# How to Reserve a Slot in the Roamio for the Mini to View Live TV?



## tmeek (Nov 20, 2007)

When I view my Mini, often all 6 recording slots on the associated Roamio are in use. So I have to hassle to cancel one of those recordings.

Is there a way to tell the Roamio to record a maximum of 5 shows simultaneously, so there will always be a "live TV" slot for the Mini?


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## TonyD79 (Jan 4, 2002)

I think you mean limit to four recordings. Doesn't the roamio hold one live tuner for itself. My Bolt does.


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## tmeek (Nov 20, 2007)

You are probably right about that.


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## Series3Sub (Mar 14, 2010)

TonyD79 said:


> I think you mean limit to four recordings. Doesn't the roamio hold one live tuner for itself. My Bolt does.


Yes it does.


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## tmeek (Nov 20, 2007)

And so far no one can answer my question.


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## tatergator1 (Mar 27, 2008)

It can't be done as the software currently exists. An option to reserve 0,1, or 2 tuners existed at the initial release of the Mini. However, this was removed once dynamic tuner allocation was added to the software.


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## Chuck_IV (Jan 1, 2002)

While I like the dynamic allocation, IMO it is poorly implemented. The way it currently works is it randomly grabs a tuner, every time it needs one. 

The problem with that is, say you are on the main Tivo with 4 tuners and someone takes a tuner for a mini, fine. However, lets say that mini user goes back to the main Tivo menu, thus releasing the tuner it was using and now goes back to Live TV. Guess what? The Tivo may allocate a DIFFERENT tuner to that mini. So if I had a background program I was tracking with the buffer on the main Tivo, I now may have lost that tuner to the mini.

This happens a LOT in our house and needs to be dealt with. What Tivo should do is allow you to allocate a tuner/pool of tuners to the mini/minis. These tuners ARE always available to the main Tivo, if a mini isn't using it, but when a mini does need a tuner, it can ONLY pick a tuner from the allocated tuner pool. The rest are off limits to the minis.

This way as the main Tivo user, you will know what tuners will always be available to you vs potentially losing a tracked buffer to a connecting mins.


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## tatergator1 (Mar 27, 2008)

Chuck_IV said:


> While I like the dynamic allocation, IMO it is poorly implemented. The way it currently works is it randomly grabs a tuner, every time it needs one.
> 
> The problem with that is, say you are on the main Tivo with 4 tuners and someone takes a tuner for a mini, fine. However, lets say that mini user goes back to the main Tivo menu, thus releasing the tuner it was using and now goes back to Live TV. Guess what? The Tivo may allocate a DIFFERENT tuner to that mini. So if I had a background program I was tracking with the buffer on the main Tivo, I now may have lost that tuner to the mini.
> 
> ...


More options are always nice, but Tivo has shown a tendency to adopt the KISS method with it's software. Advanced user configuration like the above is unlikely to ever be provided.

And be prepared for a few users to chime it with "if you're watching it, record it..." line.


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## jeff92k7 (Jan 18, 2006)

tmeek said:


> When I view my Mini, often all 6 recording slots on the associated Roamio are in use. So I have to hassle to cancel one of those recordings.
> 
> Is there a way to tell the Roamio to record a maximum of 5 shows simultaneously, so there will always be a "live TV" slot for the Mini?


Recordings should always take priority, in my opinion. I can't even imagine the number of complaints that people would make if something didn't get recorded because a tuner was "reserved" for a mini even if it wasn't using it. If 6 things are recording and you want to use a tuner, you should always be forced to manually stop a recording.



Chuck_IV said:


> What Tivo should do is allow you to allocate a tuner/pool of tuners to the mini/minis. These tuners ARE always available to the main Tivo, if a mini isn't using it, but when a mini does need a tuner, it can ONLY pick a tuner from the allocated tuner pool. The rest are off limits to the minis.


Personally, I think the way it works now is just fine. The way you described would be a nightmare of complexity for most people to set up and manage/monitor. The more complex they make it, the more complaints they will get. I have to think about my wife...would she understand it, or even try to. No...she just wants it to be simple and work.

What you described of "tracking [a show] with the buffer on the main TiVo" in the background is likely not something many people do. If you want to watch something on two channels at once....record one of them and watch the other...then the mini won't take either tuner.

