# Tivo Responsiveness When Will They Speed It Up?



## Resist (Dec 21, 2003)

Not sure about everyone else, but I sure am getting tired of the delayed response when using the Tivo interface. It's a tad better using the Slide remote on BlueTooth, but still lags. 

Worse yet is trying to control my Tivo on my laptop via my Slingbox, even on my fast 15MB home Wifi Internet connection.

Maybe I just don't understand how Tivo works and it's something they can't fix. All I know is, here we are in the 21st century and Tivo still lags out.


----------



## rahnbo (Sep 12, 2010)

I'm tired of none of the problems getting fixed.


----------



## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

I'm tired of the whole TiVo thing! (Yeah, I need to get a life instead of reading this forum.  )

We need to face the fact that history is rapidly leaving the TiVo, as we would like to know it, behind. How's that phrase go? "Deal with it!" 

I'll nurse my TA-afllicted HD along for as long as I can stand it, then .... ??


----------



## rahnbo (Sep 12, 2010)

dlfl said:


> I'll nurse my TA-afllicted HD along for as long as I can stand it, then .... ??


That's really the question now, what next? Tivo was a company I was willing to pay a premium to for something I could do myself or realistically do entirely without. They did it better than anyone else and it feels like they're deliberately self destructing now. Based on my experience with Tivo Premiere there is no way I'd ever buy Tivo again. I don't NEED to watch TV but I like to. There are plenty of other things I can do than, as you say, nurse my Tivo.


----------



## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

rahnbo said:


> That's really the question now, what next? Tivo was a company I was willing to pay a premium to for something I could do myself or realistically do entirely without. They did it better than anyone else and it feels like they're deliberately self destructing now. Based on my experience with Tivo Premiere there is no way I'd ever buy Tivo again. I don't NEED to watch TV but I like to. There are plenty of other things I can do than, as you say, nurse my Tivo.


I don't think they're deliberately self destructing, although the practical result is the same. Time and technology move on. Companies and their products come and go, or evolve to something different. I do think the more posters here who realize this, the better.

My problem is, after looking at alternatives, there is nothing that does what TiVo does for me -- although it doesn't do it as well or as reliably as I would like. Better days will come but I wonder what TiVo's role in them will be, and actually why should I care?


----------



## rahnbo (Sep 12, 2010)

dlfl said:


> I don't think they're deliberately self destructing, although the practical result is the same. Time and technology move on. Companies and their products come and go, or evolve to something different. I do think the more posters here who realize this, the better.
> 
> My problem is, after looking at alternatives, there is nothing that does what TiVo does for me -- although it doesn't do it as well or as reliably as I would like. Better days will come but I wonder what TiVo's role in them will be, and actually why should I care?


I don't see any reason to care. Tivo isn't giving us a reason. The gap between what Tivo used to be and what it is now leaves a huge gap and I'd rather learn how to fix my motorcycle's shaft drive than do with less and what's going to happen with folks like me is I'll just do stuff like that than use another Tivo.


----------



## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

rahnbo said:


> I don't see any reason to care. Tivo isn't giving us a reason. The gap between what Tivo used to be and what it is now leaves a huge gap and I'd rather learn how to fix my motorcycle's shaft drive than do with less and what's going to happen with folks like me is I'll just do stuff like that than use another Tivo.


 You may benefit from **this**


----------



## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

rahnbo said:


> I don't see any reason to care. Tivo isn't giving us a reason. The gap between what Tivo used to be and what it is now leaves a huge gap and I'd rather learn how to fix my motorcycle's shaft drive than do with less and what's going to happen with folks like me is I'll just do stuff like that than use another Tivo.


The only reason to care about TiVo (or any company) is if they are providing something that you want. Which means pretty much anyone who owns a functioning lifetimed TiVo should care.

I have no issue with anyone not liking TiVo and not using their products. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

I do have issue with someone posting BS. The TiVo Premier while not a significant improvement over a Series 3 or TiVo HD is still a step forward not backward. The Premier has more abilities and does everything that a Series 3 or TiVo HD does either as good or better. If anyone has a Premier that doesn't work as good or better than a Series 3 or TiVo HD then the unit is defective or there is something else wrong.

What most people seem to want is a high end HTPC that costs $100. All I can say is keep on dreaming.

Thanks,


----------



## aadam101 (Jul 15, 2002)

They are not going to speed it up. They are busy with iPad apps and other features to slow it down. They don't want to improve the product. They want to put another company logo on the marketing materials. As of this week they can stick an Apple iPad logo on the box. They are very proud of themselves. Next up Hulu.....


