# Well this is interesting!



## cwaring

My internet just went off for a short while and it took my Tivo's network connection with it.

It was only off for around 5 mins but it did allow me to discover something interesting that I did not realise; which would also explain why the Tivo is so slow to update some pages like "My Shows".

I had assumed that all the graphics, etc., were stored locally, but they're not 

The details and pic that appear on the right when you highlight a programme would not display whilst the network connection was not available. Even more suprising was that, with no network connection, you cannot use the 'OK' button to bring up the full 'programme details' page!

Or is this old news to most people and I'm just being my usual slow self?


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## BigH

My internet was down most of saturday and spotted this.

it had all my shows listed but no episode details/etc. 

i thought it a bit odd


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## mikerr

You could actually play back those recordings by pressing play on the remote instead of ok.

It really should be caching more of those images and info on the HDD, I really think network or server congestion is the cause of the sometimes slow menus - and inconsistent speed.


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## cwaring

mikerr said:


> You could actually play back those recordings by pressing play on the remote instead of ok.


Yes, I know. I always do that  Playback wasn't the issue.



> It really should be caching more of those images and info on the HDD, I really think network or server congestion is the cause of the sometimes slow menus - and inconsistent speed.


Agreed.


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## VirginMediaPhil

But then there would probably be a backlash from people if VM took say 100GB or so to store information of your disk, and everyone who had said why TiVo/VM was better because they didn't do this would look like a hypocrite.


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## Ernie_C

I guess that this means performance can be improved when/if they increase the BB speed to 20Mb on TiVo.


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## browellm

Ernie_C said:


> I guess that this means performance can be improved when/if they increase the BB speed to 20Mb on TiVo.


I doubt it. It will be more to do with latency and server load than throughput. 10MB should be ample for the job.


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## TCM2007

VirginMediaPhil said:


> But then there would probably be a backlash from people if VM took say 100GB or so to store information of your disk, and everyone who had said why TiVo/VM was better because they didn't do this would look like a hypocrite.


100Gb? That would be a lot of text and thumbnails!


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## cwaring

TCM2007 said:


> 100Gb? That would be a lot of text and thumbnails!


Indeed. I was thinking more around 100MB. And I certainly wouldn't complain about it. As I said in my original post, I assumed that *was* how they did it.


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## mikerr

TCM2007 said:


> 100Gb? That would be a lot of text and thumbnails!


100GB could be the entire database of pictures !

Obviously too much, but it appears they're not even caching anything, which is why UI speed may be dictated by network/server load.
This also explains the variable interface speed many are seeing.


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## VirginMediaPhil

Oops, I meant like 10GB, nevermind - even that's too much.


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## cwaring

Hehe! The perils of an extra zero


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## big_dirk

Crikey Carl, good spot there. I can hardly believe it!? That's really, *really* poor ideas/code to not cache as much as possible!


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## cwaring

I was only messing around; seeing what could and could not be done with no internet connection.

But I could not agree more. I mean, I don't know much about programming but I would assume something like that would be a pretty standard thing to do so I am at a loss to explain why they don't.


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## alextegg

Absolutely. If, as it appears, the speed or presence/lack of the internet connection affects the performance or basic functionality of the VM TiVo it should be very near the top of the list of things to be fixed !


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## alextegg

Rather ironically my internet went off this afternoon for a few hours for the first time in years, and TiVo was noticeably slower without it. Presumably there's a timeout for anything that is tries to retrieve and can't.

Not the best design of software


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## ericd121

I must admit, I am somewhat shocked by this discovery.

I would imagine that, even from a pure programming view, it would take less code to reference a resource locally, rather than from the network.

And from a customer satisfaction POV, the customer might be less upset about their internet going down if they can say, "Ah well, I'll play with the Tivo for a while."


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## ColinYounger

I think it's been done this way purely to protect assets. There's no way your TiVo is going to work if it's taken "off grid".


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## alextegg

Well, given the picture comes down the cable that's certainly true 

But I for one can't see how it makes sense that it doesn't cache non-programme content (images etc) locally to improve performance.


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## ColinYounger

Because they never saw a performance problem? They've got bandwidth to spare, probably servers to spare as well. They just add more of one or the other and the problem goes away. I don't think it's even occurred to them that they would "need" local caching.


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## alextegg

Yes, probably.

I think that's called Quality Testing - not


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## ColinYounger

No software can be or ever will be perfect, so I still buy the asset protection\didn't stress test network link theory.

The asset protection one I'd say was the most likely.


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## cwaring

My Tivo lost its network connection again early this morning so I did some more digging and found that, although Wishlist results are accessible locally, Search and Browse are not.

Again, that's just weird because don't they all rely on the same meta-data?


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## mikerr

The HD screens use network data, the SD screens use traditional tivo cached data.
Search/browse is a HD menu, wishlists are SD.

Another side effect of this is that extended episode data e.g. "Series 9 episode 3" (HD menus) is not accessible to wishlists (SD menus)

If it was in that data, we'd be able to set a wishlist for a particular series

e.g. the following should only record series 9 of CSI, 
but actually doesn't work because the HD/SD datasets are different:









The first frame is from the HD menu, the rest SD

_actually old S1 users can successfully do the above since altepg now has (S9ep3) in the description !_


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## cwaring

Okay. Thanks for the explanation mike. Interesting.


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## Furball

ColinYounger said:


> The asset protection one I'd say was the most likely.


There not silly 

Keep everything out of the consumers reach so it means theres less they can fiddle with and means without it connecting to their servers its just paper weight


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## unitron

cwaring said:


> My internet just went off for a short while and it took my Tivo's network connection with it.
> 
> It was only off for around 5 mins but it did allow me to discover something interesting that I did not realise; which would also explain why the Tivo is so slow to update some pages like "My Shows".
> 
> I had assumed that all the graphics, etc., were stored locally, but they're not
> 
> The details and pic that appear on the right when you highlight a programme would not display whilst the network connection was not available. Even more suprising was that, with no network connection, you cannot use the 'OK' button to bring up the full 'programme details' page!
> 
> Or is this old news to most people and I'm just being my usual slow self?


It's probably not old news over there, but stateside Premiere owners (i.e., people with more money than me) have been discussing and complaining about this since it first came out.

Apparently loss of internet means having to shift back to the SD UI to get anything done.

I don't know if that means that stuff isn't stored locally, or if you just can't get to it without some kind of internet magic.


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## mikerr

unitron said:


> Apparently loss of internet means having to shift back to the SD UI to get anything done.


The UK version doesn't even allow you to totally switch to the SD UI for now playing screens / tivo central etc _normally_

...but since they've enabled USB keyboards, we can now can get to it by pressing the "secret" F11 key on an attached keyboard.


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## cwaring

mikerr said:


> ...but since they've enabled USB keyboards, we can now can get to it by pressing the "secret" F11 key on an attached keyboard.


Really?  Did not know that. May have to have a play 

ETA:
Had a play last night and got it to work; but only the once


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## Brangdon

cwaring said:


> Had a play last night and got it to work; but only the once


As I recall, it doesn't work from the Home screen. F11 only takes you to the SD Home screen if you are not already in a Home screen.


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