faster and it's sad that not all menus are in HD I have had no real issues with mine. And I've had Tivo's since the 14 hour series1 way back when. Yes it should be faster and it should look better for a product with this much history but for me it's still better than the other options. If you do sell them all and move on have fun. I'd go nuts without Wishlists and I like suggestions which I'd also miss.

To those of you that don't like suggestions I think you either gave up too soon on them or you didn't teach your Tivo very well when you first got it. Then again it may work great for me since I live alone. I can see where if you had seasons passes for you and your spouse and the kids it would be hard for Tivo to do a good job with suggestions. Sorry I digressed there a bit....


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## AbMagFab (Feb 5, 2001)

oosik77 said:


> I finally got one a few weeks ago. And while the HD interface could be faster and it's sad that not all menus are in HD I have had no real issues with mine. And I've had Tivo's since the 14 hour series1 way back when. Yes it should be faster and it should look better for a product with this much history but for me it's still better than the other options. If you do sell them all and move on have fun. I'd go nuts without Wishlists and I like suggestions which I'd also miss.
> 
> To those of you that don't like suggestions I think you either gave up too soon on them or you didn't teach your Tivo very well when you first got it. Then again it may work great for me since I live alone. I can see where if you had seasons passes for you and your spouse and the kids it would be hard for Tivo to do a good job with suggestions. Sorry I digressed there a bit....


It's cheaper, and better, to just stream everything (legally).


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

AbMagFab said:


> It's cheaper, and better, to just stream everything (legally).


 The day you can stream all live sports broadcasts let us know...


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## AbMagFab (Feb 5, 2001)

moyekj said:


> The day you can stream all live sports broadcasts let us know...


Who watches sports?  And you don't need a Tivo to watch live TV.

Also, we're seeing more leagues creating apps/sites for watching things live with a subscription, aren't we? Isn't MLB one of the most accessible, even on things like Roku?


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

AbMagFab said:


> It's cheaper, and better, to just stream everything (legally).


Um, right. Get back to me when you can legally stream *ALL* the History Channel, Scify Channel, Science Channel, and NatGeo channel content in full HD/5.1, at the same or better quality/bitrate as HD cable 100% of the time, and with zero dropouts or other network issues, and with no forced commercials.

Maybe at that point I MIGHT consider "streaming only" to be an option. I have a feeling I will be waiting quite a while.


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## AbMagFab (Feb 5, 2001)

crxssi said:


> Um, right. Get back to me when you can legally stream *ALL* the History Channel, Scify Channel, Science Channel, and NatGeo channel content in full HD/5.1, at the same or better quality/bitrate as HD cable 100% of the time, and with zero dropouts or other network issues, and with no forced commercials.
> 
> Maybe at that point I MIGHT consider "streaming only" to be an option. I have a feeling I will be waiting quite a while.


That's a theoretical question.

I can currently stream everything that I record on every Tivo, and most of it is HD (at least the content that's sourced in HD).

All commercial free from iTunes (probably from Amazon as well, didn't check yet).

If you really want to check, make a list of everything you actually record, then look each one up in iTunes/Amazon, and see your costs.


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## dbenrosen (Sep 20, 2003)

AbMagFab said:


> And can the internal drive be upgraded by yourself yet?


Yes it can.


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## aaroncgi (Apr 13, 2010)

AbMagFab said:


> ...
> ... And you don't need a Tivo to watch live TV.
> ...


Actually, you do, if your TV was made in 1994, your other display devices don't have tuners in them, and you do not subscribe to cable or satellite.


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## AbMagFab (Feb 5, 2001)

aaroncgi said:


> Actually, you do, if your TV was made in 1994, your other display devices don't have tuners in them, and you do not subscribe to cable or satellite.


They are many, far cheaper solutions for simply watching live TV. You can go to Radio Shack and get a cheap little ATSC tuner.

Or maybe upgrade your TV, versus spending money on Tivo.


