# oh god the "HD" gui is an abomination



## dugbug (Dec 29, 2003)

There is no saving this. That gui is ugly even if it was fast. Tivo needs a serious direction change.

I am absolutely in *shock* at how bad it is. I literally stared for 8 seconds as it decided to download the menu icons. THE MENU ICONS. Why should we wait for that? Guys, this is the era of the ipad and iphone. Guis sweep and transition. They don't go "beeboop" and black the screen out for four seconds as you download an icon.

Good lord have mercy on that gui. Ech.

Back to the old gui for now.

-d


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## Jets (Sep 28, 2010)

Mine is fine. I have it hardwired, no wireless. 
Also, with the slide remote it is incredibly responsive.


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## lujan (May 24, 2010)

Jets said:


> Mine is fine. I have it hardwired, no wireless.
> Also, with the slide remote it is incredibly responsive.


I'm now starting to have problems with the slide remote where it sometimes takes two presses to get a response.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

dugbug said:


> There is no saving this. That gui is ugly even if it was fast. Tivo needs a serious direction change.
> 
> I am absolutely in *shock* at how bad it is. I literally stared for 8 seconds as it decided to download the menu icons. THE MENU ICONS. Why should we wait for that? Guys, this is the era of the ipad and iphone. Guis sweep and transition. They don't go "beeboop" and black the screen out for four seconds as you download an icon.
> 
> ...


Even using the Premiere at my girlfriends house with her slow 1Mb/s DLS line, it never took anywhere near 8 seconds for the icons to appear.

If it took anywhere near that long in my use I would have stopped using the HDUI months ago.
The HDUI is what I have all my boxes set for. I'll just be glad when they completely dump the crappy SDUI. I used to love the SDUI until I started using the HDUI.


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## dugbug (Dec 29, 2003)

I have house-wide hardwired 1 Gb ethernet and 30Mbps burst, 20Mbps sustained broadband. Not shabby specs by any means. This is v14.5 of code and the first time I have used my premier.

When I do a search for programs by category the tivo HD menus painfully rendered empty boxes on the right and over 6-8 seconds icons rendered the icons (one for child&family, one for action, etc.)

I thought it was caching them from the net, so I navigated away and back, but with the same results: black boxes that slowly had their icons fleshed in. 

These should be instantaneous. Everywhere I went everything reloaded from scratch as if it had to reload basic information over and over.


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## TrueTurbo (Feb 19, 2008)

dugbug said:


> I have house-wide hardwired 1 Gb ethernet and 30Mbps burst, 20Mbps sustained broadband. Not shabby specs by any means. This is v14.5 of code and the first time I have used my premier.
> 
> When I do a search for programs by category the tivo HD menus painfully rendered empty boxes on the right and over 6-8 seconds icons rendered the icons (one for child&family, one for action, etc.)
> 
> ...


I have 1Gb house-wide Ethernet too with 20Mbps sustained broadband and currently, v14.5 TiVo code on a Premiere XL. Searching and rendering is pretty much instantaneous for me. Can't explain why you are seeing poor performance but our results clearly differ.


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## AbMagFab (Feb 5, 2001)

TrueTurbo said:


> I have 1Gb house-wide Ethernet too with 20Mbps sustained broadband and currently, v14.5 TiVo code on a Premiere XL. Searching and rendering is pretty much instantaneous for me. Can't explain why you are seeing poor performance but our results clearly differ.


The only people claiming the HD UI is fast are the last remaining Tivo fans.

TiVo is quickly becoming irrelevant, in a world where streaming will be the norm. Making local copies of shows everywhere just so we can watch them is silly, and pointless.

TiVo never adapted to streaming, and it's now the reason they will be gone in <5 years.


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## TrueTurbo (Feb 19, 2008)

AbMagFab said:


> The only people claiming the HD UI is fast are the last remaining Tivo fans.
> 
> TiVo is quickly becoming irrelevant, in a world where streaming will be the norm. Making local copies of shows everywhere just so we can watch them is silly, and pointless.
> 
> TiVo never adapted to streaming, and it's now the reason they will be gone in <5 years.


I'm not _claiming_ the HD UI is fast, I'm telling you from my experience that it is! If you choose not to believe me, that's your problem.

It's your choice to continue to live under a cloud of doom, gloom and disappointment. I choose to make the most of what I have. I'll be just as happy to adopt something new and better when and if it ever comes along. Until then, TiVo is awesome.


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## dugbug (Dec 29, 2003)

TrueTurbo said:


> I have 1Gb house-wide Ethernet too with 20Mbps sustained broadband and currently, v14.5 TiVo code on a Premiere XL. Searching and rendering is pretty much instantaneous for me. Can't explain why you are seeing poor performance but our results clearly differ.


I noticed network transfers from a series 2 to the premier are slower too. Used to be the copy exceeded the playback, but now I get pauses as the copy catches up (??)

Even my bluetooth slide remote queues up button presses because the tivo just can't move the menu bar 'up'. I can do up/down four times and 10 seconds later, it suddenly moves the selector bar quickly up and down four times.

Really not impressed. Does 14.5 have both cores running? Is it caching?


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## TrueTurbo (Feb 19, 2008)

dugbug said:


> I noticed network transfers from a series 2 to the premier are slower too. Used to be the copy exceeded the playback, but now I get pauses as the copy catches up (??)
> 
> Even my bluetooth slide remote queues up button presses because the tivo just can't move the menu bar 'up'. I can do up/down four times and 10 seconds later, it suddenly moves the selector bar quickly up and down four times.
> 
> Really not impressed. Does 14.5 have both cores running? Is it caching?


It's not the 14.5 software! There is clearly something wrong with your TiVo. You need to open a case with TiVo Support and sort it out. I also have the TiVo Slide Remote and my Premiere XL has never queued up commands from it.