----------



## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

rahnbo said:


> I don't see any reason to care. Tivo isn't giving us a reason. The gap between what Tivo used to be and what it is now leaves a huge gap...........





atmuscarella said:


> ............I do have issue with someone posting BS. The TiVo Premier while not a significant improvement over a Series 3 or TiVo HD is still a step forward not backward.........,


I wouldn't dispute that. But my interpretation of what rahnbo is saying, and I agree with it, is that *relative* to the *competition*, and to *video technology* in general, TiVo has been losing ground in the last 4 years (since the Series 3 debuted).

In addition, for me and many others, Series 3 and 4 TiVo's do not provide reliable performance. Examples include:

1. SDV Tuning Failures when using Tuning Adapters. (Missed recordings)
2. Freezes or lockups caused by signal problems (Should never happen)
3. Lockups using Netflix due to network glitches. (Should never happen)
4. Lockups when using HDMI to TV, forcing component connections.
5. Expander drives with the reputation of failing after 12 to 18 months.

Some of these may not be entirely TiVo's "fault" but that doesn't really matter -- they are the user experience. And TiVo support isn't exactly sterling at addressing such issues. AFAIK, the Premier experiences all or most of the above problems -- which tends to contradict the idea that TiVo is marching forward.


----------



## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

dlfl said:


> I wouldn't dispute that. But my interpretation of what rahnbo is saying, and I agree with it, is that *relative* to the *competition*, and to *video technology* in general, TiVo has been losing ground in the last 4 years (since the Series 3 debuted).
> 
> In addition, for me and many others, Series 3 and 4 TiVo's do not provide reliable performance. Examples include:
> 
> ...


I think you are describing the general state of unhappiness with "TV" in general. People don't really want to be tied to a time schedule, mandatory channel line up or a single provider. TiVo has attempted to solve some of the issues but really has their hand tied by things out of their control - which leads to unhappy customers. There is a reason that non of the up and coming Internet connect devices (Google TV, Apple TV, Roku, etc.) are a DVR.

And it is not limited to TiVo, I am trying to listen to my Livio Internet Radio right now and it is impossible to do so. I know the reason why (my DSL has gone to sh** with a 20+% packet loss every afternoon and evening - funny it works great in the early morning). I could say Livio Radios sucks for not putting in a 100X larger buffer but as informed consumer I know better.

My TiVo's work in a manner that is acceptable to me based on my expectations of computer equipment in general. And yes occasionally they lock up, reboot for no reason or general just don't respond well. So if other people have more problems or higher expectations they may come to a different conclusion and find their TiVos unacceptable.

Isn't that the way it is with pretty much everything in life?

Thanks,


----------



## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

atmuscarella said:


> I think you are describing the general state of unhappiness with "TV" in general. People don't really want to be tied to a time schedule, mandatory channel line up or a single provider. TiVo has attempted to solve some of the issues but really has their hand tied by things out of their control - which leads to unhappy customers. There is a reason that non of the up and coming Internet connect devices (Google TV, Apple TV, Roku, etc.) are a DVR.


I guess you're alluding to the uphill battle TiVo has had trying to interoperate with cable TV, e.g., CableCARD and Tuning Adapters and more than 10 MSO's with different equipment and operating procedures. I agree, that has been a problem beyond TiVo's control, and is a problem for any device receiving cable. The future I like to picture will have no CableCARDs or Tuning Adapters in it!


atmuscarella said:


> My TiVo's work in a manner that is acceptable to me based on my expectations of computer equipment in general. And yes occasionally they lock up, reboot for no reason or general just don't respond well. So if other people have more problems or higher expectations they may come to a different conclusion and find their TiVos unacceptable.
> .......,


As you point out this is subjective and experiences vary. However I believe two things:

1. At least 3 or 4 of the five reliability problems I mentioned previously could be fixed by TiVo and would not require massive efforts. TiVo has known about them for a long time.
2. Based on the posts here, more than a few people are having these problems. Of course there are no statistics.

I have quite a few electronc devices in my home and none of them comes close to the TiVo in problems. So I guess I'm one of the people who has "come to a different conclusion".


----------



## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

News Flash - The current Tivo interface is way faster than it used to be so quit whining. Tivo sped things up years ago with an OS overhaul and the UI has been running far better ever since, thank you very much.

The problem is that the Tivo processor is slower than dirt and has minimal memory. Until they redesign the mainboard and incorporate faster hardware, it's always going to run at the current speed.

