# Premiere Elite performance enhancements



## brentil

From the Elite data thread there was a wonderful bit of data dropped by sbiller.



sbiller said:


> Premiere Elite Start-Up Time = ~3:11
> Premiere Start-Up Time = ~ 7:17
> 
> It appears there is significantly greater horsepower in the Elite's Broadcom chip. I suppose some of the increased boot up time could be related to software differences but I doubt TiVo is concerned about start-up time.


Wait a 50% increase in boot speed?  The importance of this is that boot speed can provide a glimpse into various enhancements at multiple levels in the system. It implies a significant change in a certain aspect or a collection of smaller changes combining to provide a significant overall improvement.

Is there a new chip inside of the Elite? I'm not really sure, but the items I explore below could explain this performance boost without the move to a new CPU.

Why do we care? The changes needed to provide such a boost could provide various benefits to the overall user experience as well providing for a more fluid UI interface, more advanced software components, more active features, etc.

What we know about the Elite so far;

Newer 14.9 software (instead of 14.8)
Newer kernel revision 2.6.18 buildmaster93 (instead of buildmaster64)
Newer GCC 4.2.0 compiler used (instead of 3.3.4)
1024 MB of RAM (instead of 512 MB) - UPDATE the Elite still only has 512 MB of RAM
SMP support enabled during boot process (instead of ?)
Quad Tuner support (instead of dual cable & dual OTA)

*Newer 14.9 software (instead of 14.8)*
The software version is really the overall container of features. A new version could contain a new kernel, updated support libs, newer UI code, etc. Some of the data is exposed to us in the form of version #s but is typically internal to TiVo what exactly has changed. What we know exists in this version is new UI code, a newer kernel build (not to be confused with a new kernel version), MoCA support, and Quad Tuner support.

Of note library wise Flash Player Version: mainline3/2011.07.06.0601 & HD Menu Software Version:1-9/2011.08.31-1134 show fairly new revision dates compared to a non-Elite Premiere with Flash Player Version: 14-8-mr/2011.02.24-0601 & HD Menu Software Version: 1-8/2011.04.08-1413. Any advances in these could provide significantly greater UI performance features. In relation to boot times if the core files have been optimized to use SMP as well as the larger memory space then load times at the end of the post BIOS pre-OS could be reduced.

*Newer kernel revision 2.6.18 buildmaster93 (instead of buildmaster64)*
The latest 14.9 release includes a more recent kernel build. This is not to be confused with a new version of the kernel. The non-Elite & Elite both run 2.6.18 so there are no new features added at the kernel level between these two versions. However newer builds of the same kernel version indicate bug fixes and performance enhancements to the system as it currently exists. The kernel is where the enable/disable of SMP (multiple cores) is defined and controlled so any resolutions here could have provided the ability to enable features already planned or prevent issues that were causing problems.

*Newer GCC 4.2.0 compiler used (instead of 3.3.4)*
This to me is really the most important of software level changes. The GCC 3.3.4 compiler was built in May 2004 where 4.2.0 was built in May 2007 (of note GCC 4.2.1 was what Android was being built against until late last year). The compiler takes the code you've written and translates it into the machine code your device will run. Besides dealing with your own bugs and performance issues, compiler level fixes and performance gains can provide impressive results. The various GCC versions between these sets have all produced significant performance enhancement features along with improved debugging and tracing. In terms of SMP support as well your compiler needs to properly understand certain ways of writing code to be much more SMP friendly. These newer tools can provide a very significant performance boost to SMP code as well as may have been instrumental in finally solving the SMP issues TiVo has been plagued with. As with moving to newer kernel versions moving to newer GCC versions can allow the removal of legacy components providing more efficient CPU cycle usage and memory usage.

*1024 MB of RAM (instead of 512 MB) - UPDATE the Elite still only has 512 MB of RAM*
As with PCs the more RAM you have in general the better your performance. However doubling the system RAM will not provide a doubling in performance. It does however prevent items being loaded and then pushed out of RAM to make room for new items being loaded. This type of behavior is extremely detrimental to a SQL type application which is what the heart of a TiVo's guide data and recording systems are stored in. Providing the ability to load these into memory and keep them loaded would provide an impressive performance gain in relation to tasks accessing it like scheduling, editing, listing, etc. From digging in the code of the previous 512 MB devices only a portion of the RAM is dedicated to the tuners, and it was less than 256 MB if I recall correctly meaning the Elite if they doubled the tuner memory would still allow for a doubling of RAM for the OS.

The most important aspect of more RAM becomes apparent with the enabling of SMP. The problem with running multiple concurrent processes is that you need to feed them or they starve and stall in action waiting for data. For an SMP system to function optimally it really needs more RAM and faster RAM than a single threaded core. The cores also need extra space in order to share data between each other as well for communication and data sharing.

*SMP support enabled during boot process (instead of ?)*
Threading is the beast & the beauty of performance improvements. The beauty of threading is if you can successfully thread an application set and then provide it an SMP environment you can see up to a 50% improvement in speed by running two instances. However the beast of threading comes in the form of debugging and capability. Once you break from one thread doing everything you've more than doubled the complexity of programming and debugging the issues that arise with your code. An improperly developed system can actually see a performance decrease from running on a multiple core platform as certain aspects become faulty due to unfound bugs.

If the SMP functionality has truly been enabled at the kernel level finally then this could very well provide along with additional RAM the ability to provide performance boosts in lots of regions. At boot time the ability to process multiple starting services (this kernel does not support asynchronous device loading though) greatly decreasing system loads. Under system load the ability to run UI threads and SQL threads simultaneously could provide significant UI enhancement as data is immediately available instead of in seconds or 10s of seconds.

*Quad Tuner support (instead of dual cable & dual OTA)*
The support for Quad tuners allows for the removal of OTA tuner support. Depending on how long the initialization portion is for this hardware you can see a benefit from its removal. As the loading of only one driver set for two cable tuners may provide a slight benefit. It does allow the removal of the OTA drivers from memory as well.

*14.9.9.2 vs 14.8c Performance Gains*
This image contains the data values in seconds comparing the previous 14.8c versus the new 14.9.2.2 along with the % difference.










This image is a graph of the % increase showing the overall trend in increases.


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## P42

Re: Newer kernel revision 2.6.18 buildmaster93 (instead of buildmaster64)

buildmaster## is likely just a build server at Tivo, ie the server which complies the code. Both boxes are running the same kernel 2.6.18


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## moyekj

Until the Premiere units get the same level of software (14.9 or above) I would not make any conclusions that speedup is solely hardware related.


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## brentil

You are correct, looking at the comments again the full version for both is 2.6.18-5.1. 

However if SMP is actually enabled it would require a kernel update & recompiled without the SMP blocking code in it. There obviously was a recompile at least with the newer GCC compiler and build system so they may have changed code without changing the build version number too. puffdaddy somehow was able to see this build information, I'm hoping to find out how so I can compare the code of the most recent build versus the older builds.


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## brentil

moyekj said:


> Until the Premiere units get the same level of software (14.9 or above) I would not make any conclusions that speedup is solely hardware related.


Yeah, that's part of the point of this thread to show gains from both hardware and software. I plan to benchmark my system (base Premiere) tonight in a couple methods like boot times and transfer speed to get an idea of where it is now and then where it is when/if we get the 14.9 or later software.

Another issue too is we still do not know if the Elite is the same CPU and if/when we get 14.9 will SMP be enabled for the non-Elite versions.


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## jfh3

Nice thread. I added a link to it in the initial post of the Initial Elite impressions thread. As a former programmer, this kind of info/speculation is always cool to read


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## lgerbarg

brentil said:


> *In terms of SMP support as well your compiler needs to properly understand certain ways of writing code to be much more SMP friendly. These newer tools can provide a very significant performance boost to SMP code as well as may have been instrumental in finally solving the SMP issues TiVo has been plagued with.*


*

GCC 4.2 has a number of improvements over 3.x, but better compiler support for SMP is not really one of them*. Some languages and compilers have defined SMP semantics, C does not (though the draft C1X standard finally includes language level semantics for C atomics and a memory model). Consequently all SMP support for C is provided by OS level functionality (pthreads in this case) of which the compiler is blissfully ignorant of, by design
.
*Some atomic intrinsics were added, but they don't improve code generation or change the quality of anything, they just mean you don't have to use the OS provided intrinsics in platform independent code, so on an embedded device like TiVo their inclusion is moot.*


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## aaronwt

I've been transferring some more shows to my Elite this evening. So far the fastest I seen on the diagnostics page from last night and today is 82Mb/s. But I've also never checked the speeds from the switch I currently have it connected to. So I'm not sure if that is normal or a little slow.

My other locations have seen 90Mb/s transfer rates. Although that is good for now. When I move it to it's permanent location when I remove two Premieres, I'll have to check it again.


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## Dan203

That's pretty good, and above average for real world 100Mbps Ethernet performance. So unless the Elite has switched to Gigabit I wouldn't expect much more then that.

Dan


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## brentil

lgerbarg, thank you for the clarification. I haven't done GCC/C since my undergrad days so I'm much more used to VS now with various SMP optimaztion tools.

The 802.11N modules might be able to push closer to that with their 150 Mbps theoretical limit. I'll be doing my transfer to a PC because I only have 1 S4 and the rest are S3 or less and those have very slow transfer rates. The boot times will really be a much better test for performance gains on the non-Elite as we already have pretty decent network. I mainly wanted to test to make sure it didn't get worse.


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## Dan203

brentil said:


> The 802.11N modules might be able to push closer to that with their 150 Mbps theoretical limit.


The TiVo 802.11n adapter is basically just an Ethernet bridge, so it's still limited by the throughput of the TiVo's Ethernet jack. So I think that 80-90Mbps is max you'll ever see coming from a Premiere with it's 100Mbps Ethernet.

Now The Elite on the other hand might be able to go faster using MoCa, since that has a theoretical limit of 175Mbps.

Dan


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## brentil

Duh you're right, I had one for a time and completely forgot that it was the crazy RJ45 jack + power dongle insanity... I really hope the S5 brings WiFi internally but the addition of MoCA might dash those dreams.


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## rainwater

brentil said:


> Is there a new chip inside of the Elite? I'm not really sure, but the items I explore below could explain this performance boost without the move to a new CPU.


The Elite has the same CPU as the Premiere.


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## brentil

rainwater said:


> The Elite has the same CPU as the Premiere.


Yeah, I think I was 90% convinced it was the same chip. There had just been some question of it. We also have a user in the other thread who said he was going to do a teardown and see.


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## BigJimOutlaw

Nothing scientific to add, but I did notice that the EPG (grid mode) was displaying data immediately as I paged through it. The PG was always relatively fast, with maybe some show titles populating the grid a split second behind the button press. But when I was paging through it on the Elite I played with, it was almost like the data was buffered... it kept up with every Chan Dwn and Chan Up button press. Instant. Minor but noticeable improvement.


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## justinw

BigJimOutlaw said:


> Nothing scientific to add, but I did notice that the EPG (grid mode) was displaying data immediately as I paged through it. The PG was always relatively fast, with maybe some show titles populating the grid a split second behind the button press. But when I was paging through it on the Elite I played with, it was almost like the data was buffered... it kept up with every Chan Dwn and Chan Up button press. Instant. Minor but noticeable improvement.


I noticed the same. The font seems to be slightly different as well. Looks better in my opinion.


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## caddyroger

wrong forum.


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## jfh3

Other than cost, would there have been any logic in including 2GB memory, rather than 1TB, in the Elite? How much more would 2GB cost these days at the BOM level?


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## jfh3

brentil said:


> We also have a user in the other thread who said he was going to do a teardown and see.


I don't know if you meant me, but all I plan to do is take off the hard drive and take pics. I don't plan to even have my soldering iron in the same room with be and I'm certainly not going to be trying to disassemble anything.

Is there other useful info you will be able to gather from close up pictures of the various chips? Any to focus on?


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## L David Matheny

jfh3 said:


> Other than cost, would there have been any logic in including 2GB memory, rather than 1TB, in the Elite? How much more would 2GB cost these days at the BOM level?


If you're referring to main memory (RAM), 1GB does seem a little light these days. And I didn't realize that the Premiere has only 500MB (somebody said, I think). A current Windows machine with only 500MB or even 1GB would surely be starved for memory. I know Premieres run Linux, which should use memory much more efficiently, but they are also running Flash, which probably doesn't, and video data uses lots of memory.

Has anybody ever tried to add memory to a TiVo? Could that be done? Would the OS recognize it? Does anybody feel daring?


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## jfh3

Connection Guide

http://support.tivo.com/ci/fattach/get/67297/1318268635/redirect/1

Viewer's Guide

http://support.tivo.com/ci/fattach/get/67301/1318271665/redirect/1


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## rainwater

L David Matheny said:


> If you're referring to main memory (RAM), 1GB does seem a little light these days. And I didn't realize that the Premiere has only 500MB (somebody said, I think). A current Windows machine with only 500MB or even 1GB would surely be starved for memory. I know Premieres run Linux, which should use memory much more efficiently, but they are also running Flash, which probably doesn't, and video data uses lots of memory.


You can't compare it a desktop system since it uses a Broadcom SoC which offloads a lot of tasks to the dedicated hardware. It's much different than a desktop system since it is so specialized.


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## brentil

jfh3 said:


> I don't know if you meant me, but all I plan to do is take off the hard drive and take pics. I don't plan to even have my soldering iron in the same room with be and I'm certainly not going to be trying to disassemble anything.
> 
> Is there other useful info you will be able to gather from close up pictures of the various chips? Any to focus on?


Yeah, I miss stated what you intended. The information written on the memory chip itself would be useful to know what type of RAM it is. Also if you can find the MoCA chip so we can ensure it is the one we think it is. Intrinsic or something like that?



jfh3 said:


> Other than cost, would there have been any logic in including 2GB memory, rather than 1TB, in the Elite? How much more would 2GB cost these days at the BOM level?


The current S4 has 4 x 128 MB chips on it, I wouldn't be surprised if the 1 x 1024 MB chip cost the same or less than the 4 other chips. It also decreases power draw and and heat generation. It also allows decreasing the motherboard complexity which looking at the Elite vs non-Elite there are a lot less traces now. Since the new design has 1 chip on one side they could add another chip to the other side of the PCB opposite the existing one still leaving the other traces off.

Short answer...
Maybe, it depends on how much data a well soaked TiVo stores in the SQL DB and how much more room for overhead there is in the CPU to run more advanced applications.

Long answer...
More RAM is always better RAM until you run out of things to load into RAM. Also as rainwater said a TiVo has lots of dedicated hardware to offload specific tasks too. So the question comes to how much data does a TiVo store in the SQL database? This aspect of the TiVo I'm rather lacking in knowledge, but if someone has access to the location the SQL DB files are stored that would give a good answer for a long time running Premiere. You can load that entire data set into RAM + cached queries that are commonly used. Plus you can keep larger portions of the OS in memory but a device like a TiVo (like a phone) uses a much smaller OS footprint. You could however use the memory to load higher detail graphics used for interfaces as well as load larger applications into memory (like more advanced Flash applications).

You also then run into the limitations of just what we can run with the current CPU in this device which I believe is a MIPS32 34K based design. I don't think more than 1 GB of RAM will provide significant benefits to misc applications as I don't believe anything extremely advanced could be run on this hardware.


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## brentil

A picture of just the naked motherboard would be excellent too, it would allow us to compare more changes between the versions. Something like this;

http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm314/ilovehdtv/Other/Premiere/review/large/7.png


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## brentil

Just shut off my TiVo, let it sit for 30 seconds and then powered it on. I stopped the timer when the TiVo video started. My Premiere has 1x M-Stream CC, SDV, WD MyDVR Extender, Slide Remote dongle, and software 14.8c installed.

