# TiVo Series 5



## southerndoc

I wanted to start a thread about the series 5 for rumors when it might be released, any features people might want, etc.

I was going to purchase 2 Minis and an XL4, but I've decided to wait until the new series comes out. Was hoping for faster processor and 6 tuners.


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## CuriousMark

You mean like this thread:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=501545


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## Dan203

My first guess...Iit probably not going to be called a Series 5. It'll likely still be a Premiere just with upgraded hardware. 

My second guess... It will be based on the Pace XG1 hardware platform meaning it should be capable of having up to 6 tuners. I also think we'll see a 3 or 4 tuner unit that supports OTA.

My third guess... It'll have a built in H.264 encoder for built in TiVo Stream capabilities.

Now lets see if any of those come true.


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## southerndoc

CuriousMark said:


> You mean like this thread:
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=501545


Oops.


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## wmcbrine

Dan203 said:


> My first guess...Iit probably not going to be called a Series 5. It'll likely still be a Premiere just with upgraded hardware.


Their next model may not be a Series 5, but there will be a Series 5 eventually (unless they go out of business before then).

P.S. I'm not saying I expect them to go out of business; I'm just saying that the only way I see a "Series 5" not happening at some point (however distant) is if they do go out of business before they get to that point.

Clearly a "Series" can encompass some significant hardware changes (e.g., OLED S3 vs. TiVo HD, or Premiere vs. Premiere 4 for that matter). But at some point -- I don't know when -- there will be something -- I don't know what -- that makes them think, "This deserves a bump in the Series number."

Maybe when they add h.265.


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## Dan203

He indicated that he was waiting for the Series 5 as if it would be released soon. I don't think that's going to happen. I believe that TiVo is working on a new generation of hardware that will likely be released this year, but it probably wont be called a Series 5.

I think we're going to get another 3+ years out of the Series 4/Premiere line.


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## compnurd

Dan203 said:


> He indicated that he was waiting for the Series 5 as if it would be released soon. I don't think that's going to happen. I believe that TiVo is working on a new generation of hardware that will likely be released this year, but it probably wont be called a Series 5.
> 
> I think we're going to get another 3+ years out of the Series 4/Premiere line.


I agree. It will just be a new model Premiere with faster hardware.

Direct TV has done the Same thing with there HR Line of DVR's

The HR24's came out 2 years ago and just flowed into the system but they had upgraded HW.. Now you have the HR34 and 44 which is the same design but now with the 34/44 have 5 tuners


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## steve614

I agree that the next TiVo hardware to come will be considered a "Series 4".

I expect a 6 tuner cable model and a 4 tuner OTA model based on the recent FCC filings.


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## wmcbrine

steve614 said:


> I expect a 6 tuner cable model and a 4 tuner OTA model based on the recent FCC filings.


An OTA-only model?


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## innocentfreak

wmcbrine said:


> An OTA-only model?


I would guess it will be both OTA and digital based off the filings and surveys.

Potentially I could see TiVo approach whoever makes the OTA tuner chips to see if they can develop a 4 tuner design. Either that or there are other chip improvements that may make it affordable and efficient to make it both 4 OTA and digital.

The waiver request is to drop Analog tuners which may be enough of a solution.


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## SullyND

Dan203 said:


> I also think we'll see a 3 or 4 tuner unit that supports OTA.


With the mini being advertised as requiring four or more tuners, I don't think we'll ever see a 3 tuner TiVo.


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## crxssi

Dan203 said:


> My first guess...Iit probably not going to be called a Series 5. It'll likely still be a Premiere just with upgraded hardware.
> 
> My second guess... It will be based on the Pace XG1 hardware platform meaning it should be capable of having up to 6 tuners. I also think we'll see a 3 or 4 tuner unit that supports OTA.
> 
> My third guess... It'll have a built in H.264 encoder for built in TiVo Stream capabilities.
> 
> Now lets see if any of those come true.


I like your predictions and think they are probably correct. Except I think a 3 tuner would be odd, 4 is on the mark.


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## southerndoc

I broke down today and bought a Mini and XL4. We don't have a cable box in our master bedroom, and my wife is pregnant and wanted to watch her shows in the bedroom. So I caved in.

Will probably move the XL4 to the home theater room when a newer DVR comes out (or get another Mini and sell the XL4 on eBay).


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## Mike-Wolf

I wonder if HDMI 1.4 will be implemented in the next TiVo since the current Premiere is HDMI 1.3. I'm also hoping that the next TiVo will support all of the features that the current line of TiVo Premiere's have such as support for streaming and transferring so it can be added into a TiVo Premiere centric household. I'm also wondering if TiVo will roll out any software updates to the current line of TiVo Premiere's to bring it on par with the software or feature of the next TiVo, again so the functionality and performance is seamless between current and next line.


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## MrZarf

innocentfreak said:


> I would guess it will be both OTA and digital based off the filings and surveys.
> 
> Potentially I could see TiVo approach whoever makes the OTA tuner chips to see if they can develop a 4 tuner design. Either that or there are other chip improvements that may make it affordable and efficient to make it both 4 OTA and digital.
> 
> The waiver request is to drop Analog tuners which may be enough of a solution.


I would buy a 4 OTA + digital unit so fast it would make someone's head spin. This would be a great solution, supporting both OTA usage as well as Mini and Stream usage! Hurry up, TiVo!!


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## NotNowChief

We just got the Mini. I'm going to bask in that glory for a while. 

I've learned to have very low expectations for new TiVo products. With that being said, I will not expect, speculate, or look for a Series 5 box within the next 2-3 years, AT LEAST.


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## Leon WIlkinson

Dan203 said:


> My first guess...Iit probably not going to be called a Series 5. It'll likely still be a Premiere just with upgraded hardware.
> 
> My second guess... It will be based on the Pace XG1 hardware platform meaning it should be capable of having up to 6 tuners. I also think we'll see a 3 or 4 tuner unit that supports OTA.
> 
> My third guess... It'll have a built in H.264 encoder for built in TiVo Stream capabilities.
> 
> Now lets see if any of those come true.


Possibly with the 2 drive bays for more storage, maybe a bump to a 3 or 4Tb per drive.


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## Dan203

crxssi said:


> I like your predictions and think they are probably correct. Except I think a 3 tuner would be odd, 4 is on the mark.


The reason I said 3 is because if the new platform only supports a max of 6 tuners, like the current one only does 4, then i could see them doing a 3/3 configuration for a box that does OTA.


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## atmuscarella

I certainly would be Interested in a 4 Tuner OTA model that offered increase speed and perhaps more IP/Internet Streaming abilities.

With Digital only combined OTA/Cable units TiVo can offer some interesting options, like a 4+4 digital OTA/Cable combination might be able to record more than 4 channels at once if you were using both the OTA and Cable inputs. Plus now that they have built the Mini with the operating system on flash memory perhaps future units would use the same setup allowing for simple hard drive upgrades (no software to worry about), like allowing dual internal drives again and drives bigger than 2TB. 

Not sure TiVo really is into innovating any more but we can still hope


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## uw69

6 tuner box, 4tb hdd, built in capabilities of the current TiVo Stream, and enough internal upgrades to be called a series 5!


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## NotNowChief

How about we iron out that whole dynamic tuner allocation thing before hammering out that 6-tuner box.

Maybe even that whole Stream/Android thing too.

Thanks.


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## innocentfreak

NotNowChief said:


> How about we iron out that whole dynamic tuner allocation thing before hammering out that 6-tuner box.
> 
> Maybe even that whole Stream/Android thing too.
> 
> Thanks.


Different teams.


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## NotNowChief

innocentfreak said:


> Different teams.


Agreed. I meant my comment more along the lines of "let's get the stuff we have on sale right now fully finished before we move onto the next thing we aren't going to finish".


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## aaronwt

NotNowChief said:


> How about we iron out that whole dynamic tuner allocation thing before hammering out that 6-tuner box.
> 
> Maybe even that whole Stream/Android thing too.
> 
> Thanks.


I'd rather get the six tuner TiVo first. As long as it has at least a 3TB hard drive.


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## NotNowChief

No matter what we all want, one thing is certain. We will be waiting a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time for it.


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## Jonathan_S

Dan203 said:


> The reason I said 3 is because if the new platform only supports a max of 6 tuners, like the current one only does 4, then i could see them doing a 3/3 configuration for a box that does OTA.


That would be my guess as well. 
TiVo could use a 6 tuner chipset for both a Premiere 6 (digital cable only; like the elite/4/4xl but 2 additional tuners) and a Premiere 3 (ota/cable; like the Premiere/XL but with 1 additional logical tuner).

Although if the minis really will only work with "4 or more tuner TiVos" like their box says that implies they wouldn't work with a 3/3 box - which would still mean no OTA TiVos could support them (which seems an oversight)


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## Dan203

I bet that 4 tuner limitation on the Mini is temporary. Once they get dynamic tuner allocation working there is no technical reason to set a minimum number of tuners for the host. It makes sense now, with the all or nothing approach they currently have. But we'll likely see dynamic tuner allocation working long before these new units hit, so I bet that limitation is gone before it's an issue.

TiVo has had boxes in the past with wording that no longer applied and the just covered it up with a sticker. No reason they couldn't do that again with any remaining Minis in stock after the software is updated to support dynamic tuner allocation.


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## teklock

Dan203 said:


> I bet that 4 tuner limitation on the Mini is temporary. Once they get dynamic tuner allocation working there is no technical reason to set a minimum number of tuners for the host. It makes sense now, with the all or nothing approach they currently have. But we'll likely see dynamic tuner allocation working long before these new units hit, so I bet that limitation is gone before it's an issue.
> 
> TiVo has had boxes in the past with wording that no longer applied and the just covered it up with a sticker. No reason they couldn't do that again with any remaining Minis in stock after the software is updated to support dynamic tuner allocation.


If that were the case, they would of waited. I don't think 2 tuners will ever work with the mini.


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## Dan203

I don't think that's true. Our best info says dynamic tuner allocation wont be available until Q2, which means the end of June. And it's not like TiVo has the best track record with sticking to release schedules so it could end up being September. By releasing the Mini now they not only appease anxious customers but they also potentially drive sales for 4 tuner units which have better margins for them.


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## mattack

Mike-Wolf said:


> I wonder if HDMI 1.4 will be implemented in the next TiVo since the current Premiere is HDMI 1.3.


What do you need that 1.4 supports that 1.3 doesn't? That's an honest question. I thought 1.3 did everything people could ever need now, including 3D.. Maybe it doesn't do 4K? We're not going to have 4K sets for a long time.


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## Dan203

There are a few enhancements to HDMI 1.4 but most don't apply to TiVo. 

Increased resolution to support 4K. This wont apply to TiVo for quite a few years.

Audio return channel. This is mainly for A/V receivers and allows the TV to send audio from it's built in tuners and apps back to the A/V receiver via the same HDMI cable it uses to get video from external devices.

Ethernet return channel. This is a way for HDMI devices to share a network connection over HDMI without the need for separate Ethernet cables. This might be useful for TiVo, but it requires special cables and for all your equipment to support it, so it's not really practical at the moment. 

Enhanced 3D support. This includes higher resolution and some communication protocols for the device and the TV to sync up better. This would only apply to TiVo for it's apps, like Netflix, since broadcast 3D is really just a trick and doesn't require any special features to support. 

A content type selection. This allows the device to tell the TV which picture settings to use automatically. It might apply to TiVo, but it's unlikely to be very helpful for most things except maybe apps.

Additional color spaces. This again is something that would only apply to apps and only if they were showing something like a photograph that doesn't use a standard TV color space.

Honestly I don't think any of it is really needed for a TiVo so I wouldn't expect them to support it unless adding it was basically free.


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## aaronwt

HDMI 1.4 added 3D(stereoscopic). HDMI 1.4a added enhanced 3D support.


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## wmcbrine

The 3D support would be really nice. Currently the TiVo's level of 3D support seems to consist only of having a "ThreeD" flag display in the Info.

I have a new 3D Blu-Ray player hooked up to the same TV as the Premiere. When I pop in a 3D disc, the TV switches to 3D mode automatically. When I want to watch 3D through the TiVo, I have to manually pull up the TV's menu, and select the appropriate mode (from among the several 3D modes).


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## Mike-Wolf

NotNowChief said:


> Agreed. I meant my comment more along the lines of "let's get the stuff we have on sale right now fully finished before we move onto the next thing we aren't going to finish".


Oh if only TiVo would take that advice and follow it


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## Mike-Wolf

I personally am hoping that TiVo someday sees the error of their way and allow users to use any brand of external hard drive like the Seagate GoFlex DVR expander. It looks better next to the TiVo and runs better then the Western Digital My Book AV DVR expander drive. I know it's a longshot but maybe someday....


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## Dan203

wmcbrine said:


> The 3D support would be really nice. Currently the TiVo's level of 3D support seems to consist only of having a "ThreeD" flag display in the Info.
> 
> I have a new 3D Blu-Ray player hooked up to the same TV as the Premiere. When I pop in a 3D disc, the TV switches to 3D mode automatically. When I want to watch 3D through the TiVo, I have to manually pull up the TV's menu, and select the appropriate mode (from among the several 3D modes).


That's because broadcast 3D is just a trick. They take the two images and squeeze them left/right or top/bottom in a normal 1920x1080 frame.* The TV then seperates them, stretches them back to full frame and displays one for each eye. There is no flag in the broadcast to tell the TiVo which mode it uses for the 3D and as such no way for TiVo to tell your TV regardless of HDMI spec used.

BluRays use MVC H.264 encoding, where each eye is encoded as a full resolution 1080p stream. The BD player knows when it's decoding an MVC stream so it can flag the TV and tell it to switch to 3D mode. Is method is also used for services like VUDU and Netflix, so TiVo could benefit from HDMI 1.4 for apps that support 3D.

* I believe there is a third mode where they use interlaced fields to create each eye but it's not commonly used in the wild.


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## NotNowChief

Dan203 said:


> I don't think that's true. Our best info says dynamic tuner allocation wont be available until Q2, which means the end of June. And it's not like TiVo has the best track record with sticking to release schedules *so it could end up being September*. By releasing the Mini now they not only appease anxious customers but they also potentially drive sales for 4 tuner units which have better margins for them.


I believe you are referring to the "TiVo-time" Multiplification factor of

*"&implied_release_date + next_quarter + residual_development_delay = CAN YOU PEOPLE EVER DELIVER ANYTHING IN A TIMELY MANNER?"*


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## aaronwt

From What I've seen on VUDU and Netflix, it looked like they were using top/bottom and side by side 3D. Sometimes there is some error and the image isn't processed properly. When that has happened I would see the top/bottom and side by side image. Although I can't remember which one had which format.


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## SugarBowl

Eliminating the tuning adapter should be a priority.


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## innocentfreak

Mike-Wolf said:


> I personally am hoping that TiVo someday sees the error of their way and allow users to use any brand of external hard drive like the Seagate GoFlex DVR expander. It looks better next to the TiVo and runs better then the Western Digital My Book AV DVR expander drive. I know it's a longshot but maybe someday....


I would love to see support for a NAS like Synology even if it is limited an archive option. They could even support it how Media Center works with WHS where it moves copy once recordings.



SugarBowl said:


> Eliminating the tuning adapter should be a priority.


This isn't up to TiVo, but instead the FCC and cable companies who obviously have more of an incentive not to since they don't have to deal with them.


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## Jeff_DML

SugarBowl said:


> Eliminating the tuning adapter should be a priority.


I wouldn't count on that unless the cable co allow some sort of IP based upchannel solution.


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## wmcbrine

SugarBowl said:


> Eliminating the tuning adapter should be a priority.


The tuning adapter is an absurd device that never should have existed. And it's probably not going anywhere. I blame the cable companies, not TiVo.


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## innocentfreak

The only way I ever see anything changing with tuning adapters is if everyone who uses one files a complaint every time something goes wrong. It may be time consuming though it is a simple form, but it is the only way to let the FCC know this solution isn't working. 

The FCC during the CableCARD update said they would monitor to see if things improved. If they don't they might take action. Without complaints from the consumer they can only take the cable companies word that they work.


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## L David Matheny

wmcbrine said:


> The tuning adapter is an absurd device that never should have existed. And it's probably not going anywhere. I blame the cable companies, not TiVo.


I've seen comments that if cable companies did away with all analog channels, enough bandwidth would be freed up that they would no longer need SDV or tuning adapters. I don't know whether it's true. I guess it would depend on how many obscure niche channels they think they need for fringe viewers.