Perhaps some of you don't recall the days when the HR10-250 HD-Tivos were originally selling for $999. Now you can get a HD Tivo for about $200 with far more bells and whistles.

Tivos have steadily dropped in price over the years. In order to keep it that way, Tivo has to cut corners with respect to the hardware they put in the box. They're having enough problems getting people to sign up even with the current pricing structure. An increase in the cost of Tivo hardware would probably be like a death sentence to an already struggling company.

The bottom line is that if you're unhappy with Tivo, stop whining and move on. There are other choices available to you.

FWIW, I've been a Tivo user for well over a decade and I've experienced very few issues with them. Then again, I've learned how to fix most of my own Tivo problems, many of which stem from hard drive issues that are relatively easy to deal with. You mostly only hear about problems in forums such as this. The reality is that any consumer electronics device will have a certain number of issues and Tivo is no different. In fact, Tivo probably has fewer issues than a lot of other consumer devices. If you look at the number of complaints I think you'll see that they reflect an extremely small percentage of actual Tivos out there. Overall, Tivos are generally very reliable devices. Tivo can't control hard drive issues, mainly because they don't build them. If you want to point the finger at someone, you need to look at the drive manufacturer. Frankly, I've replaced every stock Tivo hard drive with a larger aftermarket one right out of the box. Perhaps that's why I've had so few problems with them. The warranty is a joke anyway so voiding it really isn't an issue for me.


----------



## bschuler2007 (Feb 25, 2007)

May I break the unspoken forum rules and dare offer a helpful post to this stream of useless and unhelpful posts?

If so, have you tried turning off the HD menus? The SD menus do not need to pull info off the internet and thus are about 1000 times faster.


----------



## rahnbo (Sep 12, 2010)

bschuler2007 said:


> have you tried turning off the HD menus? The SD menus do not need to pull info off the internet and thus are about 1000 times faster.


Been using the SD menus since September. Yes they are much faster but occasionally they stop responding to the remote for 10 minutes per instance. There are at least two other threads on that. Tivo's support told me to:
1. Forget about it, we'll fix it eventually. All our other customers are happy.
2. Run 16 hours of disk diagnostics (2 Premieres @ 8 hours each)
3. Unplug everything including the cable, cable card, etc and leave it that way
4. Give them a report from speedtest.net when I told them several times I was using SD menus.
5. They kept referring to an imaginary expander.
6. Finally they totally gave up and told me both boxes are defective and to exchange them. Hmm, what happened to #1, wouldn't the refurbished units have the same problem? Of course they will.

The above, the poor performance of the HDUI, in addition to what dlfl and others pointed out just makes me not like Tivo anymore. Its a daily source of frustration and with 3 units total under lifetime it would be financially stupid just to toss them and "move on." Using Tivo (Series 2, never had S3) used to be such an enjoyable thing. Plop down on the couch and watch TV. Never had to wonder if it was going to freeze up, be laggy, randomly reboot, etc. I was proud to show it off to friends and now there is no way I'm going to do that because I know once I press that Tivo button it could be 10 minutes before the now playing list pops up. If I switch back to HDUI I know it will be 3 seconds per screen trying to navigate the now playing list and when I try to find shows to record that green ring is going to pop of frequently and stay there sometimes for up to a minute. I gave Tivo the benefit of the doubt the first few months with Premiere. I know something new has bugs and issues to iron out. I was one of the people back in August telling people to wait it out. But I think the time has definitely passed where those things should have been fixed.


----------



## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

bschuler2007 said:


> May I break the unspoken forum rules and dare offer a helpful post to this stream of useless and unhelpful posts?
> 
> If so, have you tried turning off the HD menus? The SD menus do not need to pull info off the internet and thus are about 1000 times faster.


LOL! Nice try but as it turns out, just another "useless and unhelpful" post. 

And a little lacking in the civility department too. (You may soon be hearing from the President's Council On Civil Discourse. )


----------



## jakerome (Nov 29, 2002)

I've only rarely experienced unresponsiveness when browsing Now Playing & other lists. My solution is to go to Live TV then back to Now Playing, and 90&#37; of the time that fixes the problem.


----------



## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

I'd be curious to know how full your hard drives are with recorded shows if you're experiencing the sluggish UI. A full drive can slow things down considerably.