Time to Boot - 8:54


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## sbiller

I just discovered the Elite has 2GB of RAM instead of the 1GB of RAM I reported earlier. Turns out it has 2 of the Hynix chips. Once I removed the hard drive I was able to see the second chip!
More to come...
~Sam


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## brentil

Can you get the part # off of the top of the chip?


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## sbiller

Atheros AR8328 - another circuit that was hiding below the hard drive!
~Sam


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## sbiller




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## brentil

sbiller said:


> Atheros AR8328 - another circuit that was hiding below the hard drive!
> ~Sam


That is rather interesting.

http://www.qca.qualcomm.com/technology/technology.php?nav1=48&product=101



> The AR8328/AR8328N is a highly integrated seven-port Gigabit Ethernet switch with a fully non-blocking switch fabric, a high-performance lookup unit supporting 2048 MAC addresses, and a four-traffic class Quality of Service (QoS) engine. The AR8328 has the flexibility to support various networking applica- tions. The AR8328/AR8328N is designed for cost-sensitive switch applications in wireless AP routers, home gateways, and xDSL/cable modem platforms.


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## brentil

Thanks for punching my theory in the gut with using that Advanced Format drive in the Elite TiVo... 

Of note though since TiVo is the one building the partitions they can do the partition alignment for factory built devices which negates a lot of the AF issues I had discussed before.


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## sbiller

With hard drive removed you can see the Atheros Gigabit Switch (upper right).










Close up of the MoCA driver.










Close up of the Atheros AR8328 Gigabit Switch.










Entropic EN2510 MoCA circuit










1 of 2 hynix H5PS1G63EFR 1GB Ram Chips










Two 1GB Ram Chips










JS28F640 Flash Memory (128MB)









~Sam


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## brentil

Awesome information!

Not to get greedy but are there chips on the flip side of the board too like the current non-Elite?


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## ghuido

This one of the best threads I have read in a long while. This is from another programeer and tech junkie ... Tear it DOWN !!!!


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## P42

The use of flash memory in interesting, there are a few possible uses for it, some good, some less good.


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## brentil

P42 said:


> The use of flash memory in interesting, there are a few possible uses for it, some good, some less good.


The non-Elite has a flash memory chip in the same location but its 8 MB instead of 128 MB. So they either need more storage for new features of the Elite or they're planning on using it for something else, like maybe Preview units too?


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## P42

Valid point. I wasn't aware that the non-Elite has flash. And if a Preview is just a trimmed down Elite, no HDD, one tuner etc, it will need some local storage for the firmware, and it is likely cheaper to just use that same chip on the Elite even if it does not currently need all 128MB.


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## turbobozz

sbiller said:


> Two 1GB Ram Chips


Those are Gb (gigabit) chips not GB (gigabyte).
8 bits = 1 byte

RAM chips tend to be listed in bits not bytes.


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## socrplyr

turbobozz said:


> Those are Gb (gigabit) chips not GB (gigabyte).
> 8 bits = 1 byte
> 
> RAM chips tend to be listed in bits not bytes.


Heh, I just looked at the chips right before you posted and saw the 1G in there and thought the same thing. I just let it go until I had time to look up the full part (as 1G could just have randomly been in the part number). You are correct that it is a 1Gb or 128MB chip. There is a good chance there more on the back side of the board. I also didn't say anything b/c the last time I looked at the markings on RAM chips was back in the SDRAM days of old (and then they definitely weren't talking about 1Gb chips...).

I can't read the markings on the Flash chip, but it might be only 16MB... as it might be 128Mb... This would make a lot more sense... 128MB would be a lot and expensive, unless they were going to move more stuff to it. Right now i am betting it is just bios memory.


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## brentil

Yes you're both correct I'm betting. We're letting excitement get us all riled up and it's making us ignore the basics... 

So we have 4 x 128 MB chips = 512 MB of DDR2 RAM (System memory)
and 1 x 16 MB Flash RAM (BIOS/boot)


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## Philmatic

sbiller, you da man! The photos are great!

The gigabit switch is likely used to bridge the MoCA interface to the Ethernet port, it's very likely that the Ethernet port itself is still 10/100, which is a bummer. The lack of a true gigabit port on the premiere is one of the biggest brain dead decisions TiVo made...

*Edit*: I may have spoken too soon, it looks like the Atheros chip has traces leading DIRECTLY to the RJ-45 port on the back of the premier, can anyone verify that the TiVo is linking up at gigabit? If it is indeed linking up at gigabit, can you try a TiVo To Go or KMTTG transfer and see what speeds you get? Anything over 100mbit would be an indication that the TiVo is in fact connected at gigabit speeds AND is enabled in software.


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## sbiller

brentil said:


> Awesome information!
> 
> Not to get greedy but are there chips on the flip side of the board too like the current non-Elite?


Damn Brentil... I hate a challenge like that. It wasn't easy to remove it but I managed to get the motherboard out of the case. I'm not sure I will be able to get it back in there!

There is a huge discovery on the back. There is another 2GB of RAM on the back from Samsung organized as 64Mx16. I'm a bit confused as to why they would be using a different RAM than the hynix. Part number is Samsung K4T1G164QF. There are qty 2 of these in the middle of the board.

Here is the data sheet --> http://www.samsung.com/global/system/business/semiconductor/product/2010/10/5/504773ds_k4t1gxx4qf_rev111.pdf

The smaller chips on the bottom are really difficult to make out. They correspond to the black surface mount blocks on the front side of the board. Maybe their decoupling caps or something.



















~Sam


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## brentil

Philmatic said:


> *Edit*: I may have spoken too soon, it looks like the Atheros chip has traces leading DIRECTLY to the RJ-45 port on the back of the premier, can anyone verify that the TiVo is linking up at gigabit? If it is indeed linking up at gigabit, can you try a TiVo To Go or KMTTG transfer and see what speeds you get? Anything over 100mbit would be an indication that the TiVo is in fact connected at gigabit speeds AND is enabled in software.


I was about to point that out as it's a lot easier to follow the traces on this design since it has a lot less stuff on the board.


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## P42

Philmatic, going from 100mbit to 1gbit does not mean a ten fold increase in transfer speed, if anything there may be a modest increase, depending on the over all workload.


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## aaronwt

Philmatic said:


> sbiller, you da man! The photos are great!
> 
> The gigabit switch is likely used to bridge the MoCA interface to the Ethernet port, it's very likely that the Ethernet port itself is still 10/100, which is a bummer. The lack of a true gigabit port on the premiere is one of the biggest brain dead decisions TiVo made...
> 
> *Edit*: I may have spoken too soon, it looks like the Atheros chip has traces leading DIRECTLY to the RJ-45 port on the back of the premier, can anyone verify that the TiVo is linking up at gigabit? If it is indeed linking up at gigabit, can you try a TiVo To Go or KMTTG transfer and see what speeds you get? Anything over 100mbit would be an indication that the TiVo is in fact connected at gigabit speeds AND is enabled in software.


I never even looked at the connection speed on my Switch. I'll have to check to see if it linked up at 100BT or 1000BT.


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## Philmatic

Additionally, the photo suggest that an additional unsocket RJ-45 port is located on the right of the Atheros chip. Possibly for the Preview's different alignment and orientation? It's possible it was something they used in development, but I don't see what benefit that would have over the other two network ports (Ethernet and MoCA)


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## brentil

I think the real reason it's there too as mentioned is you can have the system in MoCA + Ethernet mode so having an embedded switch allows managing all of those data streams internally allowing intelligent switching of where data should go where.

That region of the motherboard is rather empty now though. I'm guessing the parts there have been moved into one of the items under the mesh cages.


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## Philmatic

P42 said:


> Philmatic, going from 100mbit to 1gbit does not mean a ten fold increase in transfer speed, if anything there may be a modest increase, depending on the over all workload.


I understand that, but depending on the level of acceleration provided by the Broadcom CPU, you can see up to an eight-fold increase in network transfer speeds, which is definitely a worthwhile upgrade and could change things significantly for MRS and TTG/Streambaby users. Not to mention being able to transfer a 1 hour cable program (At 8mbps bitrate) in HD in less than 30 seconds.


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## brentil

What we know so far about the S4 Elite hardware.












Code:


1.  Broadcom BCM7413       System chip
2.  Numonyx JS28F640       16MB Flash ROM
3.  Hynix H5PS1G63EFR      128MB DDR2-800
3b  Samsung K4T1G164QF     128MB DDR2-800
4.  Hynix H5PS1G63EFR      128MB DDR2-800
4b  Samsung K4T1G164QF     128MB DDR2-800
5.  Atheros AR8328         Seven-port Gigabit Ethernet switch
6.  Entropic EN2510        MoCA interface
7.  ???                    Silicon tuner
8.  ???                    Silicon tuner
9.  ???                    ???
10. Pulse C6202NL          MoCA 
11. ???                    HDMI transmitter
12. WD20EURS               2 TB SATA-3 hard drive


[size=1]b = Second pair of DDR2 memory chips reside on opposite side.[/size]


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## brentil

Then we have the S4 versus the S4 Elite showing how much realestate was saved by removing all of the OTA chips. The Switch & MoCA chips look kinda lonely out there all by themselves compared to the amount of stuff packed into the non-Elite design.


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## jfh3

So, the Elite has the same system memory as the regular Premieres then?


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## jfh3

Nice job with the labeling and keying of the components!


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## aaronwt

brentil said:


> Then we have the S4 versus the S4 Elite showing how much realestate was saved by removing all of the OTA chips. The Switch & MoCA chips look kinda lonely out there all by themselves compared to the amount of stuff packed into the non-Elite design.


Plus the Premiere was designed back in 2009. If it were to be designed today with the same features it would still have less chips since in two years there would be improvements and consolidation with them.


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## compnurd

jfh3 said:


> So, the Elite has the same system memory as the regular Premieres then?


It does look like it is still 512 which could lend to the software improvements is what is lending to the speed increases which is a good thing


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## Philmatic

brentil said:


> 7. ??? Silicon tuner
> 8. ??? Silicon tuner
> 9. ??? ???
> [/code]


7 & 8 are likely the two dual QAM tuners and 9 is most likely the QAM tuning switch to manage the 4 tuners. Shame about the 512MB of memory though, it makes sense though when you see that there is 4096Mb of memory on the motherboard and after you divide by 8, you get 512MB.

Great work though!


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## brentil

I'll fill in the extra ??? once we know exactly what chips they are. Google is not giving me answers yet.


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## sbiller

brentil said:


> I'll fill in the extra ??? once we know exactly what chips they are. Google is not giving me answers yet.


Would be so much easier if TiVo would just release the schematics to us! 

Nice job on the numbering. Are you sure your not BKDTV???

~Sam


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## brentil

No, just an engineer who loves tech and the TiVos I've had since the S1 first came out. I just for some reason never got into the community until my TiVoHD drive died on me recently.

Once we've got more data sorted out I do plan to build a more concise info thread, right now we're kinda just bouncing all over the place like kids on Christmas morning.


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## sbiller

brentil said:


> No, just an engineer who loves tech and the TiVos I've had since the S1 first came out. I just for some reason never got into the community until my TiVoHD drive died on me recently.
> 
> Once we've got more data sorted out I do plan to build a more concise info thread, right now we're kinda just bouncing all over the place like kids on Christmas morning.


Yep. I'm an electrical engineer also. I've had TiVo's since my Philips Series 1. I'm almost embarrassed to call myself an EE after I didn't realize we were talking about megabits instead of megabytes! Its been a long time since I designed circuit cards... now I'm a Systems Engineer!


----------



## steve614

Awesome thread! 

I'm an electrician, but not an EE. I did take digital electronics in college and for as long as I can remember, I've liked taking things apart to "see how they work". 

@ sbiller, you should have watermarked your photos. All the tech blogs are going to steal them.


----------



## MichaelK

L David Matheny said:


> If you're referring to main memory (RAM), 1GB does seem a little light these days. And I didn't realize that the Premiere has only 500MB (somebody said, I think). A current Windows machine with only 500MB or even 1GB would surely be starved for memory. I know Premieres run Linux, which should use memory much more efficiently, but they are also running Flash, which probably doesn't, and video data uses lots of memory.
> 
> Has anybody ever tried to add memory to a TiVo? Could that be done? Would the OS recognize it? Does anybody feel daring?


some of the S1's had the spots on the motherboard to add more chips. If I recall some soldered on the required chips and were able to get tivo to recognize the added memory. But the discussion at the time was tivo had to include the code for X or Y in memory so you couldn't just toss on Z and it wold work.

So likely the premier and elite are built to deal with just 512 and even if you could physically add more the tivo would only use the 512.


----------



## crxssi

caddyroger said:


> wrong forum.


What is? The Elite? It is a Series 4 Premiere... nearly the same as the other Series 4 Premiere. Seems like the right forum to me.

I find the thread fascinating...


----------



## brentil

I think they posted something in the wrong forum and then edited it instead of deleting it.


----------



## danjw1

L David Matheny said:


> If you're referring to main memory (RAM), 1GB does seem a little light these days. And I didn't realize that the Premiere has only 500MB (somebody said, I think). A current Windows machine with only 500MB or even 1GB would surely be starved for memory. I know Premieres run Linux, which should use memory much more efficiently, but they are also running Flash, which probably doesn't, and video data uses lots of memory.


Tivo runs linux, that isn't as memory hungry as Windows. 512MB system memory seems to be fine, since people are saying the Elite is preforming much better then the Premiere, with essentially the same hardware.


----------



## crxssi

danjw1 said:


> Tivo runs linux, that isn't as memory hungry as [MS-]Windows.


That is the understatement of the year  Plus, just as importantly, it is an embedded system, so there is an extremely short/narrow list of apps running.



> 512MB system memory seems to be fine, since people are saying the Elite is preforming much better then the Premiere, with essentially the same hardware.


The Elite is "the Premiere" 

I see this is going to cause endless terminology issues. I propose we call the Non-Elite Premiere the "NE Premiere" or "OG Premiere" (Original Premiere). The NE Premiere and NE Premiere XL are absolutely identical in every way except hard drive size, so they are both "NE Premiere", essentially.

Anyway, as far as memory variation (which we all now know: there is none in the series 4)... The Elite is, afterall, still a series 4. TiVo seems to have a hard enough time fixing bugs and making updates available without having systems with too many varying specs. I am very confident they are going to push the same build of "firmware" (Linux OS, UI, etc) to all the series 4's, just with a few drivers not activated or swapped, and a few settings changed, depending on the model it lands on. Varying things like available memory, number of cores, speed or features of processor, etc, would make such a distribution model much more complicate.

As far as any other changes, I am actually shocked they bothered with MoCA; there are so many other things I would add before something like that (I won't list them all). I don't know ANYONE that uses or plans to use MoCA.


----------



## ADG

I apologize if this has been mentioned before, but one great feature on the S3's that has not been carried forward to any of the new systems is the title of the program(s) being recorded on the front display. I'll probably replace one of my S3's with an Elite, but I know I'll miss that feature.


----------



## brentil

In terms of MoCA the only justification I can really see for it is the cable companies whined about it not being there enough that they added it. Unless there really are enough households without wired networks and including WiFi N was too expensive comparatively.


----------



## crxssi

ADG said:


> I apologize if this has been mentioned before, but one great feature on the S3's that has not been carried forward to any of the new systems is the title of the program(s) being recorded on the front display. I'll probably replace one of my S3's with an Elite, but I know I'll miss that feature.