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## atmuscarella

L David Matheny said:


> I've seen comments that if cable companies did away with all analog channels, enough bandwidth would be freed up that they would no longer need SDV or tuning adapters. I don't know whether it's true. I guess it would depend on how many obscure niche channels they think they need for fringe viewers.


They could also move to MPEG4 like that Satellite companies have frankly no analog and MPEG4 would certainly allow for enough channels for most people. But as others have said tuning adapters are likely here to stay.


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## Dan203

I've never had any real trouble with my TAs. For the most part they're as seamless to me as the CableCARD itself. Now I'd obviously prefer if the TA's functionality was built in, so I could avoid the extra cable split and wall wart, but I've never had any problems with them as they are now. 

A CableCARD + TA is what CableCARD 2.0 should have been. However they tried to roll VOD into the mix and got into this whole debate over who's UI should be used, which then lead to OCAP which neither side liked, and ultimately the entire idea went down in flames.

The tuning adapter was actually TiVo's idea. It was meant to be a stop gap until the whole two way CableCARD standard was hammered out. Unfortunately the two way CableCARD standard died on the vine and now we're left with the TA as our only option. And the cable industry sees no reason to change that. They want to move past CableCARDs to downloadable security instead. The problem is they don't want to agree on an industry standard. They're pressuring the FCC to leave the interpretation open ended so they can each deploy their own systems and make it less desirable for companies like TiVo to develop consumer based equipment.

Personally I'm hoping the FCC nuts up and imposes a gateway type standard like AllVid on the entire industry. With something like that you would get one box from the cable company, or any service provider, that does the actual tuning and then simply streams the digital data to your TV or TiVo via a network using something like DLNA. If we could get that in place then a TiVo could truly be provider agnostic.


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## aaronwt

L David Matheny said:


> I've seen comments that if cable companies did away with all analog channels, enough bandwidth would be freed up that they would no longer need SDV or tuning adapters. I don't know whether it's true. I guess it would depend on how many obscure niche channels they think they need for fringe viewers.


Definitely not true unless they went to MPEG4. Just look at FiOS. They are all didgital and they don't have to use any bandwidth toward phone and internet like other cable companies and they still don't have enough bandwidth for all the channels. So they are finally starting to switch some channels to MPEG4 which will start freeing up some space.


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## Jeff_DML

wmcbrine said:


> The tuning adapter is an absurd device that never should have existed. And it's probably not going anywhere. I blame the cable companies, not TiVo.


without it and tivo complaining to get it you would just be missing a bunch channels. I hope the TA is better then missing channels, at least you should get them some of time inbetween the TA crashing


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## celtic pride

I wish tivo would make a 6 or 8 tuner HD model with NO internet apps like netflix rhapsody or pandora ,they dont work on my tivos, half the time i get v301 errors on rhapsody and pandora .Just make a simple tivo DVR like the one i use to have with directv ,JUST FOR WATCHING AND RECORDING TV SHOWS!!!


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## DaveDFW

L David Matheny said:


> I've seen comments that if cable companies did away with all analog channels, enough bandwidth would be freed up that they would no longer need SDV or tuning adapters. I don't know whether it's true. I guess it would depend on how many obscure niche channels they think they need for fringe viewers.


Yes, back when cable providers offered 100 analogs, those channels consumed 2/3 of the bandwidth of a typical 750mhz system.

They had to choose between eliminating analogs or squeezing all their HD channels into the 1/3 that remained. SDV was the solution--cable companies saved bandwidth by not broadcasting all digital channels at the same time, but created headaches for Tivo users.

Now the trend is for cable operators to remove analog channels. Once those are gone and bandwidth has been reclaimed, maybe SDV will no longer be needed. Surely the cable companies don't like the tuning adapters either--it's another device they must maintain, and in my market at least, they are provided free of charge. They lose money on each one deployed.


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## Dan203

celtic pride said:


> I wish tivo would make a 6 or 8 tuner HD model with NO internet apps like netflix rhapsody or pandora ,they dont work on my tivos, half the time i get v301 errors on rhapsody and pandora .Just make a simple tivo DVR like the one i use to have with directv ,JUST FOR WATCHING AND RECORDING TV SHOWS!!!


It's likely the next TiVo will have a much better CPU which should make the experience using those apps a lot better.

There is also some evidence suggesting that TiVo is planning on releasing a 6 tuner unit in the fall, so you may get your wish there. However the CableCARD spec only requires that M-cards decode 6 streams, so 6 tuners is likely to be the max for the foreseeable future. Someone posted a link to a Cisco card that could do 8, but the standard only requires 8 so MSOs are unlikely to ever deploy it unless they come up with 8 tuner boxes of their own.


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## Loach

DaveDFW said:


> Yes, back when cable providers offered 100 analogs, those channels consumed 2/3 of the bandwidth of a typical 750mhz system.
> 
> They had to choose between eliminating analogs or squeezing all their HD channels into the 1/3 that remained. SDV was the solution--cable companies saved bandwidth by not broadcasting all digital channels at the same time, but created headaches for Tivo users.
> 
> Now the trend is for cable operators to remove analog channels. Once those are gone and bandwidth has been reclaimed, maybe SDV will no longer be needed. Surely the cable companies don't like the tuning adapters either--it's another device they must maintain, and in my market at least, they are provided free of charge. They lose money on each one deployed.


So I take it the fact that Cox is implementing SDV this month in my market means that a conversion to all-digital here is likely a long way off. Surely they would not waste money pushing out tuning adapters and then eliminate analog shortly thereafter?


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## Dan203

Loach said:


> So I take it the fact that Cox is implementing SDV this month in my market means that a conversion to all-digital here is likely a long way off. Surely they would not waste money pushing out tuning adapters and then eliminate analog shortly thereafter?


We got SDV here 3 years ago, we still have about 30 channels that are analog only, not even simulcast. I'm not even sure why they did it. They didn't even add any new channels. The only change to my lineup was they duplicated all the premium HD channels to SDV, but the original non-SDV versions of the channels still exist. The only reason I can think of that they did this was to increase bandwidth for VOD.


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## aaronwt

DaveDFW said:


> Yes, back when cable providers offered 100 analogs, those channels consumed 2/3 of the bandwidth of a typical 750mhz system.
> 
> They had to choose between eliminating analogs or squeezing all their HD channels into the 1/3 that remained. SDV was the solution--cable companies saved bandwidth by not broadcasting all digital channels at the same time, but created headaches for Tivo users.
> 
> Now the trend is for cable operators to remove analog channels. Once those are gone and bandwidth has been reclaimed, maybe SDV will no longer be needed. Surely the cable companies don't like the tuning adapters either--it's another device they must maintain, and in my market at least, they are provided free of charge. They lose money on each one deployed.


It's still needed unless cable operators squeeze too many channels on the same QAM or switch to MPEG 4 to reduce the bandwidth used. Bandwidth is also needed to supply the Internet and phone service for a typical cable system which also decrease the number of channels that can be added.

FiOS supplies the internet and phone service over different wavelengths on the fiber. For TV, unlike other cable companies, they have all 860Mhz of bandwidth to use for TV and FiOS still doesn't have enough space. Now if the cable company uses a 1Ghz system then that would give them more bandwidth. But most are only 860Mhz.


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## crxssi

wmcbrine said:


> The tuning adapter is an absurd device that never should have existed. And it's probably not going anywhere. I blame the cable companies, not TiVo.


It is extremely absurd and totally unnecessary for a device that is already on the cable company's network. It is a cludgy work-around. I have had significant problems dealing with the tuning adapter which has wasted dozens of hours of my time, over and over.

I am glad a solution was worked out, but this was supposed to be temporary.


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## Philmatic

1GHz plants, MPEG 4 and removal of all analog channels is the future. Cablecard is sufficient for anything with that combination, including VoD. SDV is an evil evil, kludgy, horrible "solution" to a problem that only exists because Cable Companies are incompetent.


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## Dan203

VOD requires two way communication. CableCARD is only 1 way. Although if all cable companies convert to a IP based VOD solution like Xfinity then it doesn't matter.


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## Jeff_DML

Philmatic said:


> 1GHz plants, MPEG 4 and removal of all analog channels is the future. Cablecard is sufficient for anything with that combination, including VoD. SDV is an evil evil, kludgy, horrible "solution" to a problem that only exists because Cable Companies are incompetent.


you got a throw them a bone bit.

First you got to deploy a STB to everyone grandmas TV to get rid of analog(Yes comcast is doing this). Then update all older STB that to do not support AVC. Not even sure what the FCC would say about the non-avc supporting cable cable devices, maybe make the MSO supply a TC(Tuning Converter)  to everyone? In this case satellite and u-verse has it a lot easier.


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## jadziedzic

Dan203 said:


> CableCARD is only 1 way.


Please stop repeating this erroneous statement; CableCARDs are *not* directional. If a CableCARD *was* directional then the one I pull out of my TiVo would not work in a Comcast set-top box that accepts a separable security device (i.e., a CableCARD) - and that's just not the case.


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## lessd

jadziedzic said:


> Please stop repeating this erroneous statement; CableCARDs are *not* directional. If a CableCARD *was* directional then the one I pull out of my TiVo would not work in a Comcast set-top box that accepts a separable security device (i.e., a CableCARD) - and that's just not the case.


Cable cards do have some two way communication as Comcast could tell when I removed my cable card from my TiVo, I was having problems pairing the card and ask the Comcast person on the phone if they could see my cable card, he said yes, I then removed the card and he told me now the card could not be seen, put it back in and he told me they could see the card in their system now. Could be very basic type of communication that not able to send commands I would guess.


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## Dan203

jadziedzic said:


> Please stop repeating this erroneous statement; CableCARDs are *not* directional. If a CableCARD *was* directional then the one I pull out of my TiVo would not work in a Comcast set-top box that accepts a separable security device (i.e., a CableCARD) - and that's just not the case.


OK you're right the CableCARD itself is not directional. But the CableCARD 1.0 specification does not include a standard for bidirectional communication wi the head end, and that's required for VOD. The CableCARD 2.0 spec was supose to include a standard for bidirectional communication but it was ultimately scrubbed with only the M-Card and OCAP portions becoming actual standards.

But what I was saying holds true. As it stands now there is no standard way for a 3rd party CableCARD device to order a VOD. They might be able to do it via the tunning adapter but the MSOs would have to agree on some sort of standard for that as nothing is currently required by the FCC. Alough I seriously doubt they'll ever do that because part of the reason the whole CableCARD 2.0 spec fell apart was because there was a big fight over who's UI would be presented to the user when communicating with the head end. That's sort of how OCAP was born, except that it turned out to be a POS that neither side really liked in the end.


----------



## Mike-Wolf

I'm not sure what it was implied regarding being able to take a CableCARD from a TiVo and put it in a set top box as that isn't exactly possible. Cisco for example has created two CableCARD models. The PKM 800/801 is for use in in one-way, multi- or single-stream retail hosts such as TiVo's where as the PKM 802/803 is for use in one- or two-way, multi- or single-stream leased hosts such as digital set top boxes owned by the cable provider that lease out to customers. They cannot be swapped for use in the other due to the PKM 802/803 host ID being paired and locked to the specific set top box it was married to at the factory and cable providers lack the ability to divorce and remarry them to other equipment, only the manufacturer does.
However the Cisco PKM 908 can be used in both leased and retail hosts. http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/video/ps8611/ps8650/ps8672/7022826_a.pdf
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/video/ps8611/ps8650/ps8651/ol_28628_01.pdf

CableCARD's themselves are bi directional. The host equipment they are paired to determines if it will be a one way host (TiVo) or a two way host (digital set top box) I apologize if all of this is common knowledge.


----------



## NotNowChief

Mike-Wolf said:


> I'm not sure what it was implied regarding being able to take a CableCARD from a TiVo and put it in a set top box as that isn't exactly possible. Cisco for example has created two CableCARD models. The PKM 800/801 is for use in in one-way, multi- or single-stream retail hosts such as TiVo's where as the PKM 802/803 is for use in one- or two-way, multi- or single-stream leased hosts such as digital set top boxes owned by the cable provider that lease out to customers. They cannot be swapped for use in the other due to the PKM 802/803 host ID being paired and locked to the specific set top box it was married to at the factory and cable providers lack the ability to divorce and remarry them to other equipment, only the manufacturer does.
> However the Cisco PKM 908 can be used in both leased and retail hosts. http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/video/ps8611/ps8650/ps8672/7022826_a.pdf
> http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/video/ps8611/ps8650/ps8651/ol_28628_01.pdf
> 
> CableCARD's themselves are bi directional. The host equipment they are paired to determines if it will be a one way host (TiVo) or a two way host (digital set top box) I apologize if all of this is common knowledge.


I did not know that, and am now disappointed that some programming is all that stands between TiVo and On-Demand. Aw well, if that's the worst trade-off, so be it. I have a regular HD cable box in the house for the few occasions that we want to use On-Demand.


----------



## Ichinisan

Mike-Wolf said:


> I wonder if HDMI 1.4 will be implemented in the next TiVo since the current Premiere is HDMI 1.3. I'm also hoping that the next TiVo will support all of the features that the current line of TiVo Premiere's have such as support for streaming and transferring so it can be added into a TiVo Premiere centric household. I'm also wondering if TiVo will roll out any software updates to the current line of TiVo Premiere's to bring it on par with the software or feature of the next TiVo, again so the functionality and performance is seamless between current and next line.


It would be awesome if it was the first device to support HDMI Ethernet Channel (HEC).

It would be awesome if I could connect a LAN cable to one of my devices (TiVo / DVR, Apple TV / Roku streamer, AV receiver, "smart" TV, game console) and other devices would have a stable, wired Internet connection through the HDMI connections. It would be awesome, but I don't think any devices support HEC. Someone needs to do it first!

I made some pics in MSPAINT to demonstrate why HEC would be awesome (attached since I can't embed pics until I have >5 posts). -- I have >5 posts now, so I can embed the originals.

Basically, I want to be prepared for the day when I can turn this:









...into this:


----------



## Ichinisan

Funny. I composed an image in MSPAINT. Lossless compression with PNG is only 14KB. The stupid forum software converted it to lossy JPG format, crapped all over the image with horrid artifacts, shrunk the size, and lost detail. On top of all that, it _increased_ the file size from 14KB to 41KB!

Sometimes JPG is not an appropriate format.


----------



## Ichinisan

Dan203 said:


> Ethernet return channel. This is a way for HDMI devices to share a network connection over HDMI without the need for separate Ethernet cables. This might be useful for TiVo, *but it requires special cables and for all your equipment to support it, so it's not really practical at the moment.*


I've seen conflicting information on that matter. I believe it would not always require a special cable. ARC and HEC use the same 2 pins (according to Wikipedia, anyway), and those pins have been reserved since the first HDMI spec. If both features really do use the same pins, then any cable supporting ARC should also support HEC. I believe most normal-thickness 1.3 cables that have 19 pins (like they should) will work fine with both features.

Here's the seemingly conflicting info, straight from the Wikipedia page for HDMI:



Wikipedia said:


> HDMI 1.4 introduces ARC and HEC. *These features use two pins from the connector: a previously unused pin and the hot plug detect pin.*





Wikipedia said:


> High Speed HDMI 1.3 cables can support all HDMI 1.4 features except for the HDMI Ethernet Channel.


It seems they are saying that an HDMI 1.3 cable will support ARC. If ARC uses the same two pins as HEC, then the 1.3 cable would also support HEC.

The HDMI organization says to make sure you get a cable that says "with Ethernet." I think it's because some cable manufacturers might have left-out those previously-unused pins to make the cable lighter / thinner.


----------



## aaronwt

Ichinisan said:


> It would be awesome if it was the first device to support HDMI Ethernet Channel (HEC).
> 
> It would be awesome if I could connect a LAN cable to one of my devices (TiVo / DVR, Apple TV / Roku streamer, AV receiver, "smart" TV, game console) and other devices would have a stable, wired Internet connection through the HDMI connections. It would be awesome, but I don't think any devices support HEC. Someone needs to do it first!
> 
> I made some pics in MSPAINT to demonstrate why HEC would be awesome (attached since I can't embed pics until I have >5 posts).


The problem is it would be slower than MoCA. Last I heard was that Ethernet over HDMI is only 100mb/s. Or are the specs faster now?

I wouldn't want all my devices sharing a 100BT connection. Some of my devices exceed double that speed over the network. And especially if several devices might be used concurrently, a 100Mb/s connection is to slow.