You are right to be not impressed with the whole performance you are seeing, but realize that it is not the norm. Get your unit investigated and fixed, or replaced.


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## justen_m (Jan 15, 2004)

I'm curious. For those claiming fast GUI performance, is your box using a wired ethernet connection, or wireless?

For those claiming slow GUI performance, is your box using a wired ethernet connection, or wireless?

Netflix streaming often has problems over wireless connections, but is great with wired connections. I wonder if the same thing is happening with the GUI?


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## smbaker (May 24, 2003)

AbMagFab said:


> The only people claiming the HD UI is fast are the last remaining Tivo fans.


Search my posts and you'll see that I'm no Tivo fan, I've been very critical of the product. My Premiere's HDUI is fine. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call it fast, but it feels about as fast as my THD was. It has not locked up, not even once. I expect performance will continue to improve once the second core is enabled.

That being said, I agree with your other points, in particular about the lack of streaming support. Tivo is rapidly falling behind the competition in that aspect of the product. Streaming and a viable multi-room solution is the primary thing that held me back from buying a Premiere, and nearly encouraged me to buy a Moxi.


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## smbaker (May 24, 2003)

TrueTurbo said:


> It's not the 14.5 software! There is clearly something wrong with your TiVo. You need to open a case with TiVo Support and sort it out. I also have the TiVo Slide Remote and my Premiere XL has never queued up commands from it.


Mine queued up commands when there was a reception problem between the remote and the Tivo. In my case, adding a short USB extension and moving the bluetooth dongle out from beyond the cabinet solved the issue.

@dugbug: I'd suggest you try playing around with the positioning of the receiver, get a short USB extension if you can. See if the remote works better when closer to the receiver than when further away.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

smbaker said:


> Mine queued up commands when there was a reception problem between the remote and the Tivo. In my case, adding a short USB extension and moving the bluetooth dongle out from beyond the cabinet solved the issue.
> 
> @dugbug: I'd suggest you try playing around with the positioning of the receiver, get a short USB extension if you can. See if the remote works better when closer to the receiver than when further away.


The slide remote includes a short USB extension. I used mine and it greatly enhanced the range by getting the dongle to the front/top of the TiVo


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## ltxi (Feb 14, 2010)

Wired ethernet. Does not matter. OP got it right. HD UI sucks/continues to suck. The only reason I even know this is because I switch to it every once in awhile to check the disk free space. Even if TiVo does fix the speed/buggy issues I wouldn't use it. The concept of wanting dynamic, distracting "entertainment" while navigating menu fields is beyond my limited comprehension. TG we still have the option of the SD UI.

If my laptop brought out dancing thingys every time I tasked it to do something it would end up as roadkill.


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## DaveWhittle (Jul 25, 2002)

Put me in the camp of not having problems with the HDUI. It's not _quite_ as snappy as I would like, but fast enough. No lockups or reboots either on 14.5.

I'm hardwired in to a router.


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## curiousgeorge (Nov 28, 2002)

dugbug said:


> I have house-wide hardwired 1 Gb ethernet and 30Mbps burst, 20Mbps sustained broadband. Not shabby specs by any means. This is v14.5 of code and the first time I have used my premier.
> 
> When I do a search for programs by category the tivo HD menus painfully rendered empty boxes on the right and over 6-8 seconds icons rendered the icons (one for child&family, one for action, etc.)
> 
> ...


What are you using for your DNS?


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## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

Can the Ethernet port on a Premiere DO GigaBit?

If not, there's potentially your problem. Your switch and the Premiere might be not doing the autosense dance happily and settling on 10MB or worse - dropping packets.

He says, where his S3 OLED is happy doing 100mb on his GBit switch.


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## TrueTurbo (Feb 19, 2008)

netringer said:


> Can the Ethernet port on a Premiere DO GigaBit?
> 
> If not, there's potentially your problem. Your switch and the Premiere might be not doing the autosense dance happily and settling on 10MB or worse - dropping packets.
> 
> He says, where his S3 OLED is happy doing 100mb on his GBit switch.


It doesn't _need_ to do Gb! Gb switches and routers are all backward compatible with 10/100 Mb Ethernet.


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## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

TrueTurbo said:


> It doesn't _need_ to do Gb! Gb switches and routers are all backward compatible with 10/100 Mb Ethernet.


Really?  My point is that the switch has to "autosense" to the 100mb speed (while the computer is doing the same thing between 10mb and 100mb) and I'll tell you how often that is a problem...like on some $5 million hardware I sometimes buy.


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## TrueTurbo (Feb 19, 2008)

netringer said:


> Really?  My point is that the switch has to "autosense" to the 100mb speed (while the computer is doing the same thing between 10mb and 100mb) and I'll tell you how often that is a problem...like on some $5 million hardware I sometimes buy.


I use Gb switches and a Gb router with CAT 6e cabling and I suffer no "autosense" issues using my Premier XL with it all. There are no inherent issues plugging in a Premiere XL into a Gb network. If someone experiences problems, it's most likely because of a faulty network port or an issue somewhere in the Ethernet infrastructure, not because the Premiere only has a 10/100 Mb Ethernet port.


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## gespears (Aug 10, 2007)

TrueTurbo said:


> I use Gb switches and a Gb router with CAT 6e cabling and I suffer no "autosense" issues using my Premier XL with it all. There are no inherent issues plugging in a Premiere XL into a Gb network. If someone experiences problems, it's most likely because of a faulty network port or an issue somewhere in the Ethernet infrastructure, not because the Premiere only has a 10/100 Mb Ethernet port.