The Premiere Elite is a series 4... in most respects it is identical to NE Premiere. That type of change would be worthy of a series 5, but I have a whole laundry list of things far more important... starting with integrated tuning adapter, user removable hard drive, removable flash storage of settings (and maybe even OS), Gigabit, etc....


----------



## socrplyr

brentil said:


> In terms of MoCA the only justification I can really see for it is the cable companies whined about it not being there enough that they added it. Unless there really are enough households without wired networks and including WiFi N was too expensive comparatively.


Most households are not wired with CAT5/6 and WiFi (even N) is not reliable enough to prevent support calls. Now it was definitely a requirement for the cable operators for their version to have MoCA (it allows them to be reliant on only a single infrastructure). You can argue whether a retail box (not just copied from the MSO one) would have had MoCA. I believe if Tivo is serious at all about MRS being a successful addition (sells more boxes and doesn't increase support costs), then it needed to have MoCA. I am betting that any future Tivos will include MoCA.


----------



## moyekj

crxssi said:


> As far as any other changes, I am actually shocked they bothered with MoCA; there are so many other things I would add before something like that (I won't list them all). I don't know ANYONE that uses or plans to use MoCA.


 Why is that shocking? The original intent for the Elite was to sell to cable companies as a whole home DVR solution, so MoCA was basically required.

Also there are plenty of people in this very forum already using MoCA bridges with Series 3 & Series 4 TiVos, me included. BKDTV and others are who clued me into it in the first place. It's very convenient for those that don't have ethernet wired throughout the house but do have coax going everywhere and works a lot more reliably than any wireless solution.


----------



## ghuido

moyekj said:


> Why is that shocking? The original intent for the Elite was to sell to cable companies as a whole home DVR solution, so MoCA was basically required.
> 
> Also there are plenty of people in this very forum already using MoCA bridges with Series 3 & Series 4 TiVos, me included. BKDTV and others are who clued me into it in the first place. It's very convenient for those that don't have ethernet wired throughout the house but do have coax going everywhere and works a lot more reliably than any wireless solution.


Not to hijack the thread but what are you using as your MOCA Bridge.


----------



## moyekj

ghuido said:


> Not to hijack the thread but what are you using as your MOCA Bridge.


 Motorola NIM100. They were in 1st generation FIOS deployments and you could only buy them on Ebay, not through normal retail channels. I've been using them for many years now (I have 3).


----------



## socrplyr

moyekj said:


> Why is that shocking? The original intent for the Elite was to sell to cable companies as a whole home DVR solution, so MoCA was basically required.
> 
> Also there are plenty of people in this very forum already using MoCA bridges with Series 3 & Series 4 TiVos, me included. BKDTV and others are who clued me into it in the first place. It's very convenient for those that don't have ethernet wired throughout the house but do have coax going everywhere and works a lot more reliably than any wireless solution.


Heh, after reading your post, I realized something that people are missing. For people with multiple Tivos that want to do MRS, they don't need to choose what networking tech they will use with the Elite. It will just work... That is what MoCA is intended to do. There is no CHOOSING, both sides already have it. No one is suggesting that people use MoCA to connect all their networked devices... (Although for some it might be convenient...)


----------



## brentil

socrplyr said:


> Heh, after reading your post, I realized something that people are missing. For people with multiple Tivos that want to do MRS, they don't need to choose what networking tech they will use with the Elite. It will just work... That is what MoCA is intended to do. There is no CHOOSING, both sides already have it. No one is suggesting that people use MoCA to connect all their networked devices... (Although for some it might be convenient...)


And that's what the 7-port switch device lets it do. It also allows you to aggregate more data between devices at any given time. Ethernet to S3 devices for MRV, Ethernet to non-Elite S4 devices, and Ethernet(and/or)MoCA to other Elite devices in any combination.


----------



## jfh3

brentil said:


> And that's what the 7-port switch device lets it do. It also allows you to aggregate more data between devices at any given time. Ethernet to S3 devices for MRV, Ethernet to non-Elite S4 devices, and Ethernet(and/or)MoCA to other Elite devices in any combination.


OK, I'm confused. Does this mean that if I am using MoCA on an Elite and also connect the Ethernet port to a switch/router that I can achieve a greater throughput (say for Elite to Elite transfer) than just using Ethernet alone?


----------



## MichaelK

on the memory-I'm sure that 512 is enough. But a 250gb drive gets the job done too but not as good as a 320, 500 or 1 or 2TB. 

For like 38 cents more (ok exaggerating) tivo could put more memory in the things and things would be faster. They would be able to cache that much more of the database and all the graphics and everything else in the new UI. 

remember the cachecard for the series 1's? If I recall way back then (I'll guess 8 years?)- someone took the time to build hardware with - if i remember correctly 512 megs. That was the "right size" to cache the series 1 to speed it up. I've got to imagine the newer UI could use even more than that. 

It is probably dumb at this point to make a series 4.5 have more than a series 4. But they should have sucked it up and put a gig in everything from day one. I know I know they lose money on each box- but sometimes it's just painful how slow it does things and that has to have some effect over time on sales.


----------



## brentil

jfh3 said:


> OK, I'm confused. Does this mean that if I am using MoCA on an Elite and also connect the Ethernet port to a switch/router that I can achieve a greater throughput (say for Elite to Elite transfer) than just using Ethernet alone?


I don't think it'll connect to the same machine via MoCA & Ethernet at the same time but you can connect to a TiVo via Ethernet & another via MoCA and transfer between the two at the maximum rate of the medium being transfered on. Or if your Elite is connected via 1G you could technically feed multiple 100 MB connections and MoCA at the same time. The Elite is defintely designed to provide multiple feeds at once.


----------



## mattack

MichaelK said:


> remember the cachecard for the series 1's? If I recall way back then (I'll guess 8 years?)- someone took the time to build hardware with - if i remember correctly 512 megs. That was the "right size" to cache the series 1 to speed it up.


I never had one, but I think the major (or only?) thing it sped up is the time to get back to the Now Playing list.. (which is ~15 seconds or so.. I still use my S1 as an analog backup recorder, esp as my TivoHD is dying)


----------



## crxssi

socrplyr said:


> Heh, after reading your post, I realized something that people are missing. For people with multiple Tivos that want to do MRS, they don't need to choose what networking tech they will use with the Elite. It will just work... That is what MoCA is intended to do. There is no CHOOSING, both sides already have it. No one is suggesting that people use MoCA to connect all their networked devices... (Although for some it might be convenient...)


Exactly. I didn't think about it that way either until reading moyekj's posting (mostly because I only have, and will only ever have, a single TiVo). Seems to make perfect sense now.


----------



## crxssi

MichaelK said:


> For like 38 cents more (ok exaggerating) tivo could put more memory in the things and things would be faster. They would be able to cache that much more of the database and all the graphics and everything else in the new UI.


See the other thread... it is unlikely TiVo would do much, to what is still the series 4, that would change compatibility of their OS image.



> remember the cachecard for the series 1's? If I recall way back then (I'll guess 8 years?)- someone took the time to build hardware with - if i remember correctly 512 megs. That was the "right size" to cache the series 1 to speed it up. I've got to imagine the newer UI could use even more than that.


The cachecard was a hard drive cache, not main RAM. Linux will already effectively cache the hard drive as needed- plus hard drives of today already contain much, much larger caches and have a much faster throughput. I don't think the slow HDUI would benefit much from increased hard drive speed, anyway. That is not where it is "stuck" (it is with CPU and with a bad overall design that depends on live internet downloaded objects).


----------



## brentil

It's obvious now from the lack of major changes in the Elite model that we will not see a huge hardware shift until the S5 devices which if the info in the version 16 kernel is correct will be a CPU more in line with what modern cell phones have now. At that point larger amounts of RAM will make more sense as more and more applications would be capable of being run and Flash AIR would gobble up memory.

I'm excited to get the 14.9 for my non-Elite S4 to see what types of benefits we get from that. After that I think the version 16 software looks like it could provide another system boost on top of what we'll be seeing from 14.9 when/if it arrives.


----------



## jfh3

Posted this in the wrong place last night:

Elite 1 hooked to cable coax and Ethernet port cabled to router connected to modem to Internet. PC running TiVo Desktop connected to same router.

Elite 2 hooked to cable coax (different room). Ethernet port to Ethernet switch that connects Blu-ray player, Apple TV, and a regular Premiere.

All devices would now have Internet access and all three Tivo boxes and the PC will see each other without the need for any other MoCA adapter, correct?

I was looking at the Channel Master CM-6004 (MoCA adapter with 4 port FastEthernet switch), but I don't think I need it with the above setup, if I understand what the Elite MoCA bridge does.


----------



## classicsat

Device #9 on the diagram is likely the OOB tuner for cablecard, which continually receives activation/service messages.

Interesting to see the PSU is 12V only. That makes it a lot easier to replace, at least to jerry rig something if one has to. Near the PSU connector is a spot for a coaxial power connector, likely also developmental.


----------



## MichaelK

mattack said:


> I never had one, but I think the major (or only?) thing it sped up is the time to get back to the Now Playing list.. (which is ~15 seconds or so.. I still use my S1 as an analog backup recorder, esp as my TivoHD is dying)





crxssi said:


> See the other thread... it is unlikely TiVo would do much, to what is still the series 4, that would change compatibility of their OS image.
> 
> The cachecard was a hard drive cache, not main RAM. Linux will already effectively cache the hard drive as needed- plus hard drives of today already contain much, much larger caches and have a much faster throughput. I don't think the slow HDUI would benefit much from increased hard drive speed, anyway. That is not where it is "stuck" (it is with CPU and with a bad overall design that depends on live internet downloaded objects).


my recollection was it wasn't specifically just a plain hard drive cache but rather it was specifically made so that the tivo's database fit on it so that anything you did in the menu's like go to NPL or reorder season passes was much faster. I beleive it also was somehow able to figure out to cache the database and not normal video streams (perhaps it only cached certain partitions?). maybe a modern drive cache has firmware that can be taught not to cache the video streams but the other stuff too?

I believe the thought was at the time was that when the database had to be manipulated much of the delays were related to having to move stuff back and forth out of memory and on and off the drive, and since the drive needs to prioritize the video streams anything else that needs to access the hard drive is slowed down.

I can't say on a S4- but i know that every tivo I've had, S1 directivo, S2 directivo, s2.5 directivo, S2DT, S3 all are slow as molasses reordering season passes or scheduling new programs or the like. So I'd assume any tivo could benefit from having enough ram to keep it's database in ram. I also assume that over the years the database has only grown and so when 512meg was enough for an S1 to successfully keep the database in memory it wouldn't be enough today.

I know that I've made a lot of assumptions and where that usually gets you in life but i think they're sound.

So I think that if tivo built all S4 boxes with more memory and then tweaked their code to use that larger store of memory (cache some stuff so it doesn't have to hunt the net the instant you hit the menus as an example) that the box would be snappier in many respects. I am not really a techie so my opinion here come from reading these forums for 8-10 years and nothing more. So again take the soruce for what it's worth.

from the cachecard website:
http://www.9thtee.com/tivocachecard.htm


> Caching - The Tivo database is large (512MB) and every user-interface operation goes back to hard drive to read from the database - the same hard drive that is already busy reading and writing multiple high bit-rate video streams. The CacheCARDTM caches the entire database in high speed SDRAM so all database reads can be fulfilled instantly, rather than joining the queue for access to the hard drive. Database writes go directly to the hard drive so the Tivo database is always protected and is up-to-date on the hard drive.
> 
> The result?
> A general speedup of the user-interface and halving the time of long operations such as re-arranging season passes.


----------



## andyw715

jfh3 said:


> Posted this in the wrong place last night:
> 
> Elite 1 hooked to cable coax and Ethernet port cabled to router connected to modem to Internet. PC running TiVo Desktop connected to same router.
> 
> Elite 2 hooked to cable coax (different room). Ethernet port to Ethernet switch that connects Blu-ray player, Apple TV, and a regular Premiere.
> 
> All devices would now have Internet access and all three Tivo boxes and the PC will see each other without the need for any other MoCA adapter, correct?
> 
> I was looking at the Channel Master CM-6004 (MoCA adapter with 4 port FastEthernet switch), but I don't think I need it with the above setup, if I understand what the Elite MoCA bridge does.


If that works it would be sweet....not sure why it wouldn't


----------



## Philmatic

jfh3 said:


> All devices would now have Internet access and all three Tivo boxes and the PC will see each other without the need for any other MoCA adapter, correct?


Correct...


----------



## WO312

jfh3 said:


> Posted this in the wrong place last night:
> 
> Elite 1 hooked to cable coax and Ethernet port cabled to router connected to modem to Internet. PC running TiVo Desktop connected to same router.
> 
> Elite 2 hooked to cable coax (different room). Ethernet port to Ethernet switch that connects Blu-ray player, Apple TV, and a regular Premiere.
> 
> All devices would now have Internet access and all three Tivo boxes and the PC will see each other without the need for any other MoCA adapter, correct?
> 
> I was looking at the Channel Master CM-6004 (MoCA adapter with 4 port FastEthernet switch), but I don't think I need it with the above setup, if I understand what the Elite MoCA bridge does.


Pardon my ignorance, but are you saying that the ethernet switch at Elite 2 has no standard ethernet connection, and is relying on MoCA between the two Elites to supply the ethernet connection? If so, that is pretty neat. Pretty expensive, but pretty neat.


----------



## jfh3

Philmatic said:


> Correct...


Thanks! That will save me some time if something doesn't work.


----------



## jfh3

WO312 said:


> Pardon my ignorance, but are you saying that the ethernet switch at Elite 2 has no standard ethernet connection, and is relying on MoCA between the two Elites to supply the ethernet connection? If so, that is pretty neat. Pretty expensive, but pretty neat.


That's what I hope. I haven't hooked it up yet. That room doesn't have Cat5, but does have coax.

Right now, I have a Tivo premiere and the other devices hooked up to a DAP-1522, but swapping that out for a small Dlink switch and using the Elite to bridge the two should provide better sustained performance for the Tivos, the TV and the Apple TV when it comes to streaming video.


----------



## Philmatic

WO312 said:


> Pardon my ignorance, but are you saying that the ethernet switch at Elite 2 has no standard ethernet connection, and is relying on MoCA between the two Elites to supply the ethernet connection? If so, that is pretty neat. Pretty expensive, but pretty neat.


Yep! That's how MoCA works:










And speeds are around 80mbps, which is close enough to the 10/100 speeds that the Elite supports anyway, so you wouldn't be losing much by using MoCA over Ethernet.


----------



## jfh3

Philmatic said:


> And speeds are around 80mbps, which is close enough to the 10/100 speeds that the Elite supports anyway, so you wouldn't be losing much by using MoCA over Ethernet.


The Elite has Gigabit Ethernet, right?

Which brings up an interesting question - if you have both Ethernet and Coax/MoCA active on an Elite, does it prioritize traffic to the Ethernet interface (say doing Tivo Desktop transfer from that PC)?


----------



## compnurd

Philmatic said:


> Yep! That's how MoCA works:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And speeds are around 80mbps, which is close enough to the 10/100 speeds that the Elite supports anyway, so you wouldn't be losing much by using MoCA over Ethernet.


The only positive to MOCA would be if you cant get ethernet to the location you need


----------



## evanborkow

jfh3 said:


> That's what I hope. I haven't hooked it up yet. That room doesn't have Cat5, but does have coax.
> 
> Right now, I have a Tivo premiere and the other devices hooked up to a DAP-1522, but swapping that out for a small Dlink switch and using the Elite to bridge the two should provide better sustained performance for the Tivos, the TV and the Apple TV when it comes to streaming video.