----------



## bschuler2007 (Feb 25, 2007)

Yeah, I second mr. unnatural's curiosity. If you used SD menus and it was still very slow, Disable Home Network apps. If it is still slow.. then the only 2 causes I can think of. One is the channel logo, tv show info details. The other is a messed up network (remove network cable of wireless to troubleshoot). When it fills in the Now Playing List, it grabs all the channel logos, etc.. and I can see that being slow on a very large drive filled to capacity.


----------



## aadam101 (Jul 15, 2002)

mr.unnatural said:


> News Flash - The current Tivo interface is way faster than it used to be so quit whining.


Huh? Tell that to all the folks around here who complain about how slow the HDUI is. It is definitely not faster.......


----------



## solutionsetc (Apr 2, 2009)

Adobe has been the king of bloatware (surpassing M$) for almost a decade. There was little doubt in my mind that TiVo's decision to shortcut development with Flash would be a fatal mistake. Dead technology&#8230; trying to hang on to a huge legacy market. 

Does anyone really enjoy browsing heavily Flashed sites?

TiVo has lost both its software and interface advantage. The interface hadn't evolved much since the series two days until the series four&#8230; including a unit that was marketed for HD users with an SD interface. 

And now that they have new, faster hardware, the new interface doesn't address the age old issue of requiring way too many button presses to get where you want to go, and displaying way too little info on each page. 

Instead we have bloatware, involving the downloading of lots of thumbnails of shows we have no interest in so TiVo can charge a fee to promote these shows. For years now, TiVo has cluttered their award winning interface with anything they can to earn them an extra buck. Their decision to go with Flash not only involves performance issues, but makes for much less effort to use your internet bandwidth to cram even more marketing crap into your user interface. And I find it more than just a little sad that this is the only "continued development" that I have seen since acquiring my series 3 units many moons ago.

With all that said, TiVo is still the only DVR that allows me to offload my shows to other storage, re-encoding them to far more efficient encodings (other than the bloated, inefficient, MPEG format) for distribution and streaming over my home network. But I find it a bit laughable that I need third party and/or open source project software to do this as TiVo seems incapable of, or uninterested in delivering their own software solution to take advantage of their single most desirable feature set over the competition. I wonder if TiVo knows or cares that, without the third party solutions, I would never had bought their hardware or subscribed to their services.

Doubtful. They seem disinterested in addressing any existing functionality unless it is an opportunity to cram more advertising and content purchasing into the world that is TiVo.


----------



## arentol (Jan 24, 2011)

Resist said:


> Not sure about everyone else, but I sure am getting tired of the delayed response when using the Tivo interface. It's a tad better using the Slide remote on BlueTooth, but still lags.
> 
> Worse yet is trying to control my Tivo on my laptop via my Slingbox, even on my fast 15MB home Wifi Internet connection.
> 
> Maybe I just don't understand how Tivo works and it's something they can't fix. All I know is, here we are in the 21st century and Tivo still lags out.


What Docsis is your cable modem?


----------



## Resist (Dec 21, 2003)

arentol said:


> What Docsis is your cable modem?


DOCSIS 1.1 and 2.0 Certified. It's a Surfboard SB5100.


----------



## arentol (Jan 24, 2011)

Resist said:


> DOCSIS 1.1 and 2.0 Certified. It's a Surfboard SB5100.


That's good. I have heard of a lot of people who have purchased or been auto-updated to faster than 10mb connections with their cable company without a modem update. So they were are on 12 or 15mb connections and couldn't get more than 5mb downloads. Move up to 2.0, or better yet 3.0, and you are golden.

Anyway, wanted to eliminate it being your modem being the likely culprit. It still could be if a speed test doesn't get good results, but it isn't very likely.


----------



## caddyroger (Mar 15, 2005)

arentol said:


> That's good. I have heard of a lot of people who have purchased or been auto-updated to faster than 10mb connections with their cable company without a modem update. So they were are on 12 or 15mb connections and couldn't get more than 5mb downloads. Move up to 2.0, or better yet 3.0, and you are golden.
> 
> Anyway, wanted to eliminate it being your modem being the likely culprit. It still could be if a speed test doesn't get good results, but it isn't very likely.


I have DOCSIS 3.0 modem with 12 down and 2 up and it still slow.


----------



## bschuler2007 (Feb 25, 2007)

Well, fact is, the HD interface is always going to be slow. Everybody gave up on pulling web content for menus (even if using a huge cache) before the Tivo Premiere even entered planning stages.. somehow Tivo didn't get the memo. So I wouldn't hold out hope for the HD interface to get any better unless they redesign it without all the pop up ads, oops everyone hates pop ups, I meant the much loved banner ads. It isn't flash being slow in most cases.. it is the web portions.