Both my TiVo Premier's are connected to Gigabit hubs and are functioning perfectly. FWIW


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

AbMagFab said:


> TiVo never adapted to streaming, and it's now the reason they will be gone in <5 years.


While I don't like what I've read about the Premiere so far, this statement is complete BS. Tivo will not live or die in less than 5 years based on streaming Internet video.


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## dugbug (Dec 29, 2003)

curiousgeorge said:


> What are you using for your DNS?


That free google dns set. Guess google knows what I watch on tv now lol


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## dugbug (Dec 29, 2003)

TrueTurbo said:


> I use Gb switches and a Gb router with CAT 6e cabling and I suffer no "autosense" issues using my Premier XL with it all. There are no inherent issues plugging in a Premiere XL into a Gb network. If someone experiences problems, it's most likely because of a faulty network port or an issue somewhere in the Ethernet infrastructure, not because the Premiere only has a 10/100 Mb Ethernet port.


There is nothing wrong with my port or net. Netflix quality is DVD caliber.

Gb switches autosense just fine. Series 2 in same spot was fine.

I did btw add the extension for the slider. I bet it's low batteries. Will check that


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

netringer said:


> Really?  My point is that the switch has to "autosense" to the 100mb speed (while the computer is doing the same thing between 10mb and 100mb) and I'll tell you how often that is a problem...like on some $5 million hardware I sometimes buy.


I've been running a gigabit network at home since 2001. I've easily used over 200 network devices. I've never had a device cause a problem with the speed. I have had a couple of Monoprice Cat6e cables cause issues and force the device down to 100BT instead of 1000BT. So I stopped using those Cat6e patch cables and only use the Cat5e patch cables. Besides, all my cabling is Cat5e anyway.

But even if it was forced down to 10BT it shouldn't be a problem. When I take my Premiere to my girlfriends house. I connect it to a DLINK DAP1522 wireless bridge. And then her DSL connection is a 1Mb/s connection. Even then the Premiere is quick.


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## dugbug (Dec 29, 2003)

Here is a quick YouTube video I made to demonstrate. Made it on my phone so it's low res but makes the point

Is this the speed yours runs at?


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## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

dugbug said:


> Here is a quick YouTube video I made to demonstrate. Made it on my phone so it's low res but makes the point
> 
> Is this the speed yours runs at?


Looks like the Premiere I know.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

dugbug said:


> Here is a quick YouTube video I made to demonstrate. Made it on my phone so it's low res but makes the point
> 
> Is this the speed yours runs at?


That looks like 4.5 seconds.

Where is the menu that takes 8 seconds to load?


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## dugbug (Dec 29, 2003)

aaronwt said:


> That looks like 4.5 seconds.
> 
> Where is the menu that takes 8 seconds to load?


Hey I made the video to remove interpretations. What you see is what I get. I think it is ridiculously slow, especially given that it's redownloading the same info each time


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## Arcady (Oct 14, 2004)

The main issue for me with the HD GUI is that it isn't really any better than the old GUI, since the old TiVo menus are just shrunk into a box on the screen. It's as if they just put the old menu in a window, surrounded by a bunch of useless junk. Were they unable to actually rewrite the old menus? Because what we have now is just a bunch of ads with the old interface sitting in a tiny box. You can't see any more content within the menus than you could on the SD interface. So what's the point?


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## TrueTurbo (Feb 19, 2008)

dugbug said:


> Here is a quick YouTube video I made to demonstrate. Made it on my phone so it's low res but makes the point
> 
> Is this the speed yours runs at?


Ah, OK, these menus on my Premiere XL load about 1-2 secs faster than yours in the video. These are the slowest menus in the HD UI for me and I've never thought the way they load now to be unreasonable. This is a very content-rich part of the UI and I'm happy the way it works.


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## smbaker (May 24, 2003)

crxssi said:


> The slide remote includes a short USB extension. I used mine and it greatly enhanced the range by getting the dongle to the front/top of the TiVo


They did a good job of hiding that little extension in the box... I grabbed one from my spare cables bin.  Thanks for the note though, as the little cable (and the aptly sized piece of velcro next to it) would have surely ended up discarded in the trash this week.

All things considered, very happy with the slide remote.



aaronwt said:


> That looks like 4.5 seconds.


I just clocked my Premiere at < 4 seconds for each of those screens. I agree with dugbug that there's no reason why it should be taking this long to display content that should be cached. However, I disagree that it's some unacceptably long time. I wouldn't call it "fast" but I would call it adequate.

The screens depicted in this youtube video are all things that I have never used and was surprised the Premiere had them. The parts of the interface that I do use regularly (My Shows, Search, ...) are reasonably quick. The My Shows screen in particular seems as fast or faster than my THD. Search had a little pause when bringing up the program details, but I think my THD had a similar pause. On-screen guide is fine (albeit still SD-looking). In short, 99% of what I use the Premiere for has performance that "feels" equivalent to my THD.

Basically, it comes down to the parts of the interface that are graphic intensive that are slow. I'm not making excuses for Tivo (these items should be cached and should be instantaneous). It really depends on which parts of the interface you use most. Unfortunately the graphic-intensive portions are exactly the new features the Premiere is supposed to be delivering, so the box is delivering it's worst performance on exactly the features that new users are excited about playing with.


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## curiousgeorge (Nov 28, 2002)

dugbug said:


> That free google dns set. Guess google knows what I watch on tv now lol


What kind of transfer speeds does TiVo report in the diagnostics? You should have separate speeds for youtube, etc, and the TiVo-to-TiVo or TiVo-to-TiVoDesktop.