I realize that many of us here are geeks who would love to have added complexity to the TiVo stuff, but the reality is that all that added complexity would be very bad for TiVo and the 99.9% of not-as-geeky people that use them.

Edit to add: TaterGator types faster than I do. ha ha.


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## Chuck_IV (Jan 1, 2002)

jeff92k7 said:


> Recordings should always take priority, in my opinion. I can't even imagine the number of complaints that people would make if something didn't get recorded because a tuner was "reserved" for a mini even if it wasn't using it. If 6 things are recording and you want to use a tuner, you should always be forced to manually stop a recording.
> 
> Personally, I think the way it works now is just fine. The way you described would be a nightmare of complexity for most people to set up and manage/monitor. The more complex they make it, the more complaints they will get. I have to think about my wife...would she understand it, or even try to. No...she just wants it to be simple and work.
> 
> ...


Your not uderstanding the way I described it. The reserved tuners for the minis would always be available to the main Tivo, no matter what, just like they are now. The only reason for the reservation is to know what tuners could potentially be allocated to a linked mini, as opposed to having all of the 5/3 not in use by the main tivo. You are just limiting the amount available to the minis.

And no, this is not very complex in a sense that they essentially did it in a similar way originally(but much more stringent rules), before they went to dynamic allocation.


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## jeff92k7 (Jan 18, 2006)

Chuck_IV said:


> [You're] not [understanding] the way I described it.


So help me understand. I don't get why anyone would want to limit the amount of tuners available to a mini if it isn't already in use recording something on the main unit.

I have a Roamio OTA. That has 4 tuners. Say I have four other rooms each with a mini. From what I understand, as it stands, only 3 tuners of the 4 are currently available for Minis since one is always reserved for the main unit with nothing recording. That means I have only 3 tuners available for 4 minis to share. Why would I ever want to further limit that to only 2 tuners or 1 tuner. And who would decide what that limitation is...me? TiVo? If TiVo decides to further limit tuners, that's a PR nightmare. If they let me manage the limitation, that is further configuration that the consumer has to do and would cause confusion and problems with a lot of people.

I totally understand the tuner limit when things are recording. I always, always want recordings to have priority. If 4 things are recording, I'm fine with the minis not having any tuners available. That is as it should be. They can watch anything that is recorded or recording, or any of the streaming content.

I just don't understand why you would want to limit tuner availability when nothing is recording. ...or how that wouldn't be a nightmare for most consumers, a PR mess for TiVo, or both.

From what you described above, it sounds to me (at least from my perspective) that the best thing to do would be to record whatever background tuner you want limited from the minis. Once the show stops, the tuner is available again. No configuration, no worry. Easy WAF too.

Am I missing something?


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## Chuck_IV (Jan 1, 2002)

In your case, you simply don't reserve any(or a "max" meaning all setting) so you would have it like it is now. Done, nothing changes on your part.

If you only have 1 or 2 minis on say a six tuner +/pro, limiting the available tuners to the minis simply allows the user of the main tivo to know which backround tuners will continue the buffer and not be potentially snatched away by a connecting mini.

I have no idea why you kept bringing up PR. Giving users additional options is a good thing.


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## jeff92k7 (Jan 18, 2006)

In my case, I have one Premiere, one Romaio OTA, and one Mini. I was using the four minis for sake of argument. I think I understand better what you are saying now. However, I still don't understand why it's an issue.

If i understand correctly now, in my situation, you would be arguing for the ability to limit the available tuners to one - to match my one Mini. That would leave three tuners for the Roamio for background tasks when the Mini assigned tuner is in use, or all four when the mini tuner is not in use. correct?
If so, then how do you decide which tuner is reserved? What happens when the show you are tracking is on the tuner that the mini wants to use (someone turns on the mini while that tuner was previously being used)? If you then record that show, thereby locking the mini out of using it, wouldn't the mini just get an error message about no available tuners? How is that better than pooled tuners like it is now?

This goes back to my earlier argument that it would be difficult for most users to understand, much less configure...and that would be a bad thing for TiVo...the PR mess, if you will. Consumers would blame TiVo for making software that "doesn't work" even though it is the consumer who doesn't understand it or finds it difficult/pointless.

Seems to me what you are arguing is that the current model of shared tuners (pool) is too simple. You want something more complex.

