# Does Tivo Inc know what's causing the UI hang-ups?



## bsmith1051 (Nov 15, 2009)

When I first started playing with my brand-new Premiere the new HD UI worked wonderfully. I watched a movie through Netflix, then spent about an hour trolling through the Search function, ending-up in the Web Videos > HD section. At this point, the device suddenly froze-up and took about a minute to recover. From that point on it was hit-or-miss whether a menu would open properly. It wasn't totally hard-locked though so I went into the settings and switched to the SD menu; the Find Programs menu was still hanging. Assuming this was a 'computer' issue I did a restart and everything seems to work properly again.

So, it seems like this is a common and easily reproducible problem?

Is anyone here a Tivo tester or otherwise privy to their testing info? All I'm wondering is if they're AWARE of the problem and know the SOURCE of it? Is it a memory leak in the new Flash HD UI, or an errant Winsock process (triggered by a lost Internet connection even if just temporary) ?


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

bsmith1051 said:


> When I first started playing with my brand-new Premiere the new HD UI worked wonderfully. I watched a movie through Netflix, then spent about an hour trolling through the Search function, ending-up in the Web Videos > HD section. At this point, the device suddenly froze-up and took about a minute to recover. From that point on it was hit-or-miss whether a menu would open properly. It wasn't totally hard-locked though so I went into the settings and switched to the SD menu; the Find Programs menu was still hanging. Assuming this was a 'computer' issue I did a restart and everything seems to work properly again.
> 
> So, it seems like this is a common and easily reproducible problem?
> 
> Is anyone here a Tivo tester or otherwise privy to their testing info? All I'm wondering is if they're AWARE of the problem and know the SOURCE of it? Is it a memory leak in the new Flash HD UI, or an errant Winsock process (triggered by a lost Internet connection even if just temporary) ?


I would say it's not common and reporducible. I can do exactly what you did, and none of my boxes will reboot. Obviously people are having issues. We have no idea how many, but individual configurations seem to play a part. it's certainly not everyone. Otherwise I would have seen something on one of my boxes by now.

Although I have no idea if using the SD menu mode could contribute to anything, since I run all my boxes in the HD menu mode. And none of them are anywhere close to as slow as some people are reporting. They all seem quick in the HD menu. Of course not as quick as the SD menu was when I tried it before the current software version was released.


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## caddyroger (Mar 15, 2005)

Tivo does know about the problem. Make sure you have software version 14.4 and the hd menu is a little better but most of use the HD menu is still slow and have switched to the SD menu. When will it get fixed that a guess. If they don't get it faster I will tell every to stay away and stick with cable comp boxes or get Moxie.


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## curiousgeorge (Nov 28, 2002)

caddyroger said:


> If they don't get it faster I will tell every to stay away and stick with cable comp boxes or get Moxie.


Oh, come on. Yes, the HD interface is basically a public beta. Yes, it sucks. But just set the TiVo to SD menus and forget the HD menu for now. The 14.4 SD menu interface is rock solid in my experience. Even in SD mode, the TiVo still kills anything else out there *right now*. I would never recommend a cable company DVR to any friend I intended to keep.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

curiousgeorge said:


> Oh, come on. Yes, the HD interface is basically a public beta. Yes, it sucks. But just set the TiVo to SD menus and forget the HD menu for now. The 14.4 SD menu interface is rock solid in my experience. Even in SD mode, the TiVo still kills anything else out there *right now*. I would never recommend a cable company DVR to any friend I intended to keep.


The HD interface is better than any cable company DVR interface.


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## sthor (Oct 1, 2006)

curiousgeorge said:


> Oh, come on. Yes, the HD interface is basically a public beta. Yes, it sucks. But just set the TiVo to SD menus and forget the HD menu for now. The 14.4 SD menu interface is rock solid in my experience. Even in SD mode, the TiVo still kills anything else out there *right now*. I would never recommend a cable company DVR to any friend I intended to keep.


 I agree. Switching to SD menus and a hardwired ethernet connection has solved almost all of my problems. I had a Blockbuster movie download since then that downloaded ok but sound was a scratchy hiss. Occasionally having an SDV failure when the Cisco Tuning Adapter fails to tune an SDV channel (Speedchannel and Headline News) for a preset recording. I don't blame that on the TIVO though.