I'd change the google dns, though. It has speed issues making it 2x slower than things like OpenDNS. So, DNS resolution (and TiVo does a LOT to populate that bar) may be part of your problem:
http://wingeek.com/articles/40447/google-public-dns-makes-the-web-slower/


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## TrueTurbo (Feb 19, 2008)

Arcady said:


> The main issue for me with the HD GUI is that it isn't really any better than the old GUI, since the old TiVo menus are just shrunk into a box on the screen. It's as if they just put the old menu in a window, surrounded by a bunch of useless junk. Were they unable to actually rewrite the old menus? Because what we have now is just a bunch of ads with the old interface sitting in a tiny box. You can't see any more content within the menus than you could on the SD interface. So what's the point?


You're not even trying to see the features, are you!

For a start, you can see the synopsis of the show you have highlighted in the 'Now Playing' list, on the right side of the screen. You can see which shows are new with the 'NEW' icon that appears against a recording. You can monitor the show you were watching while browsing the menus.

There are lots of new features in the HD menus. Why are you so ignorant of them!?


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## smbaker (May 24, 2003)

TrueTurbo said:


> You can see which shows are new with the 'NEW' icon that appears against a recording. You can monitor the show you were watching while browsing the menus.


One issue with the interface is that there is a lot of unnecessary use of images and those images are exactly what is bogging down the performance. For example, let's say I hilight "Fringe" in My Shows. To the right appears a summary of the show, which is nice. However, the summary is cut off because more space is allocated to a useless thumbnail image of the show. I don't see a "New" icon anywhere on this screen even though the program is new.

There's also so much screen real estate wasted to the utterly useless discovery bar that runs across the top of the screen. I have no idea what purpose it serves other than to show a "Best Buy" advertisement.

In short, the HDUI interface emphases form over function. They threw in a lot of thumbnail images that don't really serve any purpose. It's better than the SD interface was, but doesn't like up to the potential that it could deliver.


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## dugbug (Dec 29, 2003)

curiousgeorge said:


> What kind of transfer speeds does TiVo report in the diagnostics? You should have separate speeds for youtube, etc, and the TiVo-to-TiVo or TiVo-to-TiVoDesktop.
> 
> I'd change the google dns, though. It has speed issues making it 2x slower than things like OpenDNS. So, DNS resolution (and TiVo does a LOT to populate that bar) may be part of your problem:
> http://wingeek.com/articles/40447/google-public-dns-makes-the-web-slower/


Good thoughts, thanks. I used a stopwatch to measure the menu loads that were on the youtube with different dns servers. Google DNS averages at 5.2 seconds. Brighthouse/roadrunner DNS servers give me 5.5. OpenDNS averaged 5.6.

So I figure google has upped their game since that article was written.

Diagnostics speeds (BTW, I had no idea this menu existed until I got the premier... these new?):
Copied from pre-series 3: 8.33Mbps
Video Download: 21.24 Mbps
You Tube: 8.6 Mbps

I really don't care about youtube... I just assume delete any reference to youtube in the entire tivo, but the transfer speeds seem very low compared to my series 2 <-> series 2 transfers.


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## dugbug (Dec 29, 2003)

TrueTurbo said:


> You're not even trying to see the features, are you!
> 
> For a start, you can see the synopsis of the show you have highlighted in the 'Now Playing' list, on the right side of the screen. You can see which shows are new with the 'NEW' icon that appears against a recording. You can monitor the show you were watching while browsing the menus.
> 
> There are lots of new features in the HD menus. Why are you so ignorant of them!?


I realize you weren't responding to me, but to be fair to tivo, the amazing thing about these hd menus is the Episodes info (under 'explore this show'). Search is essentially their 'killer app', but first they just need to fix their software infrastructure underpinnings.


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## tlw_2 (Apr 12, 2008)

I saw the youtube video posted. I'm using a Premiere for about a week now. Wired connection, HDUI is acceptable but definitely has room for stability & performance improvements. Have you tried without the "live window". I notice a snappier response with if "off".


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## curiousgeorge (Nov 28, 2002)

dugbug said:


> Good thoughts, thanks. I used a stopwatch to measure the menu loads that were on the youtube with different dns servers. Google DNS averages at 5.2 seconds. Brighthouse/roadrunner DNS servers give me 5.5. OpenDNS averaged 5.6.
> 
> So I figure google has upped their game since that article was written.
> 
> ...


TiVo to TiVo is low, but that's because it's Series 2. We get 85-94mbps Premiere to Premiere. Everything else looks fine. For a test have you tried using a network switch instead of a router to make sure that the router logic isn't messing up your network fetch queue?


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

smbaker said:


> One issue with the interface is that there is a lot of unnecessary use of images and those images are exactly what is bogging down the performance. For example, let's say I hilight "Fringe" in My Shows. To the right appears a summary of the show, which is nice. However, the summary is cut off because more space is allocated to a useless thumbnail image of the show. I don't see a "New" icon anywhere on this screen even though the program is new.
> 
> There's also so much screen real estate wasted to the utterly useless discovery bar that runs across the top of the screen. I have no idea what purpose it serves other than to show a "Best Buy" advertisement.
> 
> In short, the HDUI interface emphases form over function. They threw in a lot of thumbnail images that don't really serve any purpose. It's better than the SD interface was, but doesn't like up to the potential that it could deliver.


The Discovery bar has been far from useless for me. it seems to show things that I will be interested in. I'm guessing based on my Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down ratings. I've found a few enjoyable shows from the discovery bar that I otherwise would have never watched since i had not heard of them.

I think it's a welcome addition to the TiVo interface.


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## TrueTurbo (Feb 19, 2008)

aaronwt said:


> The Discovery bar has been far from useless for me. it seems to show things that I will be interested in. I'm guessing based on my Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down ratings. I've found a few enjoyable shows from the discovery bar that I otherwise would have never watched since i had not heard of them.
> 
> I think it's a welcome addition to the TiVo interface.


