# Clothes going out of style while downloading shows



## fburgerod (Oct 25, 2007)

Why is it that a two plus hour long movie can be downloaded from Netflix in 9 minutes flat while the TiVo app on Android cannot download the same length in five hours? And that is IF it doesn't kick out one of its frequent error messages? I'm doing both of these in my home whilst sitting next to the router with high speed and strong signal. Come on TiVo!!!


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## tomhorsley (Jul 22, 2010)

If it is an unprotected program you can download it via something like pytivo onto a computer in about 10 minutes.

I always crack up when I think about TiVo imagining they can make a "cloud" DVR when they can't even do direct networking from a TiVo to a tablet on the same local network.


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## HerronScott (Jan 1, 2002)

fburgerod said:


> Why is it that a two plus hour long movie can be downloaded from Netflix in 9 minutes flat while the TiVo app on Android cannot download the same length in five hours? And that is IF it doesn't kick out one of its frequent error messages? I'm doing both of these in my home whilst sitting next to the router with high speed and strong signal. Come on TiVo!!!


I just downloaded a 2 hour movie in medium format to my Android tablet in 51 minutes at home from the Stream in my Roamio Pro (should be the same "hardware") with an 802.11n (2.4GHz) WiFi connection. Final size was 2.44GB.

It's never going to be as fast as straight download/stream of a similar size show from Netflix as Netflix doesn't have to transcode on the fly but 5 hours and error messages is definitely not to be expected.

Scott


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## fburgerod (Oct 25, 2007)

HerronScott said:


> I just downloaded a 2 hour movie in medium format to my Android tablet in 51 minutes at home from the Stream in my Roamio Pro (should be the same "hardware") with an 802.11n (2.4GHz) WiFi connection. Final size was 2.44GB.
> 
> It's never going to be as fast as straight download/stream of a similar size show from Netflix as Netflix doesn't have to transcode on the fly but 5 hours and error messages is definitely not to be expected.
> 
> Scott


Hi there, I would be happy enough with 2 hours if it didn't stop so often and need to be restarted. Medium quality. 2.4GHz. 802.11n WiFi. Maybe it's my Samsung S7 that is the weak link.


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## HerronScott (Jan 1, 2002)

fburgerod said:


> Hi there, I would be happy enough with 2 hours if it didn't stop so often and need to be restarted. Medium quality. 2.4GHz. 802.11n WiFi. Maybe it's my Samsung S7 that is the weak link.


My Android tablet was a $69 RCA Walmart Black Friday special a few years back (Android 4.2.2) so I doubt that it's your Samsung S7. 

It almost sounds like you are downloading on cellular versus WiFi. Can you turn off cellular on your phone and try it? Also, what happens when it stops - is the app crashing or something else?

Scott


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## HerronScott (Jan 1, 2002)

I did that download again and this time instead of checking it every so often I just left the tablet alone. It looks like the tablet went to sleep at some point so network connectivity was lost. When I woke it up, the download had gotten to 1.52GB and I had to sign in again but I was able to pause and unpause it and it picked up where it left off. 

Scott


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

One difference that increases the time is that the Tivo is transcoding the video to a format that's compatible with your device on the fly, while Netflix already has the video encoded in a format that your device supports. So that accounts for a large part of the time difference. 

But it still shouldn't take that long. I usually get about 1/2 realtime when transferring from my TiVo. Although that's using the transcoder in a Roamio Pro. The Bolt might not be as fast since it uses the chip built into the Broadcom chipset to do the transcoding.


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## ClearToLand (Jul 10, 2001)

Interesting how these sort of threads continue while the OP never / still hasn't returned... 




fburgerod said:


> *Why is it that a two plus hour long movie can be downloaded from Netflix in 9 minutes flat while the TiVo app on Android cannot download the same length in five hours?* And that is IF it doesn't kick out one of its frequent error messages? I'm doing both of these in my home whilst sitting next to the router with high speed and strong signal. Come on TiVo!!!


Because, with TiVo, you're starting out with a HUGE, mostly uncompressed file (as stated below) and encoding it '_on-the-fly _'.



HerronScott said:


> *I just downloaded a 2 hour movie in medium format to my Android tablet in 51 minutes at home from the Stream in my Roamio Pro (should be the same "hardware") with an 802.11n (2.4GHz) WiFi connection. Final size was 2.44GB.*
> 
> It's never going to be as fast as straight download/stream of a similar size show from Netflix as Netflix doesn't have to transcode on the fly but 5 hours and error messages is definitely not to be expected...


What was the original size of the ".TIVO" file?



HerronScott said:


> ...*It almost sounds like you are downloading on cellular versus WiFi*. Can you turn off cellular on your phone and try it? Also, what happens when it stops - is the app crashing or something else?






Dan203 said:


> *One difference that increases the time is that the Tivo is transcoding the video to a format that's compatible with your device on the fly, while Netflix already has the video encoded in a format that your device supports. So that accounts for a large part of the time difference*...



@fburgerod,

Here's an 'experiment' you can try: ENCODE the file to a smaller format ahead of time with kmttg (ffmpeg or handbrake - pick an appropriate 'Encoding Profile' for your Target) and then d/l it; see how close to 9 minutes you can get...