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## sthor (Oct 1, 2006)

bsmith1051 said:


> When I first started playing with my brand-new Premiere the new HD UI worked wonderfully. I watched a movie through Netflix, then spent about an hour trolling through the Search function, ending-up in the Web Videos > HD section. At this point, the device suddenly froze-up and took about a minute to recover. From that point on it was hit-or-miss whether a menu would open properly. It wasn't totally hard-locked though so I went into the settings and switched to the SD menu; the Find Programs menu was still hanging. Assuming this was a 'computer' issue I did a restart and everything seems to work properly again.
> 
> So, it seems like this is a common and easily reproducible problem?
> 
> Is anyone here a Tivo tester or otherwise privy to their testing info? All I'm wondering is if they're AWARE of the problem and know the SOURCE of it? Is it a memory leak in the new Flash HD UI, or an errant Winsock process (triggered by a lost Internet connection even if just temporary) ?


If you are using a Wi-Fi Internet connection try switching to a hard wired connection using CAT5E or CAT6 Ethernet cable.

Dumoing Wi-Fi and switching to SD menus solved my problems.


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## caddyroger (Mar 15, 2005)

curiousgeorge said:


> Oh, come on. Yes, the HD interface is basically a public beta. Yes, it sucks. But just set the TiVo to SD menus and forget the HD menu for now. The 14.4 SD menu interface is rock solid in my experience. Even in SD mode, the TiVo still kills anything else out there *right now*. I would never recommend a cable company DVR to any friend I intended to keep.


If I was wanting to use the premiere for the SD menu I could have saved my $700 and kept using my s3 which was working just find and just as fast.
Remember I did say if they do not get the HD menu fixed I would not recommend the Tivo. Right now I do not say any thing about the tivo. I would not want my friends buy a tivo that does not work as designed.
Right now I wished I waited. The only thing that keeps from buying a moxie is that you can transfer programs. My daughter has a comcast dvr and it not to bad of unit for their use.


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## bsmith1051 (Nov 15, 2009)

I don't think anyone has really answered my question. I'm sure Tivo knows that some people are having problems but I'm specifically wondering if they've been able to reproduce the problems themselves?

Also, my system isn't slow or rebooting spontaneously. It's FREEZING-UP like there's a hung thread or a memory leak. So I manually did a restart and it started working again (I think; this was last night so I haven't really tested it since then). Since this was on a brand-new 'vanilla' box I thought it must be easy to replicate.

If people with all-digital rock-solid Internet connections, e.g. FIOS, aren't having any problems, ever, then that would seem to indicate there's a problem with the network stack. In other words, any dropped packets cause the unit to freeze (or reboot as others have experienced). I read one discussion here where people said they could reliably trigger a reboot by unplugging their LAN cord; that seems pretty easy for Tivo to troubleshoot!


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## TrueTurbo (Feb 19, 2008)

caddyroger said:


> If I was wanting to use the premiere for the SD menu I could have saved my $700 and kept using my s3 which was working just find and just as fast.
> Remember I did say if they do not get the HD menu fixed I would not recommend the Tivo. Right now I do not say any thing about the tivo. I would not want my friends buy a tivo that does not work as designed.
> Right now I wished I waited. The only thing that keeps from buying a moxie is that you can transfer programs. My daughter has a comcast dvr and it not to bad of unit for their use.


You obviously don't download web videos, or transfer shows between TiVos, or upload and download shows to TiVo Desktop on a PC. If you did, you would realize how way off base your statement is! The TiVo Premiere as way faster than the older models. Transfer speeds alone more than justify buying a TiVo Premiere, regardless of whether you use SD or HD menus!


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## TrueTurbo (Feb 19, 2008)

bsmith1051 said:


> I don't think anyone has really answered my question. I'm sure Tivo knows that some people are having problems but I'm specifically wondering if they've been able to reproduce the problems themselves?


Why do you think anyone here can answer these type of questions? Nobody here works for TiVo. No one is privy to this kind of info.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

TrueTurbo said:


> You obviously don't download web videos, or transfer shows between TiVos, or upload and download shows to TiVo Desktop on a PC. If you did, you would realize how way off base your statement is! The TiVo Premiere as way faster than the older models. Transfer speeds alone more than justify buying a TiVo Premiere, regardless of whether you use SD or HD menus!


Actually, I would guess that most TiVo users never do any transfers at all. I do, and you do too, but how many TiVo users do?