I've been using a gigabit back bone since late 2001 so I would need at much faster connection than 100BT for all my devices in my main viewing area.


----------



## ShayL

aaronwt said:


> Definitely not true unless they went to MPEG4. Just look at FiOS. They are all didgital and they don't have to use any bandwidth toward phone and internet like other cable companies and they still don't have enough bandwidth for all the channels. So they are finally starting to switch some channels to MPEG4 which will start freeing up some space.


I thought the QAM space was limited with FIOS was due to where the MOCA frequencies are using.


----------



## Dan203

aaronwt said:


> The problem is it would be slower than MoCA. Last I heard was that Ethernet over HDMI is only 100mb/s. Or are the specs faster now?
> 
> I wouldn't want all my devices sharing a 100BT connection. Some of my devices exceed double that speed over the network. And especially if several devices might be used concurrently, a 100Mb/s connection is to slow.
> 
> I've been using a gigabit back bone since late 2001 so I would need at much faster connection than 100BT for all my devices in my main viewing area.


Yes it is limited to 100Mbps. However that doesn't mean the A/V receiver is limited to 100Mbps. The A/V receiver could have a gigabit switch built in so each device could communicate at the full 100Mbps.

Plus most of these devices would only be using the network connection for internet access. So unless you have a >100Mbps internet connection I doubt this would be a problem.

I think the HEC thing is really cool. But until it's supported in all devices it really wont matter. If you still need to run regular Ethernet cables to some devices then it's not going to clean things up very much.


----------



## Mike-Wolf

Ichinisan said:


> It would be awesome if it was the first device to support HDMI Ethernet Channel (HEC).
> 
> It would be awesome if I could connect a LAN cable to one of my devices (TiVo / DVR, Apple TV / Roku streamer, AV receiver, "smart" TV, game console) and other devices would have a stable, wired Internet connection through the HDMI connections. It would be awesome, but I don't think any devices support HEC. Someone needs to do it first!
> 
> I made some pics in MSPAINT to demonstrate why HEC would be awesome (attached since I can't embed pics until I have >5 posts).


I was thinking what could be useful is a smart tv that is wireless internet connected with HDMI 1.4 using the Ethernet channel to connect to the HDMI 1.4 enabled TiVo and grant the TiVo internet access. HDMI HEC is supposed to be 100Mbps.


----------



## aaronwt

Dan203 said:


> Yes it is limited to 100Mbps. However that doesn't mean the A/V receiver is limited to 100Mbps. The A/V receiver could have a gigabit switch built in so each device could communicate at the full 100Mbps.
> 
> Plus most of these devices would only be using the network connection for internet access. So unless you have a >100Mbps internet connection I doubt this would be a problem.
> 
> I think the HEC thing is really cool. But until it's supported in all devices it really wont matter. If you still need to run regular Ethernet cables to some devices then it's not going to clean things up very much.


I have a 150Mb/s connection on FiOS. But my concern wouldn't be with the internet connection because the streaming services are slow. It would be with transferring or streaming content to/from other parts of the home.


----------



## Mike-Wolf

You know what it's fully possible that TiVo may just jump right into HDMI 2.0. I mean the PlayStation 4 is said to be HDMI 2.0. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#Version_2.0 This way they will be completely futureproof and solidify their hold as the central entertainment jack of all trades device that can do it all.


----------



## aaronwt

ShayL said:


> I thought the QAM space was limited with FIOS was due to where the MOCA frequencies are using.


I think FiOS uses 1150Mhz for the LAN MoCA frequency and 1000Mhz for the MoCA connection between the router and the ONT..

I have no idea how much space the need between their QAM channels and MoCA. But the QAM channels only go to 860Mhz.

I just know it will be nice if/when cable companies switch most of their channels to MPEG4. Not only does it free up space for more content, but DVR recordings take up less space. Giving you the ability to store more programs with the same amount of storage space.


----------



## shamilian

aaronwt said:


> I think FiOS uses 1150Mhz for the LAN MoCA frequency and 1000Mhz for the MoCA connection between the router and the ONT..
> 
> I have no idea how much space the need between their QAM channels and MoCA. But the QAM channels only go to 860Mhz.
> 
> I just know it will be nice if/when cable companies switch most of their channels to MPEG4. Not only does it free up space for more content, but DVR recordings take up less space. Giving you the ability to store more programs with the same amount of storage space.


Hopefully MPEG4 works on the Tivos without a hitch.....
I think the Moca is assignable....

Frequency is probably limited by the head end or the ONT.


----------



## Dan203

aaronwt said:


> I have a 150Mb/s connection on FiOS. But my concern wouldn't be with the internet connection because the streaming services are slow. It would be with transferring or streaming content to/from other parts of the home.


Even a BluRay uses a maximum bitrate of about 35Mbps, well under the 100Mbps limit, so what do you think you'd be streaming/transferring that would exceed 100Mbps?

Like I said the A/V receiver itself could have a gigabit switch, so the 100Mbps limit would only exist for the "last mile" between the A/V receiver and each individual device. So the only time this would be a problem is if you were attempting to transfer/stream at >100Mbps to a single device. TiVos only allow a max of 3 outgoing streams and 1 incoming stream at a time, and broadcast TV never exceeds 19.2Mbps, so you'd never exceed 100Mbps with a TiVo.


----------



## wmcbrine

Dan203 said:


> Even a BluRay uses a maximum bitrate of about 35Mbps, well under the 100Mbps limit, so what do you think you'd be streaming/transferring that would exceed 100Mbps?


Um... transfers aren't limited to real time. The TiVo Premiere can do about 80 Mbps on a single stream in "fast" (transport stream) mode.


----------



## ShayL

aaronwt said:


> I just know it will be nice if/when cable companies switch most of their channels to MPEG4. Not only does it free up space for more content, but DVR recordings take up less space. Giving you the ability to store more programs with the same amount of storage space.


I agree as long the cable co is not transcoding the source streams from mpeg 2 to mpeg 4.


----------



## Philmatic

Dan203 said:


> VOD requires two way communication. CableCARD is only 1 way. Although if all cable companies convert to a IP based VOD solution like Xfinity then it doesn't matter.


Wrong and wrong.

Comcast's VoD is not IP based, only a tiny portion of it is. When you request a VoD show on your TiVo, the TiVo sends a series of TCP/IP packets to the Cable Companies headend and tells it: "Hey, I want to watch this show, give me the QAM frequency and channel to watch it and go". The TiVo then tunes to this unique station that they created for you and you watch the show. Seeking also works the same way.

CableCard is not responsible for two way communication, it never was supposed to be either. There was talk years ago to incorporate DOCSIS modems in all TiVo's to support two way direct communication with the head end, but this was fought by TiVo as overly-complex and expensive.

The solution that Comcast came up with for VoD should be the model everywhere. It supports any internet connection and doesn't require many changes to the VoD infrastructure.


----------



## Dan203

wmcbrine said:


> Um... transfers aren't limited to real time. The TiVo Premiere can do about 80 Mbps on a single stream in "fast" (transport stream) mode.


Forgot about that.  But if a user were to run up against a bandwidth constraint because there were doing a transfer, rather then streaming, the transfer could simply be throttled. It wouldn't really hurt the experience. And if the user really wanted their full 80Mbps transfer + streaming at the same time they always have the option of using a real Ethernet cable or MoCa instead. I wasn't suggesting that HDMI HEC be the only way to connect, just that it be an option.



Philmatic said:


> Comcast's VoD is not IP based, only a tiny portion of it is. When you request a VoD show on your TiVo, the TiVo sends a series of TCP/IP packets to the Cable Companies headend and tells it: "Hey, I want to watch this show, give me the QAM frequency and channel to watch it and go". The TiVo then tunes to this unique station that they created for you and you watch the show. Seeking also works the same way.


Did not know that. I assumed that because they also offer Xfinity via iPad apps that it was completely IP based. In fact I also remember reading somewhere that Comcast wasn't counting VOD streaming toward internet bandwidth caps, which also suggests that the video itself is coming over IP. Are you sure it works the way you describe?


----------



## aaronwt

Dan203 said:


> Even a BluRay uses a maximum bitrate of about 35Mbps, well under the 100Mbps limit, so what do you think you'd be streaming/transferring that would exceed 100Mbps?
> 
> Like I said the A/V receiver itself could have a gigabit switch, so the 100Mbps limit would only exist for the "last mile" between the A/V receiver and each individual device. So the only time this would be a problem is if you were attempting to transfer/stream at >100Mbps to a single device. TiVos only allow a max of 3 outgoing streams and 1 incoming stream at a time, and broadcast TV never exceeds 19.2Mbps, so you'd never exceed 100Mbps with a TiVo.


A regular BD has a total max bitrate of 54Mb/s(Audio + video). A 3D BD has a 64Mb/s max bitrate. 
But for me, with my 3D media players they are supposed to be able to stream at bitrates of around 120Mb/s. Plus I want to be able to transfer content to them as fast as possible which right now is over 200Mb/s.

With a TiVo Elite, I hit around 130Mb/s peaks when I did my transfer tests back in 2011. But that was also while maxing out the streams. Transferring to/from multiple TiVos/PC and also downloading from Amazon concurrently.


----------



## Dan203

For people that are concerned with speed you still have the option of using regular Ethernet. HEC would be optional.

Personally I would sacrifice a little network speed for a cleaner install. Anything to pare down the rats nest of cables currently behind my A/V rack.


----------



## aaronwt

Dan203 said:


> For people that are concerned with speed you still have the option of using regular Ethernet. HEC would be optional.
> 
> Personally I would sacrifice a little network speed for a cleaner install. Anything to pare down the rats nest of cables currently behind my A/V rack.


That's why I've been using wireless for more of my devices. I'm already using around fourteen GigE switches(8 and 5 port) The devices that only need an internet connection for streaming apps can get up to 60Mb/s(depending on the device, My Roku 3 for instance gets 60Mb/s over wireless) of throughput over wireless which is way more than enough for the streaming apps. So I've been connecting them over Wi-Fi lately since I would need to add more switches to connect more devices.


----------



## Arcady

Fourteen switches? In a house? That's really really ridiculous. Why wouldn't you have a couple 12 or 24 port switches and run everything to that location? Making things jump through switch after switch will cause collisions and slow things way down. Moving devices that coule be wired to wireless seems like the opposite of a good idea. You're going to clog up the available wireless bandwidth with more than about 12 devices on any one AP.


----------



## aaronwt

Arcady said:


> Fourteen switches? In a house? That's really really ridiculous. Why wouldn't you have a couple 12 or 24 port switches and run everything to that location? Making things jump through switch after switch will cause collisions and slow things way down. Moving devices that coule be wired to wireless seems like the opposite of a good idea. You're going to clog up the available wireless bandwidth with more than about 12 devices on any one AP.


Because I can't do that. I live in a Condo and I can't run any more wiring outside the building. And the only way to run some inside would be to tear up the few areas that have drywall in the ceiling.(Which I did do in a couple of areas when I had some water damage repaired) The rest of the place has concrete ceilings so those areas are limited to outside wiring.

As far as switches. I have over sixty devices on my network and I don't have any network issues. I can chain several switches and there will not be a noticeable difference from a user perspective as having one switch. I'll still hit 155Mb/s download speeds form the internet and still have 5ms ping times Still game with zero issues. I can still transfer at 900Mb/s+ speeds from PC to PC. And can have dozens of concurrent transfers going without any problems.

Now I do have my network physically separated. So my TiVos/TiVo desktop are on one section, media players and PCs on another, Cameras/wireless on another section, and a fourth section for my alarm system and other devices. So on each section if the devices communicate to each other they never need to go through the router. The only time they would go through there is to get internet access or to communicate with a device on another section. I've been doing it this way for many years with no issues. I even used to have over seventy devices on my network.

I used to use four APs at one time. But since since getting a couple of Asus routers with simultaneous 2.4 and 5Ghz wireless radios. I get more coverage and bandwidth for wireless than when I had the four APs.


----------



## wmcbrine

Arcady said:


> Fourteen switches? In a house? That's really really ridiculous.


You're talking to the guy who used to run like nine TiVos. 

I have, let's see... five switches in service currently. The central switch is a 16-porter, but I still need the others, because I only run one line to each room.


----------



## innocentfreak

I think I have 7 switches ranging from 5 to 8 ports. I wired my place after the fact. In some spots I planned ok, but in others I highly underestimated what I would need. For example I ran 4 drops to my TV and I am up to 8 devices there. 

One of these days I need to clean it up and rerun a bunch of stuff. Unfortunately my friend who does this for me has been sidelined due to health issues so I just have to add and upgrade switches as I need them.


----------



## Dan203

I've got 5 as well. In my case I could simplify a little and get it down to just 3. But I see no reason to spend the money. They work fine.

For the A/V rack though it would be nice if all my devices could network via HDMI and the switch was just my A/V receiver. Would make the wiring for everything a LOT simpler. Plus the blinking lights on my switch kind of drive me nuts. (been meaning to break out the electrical tape and "fix" that)


----------



## Dan203

innocentfreak said:


> I think I have 7 switches ranging from 5 to 8 ports. I wired my place after the fact. In some spots I planned ok, but in others I highly underestimated what I would need. For example I ran 4 drops to my TV and I am up to 8 devices there.
> 
> One of these days I need to clean it up and rerun a bunch of stuff. Unfortunately my friend who does this for me has been sidelined due to health issues so I just have to add and upgrade switches as I need them.


I think it's silly to run drops from a central location to every device in the house. Makes much more sense to run one drop from a central location to each room, then use a switch in those rooms to feed multiple devices. A bunch of long drops to each device are more expensive and harder to maintain.


----------



## Philmatic

Dan203 said:


> Did not know that. I assumed that because they also offer Xfinity via iPad apps that it was completely IP based. In fact I also remember reading somewhere that Comcast wasn't counting VOD streaming toward internet bandwidth caps, which also suggests that the video itself is coming over IP. Are you sure it works the way you describe?


Yes, Comcast VoD on TiVo uses the SeaChange software middle-ware to handle the communication between the public internet (Since Comcast cannot assume or require that you are using their internet service) and Comcast's private cable headends. They originally used SeaChange hardware as well, but eventually settled on Cisco for production use.

This is also very clear once you use Comcast VoD, it ties up a Tuner.  The reason why the Mini can support Comcast VoD out of the box is because it uses the same tuner borrowing logic that is used to tune Live TV. It's all still managed by the host DVR.

The reason they don't count VoD usage against your cap is because it comes down the cable tv network and is not internet based. They don't HAVE to prioritize it in any way, in fact if it was purely IP based, they would likely run into net neutrality issues.

Of course one huge downside is that if you don't have internet or it is down, VoD will not work, but since the premiere is useless without an internet connection, it's not that common.

http://www.zatznotfunny.com/2012-04/tivo-xfinity-on-demand-arrives-in-san-francisco/
http://www.lightreading.com/blog/video-services/comcast-vod-coming-to-tivo/240126259


----------



## Dan203

I looked it up and the Xfinity thing I was thinking about is the XBox version. It is pure IP and they don't count it towards your bandwidth cap.

I wish they would do that same thing with Charter that they do with Comcast. I'd love to have access to the VOD content I pay for. But I don't want to pay for an HD box just for the rare occasion I might use it.


----------



## P42

Arcady said:


> You're going to clog up the available wireless bandwidth with more than about 12 devices on any one AP.


Seriously? What are you basing this on?


----------



## aaronwt

Dan203 said:


> I looked it up and the Xfinity thing I was thinking about is the XBox version. It is pure IP and they don't count it towards your bandwidth cap.
> 
> I wish they would do that same thing with Charter that they do with Comcast. I'd love to have access to the VOD content I pay for. But I don't want to pay for an HD box just for the rare occasion I might use it.


The same here with FiOS. I wish they would do it too. Instead FiOS gives us live streaming for a bunch of channels on the Xbox. I don't want to go back to how I watched TV in the 70's. At least that is what live streaming channels feels like.


----------



## Bigg

L David Matheny said:


> I've seen comments that if cable companies did away with all analog channels, enough bandwidth would be freed up that they would no longer need SDV or tuning adapters. I don't know whether it's true. I guess it would depend on how many obscure niche channels they think they need for fringe viewers.


Yes.



atmuscarella said:


> They could also move to MPEG4 like that Satellite companies have frankly no analog and MPEG4 would certainly allow for enough channels for most people. But as others have said tuning adapters are likely here to stay.


Yes.

