# Slow Tivo Roamio when using Select button



## myplanet (Jun 20, 2015)

Hello. I'm new to the forums.

I have a Tivo Roamio (Basic model). Recently, I upgraded the Hard drive from 500GB to 3TB, and had great success with it. However, a few weeks after the upgrade, whenever I do Select shows in My Shows, One Pass Manager or the To Do list, there are big delays. By Select I mean highlighting the show, then hitting the Select Button. And the delay is where the UI shows not much information, and has a spiraling icon showing that there is a delay.

I currently have 69 shows in the One Pass Manager. When I go in the One Pass Manager and hit Select button for any show to change its options, it takes about 20 seconds to let me edit the options. If I go to the To Do list and select a show to get information about it, it takes about that much. The same thing happens when I'm in My Shows and select a show, there is a slow response time. The delay is bigger when there are more than one recording in a Folder, it takes 40 seconds to see the individual recordings to play.

Now, everything else is working fine. If I'm in My Shows, and do not hit Select, but instead hit Play, playback works fine. No delays. Recording seems to be working fine too.

What do you think could be the problem? Is there a maximum for the One Pass Manager to handle a certain number of shows? Is it the Hard Drive update causing the problem, even thought it was working fine before?

I have reset the Tivo many times, with no success. There is always a delay when I Select shows in My Shows, To Do list, or One Pass Manager.


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## myplanet (Jun 20, 2015)

Interesting, I'm not the only one:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=529543


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## dougdingle (Jul 4, 2007)

It's not you. Many, including me, are having the same problems as of this afternoon.

TiVo seems to be having issues on their end, although why this should affect people wanting to just watch their shows is beyond me.

Whatever it is, they're accumulating a lot of angry customers, including me.


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## caddyroger (Mar 15, 2005)

You can ad me the list. Mine is doing the same thing. I am on the north west coast area.


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## chrispitude (Apr 23, 2005)

Same problem here. I am surprised at how long the delay is. What the heck is it doing...


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## ertyu (Nov 4, 2003)

I first noticed this happening when my internet connection went flaky. Obviously at least some of the information on that page is pulled over the internet and apparently fairly dynamically.


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## dougdingle (Jul 4, 2007)

My impression is that pretty much all the graphical elements like the endless thumbnails, as well as extended program descriptions, are not cached locally but get downloaded as needed. 

A ton of stuff coming from their server constantly seems to be the logical explanation...if their server has an issue, we all feel the pain.


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## RoyK (Oct 22, 2004)

dougdingle said:


> My impression is that pretty much all the graphical elements like the endless thumbnails, as well as extended program descriptions, are not cached locally but get downloaded as needed.
> 
> A ton of stuff coming from their server constantly seems to be the logical explanation...if their server has an issue, we all feel the pain.


If it were a ton of stuff it might make sense not to cache it locally but the metadata for a program shouldn't require more than 100k or so including graphic. Probably half that much or an insignificant fraction of the program"s file size. Looking things up over the Internet time after time after time as we scroll the menu makes no sense at all.It's like using a word processor that looks up every word on the Internet as you type it to spellcheck.


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## dougdingle (Jul 4, 2007)

RoyK said:


> If it were a ton of stuff it might make sense not to cache it locally but the metadata for a program shouldn't require more than 100k or so including graphic. Probably half that much or an insignificant fraction of the program"s file size. Looking things up over the Internet time after time after time as we scroll the menu makes no sense at all.It's like using a word processor that looks up every word on the Internet as you type it to spellcheck.


I didn't say it made sense to do it that way, just that it seems to be the most plausible explanation for what happened to a lot of Roamio users the other day - either something went wrong at the server end, or there was a DOS attack, or something similar, and the servers couldn't respond to normal requests in a timely manner and people got 10 second delays and the spinning blue wheel with each keypress.

When the problem was happening, my Roamio couldn't even remember the sort order I had set up for various folders. Why on earth would the Roamio need to talk to Mom to sort my programs inside a folder? If something as simple as that was kept locally, that would not have happened.

I'm perfectly willing to listen to alternate scenarios.


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## RoyK (Oct 22, 2004)

dougdingle said:


> I didn't say it made sense to do it that way, just that it seems to be the most plausible explanation for what happened to a lot of Roamio users the other day - either something went wrong at the server end, or there was a DOS attack, or something similar, and the servers couldn't respond to normal requests in a timely manner and people got 10 second delays and the spinning blue wheel with each keypress.
> 
> When the problem was happening, my Roamio couldn't even remember the sort order I had set up for various folders. Why on earth would the Roamio need to talk to Mom to sort my programs inside a folder? If something as simple as that was kept locally, that would not have happened.
> 
> I'm perfectly willing to listen to alternate scenarios.