You will need a MoCa adapter at the router.


----------



## jfh3

evanborkow said:


> You will need a MoCa adapter at the router.


But I will have an Elite hooked up to the router via Cat5, so doesn't that bridge the LAN with the MoCA?


----------



## jfh3

Just transferred an hour show in HD from an Elite to my laptop on a Gigabit network; took about 10 minutes. File was 4365MB.

From Video copied to remote device network status:
10 minutes 34 seconds @ 57.70 Mb/s

(sorry for the cross-post, but this seemed more appropriate here)


----------



## morac

Philmatic said:


> And speeds are around 80mbps, which is close enough to the 10/100 speeds that the Elite supports anyway, so you wouldn't be losing much by using MoCA over Ethernet.


Speeds for MoCA 1.1 are actually around 175 Mbps, but that only really comes in to play with multiple devices and streams. Individual devices are limited to around 80 mbps like you said, but multiple devices can be transferring at 80 mbps at the same time over MoCA.

Also MoCA works as a star network. So the traffic goes directly between the appropriate MoCA devices, bypassing Ethernet completely (leaving it free for other traffic).


----------



## aaronwt

I just did some transfers with my Elite. From TiVo Desktop to the Elite with all four tuners on vacant channels, I hit a peak of 130Mb/s. But the average throughput was 95Mb/s for the entire hour long HD show(6.5GB)
When I did a transfer with all tuners buffering(3 recording), the transfer rate was around 70Mb/s. Which is the typical speed for my two tuner Premieres.


----------



## jfh3

aaronwt said:


> the average throughput was 95Mb/s for the entire hour long HD show(6.5GB)


Wonder why you got significantly more throughput than I did ... that's a huge difference.


----------



## aaronwt

jfh3 said:


> Wonder why you got significantly more throughput than I did ... that's a huge difference.


I had the tuners on vacant channels. When all four tuners were buffering with 3 recording I had around a 70Mb/s average transfer rate.


----------



## brentil

jfh3 said:


> Wonder why you got significantly more throughput than I did ... that's a huge difference.


Does your laptop have gigabit too, not a lot of them do yet? Could also be an issue with your router (bug a firmware fixes for example), maybe you have a pre cat5e network cable in the mix somewhere, or aaronwt might have a better gigabit network card with TCP Offload type features. Networks can be all kinds of finicky.


----------



## jfh3

brentil said:


> Does your laptop have gigabit too, not a lot of them do yet? Could also be an issue with your router (bug a firmware fixes for example), maybe you have a pre cat5e network cable in the mix somewhere, or aaronwt might have a better gigabit network card with TCP Offload type features. Networks can be all kinds of finicky.


My laptop has Gigabit for sure, router is WNDR3700, switches are 4 or 8 port Dlink or Netgears.

All cabling is either Cat5e or Cat6 - didn't think that mattered.

Will have to do more research and verification.


----------



## megazone

A thought on the GigE. How does that switch connect into the TiVo itself? The Broadcom SoC has a Fast Ethernet interface (100Mbps), right? On the Premiere that is connected to the single Ethernet port.

I could see them sticking the switch in the Elite and connecting three things to it - the Ethernet port, the MoCA interface, and the Broadcom Ethernet interface. That would mean the real connectivity into the system would still be the 100Mbps SoC interface, even if the external interface is GigE. It'd just be like using an external speed sensing switch on a Premiere, with an external MoCA ECB hanging off the switch. Only they stuffed it all inside the box.


----------



## compnurd

megazone said:


> A thought on the GigE. How does that switch connect into the TiVo itself? The Broadcom SoC has a Fast Ethernet interface (100Mbps), right? On the Premiere that is connected to the single Ethernet port.
> 
> I could see them sticking the switch in the Elite and connecting three things to it - the Ethernet port, the MoCA interface, and the Broadcom Ethernet interface. That would mean the real connectivity into the system would still be the 100Mbps SoC interface, even if the external interface is GigE. It'd just be like using an external speed sensing switch on a Premiere, with an external MoCA ECB hanging off the switch. Only they stuffed it all inside the box.


All of this had me thinking... has anyone cracked open a Premiere over the last month or 2 to see if the layout changed?


----------



## brentil

jfh3 said:


> My laptop has Gigabit for sure, router is WNDR3700, switches are 4 or 8 port Dlink or Netgears.
> 
> All cabling is either Cat5e or Cat6 - didn't think that mattered.
> 
> Will have to do more research and verification.


Do you have another gigabit system on your network to copy that video to now to see what types of speeds you get for other devices? You definitely are on gigabit though because if any part was at 100 Mbps you'd only be able to move 12.5 MBps maximum. Some part of your network is just preventing you from reaching the maximum capable speed, which a lot of times just isn't possible. Theoretical maximum would be 125 MBps on gigabit.


----------



## jfh3

brentil said:


> Do you have another gigabit system on your network to copy that video to now to see what types of speeds you get for other devices? You definitely are on gigabit though because if any part was at 100 Mbps you'd only be able to move 12.5 MBps maximum. Some part of your network is just preventing you from reaching the maximum capable speed, which a lot of times just isn't possible. Theoretical maximum would be 125 MBps on gigabit.


I have another system with GigE and I have 3 switches that should all be GigE. Pretty sure all the cable is Cat6, but I'll have to poke around and see if I can find something amiss. I'll copy the .TiVo file later today to see how fast it is.

I do have a DAP-1522 wireless N bridge, but that shouldn't impact the wired part of the network, should it?


----------



## aaronwt

The DAP1522 also is a wired gigabit switch or AP. I use several of them. it shouldn't affect the speed unless a device is using wireless on it. But even then as long as there aren't a bunch of devices hogging the wireless bandwidth it should still be fine. With my DAp1522 units in bridge mode. My two tuner Premieres had identical transfer speeds as when connected to my gigabit backbone. SO even when it was connected to the wireless bridge, it still got 80Mb/s to 90Mb/s transfer rates. Although normally all my TiVos are on a wired connection.


----------



## brentil

jfh3 said:


> I have another system with GigE and I have 3 switches that should all be GigE. Pretty sure all the cable is Cat6, but I'll have to poke around and see if I can find something amiss. I'll copy the .TiVo file later today to see how fast it is.
> 
> I do have a DAP-1522 wireless N bridge, but that shouldn't impact the wired part of the network, should it?


Cat5e, Cat6, or Cat6a will all allow 1G speeds so if you have all of those you should be good. You are getting about 4x over what a 100 Mbps line can do so you are getting a benefit. The problem becomes as you add more switches they do have a 1 Gbps switching back-plane but they then share their uploads to the next switch layer so even if other devices aren't sending data actively they do have network chatter going on that eats a bit of bandwidth and creates resource contention. The moving of the data file between machines should help give an idea if it's your overall network it'll depend on if it's going across as many devices as the TiVo. If any of them have firmware updates you might want to look into that too.


----------



## aaronwt

brentil said:


> Cat5e, Cat6, or Cat6a will all allow 1G speeds so if you have all of those you should be good. You are getting about 4x over what a 100 Mbps line can do so you are getting a benefit. The problem becomes as you add more switches they do have a 1 Gbps switching back-plane but they then share their uploads to the next switch layer so even if other devices aren't sending data actively they do have network chatter going on that eats a bit of bandwidth and creates resource contention. The moving of the data file between machines should help give an idea if it's your overall network it'll depend on if it's going across as many devices as the TiVo. If any of them have firmware updates you might want to look into that too.


I know with my consumer grade switches having more switches, to a certain point, should not hurt anything. I use fourteen DLink 5 port and 8 port Gigabit switches, plus several DAP1522 units in AP and bridge mode.
Some devices have to go through four or five switches to access content. But I will get the same fast speeds from it whether going through all those switches or going through one switch.

For instance, I will still get 900+Mb/s throughput from PC to PC whether they are connected to the same Dlink gigabit switch or they are going through five of the Dlink gigabit switches.


----------



## brentil

I think maybe it's not actually running at Gigabit then as I realized I was mixing terms.

4365 MB in 10 minutes is 7.3 MB/s or 58 Mb/s for the average length of the file

If the TiVo was running at 1G and all connections are 1G you should be hitting much higher speeds.


----------



## ghuido

I've been using DAP-1522 for a couple of years as the main bridge on TIVO HD. Always hit the throughput capacity of the TIVO HD before I have to worry about the DAP-1522 bandwidth capacity.


----------



## Philmatic

jfh3 said:


> The Elite has Gigabit Ethernet, right?


Yeah, I don't understand what I was getting at there. lol


----------



## RichB

According to my NetGear switch, the Elite is connected gigabit.

- Rich


----------



## sbiller

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=newssearch&cd=1&ved=0CDYQqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gearlive.com%2Fnews%2Farticle%2Ftivo-elite-faster-tivo-premiere-q411%2F&rct=j&q=tivo&ctbm=nws&ei=IzyXTr_JEOTs0gHCma2tBA&usg=AFQjCNEYXbpOvtZ9lBBl7I9XSyCyVKMDUA&sig2=rSw9-4EXrStHVh-MSrKI9A&cad=rja

Other than the RAM mistake it appears the blogger has summarized the changes pretty well.


----------



## brentil

With that much of my content copy/pasted a mention would be nice.


----------



## chrislemasters

brentil said:


> With that much of my content copy/pasted a mention would be nice.


Which post are you referring to? Or is it the link?


----------



## jfh3

The blogger lifted much of brentil's text verbatim.


----------



## Philmatic

Yeah,. I noticed it that... down to the "(instead of ?)".


----------



## brentil

jfh3 said:


> The blogger lifted much of brentil's text verbatim.


He does reference the thread but not everyone clicks through. The other blogger who used some of my content from the v16 thread cited me at least.

But back to business, more performance!


----------



## smbaker

aaronwt said:


> I know with my consumer grade switches having more switches, to a certain point, should not hurt anything.


Additional switches will increase your latency, but it shouldn't hurt your throughput. Fortunately, I can't think of any reason why a few milliseconds of additional latency would matter for a Tivo.

14 switches is an impressive number for a household. I only have 4 switches, although the one in the main computer room is a fancy managed switch. Whatever do you need 14 switches for?


----------



## aaronwt

My collection of networked devices keeps growing since just about everything is IP based now. The largest percentage of networked devices I have are my cameras(ten). But with multiple electronic devices(multiple TiVos, multiple Xbox 360s, multiple media players, multiple PCs/servers/NAS devices etc), the total goes up pretty quick. Too quick.


----------



## smbaker

aaronwt said:


> My collection of networked devices keeps growing since just about everything is IP based now. The largest percentage of networked devices I have are my cameras(ten).


All of my IP cameras are wireless, except one pesky one that just couldn't keep from dropping out (fortunately I had the house wired with cat5 when it was built). Recently I decided it was better to go back to the hardwired route with the security DVR and CCTV cameras. What are you using for a DVR with your IP cameras? I've seen a few hardware solutions for IP-DVRs, and a few Linux/Windows based programs, but have never evaluated them.



aaronwt said:


> multiple PCs/servers/NAS devices etc), the total goes up pretty quick. Too quick.


I'd expect you'd almost certainly be better off building one high performance server-class PC and using that than having a bunch of separate NAS and servers. It's one of the huge advantages of virtualization software like VMWare that you can run a number of virtual servers on one physical host. Allowed me a replace a whole room full of energy-gobbling PCs with one high performance efficient beast.


----------



## vstone

ADG said:


> I apologize if this has been mentioned before, but one great feature on the S3's that has not been carried forward to any of the new systems is the title of the program(s) being recorded on the front display. I'll probably replace one of my S3's with an Elite, but I know I'll miss that feature.


Cable techs report that folks love clocks on their cable boxes and won't accept newer boxes without one.


----------



## brentil

vstone said:


> Cable techs report that folks love clocks on their cable boxes and won't accept newer boxes without one.


I know it was the only feature I wish I had still when I finally got rid of my last Cable DVR.


----------



## aaronwt

smbaker said:


> All of my IP cameras are wireless, except one pesky one that just couldn't keep from dropping out (fortunately I had the house wired with cat5 when it was built). Recently I decided it was better to go back to the hardwired route with the security DVR and CCTV cameras. What are you using for a DVR with your IP cameras? I've seen a few hardware solutions for IP-DVRs, and a few Linux/Windows based programs, but have never evaluated them.
> 
> I'd expect you'd almost certainly be better off building one high performance server-class PC and using that than having a bunch of separate NAS and servers. It's one of the huge advantages of virtualization software like VMWare that you can run a number of virtual servers on one physical host. Allowed me a replace a whole room full of energy-gobbling PCs with one high performance efficient beast.


I'm using Blue Iris software for when I want to record the video. Otherwise I just have the IP cameras email the photos when they detect movement or heat. Only two of them have built in wireless. Most of the others are connected to Dlink DAP1522 units in wireless Bridge mode.

For the storage servers I mainly use a WHS with 56TB and an unRAID with 32TB. The WHS has worked well for the last three years(I had an HP EX470 and then an EX490, both upgraded) and the unRAID I've been using since the early part of this year. I've been extremely pleased with that for storage.

I would love to do virtualization at some point.


----------



## danjw1

brentil said:


> I know it was the only feature I wish I had still when I finally got rid of my last Cable DVR.


My remote has the time on it, it is a Harmony 880, you might want to look at a harmony remote, if that maters to you.


----------



## mwecksell

You want a clock?
Select, play, select, 9, enter

And you've got a clock I'm the bottom right corner of the tv screen.


----------



## brentil

The clock comment was just a joke actually, pointing out that the only good thing about the cable company's DVR was that it had a physical clock on it.


----------



## steve614

mwecksell said:


> You want a clock?
> Select, play, select, 9, enter select
> 
> And you've got a clock I'm the bottom right corner of the tv screen.


FYP


----------



## aaronwt

brentil said:


> The clock comment was just a joke actually, pointing out that the only good thing about the cable company's DVR was that it had a physical clock on it.


That would be at the top of my list of bad things. And then the clock is usually huge and bright. If there is going to be one, I would rather it be small, like on the S3 boxes.
Otherwise one button press and it pops up on my TiVo, TV or other devices. Or I can look at my Harmony remote. There has never been any shortage of clocks around for me. AT least not since having VCRs around since the mid 80's.


----------



## mchief

Clock - you mean that flashing 12:00 on my folks VCR.


----------



## ig88

OK I have agonizingly read this thread and the "Initial impressions and details of the TiVo Premiere Elite" - both very long threads.

Good information in both of them - and I don't want to discount that.

But after all the very high-end analysis of linux build numbers and chip manufacturer part numbers, I can't really find any real information (despite the significantly faster boot time) to one simple fact:

Does the Tivo Premier Elite allow for faster navigation of HD menus?
Are the menus fast enough enough so that there is no lag/delay in clicks when navigating the menus (using HD menus)?