I think a lot of the people who are complaining about the 'Discovery Bar' are people who are not using all the features of their TiVo. As you point out, programs will appear in the bar related to your 'Thumbs Up' ratings. If you don't bother to rate anything, you lose a big slice of the functionality a TiVo provides.


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

aaronwt said:


> The Discovery bar has been far from useless for me. it seems to show things that I will be interested in. I'm guessing based on my Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down ratings. I've found a few enjoyable shows from the discovery bar that I otherwise would have never watched since i had not heard of them.
> 
> I think it's a welcome addition to the TiVo interface.


That's how I view or think of the Discovery Bar: "Visual Suggestions"


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## dugbug (Dec 29, 2003)

for what its worth I just realized you can dial down the suggestions you get in that upper bar by category, one of which is 'advertisements'. I could not turn ads off, but could reduce it to 'less' from 'standard'.


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## curiousgeorge (Nov 28, 2002)

orangeboy said:


> That's how I view or think of the Discovery Bar: "Visual Suggestions"


I think of it more as visual Brawndo.


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## AbMagFab (Feb 5, 2001)

TrueTurbo said:


> I'm not _claiming_ the HD UI is fast, I'm telling you from my experience that it is! If you choose not to believe me, that's your problem.
> 
> It's your choice to continue to live under a cloud of doom, gloom and disappointment. I choose to make the most of what I have. I'll be just as happy to adopt something new and better when and if it ever comes along. Until then, TiVo is awesome.





smbaker said:


> Search my posts and you'll see that I'm no Tivo fan, I've been very critical of the product. My Premiere's HDUI is fine. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call it fast, but it feels about as fast as my THD was. It has not locked up, not even once. I expect performance will continue to improve once the second core is enabled.
> 
> That being said, I agree with your other points, in particular about the lack of streaming support. Tivo is rapidly falling behind the competition in that aspect of the product. Streaming and a viable multi-room solution is the primary thing that held me back from buying a Premiere, and nearly encouraged me to buy a Moxi.


In terms of UI speed, you all must have really lowered your standards. Compared to my old TiVo S3, HD, and HDXLs, the Premiere is substantially slower. Every menu item selection takes ~3 seconds for something to appear - this includes the submenus, showing program details/pictures, etc. And nothing is cached, so if you go up/down/up, it reloads everything every time.

I'm comparing the Premiere HD UI to the SD UI on the older boxes. Which is all that really matters. It's just slow enough to be painful when you're used to the SD UI. (That's why my Premiere is relegated to my 6-year-old daughter's play room, where it gets very little use.)

Compare the TiVo to almost anything else - AppleTV v2, Roku, TV-based Internet UIs, etc. (and I have all of them) - the TiVo HD UI is ridiculous. TiVo is light-years behind.

Add to that they're clumsy implementation of Internet services, and their mishandling of multi-room everything (viewing, scheduling, streaming, etc.), and the TiVo's are beginning to look something like 8088 PCs.

I think Molly Wood recently made a side-comment *"It's amazing how far TiVo has fallen, and so quickly!". I couldn't agree more.*


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## curiousgeorge (Nov 28, 2002)

AbMagFab said:


> In terms of UI speed, you all must have really lowered your standards.


Don't worry, there are plenty of people that agree with you, and the crappy sales of Premiere and falling-rock pricing demonstrates that word is out on how awful and unfinished Premiere is.

Given how painful, ugly, and unfinished the interface is, I don't understand the cheerleaders, either, but I'm glad the're happy with the situation. I'm not, and no one I know personally is, either - and most of our friends are converted TiVo users from the Series 1 days. It's a sad state of affairs.


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## falcon26 (Mar 17, 2010)

I have 14.6 firmware. And I still use the SD menus. They are 10 times faster and more stable then the HD menus. What takes the HD menus like 20 seconds to do the SD menu does it in like 2 seconds. If I had to do it all over again, I would have bought a series 3 tivo used and saved a bunch of money....


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## TrueTurbo (Feb 19, 2008)

AbMagFab said:


> In terms of UI speed, you all must have really lowered your standards. Compared to my old TiVo S3, HD, and HDXLs, the Premiere is substantially slower. Every menu item selection takes ~3 seconds for something to appear - this includes the submenus, showing program details/pictures, etc. And nothing is cached, so if you go up/down/up, it reloads everything every time.


I'm amazed that you still don't understand! I don't know why your Premiere is so damned slow but, 'read my lips', mine *isn't as slow as yours*!

I still have my TiVo HD. I kept it for the 2 extra tuners. My Premiere XL HD menus are noticeably faster than the SD menus on my TiVo HD. I barely see the green 'wait circle' as I navigate through the Premiere HD menus. The longest I normally have to wait for anything is about 2 secs. Most menu actions execute in ~1 sec.

I don't deny that for whatever reason, your Premiere works slowly, but why do you continue to insist that all Premieres are slow!?! Are you really that stubborn!


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

TrueTurbo said:


> I'm amazed that you still don't understand! I don't know why your Premiere is so damned slow but, 'read my lips', mine *isn't as slow as yours*!
> 
> I still have my TiVo HD. I kept it for the 2 extra tuners. My Premiere XL HD menus are noticeably faster than the SD menus on my TiVo HD. I barely see the green 'wait circle' as I navigate through the Premiere HD menus. The longest I normally have to wait for anything is about 2 secs. Most menu actions execute in ~1 sec.
> 
> I don't deny that for whatever reason, your Premiere works slowly, but why do you continue to insist that all Premieres are slow!?! Are you really that stubborn!


dugbug backed up his claim with a video, which is about par for my experience with the Premiere. Where's your video so we can get a feel for what you consider "fast"? This could just be a difference of opinion in adjectives.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

AbMagFab said:


> the Premiere is substantially slower. Every menu item selection takes ~3 seconds for something to appear - this includes the submenus, showing program details/pictures, etc. And nothing is cached, so if you go up/down/up, it reloads everything every time.