As for SD interface locking up. If you turn off network enabled apps and deleted all saved content and it still locks up... well the Tivo is bad. If it locks up when you turn on network enabled apps.. your network setup is bad. If it only locks up after recording a bunch of shows, your Hard Drive is bad. And if it locks up only before you deleted all the shows, then you cable setup has probably changed since your recordings took place and there is a conflict.


----------



## HiJon89 (Jan 26, 2011)

bschuler2007 said:


> Well, fact is, the HD interface is always going to be slow. Everybody gave up on pulling web content for menus (even if using a huge cache) before the Tivo Premiere even entered planning stages.. somehow Tivo didn't get the memo. So I wouldn't hold out hope for the HD interface to get any better unless they redesign it without all the pop up ads, oops everyone hates pop ups, I meant the much loved banner ads. It isn't flash being slow in most cases.. it is the web portions.


While a web page is loading does your entire computer freeze? It's just badly written software. The TiVo shouldn't freeze for a few seconds while waiting to load web content, you should just be able to move normally through the menu while the content loads. On my HTPC running Windows 7 Media Center, when I go to view movies that are currently on now, it has to pull dozens of DVD covers simultaneously and it remains perfectly responsive. It just shows the movie title in place of the image until the cover loads.


----------



## HomieG (Feb 17, 2003)

QAM mapping for Series 3 (and others). Epic failure on part of TiVo, IMNSHO. Even one of my Sony HDTV's has this ability in their guide. Living in an area with a city-owned and operated cable system with a bunch of idiots running it (2 channels have been down for over two months), one cannot rely on them getting the guide data providers updated. Come on TiVo. QAM mapping for in-the-clear channels is a no-brainer that any qualified code writer could hammer out in a matter of hours...or are you (TiVo) gonna continue to not address this need, even with a response as to why you don't/won't provide it? For a product that is software-enabled, this is something that should be provided.


----------



## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

HomieG said:


> QAM mapping for Series 3 (and others). Epic failure on part of TiVo, IMNSHO. Even one of my Sony HDTV's has this ability in their guide. Living in an area with a city-owned and operated cable system with a bunch of idiots running it (2 channels have been down for over two months), one cannot rely on them getting the guide data providers updated. Come on TiVo. QAM mapping for in-the-clear channels is a no-brainer that any qualified code writer could hammer out in a matter of hours...or are you (TiVo) gonna continue to not address this need, even with a response as to why you don't/won't provide it? For a product that is software-enabled, this is something that should be provided.


What does this have to do with UI responsiveness?


----------



## HomieG (Feb 17, 2003)

orangeboy said:


> What does this have to do with UI responsiveness?


About the same as many other items already posted in this thread, much the same as yours. Next.


----------



## HiJon89 (Jan 26, 2011)

HiJon89 said:


> While a web page is loading does your entire computer freeze? It's just badly written software. The TiVo shouldn't freeze for a few seconds while waiting to load web content, you should just be able to move normally through the menu while the content loads. On my HTPC running Windows 7 Media Center, when I go to view movies that are currently on now, it has to pull dozens of DVD covers simultaneously and it remains perfectly responsive. It just shows the movie title in place of the image until the cover loads.


I took a video showing what I mean. Sorry for the bad quality, it was taken on my phone and all of the blinds were up so the projector image looks really washed out, but you should still be able to see what I mean. The interface is just infinitely more responsive than on a TiVo and after you get used to the menus you can always get where you want in a few seconds.

If you can't see what is happening in the video, I'm watching X Games then I bring up the guide and see what's on a few different channels then I go back to the main menu, go up to Movie Guide to see what movies are on (the covers are pulled almost instantly without any freezing). I browse a little bit then I put on "Did You Hear About the Morgans?" Then I bring up the show info, view the cast, and click on Sarah Jessica Parker to see what other movies she's in, and again the covers are pulled almost instantly without any freezing. Then I see Footloose and decide to record it, and then I go back to watching the movie. After using Windows 7 Media Center on an HTPC the TiVo is just about unusable because it is just so slow.





And of course, all of this is without paying a monthly service charge (except to Comcast obviously). TiVo really should be able to get their boxes to be this responsive (using the new HD menu's). This has been their focus for the last 10 years and it's blown away by Windows 7 Media Center which is almost just an afterthought for Microsoft (compared to their focus on getting the core OS up to par).