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## aaroncgi (Apr 13, 2010)

AbMagFab said:


> ...
> I can currently stream everything that I record on every Tivo, and most of it is HD (at least the content that's sourced in HD).
> 
> All commercial free from iTunes (probably from Amazon as well, didn't check yet).
> ...


I couldn't check on iTunes because it would not give me any pricing without having iTunes installed (dumb). But for Amazon, yes, we can get all but one show that we currently watch using Amazon VOD. We do not have a device other than a computer to actually watch Amazon VOD, iTunes, or Netflix, and we don't want to watch TV on our 19" computer monitor - so we'd still have to buy some additional device.

The total season passes for the shows we watch comes to $352.39 per year. And, that gives a big break to three shows which aren't available as the full season - only to watch per episode. I calculated them at only 11 episodes per season, which is generous. Now we also watch several TV shows via Netflix, which if we had to pay extra for, would add another $40-80 per year. Yes, we can rent TV shows from Netflix, but not the entire season at once, only one disc (3-5 episodes) at a time.

We paid $700 for our Tivo (ok $740 if you include the 3-year extended warranty), with nothing more to pay ever. So based on those numbers, if we were to use only AmazonVOD, it would be more expensive after two years. And, we wouldn't be able to watch anything other than what we are buying, any extra shows we discover would cost more, etc.. Forget all the cool shows we watch semi-regularly, but not regularly enough to get a season pass, or the odd movie which happens to be on, or nature show, etc. Now maybe iTunes is significantly cheaper than AmazonVOD. But even if it's half, that still means after 3-4 years, the Tivo is going to come out less expensive for us.

Now if you look at it another way, in that the Tivo is the only way for us to actually watch TV other than cable, satellite, or computer, you could reasonably remove the $340 cost of the box itself from our total outlay, leaving just the $400 lifetime subscription. Even if the box only lasts to the end of the three year warranty, that still comes out to just $11.11 per month, which is far less than the $29.37+ per month it would cost us through Amazon. The longer our Tivo lasts, the cheaper it gets per episode/season. Can iTunes or Amazon say that?


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## aaroncgi (Apr 13, 2010)

AbMagFab said:


> They are many, far cheaper solutions for simply watching live TV. You can go to Radio Shack and get a cheap little ATSC tuner.
> 
> Or maybe upgrade your TV, versus spending money on Tivo.


And which one of those cheap little ATSC tuners has a dual tuner DVR in it?

Why would I replace a component which is still serving it's purpose as well now as it did when originally made?


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## caseybea (Oct 14, 2010)

In terms of the original part of this thread-- I agree wholeheartedly with the thread title, that is, the premiere being well, "junky". For the most part, compared to many other multimedia interfaces, the Tivo interface is inconsistent, slow, and buggy. I'm a new tivo user, diving in from an older TV that had a DVR built in (which eventually required replacement). The Tivo concept is great - and I truly appreciate being able to record two things at once. While I dislike having to pay a subscription now, I do understand that it's for the data - which seems reasonably accurate. But good lord, the interface, menus, "user experience" could be SO much better. I fail to see how a company that's had a product line out there so long fails here.

As far as the latter part of this thread-- no two people are going to have the same costs or cost savings when comparing a tivo to a pay-per-view model. Some will come out ahead, some will not. (For us, we do OTA only, no cable, and MUCH of what we watch is NOT available online-- lots of pbs for example). So, for us, the monthly cost is well, all we have, if we want to capture/record everything we want to watch....


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

If this is your first TiVo then you should try switching back to the classic UI, you might like it better. It's not a pretty, but it's much more snappy and for now an overall better experience.

Dan


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

moyekj said:


> The day you can stream all live sports broadcasts let us know...


Ditto. You're either a true sports fan or you're not, and the fan wants cable or sat, not unreliable low-quality streaming.

It will get there someday, but it ain't there now. But the casual fan (or non-sports watcher) won't get that.


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