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## caddyroger (Mar 15, 2005)

TrueTurbo said:


> You obviously don't download web videos, or transfer shows between TiVos, or upload and download shows to TiVo Desktop on a PC. If you did, you would realize how way off base your statement is! The TiVo Premiere as way faster than the older models. Transfer speeds alone more than justify buying a TiVo Premiere, regardless of whether you use SD or HD menus!


I guess downloading all shows episodes of 24 cutting the commercial out and then uploading 18 hrs of 24 back to the tivo does not count. I also downloads the 5 to 6 hrs during the fall and remove the commercials out. I never watch shows the same night.
I guess I do not down load programs. guess what i also watch netflix movies.
It being a little faster at down loading and uploading programs does justify spending $700 for a tivo that does not work the way it is designed for. You might justified of buy a some thing a little faster but I don't. The downloading and uploading of programs is the only thing keeping for buying a Moxe


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## curiousgeorge (Nov 28, 2002)

caddyroger said:


> If I was wanting to use the premiere for the SD menu I could have saved my $700 and kept using my s3 which was working just find and just as fast.


Wrong. The S3 is not as fast as a Premiere. Not even close.

The Premiere is 4-6x faster at transferring programs between machines.
The Premiere SD interface is noticeably snappier than the S3 version.

Keep the Premiere in SD mode and you will still have a superior experience to an S3 (except for the omission of the OLED panel that I really miss).


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## curiousgeorge (Nov 28, 2002)

crxssi said:


> Actually, I would guess that most TiVo users never do any transfers at all. I do, and you do too, but how many TiVo users do?


Everyone I know that has one more more TiVos transfer programs. That's easily 20+ households. It's one of the best features.


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## caddyroger (Mar 15, 2005)

curiousgeorge said:


> Wrong. The S3 is not as fast as a Premiere. Not even close.
> 
> The Premiere is 4-6x faster at transferring programs between machines.
> The Premiere SD interface is noticeably snappier than the S3 version.
> ...


I would no about between tivo but it not much faster between the tivo and the pc to be worth $700.00. If Moxe could transfer program I would throw the Premire in the trash and and buy a Moxe


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## TrueTurbo (Feb 19, 2008)

caddyroger said:


> I would no about between tivo but it not much faster between the tivo and the pc to be worth $700.00. If Moxe could transfer program I would throw the Premire in the trash and and buy a Moxe


I can't speak for the Series 3 but the Premiere is significantly faster than the TiVo HD when transferring shows to and from a PC! My TiVo HD takes around 1 hour to transfer a 1 hour show to my PC. My Premiere XL takes 20-30 mins! With a 10 show series, that's a saving of around 5-6 hours when transferring to the PC. Worth it in my books!


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## caddyroger (Mar 15, 2005)

TrueTurbo said:


> I can't speak for the Series 3 but the Premiere is significantly faster than the TiVo HD when transferring shows to and from a PC! My TiVo HD takes around 1 hour to transfer a 1 hour show to my PC. My Premiere XL takes 20-30 mins! With a 10 show series, that's a saving of around 5-6 hours when transferring to the PC. Worth it in my books!


My s3 did that good maybe 5 min longer.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

caddyroger said:


> I would no about between tivo but it not much faster between the tivo and the pc to be worth $700.00. If Moxe could transfer program I would throw the Premire in the trash and and buy a Moxe


Call me when you trash it and I'll come pick it up. SD/HD menus I could care less I have a TiVo to watch TV not to sit around looking at the menus.


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## lujan (May 24, 2010)

aaronwt said:


> The HD interface is better than any cable company DVR interface.


That is probably a true statement but only for cable companies, not satellite companies. The Dish Network interface was much better but you have to pay a lot more for it. They didn't treat me fairly and that's why I left.


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## lujan (May 24, 2010)

crxssi said:


> Actually, I would guess that most TiVo users never do any transfers at all. I do, and you do too, but how many TiVo users do?


I would do more but every time I want to transfer a show to my PC, it's one of the copyright protected one's so I haven't been able to so far. I have a feeling that I won't be using this feature much.


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## andrewl570 (Apr 7, 2010)

caddyroger said:


> I guess downloading all shows episodes of 24 cutting the commercial out and then uploading 18 hrs of 24 back to the tivo does not count. I also downloads the 5 to 6 hrs during the fall and remove the commercials out. I never watch shows the same night.
> I guess I do not down load programs. guess what i also watch netflix movies.
> It being a little faster at down loading and uploading programs does justify spending $700 for a tivo that does not work the way it is designed for. You might justified of buy a some thing a little faster but I don't. The downloading and uploading of programs is the only thing keeping for buying a Moxe


Probably a huge tivo newb question... how do you cut commercials and combine shows?