----------



## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

HomieG said:


> QAM mapping for Series 3 (and others). Epic failure on part of TiVo, IMNSHO. Even one of my Sony HDTV's has this ability in their guide.


While *I* would want this, some people have said that their channels MOVE AROUND VERY OFTEN.

You have to realize that people *would call Tivo* and cost Tivo money if the user's own manually entered data ends up being incorrect (e.g. the channel moves, and the Tivo recorded the "wrong" channel).

I still would want this, as an ultra-hidden-feature-that-sends-some-info-to-Tivo-that-they-can-charge-you-a-gazillion-dollars-if-you-end-up-calling-for-support-for-your-own-problem.. but unfortunately can see why they didn't add it.


----------



## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

Resist said:


> Maybe I just don't understand how Tivo works and it's something they can't fix. All I know is, here we are in the 21st century and Tivo still lags out.


Compared to what? Please provide the brand name and model number of a DVR that does it better, in your opinion.


----------



## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

atmuscarella said:


> I do have issue with someone posting BS.


Amen.



atmuscarella said:


> The TiVo Premier while not a significant improvement over a Series 3 or TiVo HD is still a step forward not backward.


Unfortunately, this is not true. In several crucial areas, the Premier is indeed an actual step backwards. In several other key areas, it is a virtual step backwards, which is to say it has no greater capabilities despite there having been great strides in the electronics industry since the design of the S3 of which the S4 takes no advantage. One glaring example is the Premier only has a 100M Ethernet interface. For less than $10 per unit, TiVo could have installed a Gig-E interface with a network coprocessor to handle all I/O.



atmuscarella said:


> The Premier has more abilities and does everything that a Series 3 or TiVo HD does either as good or better.


Unfortunately, no it does not. Try hacking a Premier some time.



atmuscarella said:


> What most people seem to want is a high end HTPC that costs $100. All I can say is keep on dreaming.


Some people are indeed unreasonable. I'm perfectly happy with my S3s and my THD, except in a couple of areas in which the Premier is no better and in some cases worse. The only clear advantage of the Premier is the faster processor, and even that is currently crippled, as only one core is enabled.


----------



## solutionsetc (Apr 2, 2009)

So 4 years and 9 months later...

Being disappointed in the TiVo HD, and even more so with the Premiere, I just decided to keep using my HD's until they died.

No such luck with Comcast moving to mp4 next month. So off to BB I went for a new Bolt and Mini. This is the first time I've been really happy with a DVR since my RePlayTV days.

Kudos TiVo!


----------



## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Yes. The Bolt is a speed demon compared to previous TiVos.


----------



## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

solutionsetc said:


> So 4 years and 9 months later...
> 
> Being disappointed in the TiVo HD, and even more so with the Premiere, I just decided to keep using my HD's until they died.
> 
> ...


I spent time defending the Premiere back in the day because it was actually faster than the Series 3 or TiVo HD if you used it with the SDUI. However it had inferior OTA tuners (at least for me) than the Series 3 or TiVo HD and ultimately became a pretty big disappointment for me. The difference between the Roamio & Premiere was night and day in every way, with Roamio being a major improvement. My Roamio purchase was the most I ever paid for a TiVo ($590 with lifetime) and also the best deal I every got. When they dumped the flash based menus a year after the Roamio was released the Premiere finally worked well enough in the HDUI to be acceptable - unfortunately the OTA tuners still were inferior.

The Bolt is again basically superior to the Roamio in nearly ever way. With the Roamio having an advantage in price and hard drive upgrade options. However unlike buying a Roamio to upgrade a Premiere being a slam dunk with no down sides that I could see (including price). Buying a Bolt to replace a Roamio is questionable. SkipMode is great, the speed is faster, built in MOCA and/or Streaming to Android/iOS are a plus if you want/need them, and if you have a 4K TV the decision becomes easier, however the cost for what I get is pretty hard to take.


----------



## solutionsetc (Apr 2, 2009)

atmuscarella said:


> Buying a Bolt to replace a Roamio is questionable.


Well, you have to factor in my decision was coming from a couple of HD's. After the Premiere/Flash "mistake", I had lost interest in TiVo and just "used the appliance"; accepting its shortcomings). I never looked at another model again until being forced to.

I was offered the Roamio lifetime deal by TiVo, but it seemed clear to me that the Bolt was the current platform, and would be receiving the bulk of the development going forward (still a bad taste in mouth with HD's being prematurely left behind IMHO, but understandable considering the iffy hardware they put into a so-called 'HD' device). So, the Bolt was an easy decision.

