# How many TiVo Mini's can be connected on same MoCA network?



## dmk1974 (Mar 7, 2002)

I currently have 2 Mini's in my house that are connected to the coax via MoCA. If I add 2 more, are there any potential issues with bandwidth? I have 2 Premiere 4 boxes and would just split up tapping into the two of them for the primary connections. Thanks!


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## southerndoc (Apr 5, 2003)

I have 6 Minis and was streaming simultaneously with 5 of them while live TV was on the Roamio. Not a single problem.

Haven't tried to do 6 streams. Not sure it's possible since I think the Roamio always needs a tuner active.


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## dmk1974 (Mar 7, 2002)

geekmedic said:


> I have 6 Minis and was streaming simultaneously with 5 of them while live TV was on the Roamio. Not a single problem.
> 
> Haven't tried to do 6 streams. Not sure it's possible since I think the Roamio always needs a tuner active.


Thanks! That is encouraging. I like the Mini's in my house...they actually seem to be faster and more responsive than the actual Premiere 4 boxes. I may set 1 of the Premiere 4 boxes to connect 3 of the Minis (since it sits in the basement and is seldom used) and the primary Premiere 4 to just 1 so more tuners are available for recording.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

The Premiere units only support 3 simultaneous streams. You can have up to 8 Minis, but only 3 can be in use at a given time.


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## mack1951 (Dec 19, 2008)

MoCa has a limit on number of devices you can connect. 1.0 is 7 1.1 is 15 but all devices need to be 1.1 to have 15.


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## southerndoc (Apr 5, 2003)

Is TiVo using 1.0 or 1.1? I ask because I'm about to buy a 7th Mini to connect to an exercise room. I already have 7 MoCA devices (6 Minis plus 1 Roamio Pro).


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

Dan203 said:


> The Premiere units only support 3 simultaneous streams. You can have up to 8 Minis, but only 3 can be in use at a given time.


I was able to stream to 5 Minis at the same time (watching a different channel on each) from one Roamio +, I did not try watching 5 different recordings at the same time.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

lessd said:


> I was able to stream to 5 Minis at the same time (watching a different channel on each) from one Roamio +, I did not try watching 5 different recordings at the same time.


Roamios don't seem to have a limit, but the Premiere units are still limited to 3 simultaneous streams.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

WOW, that's pretty amazing. I have been able to do 3 live channels off of an XL4 in a quick test.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

If you tried to do an iPad stream at the same time or stream to another TiVo the 4th one would fail. It's a hardware limitation. There was a time when they didn't have a limit and when you tried that 4th stream it would usually cause the TiVo to reboot, so they added the 3 stream limit.

The Roamio hardware specs are capable of much more. Although the TiVo site does mention an 8 Mini limit. I've always assumed it was an account limit, but it might be a hardware limit as well. I don't have enough TiVos/Minis to test.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

Dan203 said:


> If you tried to do an iPad stream at the same time or stream to another TiVo the 4th one would fail. It's a hardware limitation. There was a time when they didn't have a limit and when you tried that 4th stream it would usually cause the TiVo to reboot, so they added the 3 stream limit.
> 
> The Roamio hardware specs are capable of much more. Although the TiVo site does mention an 8 Mini limit. I've always assumed it was an account limit, but it might be a hardware limit as well. I don't have enough TiVos/Minis to test.


Yeah, I don't have anything other than an XL4 and three Mini's, so I'm pretty happy with that part of it... the slow menus not so much, but I'm not looking to drop $1100 on a new TiVo right now, so it will soldier on.


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## dmk1974 (Mar 7, 2002)

Bigg said:


> Yeah, I don't have anything other than an XL4 and three Mini's, so I'm pretty happy with that part of it... the slow menus not so much, but I'm not looking to drop $1100 on a new TiVo right now, so it will soldier on.