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## AnotherBostonGuy (May 6, 2010)

curiousgeorge said:


> Oh, come on. Yes, the HD interface is basically a public beta. Yes, it sucks. But just set the TiVo to SD menus and forget the HD menu for now. The 14.4 SD menu interface is rock solid in my experience. Even in SD mode, the TiVo still kills anything else out there *right now*. I would never recommend a cable company DVR to any friend I intended to keep.


Let's not get crazy here.

TiVo Premiere does not kill anything [sic] out there *right now*.

The current DirecTV PVRs work better and are more reliable. They have the most important feature that TiVo seems to have lost sight of: they just work, like an appliance.

On Tivo, yes, you can turn off the HD menus - you can also unplug the unit and it'll work exactly as expected.

From an owner of Series 1, 2, 3 and Series 4. DirecTivo owner. HR20, HR21, and HR24 owner.


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## DaveWhittle (Jul 25, 2002)

AnotherBostonGuy said:


> Let's not get crazy here.
> 
> TiVo Premiere does not kill anything [sic] out there *right now*.
> 
> ...


Sorry, but gotta disagree here.

I left DirecTV and a miserable HR22 to get a TiVo Premiere, and happy I did. In my experience, even in it's current state the Premiere is a much better DVR than the DirecTV box, and works much better as an appliance.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

bsmith1051 said:


> So, it seems like this is a common and easily reproducible problem?
> 
> Is anyone here a Tivo tester or otherwise privy to their testing info? All I'm wondering is if they're AWARE of the problem and know the SOURCE of it? Is it a memory leak in the new Flash HD UI, or an errant Winsock process (triggered by a lost Internet connection even if just temporary) ?


It has been noted in other threads that testers are not allowed to share any info they may have as a result of the testing. Please do not ask for them to break that prmise.

as for the problem - it seems a common component is some network issue. You should bear in mind that TiVo did indeed use new hardware for the network connection and thus new firmware to go with it and this would react differently with the software stack as well. The premiere transfers media much faster than previous models. Still people might think they have decent broadband but not be aware of latency or lots of dropped packet problems that would have a differetn effect on a TiVo versus a PC, etc...

so reproducing all those types of network issues may be the problem for TiVo. They can work out 80 or 90% of them maybe but that last 20% is always the b!tch as I assume you have seen in your work as well.


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

AnotherBostonGuy said:


> ...you can also unplug the unit and it'll work exactly as expected...


That doesn't make sense. "Working as expected" means recording TV. How is that supposed to happen with it unplugged?


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

andrewl570 said:


> Probably a huge tivo newb question... how do you cut commercials and combine shows?


Have a look at kmttg.


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## caddyroger (Mar 15, 2005)

andrewl570 said:


> Probably a huge tivo newb question... how do you cut commercials and combine shows?


I use kmttg to automatically download the programs. I then use videoredo to edit and combine the shows. I cut the shows manually. Kmttg can cut the ads but i don't think it can join the programs.


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## caddyroger (Mar 15, 2005)

atmuscarella said:


> Call me when you trash it and I'll come pick it up. SD/HD menus I could care less I have a TiVo to watch TV not to sit around looking at the menus.


Yes that is true but Tivo sold the unit partly on the HD menu. If you can not use the use the HD menu then you paid for some thing that does not. If you bought a car the advertised that it has a 8 cylinder engine but it only run on 4 would you like it. A lot of people bought the premiere because of the HD menu. For features the Hd menu is better then the SD menu


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## vurbano (Apr 20, 2004)

AnotherBostonGuy said:


> Let's not get crazy here.
> 
> TiVo Premiere does not kill anything [sic] out there *right now*.
> 
> ...


Ive owned an HR10-250 and rented the HR20 series. You must like waiting 30 seconds for the channel to change. MY TivoHD's JUST WORK and work quickly. The HR20 series is pure CRAP. I spent a year in the CE program, every week they promise faster GUI. But they never delivered. Finally I just wanted those dogs out of my house. And dont even talk about the widgets. What a joke.


