# Can someone tell me what is going on?



## RoamioJeff (May 9, 2014)

Last night, shortly after 3:30 AM, I awoke and noticed my Roamio red record light on. This is odd, I thought, as nothing should be recording now.

So I groggily turned on the TV and looked in the To Do list. Nothing. So then I scrolled through the channel guide until I found a red recording symbol on my local ION channel for a program entitled "Teleworld paid program", 3:30 - 4:00 AM.

So I watched some of it, and it was nothing but back-to-back Tivo commercials, with a couple ads for the "Agent Carter" show interleaved.

After the recording stopped at 4:00 AM, I could find no corresponding recording anywhere on the device. But the available space bar did move a little.

What is going on? Why is a 30 minute block of Tivo Commercials being automatically recorded, and presumably stored in a hidden location on my device?

And, no, I was not dreaming. I just scrolled back to 3:30 AM last night on ION in the channel guide, and there was indeed something called "Teleworld paid program".

Secret Tivo distributed marketing content? Covert NSA intelligence storage? J/k.

Thoughts?


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## tarheelblue32 (Jan 13, 2014)

You know, now that you mention it, I noticed that the red record light was on on my Roamio Plus sometime late last night, around the time you are describing. I was half asleep though, so I did not investigate it further. But I just looked and there is nothing saved on the hard drive that could have been recorded at that time.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

This is nothing new. For many years now TiVo has recorded these "Teleworld" programs during the night. Among other things embedded that's where all the "showcase" videos come from. i.e. In short it's one of TiVo's way of putting Ads on your box.


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## dcline414 (May 1, 2014)

So this is yet another perk of being OTA-only?


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

It doesn't matter one bit.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

dcline414 said:


> So this is yet another perk of being OTA-only?


Not necessarily. TiVo broadcasts this Teleworld program on multiple stations specifically to try and get all users. You might be luck enough not to get whatever channel they use in your area, but most OTA users will still get it.


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## dcline414 (May 1, 2014)

Dan203 said:


> Not necessarily. TiVo broadcasts this Teleworld program on multiple stations specifically to try and get all users. You might be luck enough not to get whatever channel they use in your area, but most OTA users will still get it.


On OTA I can only imagine it would be on an SD sub-channel. Since I turn most of these and any shopping/infomercial-only channels off, I don't think they would reach us.

Can cable users not hide channels to block this too?


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

dcline414 said:


> Can cable users not hide channels to block this too?


 You can, but as Dan mentioned there are several channels that carry this, so you'd probably have to trial and error to get rid of all of them, and then you may end up hiding a channel you actually want.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

dcline414 said:


> On OTA I can only imagine it would be on an SD sub-channel. Since I turn most of these and any shopping/infomercial-only channels off, I don't think they would reach us.
> 
> Can cable users not hide channels to block this too?


Here I think they use UPN, or whatever it's called now, as their OTA station for Teleworld


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

There's also no reason the unit couldn't try the channel even if it's been removed from your list; if they see your area and know the broadcast station should work, they could simply tune it. I don't know if they actually do that, but no reason really that it couldn't.


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## Arcady (Oct 14, 2004)

It records the video even if you have deselected the channel.

I tested this years ago with a Series 2 box, a Series 3 box, and I think I messed with it on a DirecTiVo box too. The only thing that would keep it from recording was if all tuners were busy recording something else, or if the TiVo detected you had watched live TV in the last 30 minutes and that was the only tuner available.


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## s10023 (Nov 12, 2013)

i don't understand this. on roamios, why wouldnt they just upload the video clips to the machine? broadcasting it over the air and recording at 3am seems awfully circuitous.


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## bradleys (Oct 31, 2007)

s10023 said:


> i don't understand this. on roamios, why wouldnt they just upload the video clips to the machine? broadcasting it over the air and recording at 3am seems awfully circuitous.


Legacy - before the Premiere line, a lot of customers were still not connected via broadband connection.

I remember with my S2's every week or so dragging out an extra long telephone cord to update my guide info!


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## NotVeryWitty (Oct 3, 2003)

FWIW, Teleworld is the original name given to the company by its founders. They changed it to Tivo some time before shipping their first product.


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## dcline414 (May 1, 2014)

bradleys said:


> Legacy - before the Premiere line, a lot of customers were still not connected via broadband connection.
> 
> I remember with my S2's every week or so dragging out an extra long telephone cord to update my guide info!


Aren't they upset that many are no longer connected to a phone line to fax Tivo confirmation of receipt?


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

s10023 said:


> i don't understand this. on roamios, why wouldnt they just upload the video clips to the machine? broadcasting it over the air and recording at 3am seems awfully circuitous.


It's much more efficient. They're essentially multicasting the video to every TiVo user all at once rather then having each box redundantly download it using up their network data.

Broadcasters still do the same thing. They use private satellite networks to transmit, in real time, shows, news clips, commercials, etc... because it's more efficient then using the internet. Although there is some movement toward using internet downloads instead.


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## cosmicvoid (Oct 13, 2013)

It almost makes me want to get a cheap lamp timer and a cheap coaxial relay, to disconnect the antenna feed between 3AM and 5AM every morning.


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## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

cosmicvoid said:


> It almost makes me want to get a cheap lamp timer and a cheap coaxial relay, to disconnect the antenna feed between 3AM and 5AM every morning.


What would be the point? You will get the teleworld data eventually, whether you let it record or not.


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## CharlesH (Aug 29, 2002)

I don't see why this is something to get all bent out of shape about. The Teleworld content is recorded to a dedicated partition on the hard drive and thus does not subtract from what you can record. And nothing compels you to watch any of that stuff. So it creates a few "garbage" menu items. Whatever...


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## RoamioJeff (May 9, 2014)

CharlesH said:


> The Teleworld content is recorded to a dedicated partition on the hard drive and thus does not subtract from what you can record.


As the OP of this thread, I disagree. As I originally noted, after the recording (and having recorded nothing else during the time frame in question) my free space did decrease slightly.

YMMV.


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## HerronScott (Jan 1, 2002)

RoamioJeff said:


> As the OP of this thread, I disagree. As I originally noted, after the recording (and having recorded nothing else during the time frame in question) my free space did decrease slightly.
> 
> YMMV.


That would be a change then as it has always been indicated that these are written to area's of the drive not used for normal recordings (going back to S1's which only had 30GB hard drives).

Scott


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## RoyK (Oct 22, 2004)

HerronScott said:


> That would be a change then as it has always been indicated that these are written to area's of the drive not used for normal recordings (going back to S1's which only had 30GB hard drives).
> 
> Scott


Separate partition or not if the space wasn't reserved for Teleworld junk the space could be made available for normal recordings say by reducing the partition size.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

RoyK said:


> Separate partition or not if the space wasn't reserved for Teleworld junk the space could be made available for normal recordings say by reducing the partition size.


True, but if the recording time meets the TiVo spec. as shipped, TiVo is in the clear, TiVo can do what they want with the extra space. I never understood why the TiVos has the super size option, was TiVo ever going to use that extra space ? I don't know if the Roamios have that extra super size space as upgrading a Roamio is done within the Roamio itself.


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## HerronScott (Jan 1, 2002)

RoyK said:


> Separate partition or not if the space wasn't reserved for Teleworld junk the space could be made available for normal recordings say by reducing the partition size.


It could but that's not likely to happen from TiVo's side since the ads are part of their revenue stream.

The WinMFS supersize option could be used with drive upgrades on older TiVos which does reduce the amount of space that's reserved for these recordings. This gives you some space back for recordings but it was minimal (I think it was about 13 hours of HD recordings).

Scott


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