# Hydra demo site?



## jcthorne (Jan 28, 2002)

Is there anywhere online that I could have a good look at Hydra and its interactions without having to install it on my Tivo? IE a demo site or really through youtube vid?


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## rdrrepair (Nov 24, 2006)

jcthorne said:


> Is there anywhere online that I could have a good look at Hydra and its interactions without having to install it on my Tivo? IE a demo site or really through youtube vid?


 Nope. Anything on YouTube is dated now that they're installing a New Update.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

rdrrepair said:


> Nope. Anything on YouTube is dated now that they're installing a New Update.


But they're still TE4 and close enough, to get the idea. And, no doubt, new videos will be coming to YouTube.


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## Rose4uKY (Mar 28, 2003)

So you can't see a DEMO of Hydra? I am on the fence whether to get the new Bolt or not since we're getting a 4K TV this weekend. We currently have the Roamio 6 tuner 1TB and I would like the Bolt 6 tuner 3TB and they offered me a discount but I've read good and bad reviews so don't know what to do.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

Rose4uKY said:


> So you can't see a DEMO of Hydra? I am on the fence whether to get the new Bolt or not since we're getting a 4K TV this weekend. We currently have the Roamio 6 tuner 1TB and I would like the Bolt 6 tuner 3TB and they offered me a discount but I've read good and bad reviews so don't know what to do.


There are many, I would assume, on YouTube. But note that even if you get a new Bolt box with Hydra (TE4) on it, you always can go back to the earlier UI (TE3) on the box (note: you will lose any recordings on the box, in the process).


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## mdavej (Aug 13, 2015)

Rose4uKY said:


> So you can't see a DEMO of Hydra? I am on the fence whether to get the new Bolt or not since we're getting a 4K TV this weekend. We currently have the Roamio 6 tuner 1TB and I would like the Bolt 6 tuner 3TB and they offered me a discount but I've read good and bad reviews so don't know what to do.


The vast majority of people (including me) are fine with Hydra. A Tivo insider has reported less than 1000 rollbacks. I've seen it reported that Tivo has at least 7 million subscribers. You can do the math.

So watch some Youtube videos or try it yourself and roll back if you don't like it.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

mdavej said:


> The vast majority of people (including me) are fine with Hydra. A Tivo insider has reported less than 1000 rollbacks. I've seen it reported that Tivo has at least 7 million subscribers. You can do the math.
> 
> So watch some Youtube videos or try it yourself and roll back if you don't like it.


Do people apart from those coming to TCF even know that rolling back is a possibility? 

Inertia, at times, just takes over. But I'm sure that Hydra/Mira/Miranda is just great (except when its update bricks a box with a user-replaced hard drive  ).


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## jcthorne (Jan 28, 2002)

Hydra is still missing features the previous version supports. Leaving transferred recordings aside, I am still trying to find a reason to move to Hydra. One good feature the old version does not have that is actually useful. As Plex has gotten better, my drive to transfer recordings to the Tivo has waned. Would still really prefer an integrated watch list even if some of the items were just links but Tivo has not seen fit to implement it. What we had and has slowly been taken away in TE3 is not coming back it seems.

As more and more of the content we watch is streamed rather than recorded OTA, the Tivo becomes less desirable to be the center of our entertainment system.

At this point, if there were a Tivo app that ran on FireTV or Roku, we would likely shift to the streaming device being the center with the small number of OTA shows being access via the app to Tivo running as a service.

I have tried a tuner and Plex DVR but its still no where close to stable with a high WAF.

As I will have some time over this holiday weekend to 'play' I will likely move one of the Tivo's to Hydra and give it a try. I can always move any recordings off to another Tivo and downgrade back if I need to.


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

mdavej said:


> The vast majority of people (including me) are fine with Hydra. A Tivo insider has reported less than 1000 rollbacks. I've seen it reported that Tivo has at least 7 million subscribers. You can do the math.


Not a logical conclusion. Of those 7 million subscribers, how many are on Hydra, or have the ability to rollback?

How many Hydra users, with the ability to rollback, have?


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## mdavej (Aug 13, 2015)

astrohip said:


> Not a logical conclusion. Of those 7 million subscribers, how many are on Hydra, or have the ability to rollback?
> 
> How many Hydra users, with the ability to rollback, have?


I didn't draw a conclusion because there isn't enough data. That's why I said "you do the math", as in, you figure out what proportion have Hydra or the ability to roll back. All we can do is guess. So even my most conservative guess of 100k Hydra users that meet that criteria means only 1% rollback rate. Point is that a lot of people have Hydra that don't hate it badly enough to roll back or even seek out how to roll back.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

mdavej said:


> I didn't draw a conclusion because there isn't enough data. That's why I said "you do the math", as in, you figure out what proportion have Hydra or the ability to roll back. All we can do is guess. So even my most conservative guess of 100k Hydra users that meet that criteria means only 1% rollback rate. Point is that a lot of people have Hydra that don't hate it badly enough to roll back or even seek out how to roll back.


I'm not convinced of the numbers, but presumably there are many people who like Hydra, and others who are fine enough with it.


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

mdavej said:


> The vast majority of people (including me) are fine with Hydra. A Tivo insider has reported less than 1000 rollbacks. I've seen it reported that Tivo has at least 7 million subscribers. You can do the math.


1,000 out of 7 million sounds impressive, but how many of those 7 million ever had Hydra in the first place? Are we talking 6,999,000 on Hydra/Mira, or the total number of TiVo subs vs rollbacks?

I'm not taking sides on the TE3 vs TE4 controversy, just questioning the numbers.


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## mdavej (Aug 13, 2015)

I posted the only two numbers we know. Draw your own conclusions or endlessly fret over and analyze something as trivial as whether you click pictures or words on your TV. Both work fundamentally the same. It’s not the end of the world either way.