Sorry. I didn't intend to imply that you did. I agree with you and it's just the kind of program design I would expect from a CS101 student without the experience to know that things don't work in the real world the way textbooks imply they do.


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## dsnotgood (Aug 26, 2010)

Mine started doing this today too... Gives the blue spinning ball


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## trueblue (Jan 29, 2014)

Same here. Incredibly annoying!


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## curiousgeorge (Nov 28, 2002)

All our roamios started doing this today. We're on the west coast.


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## husky55 (Feb 2, 2008)

Yep, blue spinning ball on all my Tivos. I am in Connecticut!!! At least it's not my hardware!!!


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## bfwk122 (Jul 2, 2006)

I am on the East Coast and It started yesterday.. The small blue spiral going around in circles. We had this problem a few months back and someone suggested to reboot the system and it worked then and I guess I will try again...


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## RoyK (Oct 22, 2004)

My ISP is back up after being down for several hours. It was amazing how much zippier things were while it was down. Very refreshing.

Now it's back up and sluggish again.


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## L David Matheny (Jan 29, 2011)

RoyK said:


> My ISP is back up after being down for several hours. It was amazing how much zippier things were while it was down. Very refreshing.
> 
> Now it's back up and sluggish again.


It's well known that TiVo relies on their servers for too much eye candy and other data that should be cached locally. There's also been speculation that they may even route data moving from one unit to another within your house through their servers. The sort of server constipation we're seeing now highlights the foolishness of such a concept. Common sense requires that all network traffic should be kept as local as possible. Bandwidth will never be infinite.


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## kgvickers (Mar 18, 2015)

Same problem here, restart did not fix it.


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## sbiller (May 10, 2002)

Disconnected and reconnected the ethernet cable on my Roamio Pro. Improved significantly. I called TiVo Technical support this morning. He had me go in and delete all of the recently deleted programs, reset and clear the ToDo List and Guide data, and turn off TiVo Suggestions. The Roamio is running at typical speed again.


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## pflavell (Dec 25, 2014)

Mine was doing this yesterday and before I went to work this morning - tonight it is back to running normally.


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## pgoelz (May 1, 2005)

I called Tivo support the other day on this issue. What was I thinking? 

As usual, this was the first he had ever heard of this problem. After I read off the signal level and SNR (90% and 37dB respectively, and exactly what they have been since the Roamio was installed a year ago) he blamed the slow menu response issue on excessively high signal levels and suggested I move the Tivo to another outlet and/or try switching from hardwired network to WiFi. At no time while he was guessing what the problem might be did he EVER consider the possibility that the issue was on the Tivo server side. 

When I persisted, he put me on hold for several minutes and then came back and said that after consultation, it might be a server side issue due to all the changes to the web site. 

The last day or so it seems to have resolved, but I now see another issue that I will describe in a separate thread. 

I love my Roamio but Tivo support remains pretty useless. I guess that is a sustainable position as long as there is minimal competition......

Paul


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## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

myplanet said:


> Hello. I'm new to the forums.
> 
> I have a Tivo Roamio (Basic model). Recently, I upgraded the Hard drive from 500GB to 3TB, and had great success with it....


You can always throw the original HD in and test with that one. I doubt it's the problem, but one way to help troubleshoot.


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## bfwk122 (Jul 2, 2006)

bfwk122 said:


> I am on the East Coast and It started yesterday.. The small blue spiral going around in circles. We had this problem a few months back and someone suggested to reboot the system and it worked then and I guess I will try again...


Well I did what I did last time this happened and I rebooted the router and the Tivo unit and it is all back to normal.. Strange how this happens..


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## NorthAlabama (Apr 19, 2012)

blue spinning circles are being reported as recently starting to show up for premiere users, too:

http://tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=529670​


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

waynomo said:


> You can always throw the original HD in and test with that one. I doubt it's the problem, but one way to help troubleshoot.


I wouldn't do that, it will break the pairing of the cablecard.


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## CoxInPHX (Jan 14, 2011)

Try changing the DNS in your router to Google, that sometimes helps me, and seems much quicker than my Cox DNS.