Comcast has gone all-digital, although they haven't done MPEG-4 yet. There is absolutely no reason to be running analog in the year 2013. It's archaic and outdated. Get rid of it.



aaronwt said:


> It's still needed unless cable operators squeeze too many channels on the same QAM or switch to MPEG 4 to reduce the bandwidth used. Bandwidth is also needed to supply the Internet and phone service for a typical cable system which also decrease the number of channels that can be added.
> 
> FiOS supplies the internet and phone service over different wavelengths on the fiber. For TV, unlike other cable companies, they have all 860Mhz of bandwidth to use for TV and FiOS still doesn't have enough space. Now if the cable company uses a 1Ghz system then that would give them more bandwidth. But most are only 860Mhz.


Comcast weasels out of it by triple-channeling the HD's, which I HATE, because they look like crap. MPEG-4 however, would allow Comcast to deliver internet, phone, VOD, and TV and have enough bandwidth on an 860mhz system.



Philmatic said:


> 1GHz plants, MPEG 4 and removal of all analog channels is the future. Cablecard is sufficient for anything with that combination, including VoD. SDV is an evil evil, kludgy, horrible "solution" to a problem that only exists because Cable Companies are incompetent.


Yup.



Jeff_DML said:


> you got a throw them a bone bit.
> 
> First you got to deploy a STB to everyone grandmas TV to get rid of analog(Yes comcast is doing this). Then update all older STB that to do not support AVC. Not even sure what the FCC would say about the non-avc supporting cable cable devices, maybe make the MSO supply a TC(Tuning Converter)  to everyone? In this case satellite and u-verse has it a lot easier.


The first part has already been done by Comcast on a massive scale, so that's all set. There aren't that many older STBs out there, and Verizon is doing that, so that's possible as well. Verizon also went all-digital quite a while back.



Philmatic said:


> The solution that Comcast came up with for VoD should be the model everywhere. It supports any internet connection and doesn't require many changes to the VoD infrastructure.


And, if they wanted to do SDV, TiVos should already be able to handle it via software/IP, and not with a TA (TAs would still be needed for MCE unless Comcast put out software to do it and you can only imagine the uproar THAT would cause).



Dan203 said:


> For people that are concerned with speed you still have the option of using regular Ethernet. HEC would be optional.
> 
> Personally I would sacrifice a little network speed for a cleaner install. Anything to pare down the rats nest of cables currently behind my A/V rack.


Most devices are only 100mbps anyways.


----------



## innocentfreak

Dan203 said:


> I think it's silly to run drops from a central location to every device in the house. Makes much more sense to run one drop from a central location to each room, then use a switch in those rooms to feed multiple devices. A bunch of long drops to each device are more expensive and harder to maintain.


I was doing it to try and cut down on switches. I knew I would have the 360, TV, and the TiVo so I ran an extra in case.

Also some of my rooms are setup so one drop wouldn't work because I would need cables run open all over the room to cover every device. I could possibly get away with a drop per wall.


----------



## Bigg

With the cost of switches, it makes more sense to just do one drop per location on a retrofit and then use switches. Of course it makes sense to do 3-4 to support future applications on a pre-wire.


----------



## atmuscarella

Drops are a way to centralize and maximize your switches. Given how cheap 5 & 8 port GB switches have become, cost is no longer really much of a consideration.

Centralization of your switches does clean things up some but I would not spend the time and/or money to run enough drops to centralization my switches - I have about 20 wired devices on my network.


----------



## sbiller

Back to next gen TiVo discussion??? 

I expect the next box to support an RF remote and/or WiFi Direct (a la Roku).

There will also be a find remote button on the front of the unit.

I hope Dan is correct that the hardware will be outsourced/made by Pace. That should allow TiVo to sell it at a lower price point since Pace has an optimized supply chain and manufacturing.

And since we're dreaming, I think the next box should support HDMI-CEC. My blu-ray player supports so it would be relatively low-cost to implement.


----------



## innocentfreak

sbiller said:


> Back to next gen TiVo discussion???
> 
> And since we're dreaming, I think the next box should support HDMI-CEC. My blu-ray player supports so it would be relatively low-cost to implement.


Its not TCF if we don't derail every topic with some random conversation. 

Hopefully they add CEC across the board. It always seemed odd not to have it but to have a remote option on the iPad since you still need the remote to control the TV.


----------



## aaronwt

I turn HDMi CEC off in all my devices that have it.


----------



## Ichinisan

aaronwt said:


> A regular BD has a total max bitrate of 54Mb/s(Audio + video). A 3D BD has a 64Mb/s max bitrate.
> But for me, with my 3D media players they are supposed to be able to stream at bitrates of around 120Mb/s. Plus I want to be able to transfer content to them as fast as possible which right now is over 200Mb/s.
> 
> With a TiVo Elite, *I hit around 130Mb/s peaks* when I did my transfer tests back in 2011. But that was also while maxing out the streams. Transferring to/from multiple TiVos/PC and also downloading from Amazon concurrently.


What LAN interface did you use? From what I've heard, the wired Ethernet connection on TiVo Premiere is 100Mb/s. Basically, HDMI HEC would be just as fast as the direct-wired connection. I do expect that future TiVo models will all have gigabit to handle more simultaneous HD streams to more devices; especially now that TiVo Mini is available.

Wireless has mixed results and can be unreliable. In an apartment like mine, a neighbor could connect wireless equipment at any time and start interfering with me or using the same channel. I've read that MoCA can also have mixed results for performance and reliability (though I'm sure it's much better than wireless). For cable modem users, the wiring at the MoCA injection point can be a complicated disaster.


----------



## Ichinisan

aaronwt said:


> I turn HDMi CEC off in all my devices that have it.


I'm curious. What devices of yours actually have HDMI CEC?


----------



## aaronwt

Ichinisan said:


> I'm curious. What devices of yours actually have HDMI CEC?


Off hand I know two of my TVs have it as well as a Sony 2.1 speaker bar(maybe my 3.1 Sony speaker bar too?). And I think my Panny BDT220 BD player does too. If not I know the Sony S5100 that will be replacing it does. Im pretty sure I have a few more devices with it but off hand I'm not sure which ones. That is a feature I turn off in the initial setup of a device and never revisit the option again.

Sent from my HTC ReZound using Forum Runner


----------



## Ichinisan

[EDIT]
BLAH

I thought you were talking about HEC!


----------



## Dan203

You're confusing terms. CEC is the control protocol. HEC is the Ethernet sharing part. AFAIK there are no devices that support HEC.


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## Ichinisan

Dan203 said:


> You're confusing terms. CEC is the control protocol. HEC is the Ethernet sharing part. AFAIK there are no devices that support HEC.


Caught that before I even saw your post!


----------



## csell

The XL4 requires all digital channels. There's lot of talk of a new model allowing for OTA. Anyone have thoughts about a new model that doesn't have the all digital requirement. My cable company does not offer all channels in digital yet. There are still a handful that aren't available in digital so I'm waiting for either a new Tivo without this requirement (just like the 2 tuner Premiers) or for my cable company to make all channels available.


----------



## Dan203

csell said:


> The XL4 requires all digital channels. There's lot of talk of a new model allowing for OTA. Anyone have thoughts about a new model that doesn't have the all digital requirement. My cable company does not offer all channels in digital yet. There are still a handful that aren't available in digital so I'm waiting for either a new Tivo without this requirement (just like the 2 tuner Premiers) or for my cable company to make all channels available.


I'm in the same boat. We still have a bunch of channels that are analog only.

Unfortunately it looks like going forward TiVo is switching to digital only for all models. They recently petitioned the FCC to give them a blanket waiver to exclude analog support from all future TiVo units.

On the plus side there is an FCC mandate that requires cable companies to switch to all digital by next year, so at the very least we should be able to get all of our channels in digital by this time next year. (I'm hoping they make the switch sooner)


----------



## Loach

csell said:


> The XL4 requires all digital channels. There's lot of talk of a new model allowing for OTA. Anyone have thoughts about a new model that doesn't have the all digital requirement. My cable company does not offer all channels in digital yet. There are still a handful that aren't available in digital so I'm waiting for either a new Tivo without this requirement (just like the 2 tuner Premiers) or for my cable company to make all channels available.


Are you sure your cable co. isn't simulcasting the analog channels in digital? I thought I would lose some channels when I got my P4, but when I hooked it up all the channels that I thought were analog-only were still there. I didn't realize Cox was simulcasting them.


----------



## Jonathan_S

aaronwt said:


> I turn HDMi CEC off in all my devices that have it.


Interesting. I've got it turn on on my TV and receiver; it lets me slave the reciever to the TV. Turn on the TV (from any remote or even the power button) and the receiver automatically turns itself on.
Turn the TV off and the receiver automatically turns itself off.

(Now in the rare case I only want to listen to music I can turn the receiver on and the TV doesn't turn on)

I'm only using to to control the receiver's power state, nothing I have supports playback control through CEC, and obviously volume is handled by the receiver not the TV. But that's still very useful to me. I don't need to use a universal remote macro, or worry about one of the other missing an IR command - in normal usage they're just linked.


----------



## Dan203

Loach said:


> Are you sure your cable co. isn't simulcasting the analog channels in digital? I thought I would lose some channels when I got my P4, but when I hooked it up all the channels that I thought were analog-only were still there. I didn't realize Cox was simulcasting them.


In my case they're not. I have both a P4 and a P2. Every few weeks I try tuning one of the analog stations hoping that my cable company (Charter) has started simulcasting them. They have not.

Well actually about a year ago 3 random stations (Speed, Travel and G4) started working on my P4 and I got excited that they were going to start simulcasting them all. But they never did. Only those 3 are simulcast. Not sure why they chose those 3 and never did the rest. I really wish they would so I could get rid of mt P2 and use my P4 for everything.


----------



## innocentfreak

Ben mentioned one advantage to adding CEC to the Mini on this weeks engadgethd podcast. 

When you turn off the TV, the Mini could release the tuner. Also when you turn on the TV it could prompt you if you want to grab a tuner. Of course this would require dynamic tuning.


----------



## Loach

Dan203 said:


> In my case they're not. I have both a P4 and a P2. Every few weeks I try tuning one of the analog stations hoping that my cable company (Charter) has started simulcasting them. They have not.
> 
> Well actually about a year ago 3 random stations (Speed, Travel and G4) started working on my P4 and I got excited that they were going to start simulcasting them all. But they never did. Only those 3 are simulcast. Not sure why they chose those 3 and never did the rest. I really wish they would so I could get rid of mt P2 and use my P4 for everything.


Well, I know they're not simulcast in your case - I've seen you complain about it before


----------



## Dan203

Loach said:


> Well, I know they're not simulcast in your case - I've seen you complain about it before


Really? I feel like I've only mentioned it once or twice.


----------



## csell

Loach said:


> Are you sure your cable co. isn't simulcasting the analog channels in digital? I thought I would lose some channels when I got my P4, but when I hooked it up all the channels that I thought were analog-only were still there. I didn't realize Cox was simulcasting them.


Yea, I had another thread about this topic. It was verified via several different methods including confirmation from my cable company. Now I just wait and wait and wait...


----------



## Jonathan_S

innocentfreak said:


> Ben mentioned one advantage to adding CEC to the Mini on this weeks engadgethd podcast.
> 
> When you turn off the TV, the Mini could release the tuner. Also when you turn on the TV it could prompt you if you want to grab a tuner. Of course this would require dynamic tuning.


Actually it could apply now _if_ you oversubscribe your 4-tuner. (For example set it to share 1 tuner but have 2 minis).

Assume you'd been watching live-TV via Mini #1 and turn off the TV. Since you didn't press a button to take the mini back to the menus you'll either have to go back to it and do so, or wait the (reportedly 1.5 hours since last remote signal) mini to time out, before you could watch live-tv from Mini #2.


----------



## crxssi

sbiller said:


> And since we're dreaming, I think the next box should support HDMI-CEC. My blu-ray player supports so it would be relatively low-cost to implement.


If we are dreaming, here is my saved list:

* Faster performance, and by a major factor- perhaps 300% faster CPU, memory, etc.

* Store all user settings- channels preferences, show ratings, menu preferences, season passes, etc, on a removable flash card, like an SD card. This would prevent loss of that data when the hard drive crashes, would enable easy transition with a replacement box, would grealy ease upgrades to new boxes, and would increase performance.

* Store the operating system in flash memory. This would increase performance and uncouple the OS from the hard drive, which would be used only to store video. Could even be on the same removable card as the user settings, above.

* Allow the user to turn off the Discovery Bar.

* Allow the user to adjust font sizes in the menus to suit their preferences. TV sizes vary and some people want to see more on the screen at once. Other people might have small TV's or worse vision.

* HDUI redesign that does not require or depend on a live Internet Connection for most normal menus.

* Daily network "calls" for service/program information to include all graphics and desciptions so most everything the TiVo needs is cached and locally available.

* Allow built-in video streaming capabilities to Android tablets and devices (as well as iOS devices).

* More tuners, but without losing OTA ATSC tuning. I would certainly be happy with 3.

* Add more USB ports (at least one more, for a total of 3).

* Gigabit Ethernet.

* Adjustable playback speed with sound. Allow the user to increase/decrease playback speed with the sound tone adjusted automatically. Perhaps in increments of 10%.

* Greatly improved, built-in web server pages that allow all or most of the same type of controls one sees with Android/iPad devices, but in a web browser. Works with all browsers (Firefox, Chrome, IE, Safari, Opera) under all OS's (Linux, MacOS, MS-Windows) without using proprietary addons or plugins.

* Create custom folders in Now Playing and move recorded programs to different folders. And turn off the stupid "HD Recordings" folder.

* Multiuser capabilities that tag/filter different recordings, season passes, suggestions, by user.

* Built-in bluetooth for connection to the Slide remote, keyboards, and other devices; without requiring a dongle.

* Built-in WiFi G/N.

* Do NOT remove the optical audio out or the composite video/audio out connectors.

* Built-in tuning adapter


----------



## Dan203

I think a faster CPU is a given. If you use a Mini you'll see how fast the HDUI can really be. It's so much nicer.

I think they're more likely to store settings in the cloud then on some sort of removable storage, but I think that idea is good and likely to happen eventually. (doesn't really require new hardware)

Storing the OS on flash rather then HDD is possible, especially considering how cheap NAND is these days.

Built in Stream capabilities I think are very likely. Their CEO even alluded to it last year.

More tuners, including OTA, is also very likely given the wording of TiVo's recent FCC petition and the fact that the Mini say it needs 4 or more tuners on the box.

Multiple users I think will also happen. Although that's more of a software thing and doesn't really require new hardware. 

The UI changes regarding the discovery bar, bigger font, cache, etc... are very unlikely.

Built in Wifi isn't going to happen. If anything TiVo is moving away from Wifi in favor of MoCa.

The rest... Who knows?


----------



## Bigg

Built in TA isn't happening. Those are cable system specific. And USB ports? Most users wouldn't use any at all. Yes, in a rare situation you could need more than 2, but that's a rare situation.


----------



## crxssi

Bigg said:


> Built in TA isn't happening. Those are cable system specific


While that is true, what I mean to say is built in TA functionality. The hardware isn't needed anyway.



> And USB ports? Most users wouldn't use any at all. Yes, in a rare situation you could need more than 2, but that's a rare situation.


It would cost them nearly nothing at all to add another port. As it is now, the slide takes one, and the tuning adapter the other. This leaves nothing for a wireless keyboard adapter, the N adapter, a flash drive with video or pixs on it, or some other gadget. Of course if the bluetooth is built in (and perhaps no NEED for a TA) then it might not be an issue anymore.


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## Dan203

The TiVo wireless N adapter is not USB. It's a bridge that connects to the Ethernet port. Only the G adapter is USB.


----------



## mrsean

crxssi said:


> * Store all user settings- channels preferences, show ratings, menu preferences, season passes, etc, on a removable flash card, like an SD card. This would prevent loss of that data when the hard drive crashes, would enable easy transition with a replacement box, would grealy ease upgrades to new boxes, and would increase performance


I think these settings would be more reliably stored on Tivo's servers and then automatically downloaded to a new Tivo when necessary instead of just being on SD flash. They could also beef up the website to allow access to these settings so that changes can be made and then propagate down to the Tivo box.



crxssi said:


> * Built-in WiFi G/N.


Dual band N & 802.11 ac is more future-proof.