As I typed this post I did the following:
a) from a paused show, hit the TiVo button to return to Tivo Central: pause, Blue screen, PIP draws black, then fills in, then menu comes up, TiVo ding, menus draw, advertising video strip appears (it happens in a second or two, but it is slow enough to see each item as a separate step)

b) click My Shows: screen blue, my shows list populates, one line at a time, advertising video crap strip repopulates, highlighted show detail loads in two steps: image and data (again not SUPER slow, but this should be _instant_ - at least the show listing part of it)

c) channel down button to page down my show listing: TiVo ding, pause, update list, update selected item detail - this can be painfully slow if you want to "quickly" scroll from the top of a list four screenfuls down to get to the bottom - I want to be able to click channel down three times and be transported immediately to the bottom of my list - It feels like each with click there is a small disruption in the space/time continuum where everything momentarily freezes, and then returns to real time.

d) use the up/down arrow to navigate up and down one listing at a time - I want to click that clicker and *move* - instead I have to click slow enough so that the navigation can respond to each click individually

(these results are worse if the data hasn't recently been accessed/cached)

e) I remember when hitting the FF button three times was instantaneous. Now it is so slow that sometimes I only hear one or two TiVo dings in response, and I often find myself mis-triggering: hitting FF three times but TiVo only picks up two, and then occasionally because this happens so often, I think it has happened, hit FF again, TiVo catches up and interrupts a "fourth" FF hit and send the TiVo into Play mode - ugh.

This stuff should be getting better with new HD SW releases, not worse!

Of course editing season passes and whatnot can be downright painful, but at least I am not doing that daily.

I just wish the menu navigation system was more responsive - it seems with the pricing we pay ($900 for HW and service), and what today's hardware should be capable of, it should be better.

I used to scorn family/friends who used the cheap DVR provided my cable/satellite systems, but today these systems navigation response times are much faster than TiVos.

I have been a long time TiVo user - since the very first model, and it seems that each new hardware rev slows the interface down (along with adding a bunch of noise).
Yes, I know that I can turn the HD menus off, but there are some new features I like, so its a blessing and a curse.

So, sorry for the long winded post, but I'd really like to see the basic question answered:
Does the Tivo Premier Elite allow for faster navigation of HD menus?
Are the menus fast enough enough so that there is no lag/delay in clicks when navigating the menus (using HD menus)?
How about somebody post a YouTube side-by-side comparison?


----------



## sbiller

ig88 said:


> OK I have agonizingly read this thread and the "Initial impressions and details of the TiVo Premiere Elite" - both very long threads.
> 
> Good information in both of them - and I don't want to discount that.
> 
> But after all the very high-end analysis of linux build numbers and chip manufacturer part numbers, I can't really find any real information (despite the significantly faster boot time) to one simple fact:
> 
> Does the Tivo Premier Elite allow for faster navigation of HD menus?
> Are the menus fast enough enough so that there is no lag/delay in clicks when navigating the menus (using HD menus)?
> 
> As I typed this post I did the following:
> a) from a paused show, hit the TiVo button to return to Tivo Central: pause, Blue screen, PIP draws black, then fills in, then menu comes up, TiVo ding, menus draw, advertising video strip appears (it happens in a second or two, but it is slow enough to see each item as a separate step)
> 
> b) click My Shows: screen blue, my shows list populates, one line at a time, advertising video crap strip repopulates, highlighted show detail loads in two steps: image and data (again not SUPER slow, but this should be _instant_ - at least the show listing part of it)
> 
> c) channel down button to page down my show listing: TiVo ding, pause, update list, update selected item detail - this can be painfully slow if you want to "quickly" scroll from the top of a list four screenfuls down to get to the bottom - I want to be able to click channel down three times and be transported immediately to the bottom of my list - It feels like each with click there is a small disruption in the space/time continuum where everything momentarily freezes, and then returns to real time.
> 
> d) use the up/down arrow to navigate up and down one listing at a time - I want to click that clicker and *move* - instead I have to click slow enough so that the navigation can respond to each click individually
> 
> (these results are worse if the data hasn't recently been accessed/cached)
> 
> e) I remember when hitting the FF button three times was instantaneous. Now it is so slow that sometimes I only hear one or two TiVo dings in response, and I often find myself mis-triggering: hitting FF three times but TiVo only picks up two, and then occasionally because this happens so often, I think it has happened, hit FF again, TiVo catches up and interrupts a "fourth" FF hit and send the TiVo into Play mode - ugh.
> 
> This stuff should be getting better with new HD SW releases, not worse!
> 
> Of course editing season passes and whatnot can be downright painful, but at least I am not doing that daily.
> 
> I just wish the menu navigation system was more responsive - it seems with the pricing we pay ($900 for HW and service), and what today's hardware should be capable of, it should be better.
> 
> I used to scorn family/friends who used the cheap DVR provided my cable/satellite systems, but today these systems navigation response times are much faster than TiVos.
> 
> I have been a long time TiVo user - since the very first model, and it seems that each new hardware rev slows the interface down (along with adding a bunch of noise).
> Yes, I know that I can turn the HD menus off, but there are some new features I like, so its a blessing and a curse.
> 
> So, sorry for the long winded post, but I'd really like to see the basic question answered:
> Does the Tivo Premier Elite allow for faster navigation of HD menus?
> Are the menus fast enough enough so that there is no lag/delay in clicks when navigating the menus (using HD menus)?
> How about somebody post a YouTube side-by-side comparison?


Its been on my list of things to do. I'm surprised this hasn't been done by another user already. The performance improvements with the 14.9 software is noticeable but TiVo still has a long way to go before its as you describe.

I will link you to a youtube video showing some of the things you've asked about sometime tonight depending on how long it takes to upload.

~Sam


----------



## ig88

sbiller said:


> I will link you to a youtube video showing some of the things you've asked about sometime tonight depending on how long it takes to upload.


Much appreciated.


----------



## crxssi

ig88 said:


> This stuff should be getting better with new HD SW releases, not worse!


Well, just keep in mind that the Elite is not really a "new HD release", it is the same CPU, memory, etc. Just a few new addons. What *is* new is the next release of the firmware/OS....



> So, sorry for the long winded post, but I'd really like to see the basic question answered:
> Does the Tivo Premier Elite allow for faster navigation of HD menus?
> Are the menus fast enough enough so that there is no lag/delay in clicks when navigating the menus (using HD menus)?
> How about somebody post a YouTube side-by-side comparison?


I would LOVE to see this too. The performance of the non-Elite Premieres will be identical to the Elite, once they get the same software update. But based on what I have read so far, I think you will be very disappointed (just like I will be). There are several basic design flaws in the HDUI, and they are not corrected in the next software release. I personally believe they will never be corrected either. My prediction is that when TiVo does ever come out with the next real model change, they will retain the exact same flaws and just try to get around them by throwing a lot more CPU at the problem.

What I expect from the Premiere is that the performance will go from a D to a D+ or maybe a C-. If you are expecting a B or A, well "get real". Still, ANY performance improvement is a good thing...


----------



## ig88

crxssi said:


> There are several basic design flaws in the HDUI


Like building it on Flash?
Like not having any way to turn off the advertising crap images at the top of the screen, that takes up 1/3 of the screen realestate, that could be used to list more of my shows, because I am presumably too dumb to find new content I like?



> My prediction is that when TiVo does ever come out with the next real model change, they will retain the exact same flaws and just try to get around them by throwing a lot more CPU at the problem.


Probably right there.
Just so few smart coders and decision makers out there today.

But, I guess I don't care at this point, if the end result means a faster UI.

Then again, for the $900 I pay, that hardware should already be there.

It's just too bad - there is so much potential in TiVo, and there really isn't anything better out there at the moment.

Maybe Apple will finish Steve's last project and show everyone how it is done (unfortunately the Apple model would probably not be based on a DVR, and making the content deals with everyone just seems so out of reach....none of the studios seem to want to give anybody decent content)


----------



## DCIFRTHS

sbiller said:


> Its been on my list of things to do. I'm surprised this hasn't been done by another user already. The performance improvements with the 14.9 software is noticeable but TiVo still has a long way to go before its as you describe.
> 
> I will link you to a youtube video showing some of the things you've asked about sometime tonight depending on how long it takes to upload.
> 
> ~Sam


Ill be looking forward to that too!


----------



## DCIFRTHS

ig88 said:


> Like building it on Flash?
> Like not having any way to turn off the advertising crap images at the top of the screen, that takes up 1/3 of the screen realestate, that could be used to list more of my shows, because I am presumably too dumb to find new content I like?


:up:


----------



## sbiller

Sorry for the lengthy video. I didn't have time to edit it or narrate it but it should give you a good sense of the HDUI performance which is improved over the Premiere running 14.8. Please let me know if there is anything else you would want to see and I can take a video of that as well.






~Sam


----------



## bradleys

It seems to run about the same as my current TiVo...


----------



## crxssi

bradleys said:


> It seems to run about the same as my current TiVo...


Yeah, it is hard to tell, but doesn't seem that much different. Without knowing exactly when the buttons are being pressed, it is hard to judge lag/response time. There was definitely an improvement when he pressed page down in the listing of shows. Still a tremendous "Please wait" on Netflix launching.


----------



## ig88

sbiller said:


> Sorry for the lengthy video. I didn't have time to edit it or narrate it but it should give you a good sense of the HDUI performance which is improved over the Premiere running 14.8.


Really appreciate you posting this.

I have to say, it doesn't really look faster than my Premiere.

I am surprised at all of the earlier reports of faster performance on the Elite. Other than the boot time, I'm just not seeing it.

I can't believe they made the decision to build the Premiere interface on Flash...

You know what, I'll even give them that one. Maybe it makes it easier to find developers (not necessarily _good_ ones), and maybe it makes it easier to hook into Internet content.

But, once they made that decision, they should have paired it with the decision to give it hardware (and caching) that can make the interface smooth.

I might just sit this one out and wait for the Series 5...

In 2011 (almost 2012) there is just NO excuse for lag in a menu-driven interface.


----------



## sbiller

ig88 said:


> Really appreciate you posting this.
> 
> I have to say, it doesn't really look faster than my Premiere.
> 
> I am surprised at all of the earlier reports of faster performance on the Elite. Other than the boot time, I'm just not seeing it.
> 
> I can't believe they made the decision to build the Premiere interface on Flash...
> 
> You know what, I'll even give them that one. Maybe it makes it easier to find developers (not necessarily _good_ ones), and maybe it makes it easier to hook into Internet content.
> 
> But, once they made that decision, they should have paired it with the decision to give it hardware (and caching) that can make the interface smooth.
> 
> I might just sit this one out and wait for the Series 5...
> 
> In 2011 (almost 2012) there is just NO excuse for lag in a menu-driven interface.


I will try to create a side-by-side comparison this week. I think there are some subtle speed improvements. I really notice it when I bounce between the Premiere in my bedroom and the Elite in the living room.

As far as the ongoing Flash debate I think TiVo understands the root cause of the sluggishness and it will be significantly improved once they release the 16.x software. I look at this recent VM release as an example of the kind of speed that we can expect on the new release --> http://vmhd.blogspot.com/2011/10/new-tivo-upgrade-in-action-video.html


----------



## ig88

sbiller said:


> I really notice it when I bounce between the Premiere in my bedroom and the Elite in the living room.


Fair enough.



> As far as the ongoing Flash debate I think TiVo understands the root cause of the sluggishness and it will be significantly improved once they release the 16.x software. I look at this recent VM release as an example of the kind of speed that we can expect on the new release


Wow. No that's what I'm talking about!

Thanks for sharing!

Some really significant improvements there - still some pauses, but at least not on the main, constantly-used menus.

I wonder how the hardware of that box compares to ours - although the fact that they are highlighting the speed improvements implies that speed was an issue on their hardware in previous releases.

Strange that a partner gets newer software than their (supposed/assumed) core customers? (out of country even - seems downright un-American!)

PS I love how he pronounces router as "rooter".


----------



## sbiller

ig88 said:


> Fair enough.
> 
> Wow. No that's what I'm talking about!
> 
> Thanks for sharing!
> 
> Some really significant improvements there - still some pauses, but at least not on the main, constantly-used menus.
> 
> I wonder how the hardware of that box compares to ours - although the fact that they are highlighting the speed improvements implies that speed was an issue on their hardware in previous releases.
> 
> Strange that a partner gets newer software than their (supposed/assumed) core customers? (out of country even - seems downright un-American!)
> 
> PS I love how he pronounces router as "rooter".


I haven't seen a lot of discussion on the hardware attributes of the Cisco 8485DVB set-top box being used by Virgin Media and Ono. It appears that the processor is not significantly faster than the processor in the Premiere platform. Cisco data sheets indicate that the processor is a, "Powerful 32-bit RISC Processor" enabling "Fast CPU (300 MHz) delivers quick tuning changes and on-screen response times." I believe the Premiere is using a 400 MHz processor.

I think we can be optimistic that the performance improvements that we see in the VMED 15.2 video can be expected in the US boxes when 16.x is released. RCN alluded to significantly improved performance on the Premiere in 2012 in a discussion on dslreports.

As far as "core customers", Virgin Media can be considered TiVo's flagship MSO customer in Europe and probably the world. I think their happiness is TiVo's number one concern especially since they are now installing about 1 DVR per minute to VMED customers.

~Sam


----------



## brentil

I really think the v16 software will be where we finally see improvements. The enabling of the multiple cores finally will allow a lot of performance tuning in the various aspects of the TiVo OS to run better on it. As well if an updated version of Flash was used like AIR or something else it would allow a lot more functionality as well as multi-threading of applications built within it.

The v14.9 is the first significant update in a while for the S4 devices and I really believe this is because they've been busy working on the VM devices and the future v16 interface.


----------



## plazman30

sbiller said:


>


That drive is out of stock everywhere.


----------



## crxssi

brentil said:


> I really think the v16 software will be where we finally see improvements. The enabling of the multiple cores finally will allow a lot of performance tuning in the various aspects of the TiVo OS to run better on it. As well if an updated version of Flash was used like AIR or something else it would allow a lot more functionality as well as multi-threading of applications built within it.
> 
> The v14.9 is the first significant update in a while for the S4 devices and I really believe this is because they've been busy working on the VM devices and the future v16 interface.


I agree with what you said, except I want to still point out that in the video of the VM machine, the exact same UI design flaws were present- forcing the loading of live Internet-queried information every time you try to display or scroll through certain stuff. Unfortunately, no amount of CPU or threading will remove those delays. It can be "better", but I fear it will never be as responsive as the SDUI is (because the SDUI does NOT load anything live).


----------



## jfh3

crxssi said:


> I agree with what you said, except I want to still point out that in the video of the VM machine, the exact same UI design flaws were present- forcing the loading of live Internet-queried information every time you try to display or scroll through certain stuff. Unfortunately, no amount of CPU or threading will remove those delays. It can be "better", but I fear it will never be as responsive as the SDUI is (because the SDUI does NOT load anything live).


Agreed. No amount of CPU power can compensate for an idiotic design flaw.


----------



## morac

crxssi said:


> I agree with what you said, except I want to still point out that in the video of the VM machine, the exact same UI design flaws were present- forcing the loading of live Internet-queried information every time you try to display or scroll through certain stuff. Unfortunately, no amount of CPU or threading will remove those delays. It can be "better", but I fear it will never be as responsive as the SDUI is (because the SDUI does NOT load anything live).


It's not the forced loading of info that's the problem. It's preventing user action until said info has loaded that's the problem. If the program info loaded in the background and didn't stop user input then there would be no noticeable performance problems, unless you wanted to look at said live data.


----------



## ig88

morac said:


> It's not the forced loading of info that's the problem. It's preventing user action until said info has loaded that's the problem.


Right.

Although I can't off-hand think of any software that has info loaded (even extra-background stuff) that doesn't still get in the way and slow down user responsiveness. Maybe web browsers, but even then, not always.


----------



## ig88

And another thing regarding the new hardware:

What's with charging $90 for a wireless adapter?

In addition to the over pricing, its another thing to plug in, more component clutter, more cables...

For $2 they could put a wifi chip in there.

They pulled out the over the air and SD tuners, etc.

Yes they added two tuners, but, still, it feels like we are being taken advantage of, and it just seems like crazy design...