For some stupid reason I tried the HDUI again today for a while and gave up in disgust, yet again, and put it back into SDUI. ~3 seconds for every action does seem to be about the "norm" (with some things taking longer).

In my case, I was never happy (and still am not) with the *SDUI* speed on any TiVo. So ANYTHING that makes interacting even slightly slower or less responsive is beyond frustrating. And on the Premiere, the HDUI it isn't just slightly slower than the SDUI. Until the HDUI is *faster* than the SDUI, I doubt I will ever consider using it.

That said, I have now owned/run the Premiere for 46 days and still have never had a freeze, lockup, or reboot...


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## TrueTurbo (Feb 19, 2008)

dswallow said:


> dugbug backed up his claim with a video, which is about par for my experience with the Premiere. Where's your video so we can get a feel for what you consider "fast"? This could just be a difference of opinion in adjectives.


Gah, you people are beyond belief!! I didn't say my HD UI was "fast". It's just not as slow as some of you are reporting!

You know, I've read through enough 'piss and vinegar' posts from the same old bunch of disgruntled users for now. I'll check back in a while to see if any useful news or information gets posted.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

TrueTurbo said:


> The longest I normally have to wait for anything is about 2 secs. Most menu actions execute in ~1 sec.


 I think this kind of statement is what has people interested in seeing a video of your Premiere in action. I'm genuinely interested in seeing it as well since all videos I've seen so far do not behave that way.
I just tried HDUI again. In "My Shows" for example I can scroll up and down quickly if I don't wait for the description and pictures on the right pane to populate. But if I do wait for right pane to fully populate it's more like 3 seconds or so for that to happen for each selection (which is actually fast compared to some videos I've seen, but not fast enough for my liking). In other places there really is not much choice but to wait for a screen to fully populate before proceeding which gives it a sluggish feel for me. Perhaps something like that accounts for differences in perception of speed, but a video will let people judge for themselves.


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## innocentfreak (Aug 25, 2001)

dswallow said:


> dugbug backed up his claim with a video, which is about par for my experience with the Premiere. Where's your video so we can get a feel for what you consider "fast"? This could just be a difference of opinion in adjectives.


I think one of the other problems could be what screens people are talking about. I would say my Premiere is currently a little slower than my TiVo HD but faster than my Series 2 Directivo. I just watched his video and while my TiVo does load like his on that screen this is only the second time I have ever even gone to that screen. The first was when I was browsing the new screens when I switched to HD.

I pretty much go to Pandora, Search, or My Shows. These screens load much faster for me than the screens in the video. screens.


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## LoneWolf15 (Mar 20, 2010)

AbMagFab said:


> The only people claiming the HD UI is fast are the last remaining Tivo fans.
> 
> TiVo is quickly becoming irrelevant, in a world where streaming will be the norm. Making local copies of shows everywhere just so we can watch them is silly, and pointless.
> 
> TiVo never adapted to streaming, and it's now the reason they will be gone in <5 years.


For me, the Premiere (I have the XL) HD GUI is not fast --neither is it slow.

I have been using the HD interface since we bought our Premiere XL. I pre-ordered mine, so I've had it since the beginning. The only theory I have is that faster internet speeds result in less lag in the interface. I have Comcast; I've gone from the fast tier (16Mbps down, 8Mbps up) to standard (12Mbps down, 6Mbps up, though I get about 4Mbps up realistically) during the time I've owned my Tivo. Under both tiers, I've had no issues.

Your comment sounds kind of argumentative. I disagree, but you have a right to your opinion.


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## smbaker (May 24, 2003)

moyekj said:


> In "My Shows" for example I can scroll up and down quickly if I don't wait for the description and pictures on the right pane to populate. But if I do wait for right pane to fully populate it's more like 3 seconds or so for that to happen for each selection (which is actually fast compared to some videos I've seen, but not fast enough for my liking).


The short answer is that you don't need to wait for the description and picture to populate.

Decoupling the right hand preview panel from the My Shows list is one of the few things that Tivo seems to have got right in the user interface. Imagine what it would be like if you had to wait three seconds between button presses to move up or down. Sure, it would be better if the preview panel updated immediately, but I'm not going to lose sleep if it doesn't.

I've been more than critical of Tivo, and the fact that the Premiere HDUI *still* isn't finished. However, some of these things that people are latching onto are mere minor inconveniences and they're being exaggerated as if the HDUI was intolerable. As a prospective buyer, I held off purchasing the Premiere for a long time, expecting the HDUI to be unusable. The fact is, it's perfectly usable and seems to work as well or better than the SDUI on my THD.


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## TWinbrook46636 (Feb 9, 2008)

TrueTurbo said:


> I'm amazed that you still don't understand! I don't know why your Premiere is so damned slow but, 'read my lips', mine *isn't as slow as yours*!
> 
> I still have my TiVo HD. I kept it for the 2 extra tuners. My Premiere XL HD menus are noticeably faster than the SD menus on my TiVo HD. I barely see the green 'wait circle' as I navigate through the Premiere HD menus. The longest I normally have to wait for anything is about 2 secs. Most menu actions execute in ~1 sec.
> 
> I don't deny that for whatever reason, your Premiere works slowly, but why do you continue to insist that all Premieres are slow!?! Are you really that stubborn!


Let's see a YouTube video of your Premiere XL in action!