----------



## crxssi

@mrsean Agreed


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## Dan203

TiVo is moving away from wifi. There is no way it's going to be built in to any future unit. They want people to use MoCa. Wifi is just too unreliable and unpredictable.


----------



## Bigg

crxssi said:


> While that is true, what I mean to say is built in TA functionality. The hardware isn't needed anyway.
> 
> It would cost them nearly nothing at all to add another port. As it is now, the slide takes one, and the tuning adapter the other. This leaves nothing for a wireless keyboard adapter, the N adapter, a flash drive with video or pixs on it, or some other gadget. Of course if the bluetooth is built in (and perhaps no NEED for a TA) then it might not be an issue anymore.


The slide remote is discontinued, they are moving to MoCA and Ethernet, and TiVo is not really oriented towards flash drive playback in the first place. That only leaves you with a TA if you have one of the crappy cable companies that requires them, and maybe a slide remote if you got one while they were for sale.


----------



## crxssi

Bigg said:


> The slide remote is discontinued, they are moving to MoCA and Ethernet, and TiVo is not really oriented towards flash drive playback in the first place. That only leaves you with a TA if you have one of the crappy cable companies that requires them, and maybe a slide remote if you got one while they were for sale.


And perhaps a wireless keyboard dongle


----------



## crxssi

Dan203 said:


> TiVo is moving away from wifi. There is no way it's going to be built in to any future unit. They want people to use MoCa. Wifi is just too unreliable and unpredictable.


Too bad it is not Homeplug... then it would work anywhere, like WiFi does. Instead of just places that have coax runs.


----------



## aaronwt

crxssi said:


> Too bad it is not Homeplug... then it would work anywhere, like WiFi does. Instead of just places that have coax runs.


But then you can't use a UPS. So the network connection will go down if the power goes out. Because of that ethernet over the power lines would be an absolute last resort for me.


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## Dan203

crxssi said:


> Too bad it is not Homeplug... then it would work anywhere, like WiFi does. Instead of just places that have coax runs.


HomePlus is a lot less reliable and much more susceptible to interference from bad wiring and other devices that are plugged in.

The reason TiVo is moving toward MoCa is because in most cases people have cable run to the locations where they want to put a TV so it's almost as ubiquitous and power in the places a TiVo would be used and it's significantly more reliable then HomePlug.

The good part is it's all just standard IP so if you want to use Wifi or HomePlug it's as simple as buying a bridge. TiVo wont support it if it's not reliable, but if you can make it work then they'll never even know.


----------



## Bigg

crxssi said:


> And perhaps a wireless keyboard dongle


And you have a Slide remote and a keyboard why? You could always just use the app, and then you get your iPhone's keyboard.



aaronwt said:


> But then you can't use a UPS. So the network connection will go down if the power goes out. Because of that ethernet over the power lines would be an absolute last resort for me.


UPS is a short term thing, it's not meant to actually use anything, just to either get it shut down gracefully or transferred over to generator power. So I wouldn't really worry about that. That being said, in my apartment with two Homeplug units literally a few feet apart, which are also both like 5 feet from the breaker panel, I'm lucky to get 25mbps.


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## Mike-Wolf

Bigg said:


> And you have a Slide remote and a keyboard why? You could always just use the app, and then you get your iPhone's keyboard.
> 
> UPS is a short term thing, it's not meant to actually use anything, just to either get it shut down gracefully or transferred over to generator power. So I wouldn't really worry about that. That being said, in my apartment with two Homeplug units literally a few feet apart, which are also both like 5 feet from the breaker panel, I'm lucky to get 25mbps.


Personally for me I have my TiVo, external drive, and network switch on a UPS so I don't miss recordings, and the router and cable modem on another UPS so I don't lose internet. Both kept me from missing my recordings during Hurricane Sandy and the power outage aftermath down here in the Jersey Shore.


----------



## crxssi

aaronwt said:


> But then you can't use a UPS. So the network connection will go down if the power goes out. Because of that ethernet over the power lines would be an absolute last resort for me.


OOooh, that is interesting information I have never heard before. Makes sense that the signal could not go through a UPS, but you could power the ups with one plug on the wall outlet and use the other just for the network. Not as elegant, though.


----------



## aaronwt

Bigg said:


> And you have a Slide remote and a keyboard why? You could always just use the app, and then you get your iPhone's keyboard.
> 
> UPS is a short term thing, it's not meant to actually use anything, just to either get it shut down gracefully or transferred over to generator power. So I wouldn't really worry about that. That being said, in my apartment with two Homeplug units literally a few feet apart, which are also both like 5 feet from the breaker panel, I'm lucky to get 25mbps.


I live in a condo so I don't have the option of a generator.
I use UPSs to give me anywhere from 2 hours to 18 hours or more of use for all my electronics. Depending on the devices and how many are connected to the UPS. And the thing I want up the longest, is my network, ONT, and alarm system. Which will be up for at least 18 hours during a power outage., The second longest devices I want up are my TiVos. During a power outage I can use all my electronic devices like normal. Whether it's a receiver, subwoofer, PC, TV etc.


----------



## crxssi

Mike-Wolf said:


> Personally for me I have my TiVo, external drive, and network switch on a UPS so I don't miss recordings, and the router and cable modem on another UPS so I don't lose internet. Both kept me from missing my recordings during Hurricane Sandy and the power outage aftermath down here in the Jersey Shore.


All of my electronics (model, computer, TV, monitor, TiVo, amp, phone, non-laser printer, tuning adapter, Wii, laptop, router, dvd) are on UPS, as should be everyone's'.

* It lets equipment ride through short outages so it can still be used.
* It allows the user time for a better or proper shutdown if necessary.
* It prevents data loss.
* It prevents system corruption due to improper shutdown.
* It prevents timely waiting for things to come back up after the event.
* It prevents hardware damage from under or over-voltage.
* It helps to prevent damage from severe spikes like lightening surges.
* In higher-end units, it also automatically cleans the power of even minor frequency and voltage variations and RF, extending the life of everything connected to it.

Even with above average power reliability at my house (since we are on a hospital grid) I estimate there are still at least a dozen disturbances a year.


----------



## Bigg

Mike-Wolf said:


> Personally for me I have my TiVo, external drive, and network switch on a UPS so I don't miss recordings, and the router and cable modem on another UPS so I don't lose internet. Both kept me from missing my recordings during Hurricane Sandy and the power outage aftermath down here in the Jersey Shore.


You had cable? How big of a UPS do you have and how long will it last?



aaronwt said:


> I live in a condo so I don't have the option of a generator.
> I use UPSs to give me anywhere from 2 hours to 18 hours or more of use for all my electronics. Depending on the devices and how many are connected to the UPS. And the thing I want up the longest, is my network, ONT, and alarm system. Which will be up for at least 18 hours during a power outage., The second longest devices I want up are my TiVos. During a power outage I can use all my electronic devices like normal. Whether it's a receiver, subwoofer, PC, TV etc.


If you have a garage, you could put a transfer switch in there, and run the cord under the door when you need to run the generator...


----------



## slowbiscuit

Philmatic said:


> The solution that Comcast came up with for VoD should be the model everywhere. It supports any internet connection and doesn't require many changes to the VoD infrastructure.


Disagree - the VOD model should be entirely internet-based, because it would then not tie up a tuner and could have been rolled out to every Premiere at once (like Xfinity on Xbox) instead of this rollout that's taking forever because it has to be enabled on every headend.

Yeah, this wouldn't be great for DSL users, but I'd bet most on Comcast are getting their HSI anyway.


----------



## Mike-Wolf

Bigg said:


> The slide remote is discontinued, they are moving to MoCA and Ethernet, and TiVo is not really oriented towards flash drive playback in the first place. That only leaves you with a TA if you have one of the crappy cable companies that requires them, and maybe a slide remote if you got one while they were for sale.


Amazon and various online websites are still selling them and last I checked TiVo is selling them under the "clearance" section for around 39 or 59 dollars. I liked the Bluetooth controller because it was so much more responsive, however it just felt too small to me compared to the full sized IR remote.


----------



## Mike-Wolf

Bigg said:


> You had cable? How big of a UPS do you have and how long will it last?


That's the key right there, the lower the wattage the longer the UPS lasts, so only having the essentials running help, no monitors or anything like that. Wireless router allows the usage of wireless internet to the laptop. Yes, during and after the storm the internet and television worked great thanks to Comcast.


----------



## Bigg

Mike-Wolf said:


> Amazon and various online websites are still selling them and last I checked TiVo is selling them under the "clearance" section for around 39 or 59 dollars. I liked the Bluetooth controller because it was so much more responsive, however it just felt too small to me compared to the full sized IR remote.


There's a few available on Amazon for $100 through Weaknees. They are no longer available from TiVo proper.



Mike-Wolf said:


> Bigg said:
> 
> 
> 
> You had cable? How big of a UPS do you have and how long will it last?
> QUOTE]
> 
> That's the key right there, the lower the wattage the longer the UPS lasts, so only having the essentials running help, no monitors or anything like that. Wireless router allows the usage of wireless internet to the laptop. Yes, during and after the storm the internet and television worked great thanks to Comcast.
> 
> 
> 
> You're really lucky. Most Comcast was totally down for quite a while after the storm if there were any power issues in the area.
Click to expand...


----------



## Mike-Wolf

Mike-Wolf said:


> There's a few available on Amazon for $100 through Weaknees. They are no longer available from TiVo proper.





Bigg said:


> You're really lucky. Most Comcast was totally down for quite a while after the storm if there were any power issues in the area.


You are correct, I just checked TiVo's clearance center and it's listed as out of stock. I just got off the phone with a support agent after being on for an hour and forty minutes and said no one on their end seem to know why it was discontinued either.

I was actually in Stafford Springs, Connecticut when the hurricane and following snowstorm hit and ended up losing power overnight while visiting my friend's grandparents, whom have Cox Cable and didn't have any battery backups. However when I was able to get back home the power was still out and the battery backups were still chugging away. Checking the modem uptime log showed that it had not been reset in over 60 days.


----------



## Bigg

Mike-Wolf said:


> You are correct, I just checked TiVo's clearance center and it's listed as out of stock. I just got off the phone with a support agent after being on for an hour and forty minutes and said no one on their end seem to know why it was discontinued either.
> 
> I was actually in Stafford Springs, Connecticut when the hurricane and following snowstorm hit and ended up losing power overnight while visiting my friend's grandparents, whom have Cox Cable and didn't have any battery backups. However when I was able to get back home the power was still out and the battery backups were still chugging away. Checking the modem uptime log showed that it had not been reset in over 60 days.


You got pretty lucky. This area was hit HARD, and we as a state and a society haven't yet learned from any of it. If we had, we'd be beginning the process of under-grounding all of our power and utilities.


----------



## Mike-Wolf

Bigg said:


> You got pretty lucky. This area was hit HARD, and we as a state and a society haven't yet learned from any of it. If we had, we'd be beginning the process of under-grounding all of our power and utilities.


Yeah I was surprised when I was up there how unprepared the state was. Took me four weeks to get back to Jersey via the train and bus. What's funny is that I would have thought that after the snowstorm in October of 2011 that lessons would have been learned, especially by the power company and transportation departments and it wasn't. 
Anyway I'm looking forward to moving up to Connecticut and seeing what TiVo has to offer for my future house mates.


----------



## Bigg

Mike-Wolf said:


> Yeah I was surprised when I was up there how unprepared the state was. Took me four weeks to get back to Jersey via the train and bus. What's funny is that I would have thought that after the snowstorm in October of 2011 that lessons would have been learned, especially by the power company and transportation departments and it wasn't.
> Anyway I'm looking forward to moving up to Connecticut and seeing what TiVo has to offer for my future house mates.


I was surprised how fast they got rail service back up in the greater NYC area. Utilities are just so obviously a preventable problem.


----------



## jadziedzic

Bigg said:


> You got pretty lucky. This area was hit HARD, and we as a state and a society haven't yet learned from any of it. If we had, we'd be beginning the process of under-grounding all of our power and utilities.


Living here in New Hampshire that's a subject we hear frequently. Our local newspaper runs articles on that subject every time we have an extended outage (three times in the past four years). It was estimated it would cost $40,000 PER CUSTOMER to convert the entire power grid in New Hampshire to underground service, and would likely take forty years to do it (which is about ten years less than the fifty year service life of the cabling). Yeah, I know, we have a lot of open space up here, and "they" could concentrate on the cities, but as they say up here, it's still "wicked expensive".

I'm all for it, but how's "society" gonna foot the bill?


----------



## lessd

jadziedzic said:


> Living here in New Hampshire that's a subject we hear frequently. Our local newspaper runs articles on that subject every time we have an extended outage (three times in the past four years). It was estimated it would cost $40,000 PER CUSTOMER to convert the entire power grid in New Hampshire to underground service, and would likely take forty years to do it (which is about ten years less than the fifty year service life of the cabling). Yeah, I know, we have a lot of open space up here, and "they" could concentrate on the cities, but as they say up here, it's still "wicked expensive".
> 
> I'm all for it, but how's "society" gonna foot the bill?


The last neighborhood I lived in had all underground power, and there was plenty of problems, water getting into the xformers, shorts in the high voltage wires that feed the xformers, we lost power two three time a year with heavy rain, in my new home with above ground wires (I have underground feed to my home) rain has never killed the power, it takes a tree to fall on the wires, or a big problem at the switching station.


----------



## Bigg

jadziedzic said:


> Living here in New Hampshire that's a subject we hear frequently. Our local newspaper runs articles on that subject every time we have an extended outage (three times in the past four years). It was estimated it would cost $40,000 PER CUSTOMER to convert the entire power grid in New Hampshire to underground service, and would likely take forty years to do it (which is about ten years less than the fifty year service life of the cabling). Yeah, I know, we have a lot of open space up here, and "they" could concentrate on the cities, but as they say up here, it's still "wicked expensive".
> 
> I'm all for it, but how's "society" gonna foot the bill?


NH is a lot more rural. If you did 80% POPs in NH, the cost would go WAY down, and for the other 20% POPs, the utility company would have more resources to put them back online after a storm, as they wouldn't have to worry about the other 80%. In CT, we don't have any areas that are as rural as many parts of NH, so to get close to 100% POPs wouldn't be nearly that expensive (certain areas close to the water, prone to flooding, swamps, etc, can't be done), and if you bond it out over 30 years, and do the actual upgrades over a decade or more, it's not that difficult of a project to do...



lessd said:


> The last neighborhood I lived in had all underground power, and there was plenty of problems, water getting into the xformers, shorts in the high voltage wires that feed the xformers, we lost power two three time a year with heavy rain, in my new home with above ground wires (I have underground feed to my home) rain has never killed the power, it takes a tree to fall on the wires, or a big problem at the switching station.


If you do it right, it works.


----------



## wmcbrine

lessd said:


> The last neighborhood I lived in had all underground power, and there was plenty of problems


The last neighborhood I lived in had all underground power, and there were no problems from that (except when they were installing Fios, also underground -- got a bit careless with their digging at one point).

To be fair, I haven't had significant outages in the new neighborhood, with overheard lines, either.


----------



## lessd

wmcbrine said:


> The last neighborhood I lived in had all underground power, and there were no problems from that (except when they were installing Fios, also underground -- got a bit careless with their digging at one point).
> 
> To be fair, I haven't had significant outages in the new neighborhood, with overheard lines, either.


And for me to be fair the underground wire was put in in the early 70s, so today the power co.s may be able to do a better job.


----------



## NotNowChief

I got to thinking this morning when I got to work and began my daily ritual of surfing the TCF with my first cup of coffee from 7-11, in this case a blueberry coffee with french vanilla creamer FYI. Serious.

I liked to think of the Mini as TiVo's "UNICORN", until it was finally discovered to be real. It was a mysterious, magical, and mystical creature, capable of amazing feats.

Therefore, I would like to preemptively christen the TiVo Series 5 "Bigfoot". It's big, it's powerful, it has tons of intimidating features to lesser creatures, and tons of people have claimed to have knowledge about it, but it will undoubtedly remain hidden for a long time and be the subject of much folklore and speculation until we actually find a real specimen.