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## BigJimOutlaw (Mar 21, 2004)

Just for context and clarity, Ted said, "more than 50% of our eligible installed base are now running TE4, with fewer than 1,000 downgrades."

Then he followed up, "I was only reporting on direct, retail customers. I have no idea what the take-rate is for TE4 on the MSO side of things."

So from that all we know is that there are greater than 450,000 Hydra boxes. (Their retail market is ~900k at this point). There are also MSOs using Hydra, but those are forced usages.

We here on the forum have been 50/50 based on polls but it'll probably lean in Tivo's favor after the fall update.

The 7m number doesn't really apply here. Virgin Media makes up more than half of that, but they will never have Hydra. Their old boxes will keep their red/purple Encore, and current boxes will transition to their own UI, so over time Tivo will be losing those 4 million peeps. VM might still license data, though.


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## HerronScott (Jan 1, 2002)

BigJimOutlaw said:


> Just for context and clarity, Ted said, "more than 50% of our eligible installed base are now running TE4, with fewer than 1,000 downgrades."
> 
> Then he followed up, "I was only reporting on direct, retail customers. I have no idea what the take-rate is for TE4 on the MSO side of things."
> 
> So from that all we know is that there are greater than 450,000 Hydra boxes. (Their retail market is ~900k at this point). There are also MSOs using Hydra, but those are forced usages.


You need to subtract out all the non-eligible devices (S2/S3 with service still) from the 900,000 retail market number so your estimate of number of Hydra/TE4 TiVo's will be lower based on Ted's information.

Scott


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## xberk (Dec 3, 2011)

Mikeguy said:


> There are many, I would assume, on YouTube. But note that even if you get a new Bolt box with Hydra (TE4) on it, you always can go back to the earlier UI (TE3) on the box (note: you will lose any recordings on the box, in the process).


How do you roll back to TE3? .. I just got a Bolt + and I'm not thrilled with TE4, especially if TE3 would allow me to do PC >> TIVO transfers using pyTivo (which TE4 does not)... I also missed the Live Guide. Is there a list somewhere of features that TE3 had that are gone in TE4 ?


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

xberk said:


> How do you roll back to TE3? .. I just got a Bolt + and I'm not thrilled with TE4, especially if TE3 would allow me to do PC >> TIVO transfers using pyTivo (which TE4 does not)... I also missed the Live Guide. Is there a list somewhere of features that TE3 had that are gone in TE4 ?


There are numerous TE4/Hydra threads here that you can read, as to people's impressions of TE4 and what they miss or otherwise have less-good feelings about. I haven't moved to TE4 myself--my understanding of the currently major missing elements are, the PC => TiVo box transfer capability (transfers further complicated by the need, under TE4, to use TiVo online for transferring shows between boxes); and the lack of a full Live Guide (although TiVo brought it back to a degree, with the mini Live Guide under TE4). I'm sure that you've discovered other aspects by now as well, which have been changed from the earlier interface--some people report seeming to have an issue adjusting to the required use of the "back" button (as vs. being able to use the left button (to the left of the "Select" button) on the upper wheel); and some people have reported that doing certain tasks requires more button presses.

The roll-back procedure: How to Rollback Hydra from Roamio and Mini's v1 (people have reported here that this works with the Bolt boxes as well). Do keep in mind that all your shows on the box are lost, as part of the roll-back procedure--if there are shows you wish to retain, transfer them to another TiVo box or to your PC first (freeware pyTivo Desktop, developed by one of the moderators here, is an easy-to-install-and-use show transfer program -- Easier to use pyTivo).


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## xberk (Dec 3, 2011)

>>major missing elements are, the PC => TiVo box transfer capability

Yes. This was major for me until I realized that TIVO is NOT a media server. Sure. You could easily (using pyTivo and the like) put things on your Tivo's drive .. but you could NOT --- EVER -- organize them easily. Folders were possible in the days of "pushing" stuff but those days are gone. And even then, once you had things on your Tivo drive it could not be renamed -- or placed in a different order or different folder .. MAJOR MAJOR draw backs to a machine storing YOUR content. 

The answer is a MEDIA server. A real one. For me that consists of my home network, a portable USB hard drive, a mini PC (an old laptop would do it too), an old Windows XP PC for a server, and some Free Server software. Sure. The navigation and playback controls are not as smooth as TIVO but nearly so .. and I can reorganize my content as easy as drag and drop .. and add new content quickly and easily on my network.


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## TonyD79 (Jan 4, 2002)

xberk said:


> >>major missing elements are, the PC => TiVo box transfer capability
> 
> Yes. This was major for me until I realized that TIVO is NOT a media server. Sure. You could easily (using pyTivo and the like) put things on your Tivo's drive .. but you could NOT --- EVER -- organize them easily. Folders were possible in the days of "pushing" stuff but those days are gone. And even then, once you had things on your Tivo drive it could not be renamed -- or placed in a different order or different folder .. MAJOR MAJOR draw backs to a machine storing YOUR content.
> 
> The answer is a MEDIA server. A real one. For me that consists of my home network, a portable USB hard drive, a mini PC (an old laptop would do it too), an old Windows XP PC for a server, and some Free Server software. Sure. The navigation and playback controls are not as smooth as TIVO but nearly so .. and I can reorganize my content as easy as drag and drop .. and add new content quickly and easily on my network.


I agree and use Plex for just that. My DVR always has been a time shifting machine, not a media server. Therefore, I don't store things on it. I've had a variety of DVRs from Comcast, Verizon, TiVo and directv and used them the same way. Watch and delete. If I want to keep something, I would make a tape (old days to new), a dvd or store on a media server.


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