Mine takes 3-4 seconds for anything selected on the screen. Click on "My Shows" and count "one-mississippi" "two-mississippi" "three-mississippi" then click on the show to be watched "one-mississippi" "two-mississippi" "three-mississippi" then click play "one-mississippi" "two-mississippi" "three-mississippi" "four-mississippi" ... so about 10 seconds to do something that took 2 seconds on the Series 3. The search is the worst. You start to type in the name of a show and it finds a small list of irrelevant info and you have to type out much more or all of the title, particularly if it has more than one word in the title, before it finds anything relevant to what you are searching for. This is not how it was on the Series 3... as soon as you typed the first couple letters you could see what you're looking for in most cases. The search also does not search the listings data that has already been downloaded at all (as used in the SD menu and Series 3) and relies entirely on the internet. God help you if you want to browse titles by category. Don't even bother. You will have to go into the SD menus for that as it is far too slow and limited. The discovery bar consistently recommends shows to me that I have rated three thumbs down. Every few days the green fruit loop on the screen gets stuck for a minute or so when selecting something.


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## TWinbrook46636 (Feb 9, 2008)

TrueTurbo said:


> I think a lot of the people who are complaining about the 'Discovery Bar' are people who are not using all the features of their TiVo. As you point out, programs will appear in the bar related to your 'Thumbs Up' ratings. If you don't bother to rate anything, you lose a big slice of the functionality a TiVo provides.


Why then does it recommend shows to me that I have rated three thumbs down? :down::down::down:


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

smbaker said:


> The fact is, it's perfectly usable and seems to work as well or better than the SDUI on my THD.


 I think the problem is that I still have an S3 OLED that is very responsive (the original S3s were always better/faster than THD units) so that is still my point of reference. So I don't complain about the HDUI on the Premiere anymore, I simply don't use it. My biggest complaint with the Premiere is I have freezes almost every other day (remote control registers but TiVo doesn't respond, sometimes requiring pulling the plug) that looks to be related to tuning adapter which my S3 OLED with tuning adapter does not. That and 30 sec skip (not scan) being slower than my S3 OLED are my 2 biggest beefs with the Premiere unit. At least for HDUI one can decide not to use it if one doesn't like it. For 2 problems I mentioned there is no workaround. Still holding out hope those issues are just growing pains that will go away with subsequent fixes/releases - the S3s were far from perfect the first couple of years as many will recall.


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

TWinbrook46636 said:


> Why then does it recommend shows to me that I have rated three thumbs down? :down::down::down:


Because when you rate everything else 4-thumbs down, it figures the 3-thumbs down ones are worthy of recommending?  Wait, is this a trick question?


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## TWinbrook46636 (Feb 9, 2008)

aaronwt said:


> That looks like 4.5 seconds.
> 
> Where is the menu that takes 8 seconds to load?


Ha! Like 4.5 seconds for primitive graphics to load is something to boast about. It's not 1999. Most electronic devices have advanced since then. Most.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

TWinbrook46636 said:


> Ha! Like 4.5 seconds for primitive graphics to load is something to boast about. It's not 1999. Most electronic devices have advanced since then. Most.


No my point was that it's not 8 seconds. I don't use that menu area very often but when I was timing them recently mine populated in as little as 2 seconds and as long as 5 seconds. With the 5 seconds while it was recording two channels and also downloading content.

I also don't know how you can compare these graphics to 1999. No cable box I had in 1999 looked anything like this. There are many cable boxes in use today that don't come anywhere close to this. For instance the Scientific Atlanta boxes that Comcast peddles in my area have an interface that truly looks like something from 1999.

Now of course every STB can always be faster. If I had my way, every interface in every PC, disc player, media player, cable box, etc would have instant access to any screen. But unfortunately that has never ben the case with any device.
But I will always welcome any speed improvments from any box I use. And of course that inlcudes TiVo.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

TWinbrook46636 said:


> Ha! Like 4.5 seconds for primitive graphics to load is something to boast about. It's not 1999. Most electronic devices have advanced since then. Most.


I rechecked my TPXL last night after it upgraded to V14.5 and found (I may have missed it before under 14.1) what to me was a new setting on how much info I wanted in the extra graphics, there was about 10 or so categories all set for standard, I set them all for low (the other option was more) and the HDUI was much faster, I may again try to replace my series 3 and see if the improvements now make the TPXL usable to me.
Did anybody know about these settings ? as I never heard anybody talk about them before.


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## innocentfreak (Aug 25, 2001)

Yeah it was one of the first things I did after turning off the live tv window.


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## teewow (Oct 7, 2010)

lessd said:


> I rechecked my TPXL last night after it upgraded to V14.5 and found (I may have missed it before under 14.1) what to me was a new setting on how much info I wanted in the extra graphics, there was about 10 or so categories all set for standard, I set them all for low (the other option was more) and the HDUI was much faster, I may again try to replace my series 3 and see if the improvements now make the TPXL usable to me.
> Did anybody know about these settings ? as I never heard anybody talk about them before.


That did not speed things up for me. When I think about it ... it made sense ... moving everything from "More" to "less" did not change the relative priority. It will still display stuff. Its the screen bitmap that slows things down. Try going to "Showcases and Extras" (after setting everything to "Low") ... and you will still see the icon refreshes to be slow .. i.e. its not cached.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

teewow said:


> That did not speed things up for me. When I think about it ... it made sense ... moving everything from "More" to "less" did not change the relative priority. It will still display stuff. Its the screen bitmap that slows things down. Try going to "Showcases and Extras" (after setting everything to "Low") ... and you will still see the icon refreshes to be slow .. i.e. its not cached.


I don't care about Showcase, just getting to my now playing list to watch something, that seems to be faster now.


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## AbMagFab (Feb 5, 2001)

Interestingly (ironically?) my S3s and THDs are much faster recently. Was there an update or something that went out to them in the last week-ish?