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## fburgerod (Oct 25, 2007)

_Was out of town for five days but back home now. Tried to download a 2 hour movie last night off WiFi. Went to bed and woke up to another error message 57: -1

Is that because my phone shuts off the screen after a few minutes of inactivity? It should continue the download regardless as no phones keep the screen on beyond a minute or two. Was on a pace for a one hour download before it failed._


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## HerronScott (Jan 1, 2002)

fburgerod said:


> _Was out of town for five days but back home now. Tried to download a 2 hour movie last night off WiFi. Went to bed and woke up to another error message 57: -1
> 
> Is that because my phone shuts off the screen after a few minutes of inactivity? It should continue the download regardless as no phones keep the screen on beyond a minute or two. Was on a pace for a one hour download before it failed._


I doubt that its because the screen shuts off but as I reported with my tablet once it went to sleep the transfer stopped. I don't have an Android or Apple phone to test though. On my tablet, it didn't go to sleep fully when I was checking the transfer every so often but not sure what options might exist to turn that off altogether although I did not have it plugged in to power at the time.

Scott


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## fburgerod (Oct 25, 2007)

Today I downloaded two of three shows at medium quality over WiFi. 2 hour movie took 1:45. 30 minute show took a bit over 30 minutes. The third show failed with the same 57: -1 error code. I guess this is as good it gets. It's really the repeated failures that is most annoying. Oh well. Thanks for all your help everyone.


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## sushikitten (Jan 28, 2005)

I've never successfully downloaded anything from TiVo to an iDevice. It always times out and throws errors.


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## andy7121 (Aug 11, 2017)

I have installed the TIVO app for android on my Nexus 10 tablet. I downloaded a few movies. Found that basic quality was best; at medium quality, they would not download. (I did this in the same room as my router.)

Eventually, the movies did download in basic quality. And the available storage space on my tablet went down accordingly. However, later when I checked the list of movies on my tablet, the list was empty. No movies showed at all. But the available space on my tablet was still low, indicating that the movie files really were there. I used the file manager to try to find the movies, but I was not successful at this.

I tried to download one of the same movies again, and the app said I already had it on the tablet. Did I want to download it again? I elected to uninstall the app and start over.

After uninstalling the app, my available space on the tablet went up. The stored (and hidden) movies were deleted, along with the app. That was good.

I rebooted the tablet and installed the app again. I selected 4 movies to download. Only one of them actually made it to the tablet. Or so I thought, since the app displayed only one movie.

I downloaded yet another movie. Not only did that seem to work OK, but the other 3, missing movies also showed up in the list.

My app version is 3.2.3-1019896. In a few days, I will try to watch one of the movies. Will they still be there? I hope so.

Is there a way to refresh the list of movies available on the tablet? Does the IOS version of the app work better? (My wife has an I phone.) Will I feel confident, next time I fly, that I will be able to watch one of my movies on my tablet?

Margret Schmidt, are you listening?


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## minimeh (Jun 20, 2011)

andy7121 said:


> Margret Schmidt, are you listening?


I'm guessing "no": Farewell from TiVoMargret


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## Sparky1234 (May 8, 2006)

minimeh said:


> I'm guessing "no": Farewell from TiVoMargret


She's gone!


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## Puppy76 (Oct 7, 2004)

andy7121 said:


> Does the IOS version of the app work better? (My wife has an I phone.) Will I feel confident, next time I fly, that I will be able to watch one of my movies on my tablet?


The iOS version works really well from my experience.

I'm just listing any issues here, not to scare you off, because I use it daily on 2 iPads and an iPhone and it works well:

-Occasionally I have to force quit the program to get it to connect, if I'm remembering right.
-You have to leave the device open running the program to keep downloading (and obviously leaving the device plugged in is good!) That's in contrast to Amazon and Netflix's programs, which keep downloading in the background. It DOES support resuming downloads though-I've started downloads before work, and resumed when I've come home, before.
-It doesn't support like the video overlay thingee on the iPad, full screen only (at least as of the last time I tried it on a newer iPad that supports that...it's possible that's been added).

Honestly all of those are pretty nit-picky. It works well for me, and I use it all the time. I've watched 3 shows on my iPhone today, a few shows on my iPad last night, etc.

On my iPhone (4.7" model) I've noticed a VERY slight quality difference between Low and Medium, and can't see any between Medium and High, so I just transfer on Low mostly to avoid writing as much on my Flash (since technically it wears out over time...although that's probably a silly worry given something else will wear out first).

Anyway even Low looks great on a small screen, but the other settings work great too.

Obviously you do need a reliable wifi singnal and whatnot, and then my Bolt transfers at I guess a bit over 2x normal playback speed. I'm almost certain the bottleneck is the TiVo and not my devices' write speed nor my network, but it seems like it does an hour in like, I don't know, 24 minutes maybe? 20? I don't know-works well to queue up some shows and just leave it plugged in, downloading them, and they're done before you know it.

Also, my understanding is Bolt can transcode 2 streams at once, and the older hardware could do 4.


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## the_scotsman (Jul 28, 2005)

I have had mixed success with downloading to my i devices from a Roamio Plus. It's always better to have the i device charging while downloading. I've been in the UK for the last few weeks and generally downloading from the US (out of home obviously) with good success but still a few hiccups here and there despite have a pretty poor download speed where I am connecting from (6Mbps). Most of the time I select medium quality. Shows usually take between 75% and 150% of the actual show run time to download.

However, a day or so a go things have ground to a halt. Every show I try and download is taking forever!
For example, I am trying to download last night's episode of The Walking Dead and it's calculated to take......11.5 hours!!! The Formula One race was estimated at 26 hours! Something has gone wrong somewhere, but where?

I've had the Roamio rebooted and checked the upload/download speeds at both ends - they report as expected, Last thing for me to try is rebooting the switch the Tivo is connected to and perhaps reboot the router.

We love the ability to download shows but it is a very temperamental and frustrating user experience!


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