(I am sure there will be those that say it is to encourage us to use Ethernet, and the new MoCA stuff, but still I have to believe the vast majority are using WiFi...)


----------



## crxssi

morac said:


> It's not the forced loading of info that's the problem. It's preventing user action until said info has loaded that's the problem. If the program info loaded in the background and didn't stop user input then there would be no noticeable performance problems, unless you wanted to look at said live data.


Yes, I will concede that to you. But it will still make for very annoying things delayed-popping up in places. I would prefer to not only have no delays, but also have everything appear at the same time. Not that I am demanding or anything


----------



## aaronwt

ig88 said:


> And another thing regarding the new hardware:
> 
> What's with charging $90 for a wireless adapter?
> 
> In addition to the over pricing, its another thing to plug in, more component clutter, more cables...
> 
> For $2 they could put a wifi chip in there.
> 
> They pulled out the over the air and SD tuners, etc.
> 
> Yes they added two tuners, but, still, it feels like we are being taken advantage of, and it just seems like crazy design...
> 
> (I am sure there will be those that say it is to encourage us to use Ethernet, and the new MoCA stuff, but still I have to believe the vast majority are using WiFi...)


It's really a media Bridge that works with the TiVo. The money would be better spent getting another type of media bridge that can also work with several devices. I use the Dlink DAP1522 units. They are under $70 now and can be used as an access point or a bridge(I use several in AP mode and several in Bridge mode) It has gigabit ports and with a device like a laptop with gigabit ethernet I have no problem getting 100Mb/s+ speeds. When the Premiere is plugged into it, speeds are identical to connecting to a wired network.

Anyway the point is there are much better and more practical options than the wireless N adapter that TiVo sells.


----------



## mattack

aaronwt said:


> It's really a media Bridge that works with the TiVo. The money would be better spent getting another type of media bridge that can also work with several devices. I use the Dlink DAP1522 units. They are under $70 now and can be used as an access point or a bridge(I use several in AP mode and several in Bridge mode)


I admit I don't know if they're as fast as the one you're talking about, but there are other routers way cheaper than that that can be used as bridges. Unfortunately one of the buffalo ones I bought, I had to buy 2 (since it only worked as a bridge with its own unit), but at that time I was in a rush to get something that worked..

other times there are Fry's routers that are $20 that can have dd-wrt installed.


----------



## ig88

crxssi said:


> But it will still make for very annoying things delayed-popping up in places. I would prefer to not only have no delays, but also have everything appear at the same time.


Here's the thing - in addition to slowing down the interface, the salt in the wound is that I don't event want the crap in the first place!:
It is absolutely ZERO value to me, it's just garbage noise.

And in addition to slowing down the interface, consuming bandwidth on my home network and ISP, it also consumes screen realestate that could be used for what I really want  showing me more of MY content at once!


----------



## ig88

aaronwt said:


> It's really a media Bridge that works with the TiVo. The money would be better spent getting another type of media bridge that can also work with several devices. I use the Dlink DAP1522 units. They are under $70 now and can be used as an access point or a bridge(I use several in AP mode and several in Bridge mode) It has gigabit ports and with a device like a laptop with gigabit ethernet I have no problem getting 100Mb/s+ speeds. When the Premiere is plugged into it, speeds are identical to connecting to a wired network.
> 
> Anyway the point is there are much better and more practical options than the wireless N adapter that TiVo sells.


I'm not sure you get it.

My mom and my neighbors aren't going to do that. Heck, I'm not even going to do it.

They want Wifi.
They want it built in.
They don't want to have to sit in the store after agonizing over whether they should buy a TiVo or not, and then be told, oh yeah, you have to buy this other $70 piece if you want to anything we just told you about.

Also, you kind of make my point for me when you indicate you can get an entire AP/Router/Bridge for the same $70 that TiVo wants for their wireless connectivity.


----------



## aaronwt

ig88 said:


> I'm not sure you get it.
> 
> My mom and my neighbors aren't going to do that. Heck, I'm not even going to do it.
> 
> They want Wifi.
> They want it built in.
> They don't want to have to sit in the store after agonizing over whether they should buy a TiVo or not, and then be told, oh yeah, you have to buy this other $70 piece if you want to anything we just told you about.
> 
> Also, you kind of make my point for me when you indicate you can get an entire AP/Router/Bridge for the same $70 that TiVo wants for their wireless connectivity.


If someone is agonizing over the decision of buying a TiVo, then I don't think they should even be buying one. Buying a TiVo should be an easy decision not an agonizing one.


----------



## brentil

aaronwt said:


> If someone is agonizing over the decision of buying a TiVo, then I don't think they should even be buying one. Buying a TiVo should be an easy decision not an agonizing one.


I would agree with that back in the S1 & S2 days. However the S3 & S4 value versus cable company boxes is slowly dwindling especially with addon devices like a Roku, BluRay/Xbox/PS3 that does content along with added features like a Roku, Apple/Google TV. There are too many devices a TiVo competes with to still have the absolutely abysmal performance the interface has now along with lacking features. If you want Jack & Jill to replace their cable box it has to be simple and affordable without hidden costs and thanks to clunky UI, cable cards/SDV, and addons like the WiFi dongles TiVo fails at both of those. Ever since I got my first S3 I've debated every time if I want to continue using a TiVo or go back to the cable company's horrible DVRs something happens.


----------



## crxssi

ig88 said:


> Here's the thing - in addition to slowing down the interface, the salt in the wound is that I don't event want the crap in the first place!:
> It is absolutely ZERO value to me, it's just garbage noise.
> 
> And in addition to slowing down the interface, consuming bandwidth on my home network and ISP, it also consumes screen realestate that could be used for what I really want  showing me more of MY content at once!


You are just talking about the discovery bar on the top. Yes, that is the #1 hatred of most users. But I am talking about not only, but everything else that is live-queried. One such example is the show graphic. Another are the icons representing if it is available on Netflix, Hulu, whatever.


----------



## crxssi

ig88 said:


> I'm not sure you get it.
> 
> My mom and my neighbors aren't going to do that. Heck, I'm not even going to do it.
> 
> They want Wifi.
> They want it built in.
> They don't want to have to sit in the store after agonizing over whether they should buy a TiVo or not, and then be told, oh yeah, you have to buy this other $70 piece if you want to anything we just told you about.
> 
> Also, you kind of make my point for me when you indicate you can get an entire AP/Router/Bridge for the same $70 that TiVo wants for their wireless connectivity.


I would never want to use WiFi with a TiVo. But I agree with you 100%. It would cost them maybe $5 to have added WiFi as a standard component. And probably 50% of people would benefit from it. It is too late for Series 4, so we are just complaining. But Series 5 should absolutely include WiFi G/N *AND* hard wired Gigabit (along with MoCo, or whatever it is called).


----------



## aaronwt

crxssi said:


> I would never want to use WiFi with a TiVo. But I agree with you 100%. It would cost them maybe $5 to have added WiFi as a standard component. And probably 50% of people would benefit from it. It is too late for Series 4, so we are just complaining. But Series 5 should absolutely include WiFi G/N *AND* hard wired Gigabit (along with MoCo, or whatever it is called).


TiVo could take the view of RCN. The won't allow any streaming on a wireless connection. Only on Ethernet or MoCA. That way you eliminate all the issues that occur with the vast majority of people who don't know how to properly set up a WiFi network.


----------



## ig88

aaronwt said:


> If someone is agonizing over the decision of buying a TiVo, then I don't think they should even be buying one. Buying a TiVo should be an easy decision not an agonizing one.


Proof you don't get it. (although I was exaggerating with the word agonizing - the point I was trying to make was better made by brentil, people who "aren't sure if they should buy this TiVo thing that they've been hearing about, and how is it better than my cable box")

If TiVo wants to stay in business, and everybody knows they are on the ropes, they need to sell to more than just geeks.

Ps, my mom does have one, after years of hearing me talk about it, and she absolutely loves it. Of course I set the wifi up for her.

But the point is, why not include a wifi chip to make it easier for people to make that it over that purchasing decision hurdle, it would be cheap for TiVo to do, regardless if some people want to or can jigger up a 3rd party router on he device.

To say nothing of overcharging for the adapter...


----------



## crxssi

aaronwt said:


> TiVo could take the view of RCN. The won't allow any streaming on a wireless connection. Only on Ethernet or MoCA. That way you eliminate all the issues that occur with the vast majority of people who don't know how to properly set up a WiFi network.


Good point. In fact, I was thinking that myself. Seems "mean" since a good connection can be fine, but I can certainly understand the support issues (since I have to support a lot of users every day, myself).


----------



## mattack

crxssi said:


> I would never want to use WiFi with a TiVo.


I streamed netflix over a WiFi bridge... Seemed to work fine.


----------



## ig88

crxssi said:


> I would never want to use WiFi with a TiVo. But I agree with you 100%.


You are agreeing with me, so I am not trying to be argumentative here, because I agree with you too: wired offers significantly better performance - especially if you do a lot of high-end things (that many "Jack and Jills" aren't going to do) and are probably relatively geeky (I mean that as a compliment).

But what many of us geeks in these forums forget about are the people who buy (or are thinking of buying) tiVos that would NEVER be part of a online forum discussing the performance characteristics of a week-old product release!
The vast majority of people just buy stuff and fumble through it.

And for that group of people wifi can be totally useful for all of the things that they would do:

I transfer shows between two of my TiVos all the time over wifi and it works great. I can watch the show in real time (essentially streaming) and it is typically transferring fast enough to allow fast forwarding the commercials.

Wifi is perfectly adequate for viewing family photos, music, etc from the family computer.

Wifi is perfectly adequate for downloading video podcasts.

It is even acceptable for downloading a movie over Amazon Unboxed, although you have to plan a head for that, it is a slow process - not sure much of that is wifi vs other things though.

Having wifi built in is cheap for TiVo to do, simplifies the buying and installation process, offers great added value, and let's face it, helps keep it competitive.

Also many people (renters) can't really run Ethernet through their homes.

TVs, iPods, BluRay players - not to mention competitive set top boxes- are all coming with wifi built in today.

I just don't get why a high-end TiVo box isn't - after the 3-4 hardware revision (depending on how you count).


----------



## crxssi

mattack said:


> I streamed netflix over a WiFi bridge... Seemed to work fine.


Streaming H.264 720P Netflix is not at all the same as trying to stream Mpeg2 1080i, which is probably 10 times as much data...


----------



## ig88

crxssi said:


> Streaming H.264 720P Netflix is not at all the same as trying to stream Mpeg2 1080i, which is probably 10 times as much data...


Right. Agreed.

But what are the vast majority of (non-geek) people streaming today?


----------



## TexasGrillChef

ig88 said:


> Right. Agreed.
> 
> But what are the vast majority of (non-geek) people streaming today?


95% of elite buyers ARE geeks though!!!!! So it doesn't really matter to much what the other 5% (non-geeks) are streaming.

TGC


----------



## TexasGrillChef

If one spends $500 for hardware on an elite DVR then really I wonder why they don't use MOCA or even Ethernet??? My house cam wired for Ethernet as well as MOCA.

Tgc


----------



## sbiller

TiVo officially (sort of) confirms that 2nd core is enabled on the Elite and will be enabled on the rest of the Series 4 platform.


----------



## brentil

TiVo non-Elite users are saying 14.9 is rolling out to their devices as of last night. I didn't get it so I'll try again tonight. If it hasn't already gotten it and rebooted itself I'll do some benchmarks using a stopwatch to see how long various items take before and after.


----------



## brentil

Pre 14.9 benchmarks. All tests are done 3 times and any items related to caching are ignored and outliers are ignored too.


TiVo: Premiere (746)
Software: 14.8c-01-3-746
Flash: 14-8-mr/2011.02.24-0601
HDUI: 1-8/2011.04.08-1413
Boot Time: 7.5 m
Menu up/down transition: 3s
Load Folder: 3s
Load Folder Info: 3s
Load Settings: 3s
Load Top Web Items: 3s
Load Netflix: 10s
Delete File: 4s
Delete Folder (10 items): 13s 
TiVo Button from Live TV: 3s
TiVo Button to My Shows: 4s
Guide Load from Live TV: 1s
Live TV from TiVo Central: 3s
Music & Photos|Showcases & Extras|Find TV (first load): 4s
Add Season Pass: 5s~11s
Remove Season Pass: 7s
Move Season Pass (bottom to top with 60 season passes): 1m
Amazon Video Load: 4s
YouTube Load: 7s
Search (terminator): 3s
Search Item Details (The Terminator): 3s
Search Item Load (The Terminator): 6s [1st] 5s [avg]
Search Item Cast (The Terminator): 6s [1st] 2s [avg] 
Search Item Crew (The Terminator): 3s [1st] 2s [avg]
Search Item If You Like (The Terminator): 5s [1st] 3s [avg]
Search Item Bonus Features (The Terminator): 7s
Load Details from My Shows: 4s
Connecting - Preparing: 12.5m


----------



## aaronwt

Your time to Live TV from TiVo central will be one second or less if it is the same resolution or if you only run one output resolution .

I've seen folder deletion for large ones vary wildly from a few seconds to around the time you posted.

When I delete a single file that always takes a split second, basically instantly. But I always use the clear button when deleting one file.


----------



## brentil

I've done every test at least 3 times and the times listed are my average #s. Which is what's important is my #s as those will be what I compare versus my own updated numbers to then get a % performance increase value.


----------



## moyekj

brentil, I don't see an item related to pushing into program details from My Shows. That to me was one of the most laggard and frustratingly slow operations with HD UI My Shows since it takes on the order of 5+ seconds with HDUI from what I recall vs ~ 1 second with SDUI. Even if the HDUI performance doubles because of the 2nd core (highly unlikely) it would still be too slow for me. The delays I believe are mostly because of the internet requirement, not because HDUI is using flash, so I don't think enabling a 2nd core will do much to improve the laggy HDUI.


----------



## rainwater

brentil said:


> I've done every test at least 3 times and the times listed are my average #s. Which is what's important is my #s as those will be what I compare versus my own updated numbers to then get a % performance increase value.


Makes sense. Although like arronwt said, TC to live tv is most likely your tv switching resolutions. There's no way TiVo can speed that up. However, when you test again, you have to make sure the channel on your active tuner is the same resolution as your previous test or it will not be accurate.


----------



## brentil

moyekj said:


> brentil, I don't see an item related to pushing into program details from My Shows. That to me was one of the most laggard and frustratingly slow operations with HD UI My Shows since it takes on the order of 5+ seconds with HDUI from what I recall vs ~ 1 second with SDUI. Even if the HDUI performance doubles because of the 2nd core (highly unlikely) it would still be too slow for me. The delays I believe are mostly because of the internet requirement, not because HDUI is using flash, so I don't think enabling a 2nd core will do much to improve the laggy HDUI.


Can you give me a step by step of what you want tested and I'll add it to the list.



rainwater said:


> Makes sense. Although like arronwt said, TC to live tv is most likely your tv switching resolutions. There's no way TiVo can speed that up. However, when you test again, you have to make sure the channel on your active tuner is the same resolution as your previous test or it will not be accurate.


Benchmarking is not only to see if something got faster but to also make sure things did not get slower. Some of my tests like that are just to make sure it doesn't take longer. There's also the aspect of the UI needing to be redrawn so it might be a bit smoother now too.


----------



## moyekj

brentil said:


> Can you give me a step by step of what you want tested and I'll add it to the list.


 Simply select a single show under My Shows (or inside a folder on My Shows page) and right click to see program details and count how long it takes for program details to show up.