Navigating menus is blazingly fast, and even making changes to the SP List is a little faster (although still painfully slow).


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## wdwms (Jan 10, 2003)

FYI did a little snooping on my network to see what my premier was doing when the HD GUI is turned on. I saw many HTTP requests to a specific IP address. So I purposely blocked the traffic to see if it sped up the system, and to be honest, it was only a marginal improvement. Based on this and what a few others have said, I think internet "speed" doesn't have much to do w/the HD GUI speed; most of points to code that just needs to be re-worked..on that has either zero or a very poorly written cache.

As anyone w/a bit of technical knowledge should realize, a 30mb or 2mbs connection is going to have minimal effect on the type of traffic tivo is transferring for the menus.. latency on your network is more important than you top speed; the size of the data coming across is so small you'll never reach full speed with it.

Code + cache + network latency + 1 core = slowdown...
ok so throw flash in there too.. 

as Teewow said, setting the "extras" to "less" on all areas does help too...


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## innocentfreak (Aug 25, 2001)

I almost wonder if the speed has something to do with having to switch back and forth between the UI. It may have nothing to do with it, but I would think true optimization would be tough until you are 100% using one UI or another rather than a mixture of the two. I know nothing about coding though so I may be completely wrong.


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## smbaker (May 24, 2003)

wdwms said:


> I saw many HTTP requests to a specific IP address. So I purposely blocked the traffic to see if it sped up the system, and to be honest, it was only a marginal improvement.


Out of curiosity, are they in fact HTTP requests, or HTTPS ? It'd be interesting to see what would happen if a local proxy intercepted the requests and satisfied them from a cache on the LAN. Wouldn't be too hard if they're plain ordinary HTTP image requests. Given your experiments with blocking the IP outright, it probably wouldn't help much though.


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## wdwms (Jan 10, 2003)

innocentfreak said:


> I almost wonder if the speed has something to do with having to switch back and forth between the UI. It may have nothing to do with it, but I would think true optimization would be tough until you are 100% using one UI or another rather than a mixture of the two. I know nothing about coding though so I may be completely wrong.


Highly doubt it, if that was the case the SD menus would be slow, when in fact they are super fast even if you are running the HD gui. I think something in the HD menus just isn't optimized.



smbaker said:


> Out of curiosity, are they in fact HTTP requests, or HTTPS ? It'd be interesting to see what would happen if a local proxy intercepted the requests and satisfied them from a cache on the LAN. Wouldn't be too hard if they're plain ordinary HTTP image requests. Given your experiments with blocking the IP outright, it probably wouldn't help much though.


Hard to tell, the output from my log is below; its a request to port 8081, it looked to be about 1 request per menu "click".. by click I mean a movement in the menu that would bring new content in some shape or form. Since there is only one request per click, i'm thinking its an XML request. The XML response back would provide the box the info it needs to display. There must be a cache running because there is only one request per click, and I don't see multiple requests for images.

So going on what I've seen, i'm still leaning towards it being a GUI issue with a poorly optimized cache. I don't think the connection back to tivo w/every click is the main culprit (although a call home w/every click isn't exactly a graceful way of programming). The next step would be to sniff out these packets and see if they are encoded or not and try to figure out whats really going on.

Log:
Oct 16 23:28:51 ? user.warn kernel: ACCEPT IN=br0 OUT=vlan1 SRC=192.168.2.16 DST=204.176.49.65 LEN=60 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=63 ID=36885 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=42231 DPT=8081 WINDOW=5840 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0 OPT


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## innocentfreak (Aug 25, 2001)

wdwms said:


> Highly doubt it, if that was the case the SD menus would be slow, when in fact they are super fast even if you are running the HD gui. I think something in the HD menus just isn't optimized.


I would disagree only because the SD UI is old code based optimized for a slower processor which automatically makes it faster with this new faster processor. I would think the SDUI is still the base for the new UI since it seems to handle the heavy lifting almost. I am basing this off the fact all the user screens for the most part are HD, but all the processor intensive actions like Season Pass Manager are SD.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

wdwms said:


> FYI did a little snooping on my network to see what my premier was doing when the HD GUI is turned on. I saw many HTTP requests to a specific IP address. So I purposely blocked the traffic to see if it sped up the system, and to be honest, it was only a marginal improvement.


Your result doesn't surprise me. Simply blocking the ability of the TiVo to reach "host 204.176.49.65 : 65.49.176.204.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer mind.tivo.com." is not likely to speed up anything greatly. It still has to make the request, and it still waiting for a response, and when failed, it might try yet again or have other delays.

A better test would be to have iptables redirect requests to that host to a proxy that would somehow give an appropriate but bogus file for whatever the local machine requests.

But that won't help for all the requests while you are navigating through stuff not in the Discovery Bar and it is trying to grab information, in real time, for each of the programs you are clicking through (it might actually break everything).

Still, I would MUCH prefer an "OFF" control for the "discovery bar". That is the best fix for me.


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## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

Fed up enough with HDUI. Got my fill. Went back to SD menu again and here to stay. 

Premiere feels solid again as a pure DVR.


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## aadam101 (Jul 15, 2002)

I decided to give the HD UI another try last night. The first thing I did in the UI was delete a program. It locked up for three minutes. I switched back to the SD UI......Thanks for lying to me Tivo.....


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## smbaker (May 24, 2003)

wdwms said:


> Since there is only one request per click, i'm thinking its an XML request. The XML response back would provide the box the info it needs to display. There must be a cache running because there is only one request per click, and I don't see multiple requests for images.


I agree, this sounds likely. It wouldn't be too hard to use something like tcpick to capture the stream and see what it's sending back and forth.


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