With your XL4 and 3 Mini's connected, does that mean you can only watch/record 1 show on the main XL4 box? It sounds like recordings don't automatically trump the Mini's which is too bad.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

dmk1974 said:


> With your XL4 and 3 Mini's connected, does that mean you can only watch/record 1 show on the main XL4 box? It sounds like recordings don't automatically trump the Mini's which is too bad.


With the newest software tuner allocation is dynamic. Meaning the main TiVo has access to all of the tuners. If all three Minis were in use and the TiVo needed an extra tuner to record it would prompt one of the Minis and ask it to relinquish the tuner, just like it does if someone is watching live TV on the main TiVo.


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## dmk1974 (Mar 7, 2002)

Dan203 said:


> With the newest software tuner allocation is dynamic. Meaning the main TiVo has access to all of the tuners. If all three Minis were in use and the TiVo needed an extra tuner to record it would prompt one of the Minis and ask it to relinquish the tuner, just like it does if someone is watching live TV on the main TiVo.


The drawback though is that the recording does not sound like it automatically supersedes what is being viewed on the Mini.

On the stand-alone TiVo, it will prompt and if the user does not respond, it will flip to the channel where the scheduled recording is. In this case, it will not automatically flip to the recording and requires a viewers intervention. Or am I understanding incorrectly?


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## CrispyCritter (Feb 28, 2001)

dmk1974 said:


> The drawback though is that the recording does not sound like it automatically supersedes what is being viewed on the Mini.
> 
> On the stand-alone TiVo, it will prompt and if the user does not respond, it will flip to the channel where the scheduled recording is. In this case, it will not automatically flip to the recording and requires a viewers intervention. Or am I understanding incorrectly?


yes, you are understanding incorrectly. If there is no response, then the recording will be started. Recordings have the highest default priority. (This causes other problems sometimes, in that in means you sometimes cannot watch live-tv on the Mini without stopping an ongoing recording.)

I believe the host asks the live-tv user which has least recently shown any activity about whether the recording should be cancelled. It doesn't distinguish between host or Mini in this regard.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

dmk1974 said:


> The drawback though is that the recording does not sound like it automatically supersedes what is being viewed on the Mini.
> 
> On the stand-alone TiVo, it will prompt and if the user does not respond, it will flip to the channel where the scheduled recording is. In this case, it will not automatically flip to the recording and requires a viewers intervention. Or am I understanding incorrectly?


The default answer is to relinquish the tuner, so if there is no response from the user of the Mini then it will timeout and click "yes" just like it does on the host TiVo.

The only draw back, as CrispyCritter pointed out, is that because the host now has access to all tuners you can run into a situation where you can't watch live TV on the Mini because all the tuners are being used by the host to record.


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## dmk1974 (Mar 7, 2002)

Dan203 said:


> The default answer is to relinquish the tuner, so if there is no response from the user of the Mini then it will timeout and click "yes" just like it does on the host TiVo.
> 
> The only draw back, as CrispyCritter pointed out, is that because the host now has access to all tuners you can run into a situation where you can't watch live TV on the Mini because all the tuners are being used by the host to record.


Thank you both for the responses. Personally, I am glad that it works this way because I thought perhaps it limited the number of possible simultaneous recordings on my Premiere. I'd rather that the Mini not have the ability to watch live TV if there is not a free tuner on the Premiere. The user on the Mini should still have plenty they can watch.


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## dmk1974 (Mar 7, 2002)

Are there any good deals on the TiVo Mini right now? I still haven't pulled the trigger to add the 2 additional Mini's to my house for the kids' bedrooms, but may do so.