"TiVo Series 5; Codename: BIGFOOT" Copyright 2013, NotNowChief


----------



## atmuscarella

NotNowChief said:


> I got to thinking this morning when I got to work and began my daily ritual of surfing the TCF with my first cup of coffee from 7-11, in this case a blueberry coffee with french vanilla creamer FYI. Serious.
> 
> I liked to think of the Mini as TiVo's "UNICORN", until it was finally discovered to be real. It was a mysterious, magical, and mystical creature, capable of amazing feats.
> 
> Therefore, I would like to preemptively christen the TiVo Series 5 "Bigfoot". It's big, it's powerful, it has tons of intimidating features to lesser creatures, and tons of people have claimed to have knowledge about it, but it will undoubtedly remain hidden for a long time and be the subject of much folklore and speculation until we actually find a real specimen.
> 
> "TiVo Series 5; Codename: BIGFOOT" Copyright 2013, NotNowChief


I may need some meds first I believed in Unicorns and now I believe in Bigfoot


----------



## Mike-Wolf

(sniffs NotNowChief's coffee for anything extra added to it)


----------



## Bigg

NotNowChief said:


> I got to thinking this morning when I got to work and began my daily ritual of surfing the TCF with my first cup of coffee from 7-11, in this case a blueberry coffee with french vanilla creamer FYI. Serious.
> 
> I liked to think of the Mini as TiVo's "UNICORN", until it was finally discovered to be real. It was a mysterious, magical, and mystical creature, capable of amazing feats.
> 
> Therefore, I would like to preemptively christen the TiVo Series 5 "Bigfoot". It's big, it's powerful, it has tons of intimidating features to lesser creatures, and tons of people have claimed to have knowledge about it, but it will undoubtedly remain hidden for a long time and be the subject of much folklore and speculation until we actually find a real specimen.
> 
> "TiVo Series 5; Codename: BIGFOOT" Copyright 2013, NotNowChief


Nice codename.


----------



## Mike-Wolf

Dan203 said:


> There are a few enhancements to HDMI 1.4 but most don't apply to TiVo.
> 
> Increased resolution to support 4K. This wont apply to TiVo for quite a few years.
> 
> Audio return channel. This is mainly for A/V receivers and allows the TV to send audio from it's built in tuners and apps back to the A/V receiver via the same HDMI cable it uses to get video from external devices.
> 
> Ethernet return channel. This is a way for HDMI devices to share a network connection over HDMI without the need for separate Ethernet cables. This might be useful for TiVo, but it requires special cables and for all your equipment to support it, so it's not really practical at the moment.
> 
> Enhanced 3D support. This includes higher resolution and some communication protocols for the device and the TV to sync up better. This would only apply to TiVo for it's apps, like Netflix, since broadcast 3D is really just a trick and doesn't require any special features to support.
> 
> A content type selection. This allows the device to tell the TV which picture settings to use automatically. It might apply to TiVo, but it's unlikely to be very helpful for most things except maybe apps.
> 
> Additional color spaces. This again is something that would only apply to apps and only if they were showing something like a photograph that doesn't use a standard TV color space.
> 
> Honestly I don't think any of it is really needed for a TiVo so I wouldn't expect them to support it unless adding it was basically free.


Could you remind me which HDMI 1.3 features TiVo Premiere supports such as Deep Color, Broader color space xvYCC, Lip Synch, and Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio capabilities? Is it HDMI 1.3 or is it HDMI 1.3*a*? From what I understand 1.3*a* brought the support of 48bit color and higher resolutions beyond 1080p. Secondly, what HDCP version does the Premiere use?

Regarding the HDMI version comment, As far as I understand HDMI version 1.3 doesn't support 3D but was introduced instead to version 1.4? http://www.hdmi.org/manufacturer/hdmi_1_4/3d.aspx
As well as what the wiki page says? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#Version_1.4


----------



## Mike-Wolf

aaronwt said:


> HDMI 1.4 added 3D(stereoscopic). HDMI 1.4a added enhanced 3D support.


This confuses me because the PlayStation 3 is supposed to be doing 3D Stereoscopic in games and Blu-ray movies, http://us.playstation.com/ps3/3d/ however according to the specs it's supposed to be HDMI version 1.3 http://web.archive.org/web/20061106061736/http://www.hdmi.org/press/pr/pr_20060622.asp

Was there a firmware or software update put forth that updated all PS3's to HDMI version 1.4?


----------



## Bigg

All the 3D I've seen just puts two images side by side or top on bottom, and the TV processes them. It would probably work on component or anything else...


----------



## Ichinisan

Dan203 said:


> ...
> On the plus side there is an FCC mandate that requires cable companies to switch to all digital by next year, so at the very least we should be able to get all of our channels in digital by this time next year. (I'm hoping they make the switch sooner)


Do you have more information about this?

I just don't know why the FCC would care about the continuation of analog cable. My small, local cable ISP probably wouldn't be able to handle the equipment costs and manpower for such an upgrade. Even after such a transition, lots of customers are elderly grandmothers that have used their VCRs the same way for decades and they will not want to change. Other people will call tech support because they have no understanding of an external tuner and their new remote control. They'll end-up with the TV turned-on while the converter is turned-off, and vice-versa. A lot of people still use their TVs with the original remote and a cable line connected directly.


----------



## wmcbrine

There is no mandate for cable companies to switch to digital. There was a mandate for them to maintain analog access*, which is expiring.

* This could be met even with an all-digital system, by providing free STBs.


----------



## Bigg

Ichinisan said:


> Do you have more information about this?
> 
> I just don't know why the FCC would care about the continuation of analog cable. My small, local cable ISP probably wouldn't be able to handle the equipment costs and manpower for such an upgrade. Even after such a transition, lots of customers are elderly grandmothers that have used their VCRs the same way for decades and they will not want to change. Other people will call tech support because they have no understanding of an external tuner and their new remote control. They'll end-up with the TV turned-on while the converter is turned-off, and vice-versa. A lot of people still use their TVs with the original remote and a cable line connected directly.


Those people need to get with the program. They already have in most Comcast areas (in my area we are overbuilt by a carrier that hasn't reclaimed analog spectrum yet, so people could switch to that carrier, but we are the exception, not the rule). The future is all-HD, all-digital.


----------



## jmr50

Ichinisan said:


> Do you have more information about this?
> 
> I just don't know why the FCC would care about the continuation of analog cable. My small, local cable ISP probably wouldn't be able to handle the equipment costs and manpower for such an upgrade. Even after such a transition, lots of customers are elderly grandmothers that have used their VCRs the same way for decades and they will not want to change. Other people will call tech support because they have no understanding of an external tuner and their new remote control. They'll end-up with the TV turned-on while the converter is turned-off, and vice-versa. A lot of people still use their TVs with the original remote and a cable line connected directly.


There's a pretty substantial reduction in operational costs for companies which make this conversion -- newer generations of equipment are SUBSTANTIALLY less costly to run and maintain (and cost a fraction of what earlier digital equipment cost).

Perhaps more to the point, there's major revenue to be gotten from (a) STB rentals, (b) VOD sales/rentals, and (c) content upsell from digital. Yes, even for small, local cable companies. Actually, especially for them: the big companies paid to make the technology cheap, now the small folks get all kinds of goodies because the development costs are sunk and the equipment is available.


----------



## aaronwt

Bigg said:


> Those people need to get with the program. They already have in most Comcast areas (in my area we are overbuilt by a carrier that hasn't reclaimed analog spectrum yet, so people could switch to that carrier, but we are the exception, not the rule). The future is all-HD, all-digital.


The future is definitely all digital, but not necessarily all HD. Especially as long as OTA is around.


----------



## Bigg

aaronwt said:


> The future is definitely all digital, but not necessarily all HD. Especially as long as OTA is around.


How does OTA bring us down from HD? The only thing that's not HD is the junk subchannels, which need to die and give more bandwidth to HD. I want my 19mbps MPEG-2 HD!


----------



## aaronwt

Bigg said:


> How does OTA bring us down from HD? The only thing that's not HD is the junk subchannels, which need to die and give more bandwidth to HD. I want my 19mbps MPEG-2 HD!


The majority of OTA channels are SD. Since typically the main channel is HD but with one, two, or three or more sub-channels all in SD.

I doubt the sub-channels will die. Over the last few years they have increased in my area. One station in my area broadcasts twelve sub-channels, all SD.

BAck in 2001, when I first started watching HD, there were very few sub-channels around here. So they dedicated alot of bandwidth to the main HD channels. When I look at some of those HD recordings I made from back in 2001, I am amazed at the difference. The shows looked so much better from back then since they were given much more bandwidth than they do now.

EDIT: I forgot that the channel that shows up as twelve sub-channels actually broadcasts on two frequencies from two different locations. Each has six sub-channels. With one set showing up as 30.1 through 30.6. And the other showing up as 30.6 through 30.12.

I sometimes watch one of these sub-channels since it has Al Jazeera English on it.


----------



## Bigg

aaronwt said:


> The majority of OTA channels are SD. Since typically the main channel is HD but with one, two, or three or more sub-channels all in SD.
> 
> I doubt the sub-channels will die. Over the last few years they have increased in my area. One station in my area broadcasts twelve sub-channels, all SD.
> 
> BAck in 2001, when I first started watching HD, there were very few sub-channels around here. So they dedicated alot of bandwidth to the main HD channels. When I look at some of those HD recordings I made from back in 2001, I am amazed at the difference. The shows looked so much better from back then since they were given much more bandwidth than they do now.
> 
> EDIT: I forgot that the channel that shows up as twelve sub-channels actually broadcasts on two frequencies from two different locations. Each has six sub-channels. With one set showing up as 30.1 through 30.6. And the other showing up as 30.6 through 30.12.
> 
> I sometimes watch one of these sub-channels since it has Al Jazeera English on it.


The sub-channels are junk. And the occasional one that isn't is so over-compressed that it's unwatchable.

I'll give you Al Jazeera, since I'm jealous that you get that one, but other than that, nothing is worth it in SD.

It's sad that they are taking bandwidth away from the main feed. They should kill off the subchannels, leave them on cable if they want, and crank up the bandwidth on the main feeds.


----------



## crxssi

Bigg said:


> The sub-channels are junk. And the occasional one that isn't is so over-compressed that it's unwatchable.
> 
> I'll give you Al Jazeera, since I'm jealous that you get that one, but other than that, nothing is worth it in SD.
> 
> It's sad that they are taking bandwidth away from the main feed. They should kill off the subchannels, leave them on cable if they want, and crank up the bandwidth on the main feeds.


I totally agree. Besides, in most areas, nowhere near all channel slots are being used anyway. Here we have maybe 8 main channels. If they want to create more channels- do it the right way.


----------



## SeaFractor

Bigg said:


> How does OTA bring us down from HD? The only thing that's not HD is the junk subchannels, which need to die and give more bandwidth to HD. I want my 19mbps MPEG-2 HD!


Many local providers are multi-casting (sp?) their allocated frequency. This means that with compression and other techniques, they can have one HD channel and then several SD channels (channel number - subchannel number, 7-1 versus 7-2, etc).

They all share the same frequency pie for bandwidth. If the provider feels they can get enough revenue with multiple SD home shopping channels, then you don't see more HD from that provider (or it's as compressed as the Sat providers).

So as long as there is profit, you'll continue to see SD channels. So I would say we'll see an all-digital future, but it's hubris to say all-HD. That's just a desire we have ourselves for content.


----------



## Bigg

SeaFractor said:


> Many local providers are multi-casting (sp?) their allocated frequency. This means that with compression and other techniques, they can have one HD channel and then several SD channels (channel number - subchannel number, 7-1 versus 7-2, etc).
> 
> They all share the same frequency pie for bandwidth. If the provider feels they can get enough revenue with multiple SD home shopping channels, then you don't see more HD from that provider (or it's as compressed as the Sat providers).
> 
> So as long as there is profit, you'll continue to see SD channels. So I would say we'll see an all-digital future, but it's hubris to say all-HD. That's just a desire we have ourselves for content.


I think the FCC should regulate the big 5 to a single HD only. Cut the junk out.


----------



## Mike-Wolf

I feel this thread has gone off topic.

I'm hoping the TiVo 5 will have a gigabit Ethernet port so the transfer of videos would go a lot faster between devices, especially with most computers coming standard with a gigabit Ethernet port these days.

Another hopeful thing is hopefully TiVo 5 will come standard with MoCA built in across the board from their 2 tuner model and up.


----------



## wmcbrine

Mike-Wolf said:


> I'm hoping the TiVo 5 will have a gigabit Ethernet port so the transfer of videos would go a lot faster


Before worrying about gigabit, I'd want to see it saturate the 100 Mbit link it has now. And I've never seen it go much above 80.

Still, it shouldn't be an expensive upgrade, even if it does nothing.



> _Another hopeful thing is hopefully TiVo 5 will come standard with MoCA built in across the board from their 2 tuner model and up._


I think that's a safe bet.


----------



## aaronwt

The latest TiVo boxes already have gigabit. So it makes sense that any newer TiVos would also have gigabit connection.


----------



## compnurd

wmcbrine said:


> Before worrying about gigabit, I'd want to see it saturate the 100 Mbit link it has now. And I've never seen it go much above 80.
> 
> Still, it shouldn't be an expensive upgrade, even if it does nothing.
> 
> I think that's a safe bet.


It wont saturate 100. With TCP overhead and such you will never get a perfect 100


----------



## wmcbrine

compnurd said:


> It wont saturate 100. With TCP overhead and such you will never get a perfect 100


Maybe not a perfect 100, but at least the high 90's. I can hit that easily with Linux PCs. 80 is way off, and it's not due to TCP overhead.


----------



## compnurd

wmcbrine said:


> Maybe not a perfect 100, but at least the high 90's. I can hit that easily with Linux PCs. 80 is way off, and it's not due to TCP overhead.


even on a perfect network the most I have ever seen is 88-92


----------



## crxssi

wmcbrine said:


> Maybe not a perfect 100, but at least the high 90's. I can hit that easily with Linux PCs. 80 is way off, and it's not due to TCP overhead.


+1

My Linux machines can get in the mid 90's on quality 100base hardware. The Premiere simply can't keep up with 100 base at all. If TiVo doesn't drastically improve CPU/Chipset, then adding gigabit to a Premiere would yield no increase in network speed, whatsoever.


----------



## crxssi

compnurd said:


> even on a perfect network the most I have ever seen is 88-92


Define perfect  I agree that I have not seen "high" 90's before, but mid 90's is doable without anything special (like using special packet sizes and such).

Here is a simple test on Gigabit, which is just a factor of 10 from 100Base.

# ls -l it2 
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 393216000 Apr 20 11:40 it2

# time rcp it2 lake:/tmp

real 0m3.355s
user 0m0.004s
sys 0m0.194s

That is 937.6 Megabits per second. The 100base equivalent would be about 94.


----------



## aaronwt

I've seen my ELites hit 130 Mb/s peaks. But this was when doing a bunch of concurrent streams(back when the Elite first came out). When doing one transfer it is nowhere near that.


----------



## Mike-Wolf

compnurd said:


> It wont saturate 100. With TCP overhead and such you will never get a perfect 100


I agree with this post. The highest I've ever seen mine go on Premiere to Premiere transferring was mid to upper 80's.

Found this. http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=444300 http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=480575


----------



## aaronwt

Mike-Wolf said:


> I agree with this post. The highest I've ever seen mine go on Premiere to Premiere transferring was mid to upper 80's.
> 
> Found this. http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=444300 http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=480575


That is one transfer. When you do multiple concurrent transfers the sum of all the transfer speeds will be higher.


----------



## Mike-Wolf

aaronwt said:


> I think FiOS uses 1150Mhz for the LAN MoCA frequency and 1000Mhz for the MoCA connection between the router and the ONT..
> 
> I have no idea how much space the need between their QAM channels and MoCA. But the QAM channels only go to 860Mhz.
> 
> I just know it will be nice if/when cable companies switch most of their channels to MPEG4. Not only does it free up space for more content, but DVR recordings take up less space. Giving you the ability to store more programs with the same amount of storage space.


Ok here is a question, is this TiVo rep right or wrong about his comment that the TiVo doesn't support MPEG4 compression?


----------



## aaronwt

Mike-Wolf said:


> Ok here is a question, is this TiVo rep right or wrong about his comment that the TiVo doesn't support MPEG4 compression?


Yes the TiVo Premiere(Series 4 TiVos) supports H.264 (MPEG4). I have no problem viewing the H.264 channels that FiOS has with my Premiere TiVos. Now if you have a Series 3 TiVo, then those TiVos do not support the﻿ H.264 channels


----------



## wmcbrine

Mike-Wolf said:


> Ok here is a question, is this TiVo rep right or wrong about his comment that the TiVo doesn't support MPEG4 compression?


