# Very slow transfer speed in Tivo Desktop?



## FortoReibas (Nov 9, 2006)

Hi there.
I've had my Series 2 80 hour Tivo for about a year now, and I love it. Just ran a Cat5 jumper from it to my computer. I am using a Linksys USB100m adapter on the Tivo and an Intel 82558 10/100 adapter in my computer. I've started transferring saved shows from my Tivo to my computer using Tivo Desktop 2.3a, and I can't make heads or tails of the transfer speeds. A 2 hour show recorded at good quality, about 5.1GB in size, is taking about 3 or so hours or so to transfer. A half-hour show at good quality, about 800MB, takes about 40 minutes.

Based on my understanding of USB, there are two possible speeds with USB 1.x (Low=1.5Mb/Sec and Full=12Mb/Sec), and 3 possible speeds with USB2.0 (Low, Full, and High=480Mb/Sec).

If the device is defaulting to Low speed, the above makes sense, as a 800 MB file should take between 20 and 40 minutes. But, Low is usually used only by mice, keyboards, joysticks, etc. If it is using Full speed, which is what I would expect, the transfer should take place in 8 to 16 minutes.

Is the Tivo stuck on the lowest possible speed for some reason? Can anything be done to increase the transfer speed?

TIA
Brian


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## CuriousMark (Jan 13, 2005)

The transfer speed is set by the TiVo's internal processes remuxing the video stream and applying encryption to it. The processor is going as fast as it can. You will get a slight speed up by going to a USB200M but the difference is small. There are some workarounds you can try. The first is to go to the sending TiVo, play a pre-recorded program and pause it. Turn off the TV if it is at risk of burnin. This helps because the TiVo is no longer reading from the HD to play the show. Another option is to tune a nonexisting channel so that you get the blue no video source screen displayed by the TiVo. This stops video going onto and coming off the HD and provides even more resources to the TiVoToGo software.

Your speeds are not that atypical, so it doesn't look like you have anything serious going wrong. 

Good luck,

CuriousMark


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