I watch a lot of Golf... the quick mode is the bomb!


----------



## tarheelblue32 (Jan 13, 2014)

solutionsetc said:


> I watch a lot of Golf... the quick mode is the bomb!


Yeah I could see how QuickMode would be great with golf. The current 1.3x QuickMode probably isn't even fast enough for golf though. They need to add a 1.5x or 2x QuickMode for golf.


----------



## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

solutionsetc said:


> Well, you have to factor in my decision was coming from a couple of HD's. After the Premiere/Flash "mistake", I had lost interest in TiVo and just "used the appliance"; accepting its shortcomings). I never looked at another model again until being forced to.
> 
> I was offered the Roamio lifetime deal by TiVo, but it seemed clear to me that the Bolt was the current platform, and would be receiving the bulk of the development going forward (still a bad taste in mouth with HD's being prematurely left behind IMHO, but understandable considering the iffy hardware they put into a so-called 'HD' device). So, the Bolt was an easy decision.
> 
> I watch a lot of Golf... the quick mode is the bomb!


I agree with you that while the current deals on all the Roamios are good, if a person only needs a 4 tuner DVR the Bolt is better and would be my choice also. Yes QuickMode is very nice.


----------



## LoneWolf15 (Mar 20, 2010)

solutionsetc said:


> So 4 years and 9 months later...
> 
> Being disappointed in the TiVo HD, and even more so with the Premiere, I just decided to keep using my HD's until they died.
> 
> ...


I can understand how the Premiere might not have been great at launch (which is when I bought mine), but by the time I took it offline this morning, it had everything I wanted and operated quite well. The UI isn't quite as responsive as the Roamio Plus replacing it, but the real reason for me shelling out more money was the need for 1-2 more tuners and the loyalty upgrade program offering $99 lifetime. The Premiere XL did things fine for me once the software matured.

If I were to offer constructive criticism for Tivo, it would be items unrelated to UI performance, but more to layout and organization (like, if I remove channels from the channel settings, I want them gone from the Guide too, and I should be able to transfer shows as groups instead of one at a time) that haven't changed going to the Roamio, and I'm guessing haven't changed going to the Bolt either.


----------



## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

The default guide shows only the channels selected. You can also set it to All and to Favorites..


----------



## LoneWolf15 (Mar 20, 2010)

jrtroo said:


> The default guide shows only the channels selected. You can also set it to All and to Favorites..


Yes...I was incorrect on this, at least for the Roamio. I don't know if that was always the case in previous Tivos or not, I seem to remember having the issue once upon a time.

Actually, what I do want is to be able to have the Live TV window show up in the Settings->Channels area so I can preview a channel while deciding to keep/remove it from Channels. When your lineup lists channels from 2-1800, and you don't know what you get or not, it's a pain having to actually make a notepad list on my computer to figure out what I get, as well as what I get in HD or not (so I can remove SD channels I also get in HD).


----------



## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

Live TV window is in the grid guide when removing channels. All you have to do is tune to the channel in the guide, hit left arrow to the channel number, then select to remove it. Better yet you can sort the guide by name instead of number and then quickly remove all the SD dupes.

As far as responsiveness goes, that issue went away with the Roamios. It will never go away on the Premieres.


----------



## krkaufman (Nov 25, 2003)

LoneWolf15 said:


> Actually, what I do want is to be able to have the Live TV window show up in the Settings->Channels area so I can preview a channel while deciding to keep/remove it from Channels. When your lineup lists channels from 2-1800, and you don't know what you get or not, it's a pain having to actually make a notepad list on my computer to figure out what I get, as well as what I get in HD or not (so I can remove SD channels I also get in HD).





slowbiscuit said:


> Live TV window is in the grid guide when removing channels. All you have to do is tune to the channel in the guide, hit left arrow to the channel number, then select to remove it. Better yet you can sort the guide by name instead of number and then quickly remove all the SD dupes.


Yes, but it's not quite as useful as it could be.

With the current mechanism, you can only choose to 'Watch now' with the channel selected under the channel details column, and when you do so, the guide is lost and the screen is filled with the video content from the channel selected.

What would be better would be if the 'Watch now' would simply change the video content shown in the Preview window. This would allow for previewing channel content while remaining within the Guide UI, greatly facilitating channel editing, as requested.


