# Roamio, Xfinity on Demand, and Caller ID display



## jamesrob (Feb 19, 2004)

Just looked at the Roamio for the first time yesterday, at Best Buy, discovered that Xfinity on Demand support via these TiVo DVRs is now available in my market.

My understanding is that the same "2-way" communication that enables this is what makes Comcast cable boxes capable of posting Caller ID information to the TV screen when calls come in.

Any idea whether the Caller ID on the TV happens with an "Xfinity on Demand" capable Roamio?

I read a few ancient threads in the help forums that talked about placing an external caller ID box between the phone jack and the TV as a way of implementing this, but they also mentioned that doing so blacks out the TV screen while the phone info is being displayed, and that the phone info shows up on any recordings made using that approach.

I didn't bother to ask the "Geek" at Best Buy once he told me that
1. He'd never heard of expander drives
2. Even if they existed, he was certain that they didn't work with Roamios
3. He appeared incredulous when a customer who overheard my question pointed out that the Roamio DOES have an eSATA port for exactly this purpose, AND that the basic drive in the Roamio can easily be swapped for a larger one in order to avoid the foibles of expander drives anyway (the Geek was clueless on each of those points).


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## markp99 (Mar 21, 2002)

jamesrob said:


> Any idea whether the Caller ID on the TV happens with an "Xfinity on Demand" capable Roamio?


No caller ID display in my Roamio/Xfinity


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## MadPB (Oct 6, 2013)

The 2-way feature in a Comcast cable box works different than the communications between a Tivo and Comcast. Their boxes are able to communicate back using the cable line itself. Tivo's use the internet connection.

Even for On Demand, the Tivo uses the internet connection to browse the titles and control the playback. The video itself comes over a channel (it's -not- streamed over the network connection).

It would be cool if the Caller-ID display was a feature the Tivo could do. I guess technically Tivo could add that on it's own with a little help from Comcast. I don't know if Comcast still offers it, but there used to be a little Windows compatible program that would sit in your system tray and pop up the name/number when a call came in. It did that by just querying some service on Comcast's end.

I seem to remember it worked fairly well, and even had a little log of the last few calls, etc. There wasn't much lag between when the phone rang and when the display popped up with the number... less than a second.

If there's a Windows program that can do it, I'm sure a Tivo plugin could do it too.


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## rhettf (Apr 5, 2012)

MadPB said:


> The 2-way feature in a Comcast cable box works different than the communications between a Tivo and Comcast. Their boxes are able to communicate back using the cable line itself. Tivo's use the internet connection.
> 
> Even for On Demand, the Tivo uses the internet connection to browse the titles and control the playback. The video itself comes over a channel (it's -not- streamed over the network connection).


Actually in the Bay Area even the boxes comcast give you need internet to start an onDemand program.

My girlfriend lives out in a rural area and her internet constantly cuts out for minutes at a time. If you have a onDemand program already started it will continue playing but if you're in the menus trying to start a onDemand program it doesn't work.

I wonder if comcast has completely switched how onDemand works so they don't have to maintain two separate protocol systems.


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