He said "does not use", not "doesn't support". What he meant, in context, is that the TiVo doesn't take the incoming digital video and recompress it, but rather it stores it as-is, giving you better quality. This is accurate, as far as it goes.

He's still full of it in general, implying that MPEG-4 (rather than the necessarily lossy process of recompression) is somehow inferior to MPEG-2 -- a talking point they're sure to reverse on in the future, if not already.


----------



## Bigg

Mike-Wolf said:


> Ok here is a question, is this TiVo rep right or wrong about his comment that the TiVo doesn't support MPEG4 compression?


I thought that video wasn't worth watching when I saw it on DSLR. That guy is completely full of sh*t. MPEG-4 with half the bandwidth usually gives better results than MPEG-2. And TiVo doesn't really use MPEG-2 either, the video is already compressed when it gets to the TiVo. MPEG-2 is so inferior to MPEG-4, but TiVo doesn't have any choice as they get what they get from the MSO.

And who the f*** is installing this stuff? This is all consumer hardware that you just take out of the box and plug it in.

Also, MoCA is about 70-100mbps real-world.


----------



## crxssi

Bigg said:


> I thought that video wasn't worth watching when I saw it on DSLR. That guy is completely full of sh*t. MPEG-4 with half the bandwidth usually gives better results than MPEG-2. And TiVo doesn't really use MPEG-2 either, the video is already compressed when it gets to the TiVo. MPEG-2 is so inferior to MPEG-4, but TiVo doesn't have any choice as they get what they get from the MSO.


MPEG-2 is not inferior to H.264 in video quality only in tightness of encoding. IE- it is only inferior in bandwidth at a set quality, or quality at a set bandwidth. A technicality, but it is different.

MPEG2 is fine, as long as you have enough bandwidth/storage for it. In some ways, I think the macroblocking on MPEG-2 looks better.


----------



## Dan203

It's all about bandwidth. If bandwidth is unlimited then there is really no difference between MPEG-2 and H.264. This is why the broadcasting industry still uses MPEG-2 for most things internally. (4:2:2, I frame @ 35-50Mbps, it's basically motion JPEG at this point)

Only when bandwidth comes into play does H.264 become a better option, because H.264 can create a comparable image at 1/2 to 2/3 the bitrate of MPEG-2. The ONLY reason they're starting to use H.264 is because of bandwidth constraints. If bandwidth was unlimited they'd probably stick to MPEG-2 indefinitely.


----------



## Bigg

crxssi said:


> MPEG-2 is not inferior to H.264 in video quality only in tightness of encoding. IE- it is only inferior in bandwidth at a set quality, or quality at a set bandwidth. A technicality, but it is different.
> 
> MPEG2 is fine, as long as you have enough bandwidth/storage for it. In some ways, I think the macroblocking on MPEG-2 looks better.


MPEG-4's degradation is a lot more gradual than MPEG-2, which likes to fall off a cliff with macro-blocking in motion. MPEG-4 also does a LOT more to the video than MPEG-2.


----------



## Darkev

Bigg said:


> The slide remote is discontinued, they are moving to MoCA and Ethernet, and TiVo is not really oriented towards flash drive playback in the first place. That only leaves you with a TA if you have one of the crappy cable companies that requires them, and maybe a slide remote if you got one while they were for sale.


That would really suck for people like me - people who do not have cable and depend on OTA broadcast. I have a huge antenna on my roof that picks up lots of TV stations and feel I don't need cable. If TiVo implements MoCA for guide updates, that means they are throwing away all of their "Over the Air" customers.

Here in Canada, the cable companies don't allow TiVo's to be hooked up. I think there's one cable company in Saskatchewan but that's it. Now that most TV stations transmit over the air at 1080i digital, it's absolutely a beautiful picture and opens up a huge door to TiVo. If they close the door on Antenna users, they are going to be losing a huge number of people. Not only in Canada, but anywhere there is OTA transmission they'll lose customers. Not a smart thing for any company to do. TiVo makes the best PVRs/DVRs, so it would be really bad for the customer to remove this widely used feature. This is what they did to their Premiere 4's - those only work for cable customers. I cannot buy one as it is useless to me and many others throughout Canada and the US who don't subscribe to cable TV.

My hopes is that TiVo will release a new machine that has these features:

- Performs faster when it comes to the menus
- Has complete integration with their "stream" device
- Allows an antenna connection
- Improved signal via antenna on the new machine
- Has the ability to record 3 to 4 shows simultaneously
- Has built in wireless connectivity
- Has a large hard drive (2 TB to 3 TB) to hold lots and lots of saved shows
- Is advertised in Canada because most people here don't know about TiVo
- Sends email alerts (IE: This show won't record because there are no more tuners avail)

The highest priority for me is the antenna connection - the others are all icing on the cake.


----------



## jrtroo

Darkev said:


> If TiVo implements MoCA for guide updates, that means they are throwing away all of their "Over the Air" customers.


Moca is just ethernet over a coax cable. Nothing to do with service from a cableco.


----------



## Grakthis

TiVo really dropped the ball on the slide remote... that thing had a ton of potential and they never did THE OBVIOUS things with it.

There's no excuse for why my tivo doesn't have a keyboard that let's me simply type a channel or show name and it filters the guide by that input.

"Just Type" was a concept 5 years ago with WebOS. It moved to iOS and Android very quickly. It's in windows 8 now. And yet, the place where it makes as much sense as ANY advance I can think of, still doesn't have it. This is such a "duh" to me.

We don't live in a world where anyone wants to think about channels anymore. When I tivo something, I don't know or care what channel it's on. It's just a show. A show I want to watch. If I have the guide up, I should be able to just type "NBA" and it's going to figure out which channel the NBA game is on tonight by filtering the list for that input and show me that channel.

Or, if I want to see TNT, I should just be able to type "TNT" and it filters the guidelist down to just show me TNT.

In fact, I don't see why I can't just type the show name and have it show results from EVERYTHING. Netflix, live TV, Amazon, Now Playing...

Let me configure which ones I want to show up.

Again, this already exists in mobile operating systems and windows 8. It's trivial to implement.

Don't make me go to a special search screen for this.


----------



## aaronwt

Darkev said:


> That would really suck for people like me - people who do not have cable and depend on OTA broadcast. I have a huge antenna on my roof that picks up lots of TV stations and feel I don't need cable. If TiVo implements MoCA for guide updates, that means they are throwing away all of their "Over the Air" customers.
> 
> Here in Canada, the cable companies don't allow TiVo's to be hooked up. I think there's one cable company in Saskatchewan but that's it. Now that most TV stations transmit over the air at 1080i digital, it's absolutely a beautiful picture and opens up a huge door to TiVo. If they close the door on Antenna users, they are going to be losing a huge number of people. Not only in Canada, but anywhere there is OTA transmission they'll lose customers. Not a smart thing for any company to do. TiVo makes the best PVRs/DVRs, so it would be really bad for the customer to remove this widely used feature. This is what they did to their Premiere 4's - those only work for cable customers. I cannot buy one as it is useless to me and many others throughout Canada and the US who don't subscribe to cable TV.
> 
> My hopes is that TiVo will release a new machine that has these features:
> 
> - Performs faster when it comes to the menus
> - Has complete integration with their "stream" device
> - Allows an antenna connection
> - Improved signal via antenna on the new machine
> - Has the ability to record 3 to 4 shows simultaneously
> - Has built in wireless connectivity
> - Has a large hard drive (2 TB to 3 TB) to hold lots and lots of saved shows
> - Is advertised in Canada because most people here don't know about TiVo
> - Sends email alerts (IE: This show won't record because there are no more tuners avail)
> 
> The highest priority for me is the antenna connection - the others are all icing on the cake.


I wouldn't expect built in wireless connectivity. That would be a nigthmare for tech support. Since they don't officially support streaming over wireless. To have wireless built in would imply that it is supported for streaming the content between boxes.


----------



## gweempose

Would a single CableCARD be able to support six tuners? If so, I could see myself getting rid of all three of my older TiVos and replacing them with one of the newer boxes and a couple Minis. I pay a sh*t load each month for my CableCARDs, and it would be nice to save some money.


----------



## moyekj

gweempose said:


> Would a single CableCARD be able to support six tuners? If so, I could see myself getting rid of all three of my older TiVos and replacing them with one of the newer boxes and a couple Minis. I pay a sh*t load each month for my CableCARDs, and it would be nice to save some money.


 A single M-Card can handle up to 6 streams at once, so yes. So do Tuning Adapters from either Cisco (with recent firmware) or Motorola (support for up to 6 streams has been there all along). I expect 6 tuner unit + Minis will be dramatically altering TiVo landscape in many TiVo homes.


----------



## Darkev

aaronwt said:


> To have wireless built in would imply that it is supported for streaming the content between boxes.


I have 2 of those Wireless AC Routers by ASUS. I have to say that these things are just as fast as being hard wired from what I have tested. I placed one on the top floor of my house, and it's connected wirelessly to one in my basement. The one in the basement is in bridge mode and picks up the signal from the one on the top floor to provide internet to my stuff in the basement. It's amazingly fast during the speed tests I've done - both routers are using wireless AC transmission, not wireless N. The requirement to have wired streaming is really not there anymore. Even wireless N is fast enough to successfully handle streaming as my Apple TVs are both N and I've never had an issue streaming video through "N" on those.


----------



## JWhites

moyekj said:


> A single M-Card can handle up to 6 streams at once, so yes. So do Tuning Adapters from either Cisco (with recent firmware) or Motorola (support for up to 6 streams has been there all along). I expect 6 tuner unit + Minis will be dramatically altering TiVo landscape in many TiVo homes.


Cisco has a new cablecard out the PKM908 that can handle up to 8 streams at once so you have a very valid point.:up:


----------



## atmuscarella

Darkev said:


> I have 2 of those Wireless AC Routers by ASUS. I have to say that these things are just as fast as being hard wired from what I have tested. I placed one on the top floor of my house, and it's connected wirelessly to one in my basement. The one in the basement is in bridge mode and picks up the signal from the one on the top floor to provide internet to my stuff in the basement. It's amazingly fast during the speed tests I've done - both routers are using wireless AC transmission, not wireless N. The requirement to have wired streaming is really not there anymore. Even wireless N is fast enough to successfully handle streaming as my Apple TVs are both N and I've never had an issue streaming video through "N" on those.


As many people have said on this forum everything TiVo works just fine wirelessly with good equipment and a properly setup wireless network. The key words are good equipment and properly setup, neither are under TiVos control so they stay away from wireless as much as possible.

Also the bit rate of an HD stream between 2 TiVos is higher than anything currently streaming from the Internet to a Apple TV/Roku type device.


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## JWhites

I think TiVo is phasing away from wireless for streaming since they already have been discontinuing the wireless adapters and have blocked streaming over wireless in the Premiere's, and it would be a huge step in the opposite direction to then go _back_ to wireless streaming in the next TiVo series. Ironically, customers who use a TiVo Stream must use a wireless network for their mobile devices to view the TiVo content.


----------



## moyekj

JWhites said:


> Cisco has a new cablecard out the PKM908 that can handle up to 8 streams at once so you have a very valid point.:up:


 Really? That could pose problems in markets requiring Tuning Adapters though...

6 tuners is enough for my needs. I would get 1 6 tuner unit for myself and let rest of family take over my existing 2 tuner and 4 tuner Premiere units. Though I suppose with 8 tuners you can add padding to every season pass without worrying about conflicts.


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## aaronwt

Darkev said:


> I have 2 of those Wireless AC Routers by ASUS. I have to say that these things are just as fast as being hard wired from what I have tested. I placed one on the top floor of my house, and it's connected wirelessly to one in my basement. The one in the basement is in bridge mode and picks up the signal from the one on the top floor to provide internet to my stuff in the basement. It's amazingly fast during the speed tests I've done - both routers are using wireless AC transmission, not wireless N. The requirement to have wired streaming is really not there anymore. Even wireless N is fast enough to successfully handle streaming as my Apple TVs are both N and I've never had an issue streaming video through "N" on those.


Yes wireless N is plenty fast enough. I can hook my Elites and Minis on wireless N Bridges and the experience is identical to a wired connection. But my wireless network is setup properly. With multiple APs and no saturation issues. A typcial home network is not setup properly which is a big reason why people have issues. It would be a support nightmare for TiVo.


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## JWhites

moyekj said:


> Really? That could pose problems in markets requiring Tuning Adapters though...
> 
> 6 tuners is enough for my needs. I would get 1 6 tuner unit for myself and let rest of family take over my existing 2 tuner and 4 tuner Premiere units. Though I suppose with 8 tuners you can add padding to every season pass without worrying about conflicts.


I agree 6 tuners is pretty nifty for now. Here's some info on the card http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/video/ps8611/ps8650/ps8651/ol_28628_01.pdf

I don't know how to pad or what padding is


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## moyekj

JWhites said:


> I don't know how to pad or what padding is


 That's where you can tell TiVo to record a few extra minutes at start and/or end to make sure you don't miss anything in a show (a few shows like to go a few seconds beyond scheduled time for example). You can do that for individual recordings or season passes. Traditionally the problem of setting up Season Passes to do that is it would create conflicts for back to back recordings due to lack of tuners. The more tuners you have the less problems you will have using padding for everything.


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## JWhites

OOHHH!! Cool  Thanks!


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## gweempose

Yep. Between all my TiVos, I have 12 tuners. That may seem like a lot, but when you pad every single recording, they come in handy. Two of the tuners are dedicated solely to my kids, and the other 10 are for my wife and I. But the reality is that two of the locations (the workout room and guest bedroom) are rarely watched locally. That's why I'm thinking a Mini is much more practical for these locations. I'm currently being charged $80 a month just for the cablecards alone. That's insane!


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## JWhites

I wanna move into your house  That sounds so cool!!


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## moyekj

gweempose said:


> Yep. Between all my TiVos, I have 12 tuners. That may seem like a lot, but when you pad every single recording, they come in handy. Two of the tuners are dedicated solely to my kids, and the other 10 are for my wife and I. But the reality is that two of the locations (the workout room and guest bedroom) are rarely watched locally. That's why I'm thinking a Mini is much more practical for these locations. I'm currently being charged $80 a month just for the cablecards alone. That's insane!


From your sig inventory looks like you may have 8 cablecards (2 for each S3, 1 each for series 4 units), so that would make it $10/cablecard which sounds very high! Are there more units not listed in your sig or are you counting Additional Outlet Fees as part of the cost too? Luckily for me cablecards are $2/month and Additional Outlet Fees are very small (under $1 each from what I recall).


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## Dan203

6 tuners would be more then enough for us. We currently have 8 (1 Elite and 2 Premieres) but we don't really need that many. It's mainly because me and my wife record a lot of different things to watch alone and having one huge list of all our stuff mixed together would be a PITA. Although if the 6 tuner comes out with some sort of family profile system we'll probably get one to replace the Elite and one Premiere. We'll have to keep one Premiere around though because we still have some stations that are only available as analog and based on the FCC filing these new 6 tuner units wont do analog.


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## Darkev

JWhites said:


> I think TiVo is phasing away from wireless for streaming since they already have been discontinuing the wireless adapters and have blocked streaming over wireless in the Premiere's, and it would be a huge step in the opposite direction to then go _back_ to wireless streaming in the next TiVo series. Ironically, customers who use a TiVo Stream must use a wireless network for their mobile devices to view the TiVo content.


It seems odd they would be doing this when more and more electronics are being developed to work wirelessly. There are ways around it. You can buy wireless access points that allow you to connect devices with an ethernet cord.


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## Dan203

Even if they added wifi to the next gen TiVos the Minis don't have it so you'd still have to use MoCa or Ethernet for internal streaming. (or a wifi bridge) The built in wifi would only be used for the internet leg of the connection for downloading guide data and using apps, both of which should work fine via wifi. The issue with wifi for internal streaming is that MRS uses full bitrate video (15-19Mbps) and allows streaming to up to 3 devices, plus downloading, all at the same time which can quickly saturate a wifi bandwidth and degrade the user experience.


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## crxssi

aaronwt said:


> Yes wireless N is plenty fast enough.


And so is G.



> I can hook my Elites and Minis on wireless N Bridges and the experience is identical to a wired connection. But my wireless network is setup properly. With multiple APs and no saturation issues. A typcial home network is not setup properly which is a big reason why people have issues. It would be a support nightmare for TiVo.


Bingo. I don't blame TiVo a bit on this. Anyone can hook a WiFi gaming adapter to a TiVo and if it is done right get good results. But if one calls TiVo with issues about streaming, they are going to ask if it is wired or wireless (as they should) and if it is wireless, they are simply not going to troubleshoot any further for the customer.