----------



## LoneWolf15 (Mar 20, 2010)

slowbiscuit said:


> Live TV window is in the grid guide when removing channels. All you have to do is tune to the channel in the guide, hit left arrow to the channel number, then select to remove it. Better yet you can sort the guide by name instead of number and then quickly remove all the SD dupes.
> 
> As far as responsiveness goes, that issue went away with the Roamios. It will never go away on the Premieres.


I would say "It will never go away entirely". From the early software releases to the current running release, the UI got quite a bit more responsive.

The one major difference I notice with a Roamio Plus is when going up or down through a menu's options (which also includes the channel guide). That is significantly faster. Channel changing is a bit quicker. Perhaps it is just because I don't run apps regularly on my Tivo (I have an HTPC that I use for some of that), which may be where the slowness is most pronounced.

As I also didn't have a Tivo S3, I can't compare with what came before. My ReplayTV might have been a little more responsive, but its menus were 480p, not HD (ReplayTV, later SonicBlue, went belly up before HD DVRs became available), and it's long enough ago that I can't say for sure. I played with the S1 and S2 (having set them up for others), and the Premiere seemed faster to me, but that's not a fair comparison as they're much older units.


----------



## chicagobrownblue (May 29, 2008)

Resist said:


> Not sure about everyone else, but I sure am getting tired of the delayed response when using the Tivo interface.


My TiVo became slow when I plugged a Cat 5 connection in and TiVo was setup to use WiFi. When I unplugged the wired connection, responsiveness returned to normal and fast.


----------



## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

krkaufman said:


> Yes, but it's not quite as useful as it could be.
> 
> With the current mechanism, you can only choose to 'Watch now' with the channel selected under the channel details column, and when you do so, the guide is lost and the screen is filled with the video content from the channel selected.
> 
> What would be better would be if the 'Watch now' would simply change the video content shown in the Preview window. This would allow for previewing channel content while remaining within the Guide UI, greatly facilitating channel editing, as requested.


*shrug* you quickly hit the guide button again after tuning, it's not that big a deal. Plus you're only doing this once.

The ability to sort channels by name makes this deselection process very easy to do regardless of a few extra steps for channels you don't know about. Not to mention that you can figure out most channels just by looking at upcoming shows in the guide.


----------



## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

HDMI has been great for projects at work. We just run a cat5e cable from the source to the display. Then just use extenders using HDBaseT protocol and we have an excellent connection for audio and video. That is all we use now for clients. With the cat5e cable and extenders you just get the extenders you need for what the client requires. HDMI, VGA, etc.


----------



## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

tarheelblue32 said:


> Yeah I could see how QuickMode would be great with golf. The current 1.3x QuickMode probably isn't even fast enough for golf though. They need to add a 1.5x or 2x QuickMode for golf.


If Quickmode ever gets added to Roamio, I'll use it.. but probably only for the ~5 minute talk show segments I now sometimes download and watch in VLC, or dub to my other recorder and watch sped up at approx the same speed (so it'll save the dubbing time).

But it's not just golf.. I was VERY interested when I heard about this feature, but when finding it it was *only* 1.3x, much less so. For example, I watched 2 episodes of Nova yesterday on my day off, in VLC on an iPad at 2x. For "lighter" things like news, talk, and some reality shows, I get closer to 2.5x.. though maybe 2.25-2.3 is the usual max..

Even if it was "only" 2x, I would probably use it for VIRTUALLY all of my uses of VLC on the iPad.. (especially if the iOS app supported this faster playback too.. yeah, I hope the iOS app gets quick mode + the commercial skip functionality)


----------



## tenthplanet (Mar 5, 2004)

atmuscarella said:


> I think you are describing the general state of unhappiness with "TV" in general. People don't really want to be tied to a time schedule, mandatory channel line up or a single provider. TiVo has attempted to solve some of the issues but really has their hand tied by things out of their control - which leads to unhappy customers. There is a reason that non of the up and coming Internet connect devices (Google TV, Apple TV, Roku, etc.) are a DVR.
> 
> And it is not limited to TiVo, I am trying to listen to my Livio Internet Radio right now and it is impossible to do so. I know the reason why (my DSL has gone to sh** with a 20+% packet loss every afternoon and evening - funny it works great in the early morning). I could say Livio Radios sucks for not putting in a 100X larger buffer but as informed consumer I know better.
> 
> ...


 I agree. Let me add that Tivo is at a heart a computer, there is only so much speed you can wring out of software changes. You want more speed you need a faster processor, which means a new box. That means buying a new box, we all know how that goes...


----------