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## CharlesH (Aug 29, 2002)

bsmith1051 said:


> Is it a memory leak in the new Flash HD UI, or an errant Winsock process (triggered by a lost Internet connection even if just temporary) ?


Small nit here: "winsock" is the "Windows Socket" code used in Windows operating systems. It dates back to Windows 3.1 days, when networking was an add-on. TiVo is built on a Linux platform and thus does not use winsock.


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## RoyK (Oct 22, 2004)

orangeboy said:


> That doesn't make sense. "Working as expected" means recording TV. How is that supposed to happen with it unplugged?


How do you expect it to work when its unplugged? Well that's exactly how it works when its unplugged.


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## curiousgeorge (Nov 28, 2002)

AnotherBostonGuy said:


> Let's not get crazy here.
> 
> TiVo Premiere does not kill anything [sic] out there *right now*.
> 
> The current DirecTV PVRs work better and are more reliable. They have the most important feature that TiVo seems to have lost sight of: they just work, like an appliance.


Wrong.

The DirecTV units are SUBSTANTIALLY inferior in file transfer and interface speed to the Premiere in SD mode (the only valid point of apples to apples comparison). For reliability they are equal. So yes, the Premiere DOES have the upper hand.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

curiousgeorge said:


> Everyone I know that has one more more TiVos transfer programs. That's easily 20+ households. It's one of the best features.


I know several people with a TiVo. I don't know any that have more than one. I trust there are many out there, I just question it being something "typical".


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

crxssi said:


> curiousgeorge said:
> 
> 
> > crxssi said:
> ...


Since it is unknown the number of people that transfer programs, I would think it best to not try and quantify it with words like "most".


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

orangeboy said:


> Since it is unknown the number of people that transfer programs, I would think it best to not try and quantify it with words like "most".


Well you are right that it is complete speculation. But to me it does seem to have face validity. Too bad we don't have any statistics, it would be interesting.


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## bsmith1051 (Nov 15, 2009)

How did my nice tightly-constrained topic get hijacked so badly? START YER OWN THREADS! 



ZeoTiVo said:


> It has been noted in other threads that testers are not allowed to share any info they may have as a result of the testing.


Yes, I'm aware of that. Which is why I asked so 'obliquely' if the problems were merely recognized.



ZeoTiVo said:


> people might think they have decent broadband but not be aware of latency or lots of dropped packet problems


I suspect you're right. Still, network 'stacks' are hardly rocket science nowadays.



CharlesH said:


> Small nit here: "winsock" is the "Windows Socket" code used in Windows operating systems. It dates back to Windows 3.1 days, when networking was an add-on. TiVo is built on a Linux platform and thus does not use winsock.


Picky, picky!  OK, so I shoulda used the generic 'network stack' terminology. Instead, I've gone and revealed my long experience working in networking.


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## AnotherBostonGuy (May 6, 2010)

A guy is sitting in a bar. He polls all the people in the bar, with the following question: 

How many of you have visited a bar today?


A guy posts a msg in TiVo enthusiasts forum asking how many people transfer programs from their TiVo to another device...


I wish I could tell you what percentage of people use that feature on the TiVo, but I'm not allowed to as it's not public information.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

bsmith1051 said:


> Picky, picky!  OK, so I shoulda used the generic 'network stack' terminology. Instead, I've gone and revealed my long experience working in networking.


It apparently isn't all THAT long.... Microsoft didn't even understand the concept of networking when we Unix (the father/brother of Linux, thus, the ancestor of TiVo's OS) users were networking. Plus, when MS finally did discover networking, the refused to use TCP/IP, like the Unix world that was creating the Internet Then when they FINALLY decided to use TCP/IP, they couldn't write their own working code, so they took it from the networking code in BSD Unix.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

crxssi said:


> It apparently isn't all THAT long.... Microsoft didn't even understand the concept of networking when we Unix (the father/brother of Linux, thus, the ancestor of TiVo's OS) users were networking. Plus, when MS finally did discover networking, the refused to use TCP/IP, like the Unix world that was creating the Internet Then when they FINALLY decided to use TCP/IP, they couldn't write their own working code, so they took it from the networking code in BSD Unix.


yeah, I had hoped Winsock had been buried deep and never came out of its grave ever again


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## Derek Nickel (Oct 7, 2003)

caddyroger said:


> If I was wanting to use the premiere for the SD menu I could have saved my $700 and kept using my s3 which was working just find and just as fast.


Yeah, what he said!


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