Google DNS servers are 8.8.8.8 & 8.8.4.4


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## pgoelz (May 1, 2005)

bfwk122 said:


> Well I did what I did last time this happened and I rebooted the router and the Tivo unit and it is all back to normal.. Strange how this happens..


Well, I have egg on my face. After insisting to Tivo Support in a recent frustrating phone call that the problem was most likely on THEIR end, it turns out maybe it wasn't. Maybe.

I had been noticing that page loads on my Windows phone on WiFi were sometimes VERY slow. In the process of trying to figure out what was going on (I was blaming the phone) I noticed that when trying to reach the router setup screen from my laptop, THAT page was taking a long time to load. It would sit on the "resolving host" step for way longer than it should.

Once I reached the setup screen, everything looked OK so I tried a couple power cycles (it has a power button). No change. So I decided to press the reset button on the bottom of the router. BIG change! Page loads are now blazingly fast on my phone and PC. I can't say for sure that this was the solution for the Tivo problem since it was reasonably fast yesterday. But it definitely could have been affecting it.

Now the only remaining question is.... what happened to slow my router down? Speed tests and ping plots look essentially identical before and after the reset. Is there a small memory leak? The router is a Netgear WNDR3700v2 if that helps anyone else struggling with this. I may try installing DD-WRT and see what happens.....

Paul


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## RoyK (Oct 22, 2004)

While your router may or may not have had a problem the root cause of the unsatisfactory delays in navigating your TiVo isn't your network or TiVo's servers it's the poor software design that allows those things to drag the UI to a crawl when there is an issue with them. Yeah, it's nice to have a slick program icon come up when I click a show but not if I have to wait for it before I can watch the program or move on to the next.


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## skypros (May 19, 2015)

I am sure glad I found this thread....

I am new to Tivo (6.20.15) But not DVR's..... I have had many satellite DVR's ever since 1999 (I was a satellite dealer)

I purchased a "renewed" Roamio plus, and honestly thought the WD 1TB hard drive was failing..... Now reading this thread, I am not so sure about that.

The one thing I would think..... is that if this is on Tivo's end, You sure would think there would be allot more activity here on TCF about the issue (or maybe this has been happening for so long, everyone is use to it!!!).

I don't know if this will help or not.... But I am located in Oregon, Roamio Plus was renewed March 18, 2015..... Wi-Fi connection only (later today I am going to hard wire the unit via ethernet) On July 3rd, I performed a..... Restart Tivo.... clear thumb ratings & suggestions..... cleared program information & to do list.
The above has helped, as I was getting "C501 errors".... & was getting allot of "there was an unexpected problem".... and "search results are temporarily unavailable"...... I have not seen the C501 errors in the since.

Question: is my Tivo always using the internet? IE: Always requesting data?


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## dougdingle (Jul 4, 2007)

skypros said:


> Question: is my Tivo always using the internet? IE: Always requesting data?


Yes. Always. Not only is it constantly requesting data, thumbnails, descriptions, etc., but it sends every little thing you do on the remote back to mom.

Everything.

What you watch, when you pause, what you skip, your searches, how long you watch. TiVo knows every single little thing about your viewing habits.

Why they haven't been better able to monetize that long ago is beyond comprehension. Their data has to be FAR more accurate than the incredible nonsense sold by Nielsen, which relies on people telling the truth about what they watch. People never tell the truth about what they watch.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

skypros said:


> I am sure glad I found this thread....
> 
> I am new to Tivo (6.20.15) But not DVR's..... I have had many satellite DVR's ever since 1999 (I was a satellite dealer)
> 
> ...


I sort of envy you. You will be learning a lot. The TiVo is very reliable, but it's not a toaster either. Clearing the To Do List and Suggestions is my way to reduce the size of my History folder. As posted, the box likes to be connected to the internet. Just try to delete a 1P with no access. It will work, but not until after the connection is established. I wish the box would show internet status within TiVo Central. The quickest test is to go to Settings, Network, Network diagnostics, and watch the View TCP port test details. It should show Succeeded in a second or two. If not, back out and try later: you have no internet access, but can still have your local network running, like for using a Mini. Anyhow, good luck.


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## dougdingle (Jul 4, 2007)

I have found that the Mini talking to the Roamio is hit and miss without Internet access. 

Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. Others have had similar experiences, based on posts in a Mini thread.


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## pgoelz (May 1, 2005)

dougdingle said:


> Why they haven't been better able to monetize that long ago is beyond comprehension. Their data has to be FAR more accurate than the incredible nonsense sold by Nielsen, which relies on people telling the truth about what they watch. People never tell the truth about what they watch.