----------



## brentil

moyekj said:


> Simply select a single show under My Shows (or inside a folder on My Shows page) and right click to see program details and count how long it takes for program details to show up.


Added, can't believe I forgot to do that one.


----------



## rainwater

brentil said:


> Benchmarking is not only to see if something got faster but to also make sure things did not get slower. Some of my tests like that are just to make sure it doesn't take longer. There's also the aspect of the UI needing to be redrawn so it might be a bit smoother now too.


In that case, you need to do it on a channel where the resolution doesn't switch. Then you can test the software speed improvement of switching screens from TC to live tv. Otherwise, the variable of the tvs resolution switch which can vary makes your test not very useful.


----------



## aaronwt

rainwater said:


> In that case, you need to do it on a channel where the resolution doesn't switch. Then you can test the software speed improvement of switching screens from TC to live tv. Otherwise, the variable of the tvs resolution switch which can vary makes your test not very useful.


Just set the output to 1080i since most stations are 1080i. This is what I did with my Elite and it makes switching between tuners so much easier with sub 1 second changes. I ended up doing this with all my Premieres as well.


----------



## brentil

Benchmarks!

All tests were performed a minimum of 3 times, most were done 5. All runs are averaged while the outliers are ignored as is initial loads unless noted. Timing was done using a digital stopwatch and values were typically rounded to whole seconds unless I felt the 0.5s value was needed to indicate a feeling of being that bit faster.

This image contains the data values in seconds comparing the previous 14.8c versus the new 14.9.2.2 along with the % difference.










This image is a graph of the % increase showing the overall trend in increases.










Aggregating this data ignoring the 0% values shows an average gain of 46% or nearly a 50% performance gain in the TiVo Premiere non-Elite with the new software that contains the new HDUI/Flash & 2nd core enabled. This is definitely a solid performance gain from primarily the 2nd core without a complete HDUI rewrite with a new multi-threaded Flash runtime.

To me what this shows is that the main system was CPU limited for a majority of background tasks the UI relies on as the UI itself probably was as well. Providing true hardware threading the systems behind the UI (IO, database, network, etc) can now run more efficiently and finally concurrently.

Oddly the moving of a Season Pass form bottom to top decreased in speed, where I had expected to see a solid improvement here. This task is possibly one of the most DB intensive in my opinion as it requires a significant amount of reorganization and validation. My guess would be the process needs to be optimized for more efficient memory/cpu use due to heavy thrashing.

In terms of software improvements this is super solid gains. I can't wait to see what the v16 software and v2.0 UI bring to us!


----------



## sbiller

Brentil,

Outstanding work! I thought the improvements would have been more modest but as you have surmised the gains are primarily the background tasks that were CPU/database intensive in the past. I always wondered why that connecting/preparing takes so long!

This is great news. I'm really looking forward to seeing what kind of HDUI performance we see in Q1-2012 when 16.x is released. 

~Sam


----------



## BlackBetty

sbiller said:


> in Q1-2012 when 16.x is released.
> 
> ~Sam


feb-apr

I won't hold my breath.


----------



## crxssi

brentil said:


> Benchmarks!


Great work! Thanks so much!!!!! Have to go to work, but I will analyze it better later. One thing that would be nice would be to categorize things like I did in the change log- those tests related to the HDUI, those to the SDUI (which it looks like you didn't do) and those that are common to both or neither. (For example, things like launching Netflix/Youtube/Amazon, boot time, etc, are not attributable to the HDUI).


----------



## socrplyr

brentil said:


> Benchmarks!


Brentil,
Thanks for the benchmarks. I just wanted to verify that your column labeled % faster is actually some other measure. For example, when I compute the speed of the boot operation (to see how much faster it is), I get 1/450 and 1/240 according to your numbers. This leads to an increase in speed of 87.5%, not the 47% reported. This also makes sense with the second core being utilized well. I think the 47% must be more along the lines of the reduction in time.

I think we all appreciate your hard work on this one.

As for moving the season pass, I guess we should all be organizing them online.


----------



## sbiller

socrplyr said:


> Brentil,
> Thanks for the benchmarks. I just wanted to verify that your column labeled % faster is actually some other measure. For example, when I compute the speed of the boot operation (to see how much faster it is), I get 1/450 and 1/240 according to your numbers. This leads to an increase in speed of 87.5%, not the 47% reported. This also makes sense with the second core being utilized well. I think the 47% must be more along the lines of the reduction in time.
> 
> I think we all appreciate your hard work on this one.
> 
> As for moving the season pass, I guess we should all be organizing them online.


Interesting question. I had to think about this for a second and play with the numbers. I believe Brentil's calculations are correct.

Brentil essentially used the formula, percent difference as ((q1-q2)/q2)*100. Since we were looking at a number that was going down (in most cases) the percent differences look smaller.

If the boot time increased from 240 to 450 than we would have an 87.5% increase in boot time. Since the numbers went down from 450 to 240 we have a 46% decrease in boot time. It all depends on the denominator of the equation. When 450 is the denominator we have a smaller number for percentage difference.

This would be the normal way to account for the difference.



> The above is really about "percent change" or "percent increase,"
> rather than "percent difference," since there is an "old" and a "new"
> value. In that case, you take the percentage of the old value.
> 
> When there is no directionality to the difference, so you can't
> distinguish an "old" value from a "new" value, you have to use the
> average of the two as the standard of comparison, as in your formula.
> 
> This is one of many cases where terms are used differently in various
> contexts, and what is a minor error of terminology in one question can
> lead to major confusion for people coming at it from a different
> direction.


For more info -->

http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/58083.html

http://www.percent-change.com/


----------



## socrplyr

sbiller said:


> Interesting question. I had to think about this for a second and play with the numbers. I believe Brentil's calculations are correct.


I agree that his computations are correct (just question the labeling). For me, if you refer to something as being some % faster, then you are computing the change in speed/rate at which it does something. If we are both in cars and I am driving 50% faster than you are, then my speed is 1.5x yours. If I say I will get there in 33% less time, then my speed is again 1.5x yours. They both represent the same reality. Maybe I was just being too picky about a subjective definition of faster. I just think speed/rate when the word faster is said, not time. Meh, oh well. 
Sorry for the unnecessary distraction.


----------



## brentil

I did the math as sbiller mentioned. My label term might be not exactly correct for the math I used but I think most people will understand what it means.



crxssi said:


> Great work! Thanks so much!!!!! Have to go to work, but I will analyze it better later. One thing that would be nice would be to categorize things like I did in the change log- those tests related to the HDUI, those to the SDUI (which it looks like you didn't do) and those that are common to both or neither. (For example, things like launching Netflix/Youtube/Amazon, boot time, etc, are not attributable to the HDUI).


Yeah, I'm kicking myself for forgetting to go test the SDUI before I got the update...

I'll reorganize my values so they're more intuitive to read, I finished this about 1am last night and was just too giddy to get data out. 



socrplyr said:


> As for moving the season pass, I guess we should all be organizing them online.


The problem with that is I've tried organizing them online but then when my TiVo hits in it erases all the changes to organization I made online and replaces it with what was on the TiVo. I haven't tested this since the 14.9 update though.


----------



## crxssi

crxssi said:


> Great work! Thanks so much!!!!! Have to go to work, but I will analyze it better later. One thing that would be nice would be to categorize things like I did in the change log- those tests related to the HDUI, those to the SDUI (which it looks like you didn't do) and those that are common to both or neither. (For example, things like launching Netflix/Youtube/Amazon, boot time, etc, are not attributable to the HDUI).


OK, I spent more time studying the numbers you supplied. Again, thanks for your work, I know what it is like to spend a lot of time on this stuff  I did update the changelog thread: http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb...00#post8858900 a little bit based on what I saw.

The things you tested are mostly unrelated to the user interface, but more on underlying processes. And on those, results you are showing are MOSTLY inline with what I expected with another core going on line. Linux will nicely use the extra processing power to increase the speed of things it more directly deals with, like: searching, season pass setup, shifting to live TV, deleting programs, possibly network transfer, booting, and some aspects of playback. So they have face validity. But I also can notice the performance changes on many of those tasks from just observation, which is further positive verification/confirmation.

At first, I was a little surprised that the launching speed of the sub-modules, such as Netflix, Youtube, Amazon, etc showed no change. But after thinking about it a while, those are also Flash based, and the loading/switching itself is probably constrained by being a single thread.

I would NOT, however, based on this data, and from what I have experienced/observed after the update, make a generalization that the HDUI has significant performance improvements. Of course, that is a qualitative analysis (*). It is unfortunate that the data does not have such things as "time to completely finish drawing" screen X, Y, or Z. Those are actually the type of actions users are likely to notice the most as lagging.

Other UI tests would be perhaps too difficult to have even tested (like lag between keystrokes in menus). You do have TWO metrics in that genre, I think, the "Menu up/down" transitions. Possibly more, depending on your definition of "Load Details from My Shows" and "Load Folder" and "Info". I just can't seem to verify those through observation.

(*) I would use the following analogy: Speed limit on the road is 55 MPH. You are in a lot of traffic and crawling at 10 MPH. Something changes and then you are finally going 15 MPH. That is a whopping 50% speed improvement! Taken alone, that would certainly be very significant. But will you really notice that much difference? Especially if you want to be going 55? This is how user expectations can very much skew perceived performance.

As an example of specific HDUI testing: It takes my updated Premiere non-Elite in HDUI, 5 seconds just to finish drawing everything when I select "My Shows" from "TiVo Central" the first time, and 3.5 seconds the second time. It takes 2.5 seconds for the screen to finish drawing after highlighting a program from "My shows". It takes 5 seconds to finish drawing the screen if I then select that program. It takes 7 seconds to finish drawing the screen if I select to "explore" the program. I repeated each just to make sure. In each case, the right hand side of the screen was updated in about half to 3/4 the time, and the change of the discovery bar was last.


----------



## bradleys

Such a Scrooge...

[media]http://crooksandliars.com/files/vfs/2011/09/scrooge.jpg[/media]


----------



## crxssi

bradleys said:


> Such a Scrooge...


Bah.... humbug....


----------



## lessd

crxssi said:


> OK, I spent more time studying the numbers you supplied. Again, thanks for your work, I know what it is like to spend a lot of time on this stuff  I did update the changelog thread: http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb...00#post8858900 a little bit based on what I saw.
> 
> The things you tested are mostly unrelated to the user interface, but more on underlying processes. And on those, results you are showing are MOSTLY inline with what I expected with another core going on line. Linux will nicely use the extra processing power to increase the speed of things it more directly deals with, like: searching, season pass setup, shifting to live TV, deleting programs, possibly network transfer, booting, and some aspects of playback. So they have face validity. But I also can notice the performance changes on many of those tasks from just observation, which is further positive verification/confirmation.
> 
> At first, I was a little surprised that the launching speed of the sub-modules, such as Netflix, Youtube, Amazon, etc showed no change. But after thinking about it a while, those are also Flash based, and the loading/switching itself is probably constrained by being a single thread.
> 
> I would NOT, however, based on this data, and from what I have experienced/observed after the update, make a generalization that the HDUI has significant performance improvements. Of course, that is a qualitative analysis (*). It is unfortunate that the data does not have such things as "time to completely finish drawing" screen X, Y, or Z. Those are actually the type of actions users are likely to notice the most as lagging.
> 
> Other UI tests would be perhaps too difficult to have even tested (like lag between keystrokes in menus). You do have TWO metrics in that genre, I think, the "Menu up/down" transitions. Possibly more, depending on your definition of "Load Details from My Shows" and "Load Folder" and "Info". I just can't seem to verify those through observation.
> 
> (*) I would use the following analogy: Speed limit on the road is 55 MPH. You are in a lot of traffic and crawling at 10 MPH. Something changes and then you are finally going 15 MPH. That is a whopping 50% speed improvement! Taken alone, that would certainly be very significant. But will you really notice that much difference? Especially if you want to be going 55? This is how user expectations can very much skew perceived performance.
> 
> As an example of specific HDUI testing: It takes my updated Premiere non-Elite in HDUI, 5 seconds just to finish drawing everything when I select "My Shows" from "TiVo Central" the first time, and 3.5 seconds the second time. It takes 2.5 seconds for the screen to finish drawing after highlighting a program from "My shows". It takes 5 seconds to finish drawing the screen if I then select that program. It takes 7 seconds to finish drawing the screen if I select to "explore" the program. I repeated each just to make sure. In each case, the right hand side of the screen was updated in about half to 3/4 the time, and the change of the discovery bar was last.


My PC display in HD is very fast *BUT* the display board cost 2.5 times the total cost of the TiVo or to put it another way it cost 1/2 of a TP with lifetime, so how could TiVo HDUI compete with what some of us are use to, and i don't have the fastest display board I could get, my Windows 7 display rating is 7.4 out of a possible 7.9. It takes a lot of power to display HD graphics quickly.


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## crxssi

lessd said:


> My PC display in HD is very fast *BUT* the display board cost 2.5 times the total cost of the TiVo or to put it another way it cost 1/2 of a TP with lifetime, so how could TiVo HDUI compete with what some of us are use to, and i don't have the fastest display board I could get, my Windows 7 display rating is 7.4 out of a possible 7.9. It takes a lot of power to display HD graphics quickly.


What makes the present HDUI inherently slow are design flaws in the way the interface is presented and updated and how it relies on live Internet-supplied data instead of locally cached information. It is presumably further crippled by lack of threading capability in the HDUI to take advantage of both cores. I do not think it is a limitation of raw computing power.

Graphics card/chip speed not a useful comparison to a machine such as the TiVo... updating a 2D HD screen is not terribly difficult nor slow even with a puny GPU (or CPU). Where the GPU on a typical computer comes into play is 3D, texturing, massive vectoring/blitting and decoding video streams. The TiVo does no 3D, no texture mapping, no massive vectoring or blitting and video decoding is handled speedily by the chipset with almost no CPU load and with no performance issues at all.


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## brentil

I agree with crxssi on this point for the most part actually, I know surprise! 

I think there is the possibility that the new UI & Flash code does contain some performance fixes in the HDUI but that would be mainly preventing the little hiccups we usually see. The HDUI speedup comes from 2 places.

*1 - *Now that the 2nd core is enabled you can have 2 processes running up to 400 MHz each where before that 400 MHz was shared across ALL threads. So what you get now is the ability for the HDUI to solely reside on one core using up to 100% of that CPU before where before there was contention for resources which results in thrashing.

*2 - *Now with the 2nd core enabled the tasks that were fighting the HDUI for CPU can now run at full speed themselves allowing them to feed the HDUI at a much faster rate. The HDUI relies heavily on disk IO, network IO, & database access which all had to fight with the HDUI itself before to run where now they have their own core to play.

However now that the 2nd core is fully enabled this allows development of more advanced HDUIs especially if they can make the HDUI itself threaded. The main wait now when the HDUI is running is that all the data being loaded needs to realistically be loaded when you access it. If you have a heavily threaded UI you can pre-cache data based on histograms and expected behavior. If you know a user is paging down pre-cache the next 5 items before they get to it. If they 95% of the time go to Watch Videos and load Netflix pre-cache it before they load it.

I really think the v16 code & v2.0 HDUI is where we'll see these types of improvements. As you can see from the v16 thread there are a significant number of changes revolving around the graphics engine as well as improved threaded processes. If they move to a newer Flash runtime that's more efficient as well then we can expect some solid gains.


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## crxssi

brentil said:


> I really think the v16 code & v2.0 HDUI is where we'll see these types of improvements. As you can see from the v16 thread there are a significant number of changes revolving around the graphics engine as well as improved threaded processes. If they move to a newer Flash runtime that's more efficient as well then we can expect some solid gains.