I would then have 1 Mini (in master bedroom) connected to my family room 2 TB Premiere 4 (primary for my wife and I) and then 3 Mini's connected to the basement 500 GB Premiere 4 for the kids rooms and kitchen. If they get constrained on live viewing and recordings, then too bad for them


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

dmk1974 said:


> Are there any good deals on the TiVo Mini right now? I still haven't pulled the trigger to add the 2 additional Mini's to my house for the kids' bedrooms, but may do so.
> 
> I would then have 1 Mini (in master bedroom) connected to my family room 2 TB Premiere 4 (primary for my wife and I) and then 3 Mini's connected to the basement 500 GB Premiere 4 for the kids rooms and kitchen. If they get constrained on live viewing and recordings, then too bad for them


There really aren't significant deals, since much of the cost is the subscription, $150, vs. $100 for the hardware. I have 3 Mini's and an XL4 serving the whole house, and we rarely run into conflicts, but of course it depends on how much crap you record. I'd imagine with the new Roamio boxes, all 6 tuners would almost never be recording all at once. Even with 4 unrelated people in one house (myself and 3 roommates), we only get all 4 tuners recording for more than a minute at a time once or twice a week, if that, during TV season, and basically never during the summer.


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## bparker (Mar 5, 2014)

Is moca network better for minis than clogging up the home Ethernet?


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

I don't think some 12-18mbps video streams are going to clog up a gigabit network...


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Ethernet is always better then MoCa. You only need to use MoCa if you don't have access to Ethernet in the room where you want the Mini or the host TiVo.


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## dmk1974 (Mar 7, 2002)

Well, I finally upgraded my kids from the basic Comcast boxes to a couple of TiVo Mini boxes. They are both setup on MoCA connections and so far (less than 12 hours) appear to be working just fine. 

In total now, I have 3 Mini's connected to my Basement TiVo Premiere 4 (the 2 new kids boxes plus the Kitchen) and the Mini in my Master Bedroom connected to the Family Room Premiere 4. Hopefully they all work well with no network issues. If anything, the kids will probably sometimes run out of tuners if they have too many recordings, but oh well...they're lucky to have what they have


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## tarheelblue32 (Jan 13, 2014)

dmk1974 said:


> Well, I finally upgraded my kids from the basic Comcast boxes to a couple of TiVo Mini boxes. They are both setup on MoCA connections and so far (less than 12 hours) appear to be working just fine.
> 
> In total now, I have 3 Mini's connected to my Basement TiVo Premiere 4 (the 2 new kids boxes plus the Kitchen) and the Mini in my Master Bedroom connected to the Family Room Premiere 4. Hopefully they all work well with no network issues. If anything, the kids will probably sometimes run out of tuners if they have too many recordings, but oh well...they're lucky to have what they have


Get the kids a Roamio Plus for X-mas.


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## dmk1974 (Mar 7, 2002)

tarheelblue32 said:


> Get the kids a Roamio Plus for X-mas.


Heck, I'd get _myself _a Roamio Plus first!


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

dmk1974 said:


> Well, I finally upgraded my kids from the basic Comcast boxes to a couple of TiVo Mini boxes. They are both setup on MoCA connections and so far (less than 12 hours) appear to be working just fine.
> 
> In total now, I have 3 Mini's connected to my Basement TiVo Premiere 4 (the 2 new kids boxes plus the Kitchen) and the Mini in my Master Bedroom connected to the Family Room Premiere 4. Hopefully they all work well with no network issues. If anything, the kids will probably sometimes run out of tuners if they have too many recordings, but oh well...they're lucky to have what they have


You can almost always work around tuner limitations with creative scheduling. I got through Sochi and March Madness with 3 roommates in addition to myself all sharing a single XL4. Yeah, the XL4 was running hard during both events, with several stretches of full 4 tuner recording...


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Most of the Sochi stuff was on in the middle of the night tough right?


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

Dan203 said:


> Most of the Sochi stuff was on in the middle of the night tough right?


Plus the Prime Time blocks where there was often something else going on with one of the other channels, in addition to the normal recording load...

March Madness would tougher with multiple games on at once. One of the Thursdays or Fridays I had to get really creative with scheduling to get almost all of two games I think.


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