I know someone who was chosen by Nielson several years ago to report on their viewing habits and there was nothing manual about it. There was a box attached to their cable box and it automatically sent back viewing data including whether you were in the room or not (IR sensing, I think).

Just FWIW.

Paul


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## dougdingle (Jul 4, 2007)

pgoelz said:


> I know someone who was chosen by Nielson several years ago to report on their viewing habits and there was nothing manual about it. There was a box attached to their cable box and it automatically sent back viewing data including whether you were in the room or not (IR sensing, I think).
> 
> Just FWIW.
> 
> Paul


Yes, but TiVo was gathering all that data from the very beginning, when Nielsen Families were still filling out a manual log book. I know - I was one until I got fed up with it. Even the Series 1, with its original phone connection, would send log files home to Mom.

My impression at the time was that the networks didn't really want to know what was going with any great amount of accuracy, lest the numbers show how badly they were doing competing with those new upstart cable channels. Look how long it took them to accept "same week viewing" DVR numbers...

I don't know what they're doing currently, but I can't imagine they gather data that comes anywhere close to what TiVo gets from their customers - info on what commercials are being watched, watched again, skipped, for example.


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## skypros (May 19, 2015)

dougdingle & JoeKustra, Thank You both for your answers, I really appreciate it.

I did a permanent hard wire ethernet to the Roamio Pro and now it is working 95% better (it could still be better IMHO, But I can live live with it now) 

Although I was able to use my iPad & iPhone to control and stream the Tivo via Wi-Fi (had a 76% signal)..... Being hard-wired has made everything way more responsive!!!


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## dougdingle (Jul 4, 2007)

Indeed. While the Roamio line of boxes does have wireless, it seems a connection of last resort. 

And of course if you have a Mini or two talking to the Roamio, wireless is just not going to cut it at all.

I have a Pro and an old Series 3 here, along with two Minis. The Series 3 is connected wirelessly because pulling a cable to it would have been a daunting task, and because its main function is to be the Roamio's backup (same Season Passes, etc.). But because it is wireless, transferring shows to/from it is somewhat painful, even though it shows 90-95% signal level.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

dougdingle said:


> Indeed. While the Roamio line of boxes does have wireless, it seems a connection of last resort.
> 
> And of course if you have a Mini or two talking to the Roamio, wireless is just not going to cut it at all.


I should mention that I have found the internal Roamio wireless not so good. However, my Roamio feeds an ASUS EA-N66R 802.11ac adapter on one floor of my house. Down in the kitchen I have a Mini connected to a Linksys adapter with 802.11ac. They communicate 100% and have never failed to operate. I have also used a TiVo AN0100 on the Mini. The transfer rate from the Roamio to my wired Premiere is 80+Mbps when the Roamio starts the transfer and 60+Mbps when the Premiere starts the transfer. Roamio to PC is always 100Mbps except when the Mini is active, then it drops to 80Mbps. I'm using a Netgear R7500 router in a different room where the cable modem is located.

If you are trying to save money, or need support from TiVo this is a bad idea. I have a dozen active wireless devices and they all behave and play nice together. I use the built-in wireless from my TV, Roku and printer only. The printer is the only device using 2.4Ghz. It took a while to get it right, but hardwired wasn't an option. I think wireless is great, just not so much on a Roamio.


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

RoyK said:


> While your router may or may not have had a problem the root cause of the unsatisfactory delays in navigating your TiVo isn't your network or TiVo's servers it's the poor software design that allows those things to drag the UI to a crawl when there is an issue with them. Yeah, it's nice to have a slick program icon come up when I click a show but not if I have to wait for it before I can watch the program or move on to the next.


Exactly. Having to wait for Tivo's servers to respond when you are simply selecting a group of shows (or an individual show) for playback is extremely poor software design. If they want to do this stuff in a background thread for their own stats that's fine by me, but don't make it difficult to get a show description, see upcoming shows etc. because all of that stuff should be stored locally. It's already in the guide data anyway.

We keep complaining about how they're too tied to the mothership now, they keep ignoring us. And so it goes.


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## patrickthickey (Sep 4, 2002)

Ditto on the spinning blue ball, for the past few weeks. Very annoying.

Roamio, 1GB drive, hard wired to my firewall.

I like the suggestion of deleting the recently deleted shows, and will try it. Resource starving can never be ruled out and deleted programs eat RAM.


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