I am cautiously optimistic/excited about the v16 code. From what I saw of the videos, it did look like a huge improvement... Of course it is one thing to see a video of someone else using it, and another using it one's-self on one's own unit. I hope it doesn't take forever to roll out!


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## brentil

I've dug in the kernel code and I know there's a lot of low level system stuff revision wise that will make the base subsystem a lot more modern with the possibility of some good gains. The biggest IF will be what they do about the HDUI in terms of what it runs on (either newer Flash runtime or moving to something like Java which I believe is what large portions of the Virgin box run) to actually translate those benefits to the user end.


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## brentil

I updated the images in my post above to be more readable and also added them to the first post in the thread.


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## crxssi

brentil said:


> I updated the images in my post above to be more readable and also added them to the first post in the thread.


I like it 

Although one could argue a case that "TiVo Button from live TV", "TiVo Button to My Shows", and "Live TV from TiVo Central" are also more like "Apps" (perhaps "modules"). I those cases, the user is not really navigating what we typically think of as the UI, but leaving the UI and performing the video playback function (or the reverse).

Of course, one could make all kinds of arguments about just about anything


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## sbiller

brentil said:


> I updated the images in my post above to be more readable and also added them to the first post in the thread.


Brentil,

Do you want to correct the first post to delete the errors that were discovered later in the thread? For example, we know that the memory is no 1GB in the Elite.

Not a big deal but if someone reads just the first post they would have some misinformation.

Thanks,
~Sam


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## sbiller

brentil said:


> I've dug in the kernel code and I know there's a lot of low level system stuff revision wise that will make the base subsystem a lot more modern with the possibility of some good gains. The biggest IF will be what they do about the HDUI in terms of what it runs on (either newer Flash runtime or moving to something like Java which I believe is what large portions of the Virgin box run) to actually translate those benefits to the user end.


Can you elaborate on why you think/know that large portions of the Virgin Media box run Java instead of Flash?


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## aaronwt

Hardware wise, what is the difference between the Premiere in the US. and the Virgin Media TiVo in the UK?


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## brentil

sbiller said:


> Brentil,
> 
> Do you want to correct the first post to delete the errors that were discovered later in the thread? For example, we know that the memory is no 1GB in the Elite.


Yeah, I'll take care of that tomorrow.



sbiller said:


> Can you elaborate on why you think/know that large portions of the Virgin Media box run Java instead of Flash?


I might be incorrect but I thought I read in one of the technical articles all of the addons they have that we don't have are java. I'll have to dig again.


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## sbiller

brentil said:


> I might be incorrect but I thought I read in one of the technical articles all of the addons they have that we don't have are java. I'll have to dig again.


I did a bit of research. I couldn't find anything that talks about VMED apps being anything but Flash-based.


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## brentil

sbiller said:


> I did a bit of research. I couldn't find anything that talks about VMED apps being anything but Flash-based.


You are correct, I was thinking of this article which relates to their web services on their servers, not the TiVo itself.

http://www.mulesoft.com/case-study-tivo

I also updated the first post about the RAM snafu.


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## dsa1971

I just skimmed this 7 page thread so forgive me if this has been answered already. Are there actually UI performance improvements in the Tivo Premiere Elite? I have 2 Tivo Premiere's but am always surprised at how pathetic the performance is in pretty much all aspects of the UI. I have a $50 Roku which has better performance with Hulu Plus and Amazon than Tivo. Don't get me wrong. The ability to record 4 shows at once sounds great since my wife records freaking everything but how about some performance improvements and better extensibility for their software. My Roku and PS3 are much better at allowing the ability developers to provide additional mechanisms accessing more streaming content.


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## sbiller

dsa1971 said:


> I just skimmed this 7 page thread so forgive me if this has been answered already. Are there actually UI performance improvements in the Tivo Premiere Elite? I have 2 Tivo Premiere's but am always surprised at how pathetic the performance is in pretty much all aspects of the UI. I have a $50 Roku which has better performance with Hulu Plus and Amazon than Tivo. Don't get me wrong. The ability to record 4 shows at once sounds great since my wife records freaking everything but how about some performance improvements and better extensibility for their software. My Roku and PS3 are much better at allowing the ability developers to provide additional mechanisms accessing more streaming content.


Elite performance is exactly the same as your Premiere's running 14.9.2 software. I suggest you wait until the promised "major upgrade" before making a decision to buy the Elite. Many of us on TCF are expecting the performance of 16.x to be equivalent to the performance you would find with your Roku box for the services you mentioned.


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## brentil

sbiller said:


> Elite performance is exactly the same as your Premiere's running 14.9.2 software. I suggest you wait until the promised "major upgrade" before making a decision to buy the Elite. Many of us on TCF are expecting the performance of 16.x to be equivalent to the performance you would find with your Roku box for the services you mentioned.


Roku 1 yes, but not the Roku 2. The Roku 2 has what is equal to a modern dual core cellphone CPU in it which is light years ahead of the CPU we have. So whatever is the best that is on a Roku1 we should hope to one day see.


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## morac

brentil said:


> Roku 1 yes, but not the Roku 2. The Roku 2 has what is equal to a modern dual core cellphone CPU in it which is light years ahead of the CPU we have. So whatever is the best that is on a Roku1 we should hope to one day see.


Technically the Premiere has a dual core processor, albeit a low end one. I don't see the UI ever approaching the speeds of either Roku box though as Roku doesn't run Flash. Even if it did, the fact that Roku only ever does one thing at a time (no background tasks or DVR functionality) and the Roku interface is less complicated than the TiVo one means it's almost impossible for the Premiere UI to ever match the speed of the Roku UI.


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## dsa1971

morac said:


> Technically the Premiere has a dual core processor, albeit a low end one. I don't see the UI ever approaching the speeds of either Roku box though as Roku doesn't run Flash. Even if it did, the fact that Roku only ever does one thing at a time (no background tasks or DVR functionality) and the Roku interface is less complicated than the TiVo one means it's almost impossible for the Premiere UI to ever match the speed of the Roku UI.


It seems like Tivo has made some serious design/system architecture decisions. Sure, Tivo has a lot more to do than a Roku but you can get a Roku for $50 with a $15+ subscription fee. Given what I paid for the Tivo Premiere and the ongoing subscription fee I expect a lot more from Tivo. I really do like Tivo but for me the only reason I still have Tivo is because it's what my wife is used to and doesn't want to switch. I would be able to deal with the Verizon DVR and my Roku box. I'm just always surprised at how sluggish the Tivo UI can be.


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## gteague

compared to my s3 that just died, my new elite is dog slow. benchmark away, but perception is reality and my perception is that 1/4s had been added onto nearly every click compared to the s3. and my season pass manager still sometimes locks me out for up to 15 minutes when rearranging only a couple of items. of course, that's down from the obscene 30-45 minutes on the s3 which happened all too often. if i wasn't so pleased at the new gigabit ethernet, 4 tuners, and 450hrs of hd (w/ext) i'd be doing mouth-to-mouth on the s3 to resurrect it rather than buying a box that was (seemingly, imo) rushed out and warmed over.

/guy


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## aaronwt

dsa1971 said:


> It seems like Tivo has made some serious design/system architecture decisions. Sure, Tivo has a lot more to do than a Roku but you can get a Roku for $50 with a $15+ subscription fee. Given what I paid for the Tivo Premiere and the ongoing subscription fee I expect a lot more from Tivo. I really do like Tivo but for me the only reason I still have Tivo is because it's what my wife is used to and doesn't want to switch. I would be able to deal with the Verizon DVR and my Roku box. I'm just always surprised at how sluggish the Tivo UI can be.


What subscription fee does Roku have? I'm not paying a subscription fee for my roku2.


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## crxssi

aaronwt said:


> What subscription fee does Roku have? I'm not paying a subscription fee for my roku2.


I think he is attributing the Netflix and/or Hulu fees to the Roku?


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## MichaelK

gteague said:


> compared to my s3 that just died, my new elite is dog slow. benchmark away, but perception is reality and my perception is that 1/4s had been added onto nearly every click compared to the s3. and my season pass manager still sometimes locks me out for up to 15 minutes when rearranging only a couple of items. of course, that's down from the obscene 30-45 minutes on the s3 which happened all too often. if i wasn't so pleased at the new gigabit ethernet, 4 tuners, and 450hrs of hd (w/ext) i'd be doing mouth-to-mouth on the s3 to resurrect it rather than buying a box that was (seemingly, imo) rushed out and warmed over.
> 
> /guy


hate to kick a dead horse but the fact that after 10+ years they still haven't managed to figure out to rearrange season passes in the background points to them not really caring about the perception that the box is slow as (insert choice here).

the stupidity that they dont cache the pictures in the new UI and that makes the whole think choke is just the next logical step in their path of crappy architecture choices for the last decade....

I guess when you outsource everything that's the way the cookie crumbles.


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## sbiller

brentil said:


> Roku 1 yes, but not the Roku 2. The Roku 2 has what is equal to a modern dual core cellphone CPU in it which is light years ahead of the CPU we have. So whatever is the best that is on a Roku1 we should hope to one day see.


FWIW, it appears the Roku 2 is using a 700 MHz Broadcom processor.

http://www.mycablealternatives.com/2011/07/roku-2-xs-teardown/


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## morac

MichaelK said:


> hate to kick a dead horse but the fact that after 10+ years they still haven't managed to figure out to rearrange season passes in the background points to them not really caring about the perception that the box is slow as (insert choice here).


Actually they have since reordering Season Passes via the web site season pass manager and via the iPad app does so in the background. Why they haven't implemented that in the UI on the Premiere itself is the million dollar question.


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## MichaelK

morac said:


> Actually they have since reordering Season Passes via the web site season pass manager and via the iPad app does so in the background. Why they haven't implemented that in the UI on the Premiere itself is the million dollar question.


good point. They actually do it. BUT are too (insert your favorite adjective) to implement it in the UI.

they've made strides lots of places just not the part of the thing that people actually interact with.

Apparently they believe that *UI *stands for not *U*n*I*mportant and not User Interface. (gee, maybe we're all wrong....)


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## brentil

sbiller said:


> FWIW, it appears the Roku 2 is using a 700 MHz Broadcom processor.
> 
> http://www.mycablealternatives.com/2011/07/roku-2-xs-teardown/


Yeah, the Broadcom BCM2835, which is an ARMv11 design with a dual core GPU. The ARMv11 was the last generation before the Cortex series which is what the current phones are based off of, so the last phone generation (iPhone/iPhone 3G) in terms of performance. The S4 produces 1100 DMIPS which is a test that can be divided by # of cores to give a per core value of 550 DMIPS (they aggregate each core into a total score). The ARMv11 produces about 900 DMIPS for one core @ 700 MHz plus then has the far more advanced GPU included as well that can offload a significant amount of GUI load. So you can think of it as a Roku2 can do anything a iPhone 3G could do and a TiVo S4 slides in between an iPod Video (pre-touch) and a iPhone (original).


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## brentil

I can't believe I completely forgot to benchmark the initial release of the 20.x series... I guess I just got too excited about the new features and it slipped my mind. I'm going to start working on benchmarks for the latest version and hopefully have them up soon.


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## sbiller

brentil said:


> I can't believe I completely forgot to benchmark the initial release of the 20.x series... I guess I just got too excited about the new features and it slipped my mind. I'm going to start working on benchmarks for the latest version and hopefully have them up soon.


Awesome! I'm looking forward to seeing the revised numbers. Thanks Brentil.


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## crxssi

sbiller said:


> Awesome! I'm looking forward to seeing the revised numbers. Thanks Brentil.


Probably would be best to start a new thread on it, since it has nothing to do with the "Elite". Besides, the thread title seems to imply there ARE enhancements to performance by using the Elite, which we all know there are not. (Plus the "Elite" name is now dead, anyway).


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## ghuido

can't wait to see them. Post a link in this thread to the new one if you do.


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## moyekj

brentil said:


> I can't believe I completely forgot to benchmark the initial release of the 20.x series... I guess I just got too excited about the new features and it slipped my mind. I'm going to start working on benchmarks for the latest version and hopefully have them up soon.


 Would be interesting to see numbers before and after DNS Optimization as well since it looks like HDUI makes a LOT of DNS requests in normal use. Even better is using a router with DNS caching (~2ms vs double digit ms per lookup) which seems like would be the best way to minimize delays due to DNS.


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## Ziggy86

Last night my Premiere froze, I could not change the channel or use the Tivo button to get to Tivo central. I had to unplug the unit in order to reboot it. Has anyone else experienced this and if so how did you get it to work, did you have to unplug the Tivo too?

Thanks


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## moyekj

Ziggy86 said:


> Last night my Premiere froze, I could not change the channel or use the Tivo button to get to Tivo central. I had to unplug the unit in order to reboot it. Has anyone else experienced this and if so how did you get it to work, did you have to unplug the Tivo too?
> 
> Thanks


 In situations where Premiere is not responding to remote control commands using the iPad or Android applications (or kmttg remote) to start playback of a recorded show will often but not always unfreeze the TiVo. Also if using HDUI following sequence is supposed to reboot the HDUI: thumbs up,thumbs down,play,play
The above can be attempted before resorting to pulling the plug.


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## Ziggy86

I could not get to a recorded show since none of the buttons would work.


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## moyekj

Ziggy86 said:


> I could not get to a recorded show since none of the buttons would work.


 You misunderstand. The iOS/Android applications communicate with TiVo over your home network, not through the remote control. So using those apps you don't have to pick up your remote control to start playback of a show which is the whole point - you are frozen out and remote control doesn't work so using those applications is a way to start playback of a show without using your remote control. Often times using those apps to start playback of a show will then "unfreeze" your TiVo making it responsive to remote control again.


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## Ziggy86

I understand now, thank you.

Is it common for the Tivo units to freeze?


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## moyekj

Ziggy86 said:


> I understand now, thank you.
> 
> Is it common for the Tivo units to freeze?


 That's a loaded question. For well over a year since it was released it was quite common for me and others when using the SDUI to have freezes which lasted up to 20 minutes at a time and sometimes requiring pulling the plug. Using HDUI the problem was less prevalent, but then one had to try and tolerate slowness of HDUI. There's a huge thread on the subject among several smaller ones. More recent versions of TiVo software seem to have mostly fixed that. Once in a while I still see reports of freezes but I would say it's not very common anymore, especially if your unit has latest software.


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## Ziggy86

last question, what is SDUI and HDUI and is this something you setup in the setting section?


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## moyekj

Ziggy86 said:


> last question, what is SDUI and HDUI and is this something you setup in the setting section?


SDUI = Standard Definition User Interface - the classic user interface that was used prior to launch of the Premiere platform.
HDUI = High Definition User Interface (the default slower interface with the annoying thumbnails at the top of the screen in TiVo Central).

A few people (such as me) still prefer the SDUI because it's still much faster than the HDUI. TiVo eventually is going to phase it out completely for newer hardware and some functionality has been somewhat crippled with recent releases but I'll use it as long as it's available and not totally crippled.

You can switch between the 2 from Settings->Displays->Choose TiVo Menus


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## Ziggy86

Thank you.


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## brentil

Back to benchmarking!

When I get home tonight I'll finish the current set, I'm about 50% done. I'll look at the DNS thread and see what I can do to my TiVo and see how it changes the way it works. I'll try a variety of options including the 3rd party services.

I'll also start a new thread bringing over the benchmark information I have here as the basis. I'll link back once it is made.


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## brentil

New thread specific to just benchmarking.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=488159


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