I'm not saying that you don't have a reason for it...just that most people would find your method too confusing, even if it makes perfect sense to you and would work well in your household.

My argument is basically that anything requires people to "manage" the background buffer settings is needless. I don't want to think about what the background tuners are doing...I just want to watch a show. If another channel has something on I want to see too, I'll record it. 

And in most cases, I agree with you that more options are always good for consumers, but with a TiVo, I would argue that this is one case where it would be a bad thing. TiVo made a name for itself by being simple and easy to use - easier than Cable/Sat DVRs in the early days. I personally think that making them needlessly complex would only hurt them.


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## Chuck_IV (Jan 1, 2002)

jeff92k7 said:


> Seems to me what you are arguing is that the current model of shared tuners (pool) is too simple. You want something more complex.


Yes, but just slightly. Just seems you want to make it this complex system whereas, all I am asking is for the ability to limit the size of that shared pool, if the user chooses to. That's it. Everything else stays the same. It's that simple.


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## tmeek (Nov 20, 2007)

My question seems to have been hijacked into a different discussion. All I want to do is limit the Roamio to using 4 tuners, so that there is always one available for the Mini. That is all I want. Not complex.

I do not care that limiting the Roamio to 4 tuners (instead of 5 tuners) will result in fewer (low priority) programs being recorded on the Roamio. I want the user of the Mini to always have a tuner available. That user is not a technical expert and should not be forced to stop a recording on the Roamio in order to watch TV on the Mini.


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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

tmeek said:


> My question seems to have been hijacked into a different discussion. All I want to do is limit the Roamio to using 4 tuners, so that there is always one available for the Mini. That is all I want. Not complex.
> 
> I do not care that limiting the Roamio to 4 tuners (instead of 5 tuners) will result in fewer (low priority) programs being recorded on the Roamio. I want the user of the Mini to always have a tuner available. That user is not a technical expert and should not be forced to stop a recording on the Roamio in order to watch TV on the Mini.


Never going to happen, and as others have pointed out that was EXACTLY the way it worked when the mini came out and people SCREAMED about how awful it was (YMMV) and we rejoiced with dynamic allocation.


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## Aero 1 (Aug 8, 2007)

tmeek said:


> My question seems to have been hijacked into a different discussion. All I want to do is limit the Roamio to using 4 tuners, so that there is always one available for the Mini. That is all I want. Not complex.
> 
> I do not care that limiting the Roamio to 4 tuners (instead of 5 tuners) will result in fewer (low priority) programs being recorded on the Roamio. I want the user of the Mini to always have a tuner available. That user is not a technical expert and should not be forced to stop a recording on the Roamio in order to watch TV on the Mini.


yea, dont go beyond the physical limitation of the roamio and dont record more than 4 things at any given time. problem solved.


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## tmeek (Nov 20, 2007)

Aero1 apparently does not know how a Tivo works. One cannot dictate that a Tivo not record more than 4 things at once. Once the recordings are set up in OnePass, it chooses the times at which each program will be recorded. Telling the Roamio not to record more than 4 things at once is exactly what I want to do, but there is no way to do it, presently.

As for rejoicing for "dynamic allocation," I would say that the current system is the opposite of dynamic. It requires the user of the Mini to manually stop a recording on the Roamio in order to watch TV. The "dynamic" solution would be for the Roamio to automatically stop recording the lowest-priority of the 5 programs being recorded. At least that should be an option that the user can choose.


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## TonyD79 (Jan 4, 2002)

I agree it should give an option to end a recording from the mini like it would on the host. But keep in mind that it would have to stop TWO recordings if all the tuners in the host are being used for recording. 

Also, recording is the priority of TiVo. That is just a reality.


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## tmeek (Nov 20, 2007)

The priority of the Tivo is whatever it is programmed to be. It is not a fixed "reality." I think it should be programmed differently from how it is now.

Why would watching TV on the Mini require stopping 2 recordings on the Roamio?


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## TonyD79 (Jan 4, 2002)

The reality is what TiVo markets and brands their device to be. It is marketed and branded mostly for recording. Therefore that will always take priority. Things can be improved and adjusted like providing an opportunity to stop a recording from the mini when tuners are tied up but tivos business model is based upon recordings.


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