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## Dan203

crxssi said:


> And so is G


Not really. A host TiVo can stream to 3 devices. The real world throughput of 802.11g is only 15-20Mbps. A typical 1080i HD stream is about 15Mbps. So you might be able to stream one show but that's it. Even 802.11n, which has a real world speeds around 50Mbps, you would barely be able to do all 3 and if the TiVo was making a call or using Netflix at the time you'd be in trouble. Plus the 6 tuner model might allow even more streams, especially if it has built in Stream capabilities, so wifi could be even less of a viable option.


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## gweempose

moyekj said:


> From your sig inventory looks like you may have 8 cablecards (2 for each S3, 1 each for series 4 units), so that would make it $10/cablecard which sounds very high!


*Very high indeed ...*


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## Dan203

At that price I would be looking at upgrading. One 4 tuner could replace the 2 S3s and save you $30/mo. (4 CableCARDs to 1) Two 4 tuner units could get you down to 4. If you can cut two tuners and get it down to just 12* with three 4 tuner units then you could save yourself $50/mo.

If you need to service more TVs then get some Minis, they're cheaper then full TiVos and don't require a CableCARD. 

* Based on your sig you have 14 tuners, not 12.


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## socrplyr

gweempose said:


> *Very high indeed ...*


If I was being charged that, I would definitely dump the S3 units. I have never had Comcast, but I would definitely fight those charges. I feell they can't charge for something they don't provide. I doubt it would get anywhere, but they don't actually provide the additional outlet (that is your responsibility in your own home). On a side note, from what I have seen here, I am 99% sure that you are being over charged for the S3 units. I believe that there is no second AO fee for a second cablecard in the same device, just the cablecard rental fee (In the past $1.50). Also, you should be getting some kind of credit b/c I am pretty sure the AO fee includes an STB, which they need to credit you for (I thought the credit was $2.50). Also, isn't your first outlet supposed to be included in the price of the service? You should definitely be able to drop some money off that bill by just getting those three things straightened out.


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## crxssi

Dan203 said:


> Not really. A host TiVo can stream to 3 devices. The real world throughput of 802.11g is only 15-20Mbps. A typical 1080i HD stream is about 15Mbps. So you might be able to stream one show but that's it.


Exactly. I never said it was ideal


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## slowbiscuit

moyekj said:


> I expect 6 tuner unit + Minis will be dramatically altering TiVo landscape in many TiVo homes.


If the Minis weren't so damn expensive I would agree with you, but you do have to factor in the savings for only needing one card.


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## slowbiscuit

socrplyr said:


> On a side note, from what I have seen here, I am 99% sure that you are being over charged for the S3 units. I believe that there is no second AO fee for a second cablecard in the same device, just the cablecard rental fee (In the past $1.50). Also, you should be getting some kind of credit b/c I am pretty sure the AO fee includes an STB, which they need to credit you for (I thought the credit was $2.50). Also, isn't your first outlet supposed to be included in the price of the service? You should definitely be able to drop some money off that bill by just getting those three things straightened out.


If half of those are second cards in an S3, he's definitely getting overcharged. As you said the second card in a Tivo is $1.50 per month, and there should be a $2.50 credit for each card that he's not showing (net cost for A/O cards is $7.45 a month).

Escalate to Comcast corporate if the local won't fix this obviously incorrect bill.


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## GmanTiVo

Has TiVo ever considered integrating flash memory to alleviate the amount of read/write that goes on with the HD and to speed up playback functionality?


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## k2ue

GmanTiVo said:


> Has TiVo ever considered integrating flash memory to alleviate the amount of read/write that goes on with the HD and to speed up playback functionality?


I hope they don't -- my experience with the reliability of SSD's in computers has been very poor -- I'd hate to have one soldered into the TiVo main board.


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## gweempose

slowbiscuit said:


> If half of those are second cards in an S3, he's definitely getting overcharged.


Two of them are second cards in S3s.



slowbiscuit said:


> As you said the second card in a Tivo is $1.50 per month, and there should be a $2.50 credit for each card that he's not showing (net cost for A/O cards is $7.45 a month).
> 
> Escalate to Comcast corporate if the local won't fix this obviously incorrect bill.


I am receiving a credit of $2.50 for each TiVo. They call it a "Customer Owned Equipment Adjustment". If you consider that to be a discount off the cablecards, then it does indeed bring six of the cards down to $7.45/month. I'm still being charged the full $9.95/month for the other two cards, though. I've talked to Comcast many times about this, and I have never got anywhere with them.


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## gweempose

socrplyr said:


> If I was being charged that, I would definitely dump the S3 units.


I agree, and that's why I've officially decided to get rid of both S3s. I'm just biding my time to see what the new TiVos will be like. A 6-tuner unit would be ideal for my purposes, as it would allow to replace both my S3s as well as my THD with one TiVo and two Minis.

Are the Minis pretty reliable? Do they essentially function like a single tuner Premiere?


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## lessd

gweempose said:


> *Very high indeed ...*


*WOW* that more than anybody I know on the Comcast system
My friend pays $7.43 for each of his 6 cable cards and no HD fee and I pay $1.00 for each of my 4 cable cards, no HD fee, in CT we all pay another 9% tax and other fees on top of the price.

I don't know how you make that great copy of your Comcast bill, below I just copied the section from my bill:

*3D Technology Fee- No Charge 05/25 - 06/24
Franchise Related Cost 05/25 - 06/24 $0.67
(Cost Associated With Local Access
Programming, Facilities, Equipment Or Other
Related License Requirements)
2nd Cablecard 05/25 - 06/24 $4.00
Same Outlet.
Qty 4 @ $1.00 each
Total Additional XFINITY TV Services $4.67*

On the other hand I pay $139 for cable+high speed internet with HBO and Starz, no other premium channels, you pay only $126 for far more premium channels. If I ordered the same premium channels you have my total bill would be closer to yours. (I am assuming your $126.95 comes with internet service)


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## aaronwt

gweempose said:


> *Very high indeed ...*


Is that high price really just for TV?

My FiOS bill for 150/65 internet, home phone, Ultimate HDTV tier(with 3 cable cards and most premium channels), and cellular phone service with unlimited data is only around $225 before taxes.


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## gweempose

lessd said:


> I am assuming your $126.95 comes with internet service ...


I wish. Here's a full copy of my bill. As you can see, it's pretty ridiculous:


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## slowbiscuit

Buy your own modem, it will pay for itself in less than a year. But $7 saved is a pittance for that bill! 

I don't understand why they wouldn't give you the $1.50 card charge for 2nd card in a Tivo, they can see from their end that the Host IDs are the same on both cards. It's even on the rate sheet as such in my area, and I know that the corporate reps know about it from my conversations with them.


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## Dan203

That bill looks about the same as my charter bill with three exceptions...

1) I only have a minor bump in internet to a 30/4 plan which is only $10/mo extra instead of $48/mo. They have 100/5 plan but like you I'd have to pay an extra $50/mo and it doesn't seem worth it to me. (although I've considered it a few times)

2) I have my own modem. $70 at Amazon and it pays for itself in less then a year

3) I only have 3 CableCARDs and they're only $2/mo each. (3 CableCARDs = 8 tuners for us)

I also have some sort of promotional credit on there that's lowering my bill temporarily by $30. All in we're at about $180/mo. When the promo expires it'll jump to over $200/mo and I'll have to call back and see what they can do for me. (they always have some promo to lower your bill for 6-12 months if you commit)


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## gweempose

slowbiscuit said:


> Buy your own modem, it will pay for itself in less than a year ...


I just picked up a Motorola SB6141 the other day to replace the SB6120 I had been renting. I also cancelled all my premium channels except for HBO and Showtime. I got sick and tired of paying $320/month to Comcast.


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## gweempose

Dan203 said:


> 1) I only have a minor bump in internet to a 30/4 plan which is only $10/mo extra instead of $48/mo. They have 100/5 plan but like you I'd have to pay an extra $50/mo and it doesn't seem worth it to me. (although I've considered it a few times)


The internet is damn expensive, but I'm a trader and work from home, so at least I can write some of it off. I have to say, I've been very happy with Comcast's internet. I've been using them for years, and the service has been very reliable. They recently upgraded my plan. I'm now getting sustained speeds of about 120 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up, and I'm not paying any more money. It definitely comes in handy having all that speed when you are doing stuff like BitTorrent, but I've been doing a lot less of that these days.


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## Bigg

You're getting WAY overcharged for those CC's. You should tell them you have 4 Series 3 TiVos, and pay for 4 full priced CC's and 4 @ 1.50. Also, you should buy your modem, you could save a lot by switching to Blast! as opposed to Extreme, and in some areas, you could get the HD Technology fee off, although that varies market to market.


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## crxssi

GmanTiVo said:


> Has TiVo ever considered integrating flash memory to alleviate the amount of read/write that goes on with the HD and to speed up playback functionality?


1) SSD is still way too expensive for a main drive. WAY WAY too expensive.

2) I don't think it would affect performance much at all. Hard drives are plenty fast enough for video playback (many times over). The slow parts of the TiVo are due to the Flash and software design, tivo server dependencies, the slow CPU, and the lack of RAM for more caching.

3) It would be a WONDERFUL thing if they were to store all the *settings* (and possibly even OS) on a removable SD flash card. I have been suggesting that for years to TiVo. That way you would not lose your ratings, stations, preferences, and settings every time something went wrong. Upgrades or changes could be a snap. They should at least have a "cloud" option at this point for that stuff.


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## Darkev

Great idea crxssi. They should setup focus groups with several folks who've owned TiVos for years before embarking on any new hardware design. I realize it's less expensive for them to put minimal memory chips inside the tivo along with a slow CPU, but people just might be willing to pay extra for a machine that is faster and smoother. I found most DVRs/PVRs have slow CPUs. Every one I've owned prior to TiVo were actually worse than TiVo as far as speed goes. In 2013, the commands we choose should be just as responsive as they used to be with a VCR from 1980. Sure, it's different technology and much more complicated, but we've lost responsiveness with out DVR A/V equipment over the years.


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## Dan203

crxssi said:


> They should at least have a "cloud" option at this point for that stuff.


They do kind of do this already. If you replace the hard drive in a specific TiVo it will actually re-download all your SPs from the cloud. (not sure about thumb ratings or WLs though) so what they really need is a UI for transferring those things to a new box. Also an MRV option that moves, rather then copies, shows so that even copy protected shows can be moved to a new unit would be nice.


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## crxssi

Dan203 said:


> They do kind of do this already. If you replace the hard drive in a specific TiVo it will actually re-download all your SPs from the cloud. (not sure about thumb ratings or WLs though) so what they really need is a UI for transferring those things to a new box. Also an MRV option that moves, rather then copies, shows so that even copy protected shows can be moved to a new unit would be nice.


You are correct, but it is ONLY season passes. The ratings and channels and all other settings are lost forever. Plus you have to know how to do it, and I think that only works if you set up your MAK for remote (can't remember it has been so long).

Good idea on the moving of programs. Of course, if you have only one TiVo, that is not an option. In my case, however, I rarely care that much about the recordings- those can usually be replaced. My hours of frustration reentering everything (including ratings over the next YEAR) can't be recooped.


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## Bigg

crxssi said:


> 1) SSD is still way too expensive for a main drive. WAY WAY too expensive.
> 
> 2) I don't think it would affect performance much at all. Hard drives are plenty fast enough for video playback (many times over). The slow parts of the TiVo are due to the Flash and software design, tivo server dependencies, the slow CPU, and the lack of RAM for more caching.
> 
> 3) It would be a WONDERFUL thing if they were to store all the *settings* (and possibly even OS) on a removable SD flash card. I have been suggesting that for years to TiVo. That way you would not lose your ratings, stations, preferences, and settings every time something went wrong. Upgrades or changes could be a snap. They should at least have a "cloud" option at this point for that stuff.


Yup, that would actually make sense though. It would be awesome to have an SSD for the live TV buffer as well, since that's pounding away on the HDD 24/7. You'd only need about an 80GB drive for the buffer on a quad-tuner unit.

They should have a cloud option, as well as dynamic scheduling among units with intelligent network transfers to spread the load out evenly among a household so that you always have tuners available on every box. And user profiles with quotas that work and re-distribute across the whole house worth of DVRs. But that would actually require TiVo to innovate, right?


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## JWhites

I was speaking to TiVo about the idea someone on the forum had about using a removable memory chip to store season passes, ratings, and other personalized settings that can be taken out and put into a new TiVo in the event of an exchange or failure or replacement, and they seemed to like the idea quite a lot and thought it was ingenious. It reminds me of how a SIM card works where it stores the customers personal information, phone number, contacts and the like, and can be removed and put into another phone or computer.


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## PotentiallyCoherent

JWhites said:


> I was speaking to TiVo about the idea someone on the forum had about using a removable memory chip to store season passes, ratings, and other personalized settings that can be taken out and put into a new TiVo in the event of an exchange or failure or replacement, and they seemed to like the idea quite a lot and thought it was ingenious. It reminds me of how a SIM card works where it stores the customers personal information, phone number, contacts and the like, and can be removed and put into another phone or computer.


Do you actually talk to the box, or do you bug CSRs 24/7?


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## slowbiscuit

JWhites said:


> I was speaking to TiVo about the idea someone on the forum had about using a removable memory chip to store season passes, ratings, and other personalized settings that can be taken out and put into a new TiVo in the event of an exchange or failure or replacement, and they seemed to like the idea quite a lot and thought it was ingenious. It reminds me of how a SIM card works where it stores the customers personal information, phone number, contacts and the like, and can be removed and put into another phone or computer.


You can talk to Tivo about any number of things, all of them potentially great ideas. Any number of them will be immediately discarded.

This one in particular was brought up years ago, it's nothing new or ingenious.


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## compnurd

PotentiallyCoherent said:


> Do you actually talk to the box, or do you bug CSRs 24/7?


I think he is bugging CSR's not realizing most of no clue what they are talking about and are just yessing him to get him off the phone


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## KevinG

Bigg said:


> It would be awesome to have an SSD for the live TV buffer as well, since *that's pounding away on the HDD 24/7*.


You do realize that that is about the worst possible scenario for the longevity of an SSD, right?


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## aaronwt

KevinG said:


> You do realize that that is about the worst possible scenario for the longevity of an SSD, right?


Yes. A platter hard drive running 24/7/365 has never caused me issues in the past. I would much rather have a platter drive for that than an SSD.


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## Darkev

I'm a bit puzzled and although this may be considered off topic, but don't SSDs have zero moveable parts whereas HDD are constantly physically in motion? Mechanical parts tend to wear our quicker than solid state, so how is it that the SSD cannot withstand constant reading and writing?


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## k2ue

Darkev said:


> I'm a bit puzzled and although this may be considered off topic, but don't SSDs have zero moveable parts whereas HDD are constantly physically in motion? Mechanical parts tend to wear our quicker than solid state, so how is it that the SSD cannot withstand constant reading and writing?


Because there IS physical motion in an SSD -- charge being pushed thru gate insulators of floating-gate FETs -- this is a delicate operation, balanced between unreliability and breakdown, that is sensitive to the barest wisp of process contamination. Only accellerated life testing can confirm that the expected number of useful cycles has been obtained.

In contrast, the HD has no head to platter contact, with the heads flying on air, and the bearings are riding on a thin film of lubricant -- this can easily go on for many years, with no life reduction due to intensive data changes (or not).


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## Dan203

There is no physical motion in an SSD unless you count electrons being pushed between atoms. The reason SSDs wear out is because they use a special material to hold electrons which is then used to signal the chipset whether a cell is a 1 or a 0. (i.e. charged means 1, uncharged means 0) Each erase/write diminishes the cells ability to hold a charged state and after about 5,000-10,000 erase/write cycles the cell becomes unusable. Modern SSDs use load balancing to spread erase/writes across the entire drive so that one section of the drive doesn't wear out faster then another. However if you were writing to the drive 24/7, like a TiVo does, it would likely wear out faster then a typical HDD takes to fail. Although the numbers are pretty close, so I think the biggest drawback to SSD is cost. Plus it doesn't really provide any benefit to a TiVo, expect maybe silent operation.


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## Bigg

Are we still at that point with SSDs? I thought we were getting a lot better with longevity?


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## Darkev

The other benefit to the SSD is speed. When I upgraded my Mac to an SSD it was like purchasing a brand new machine the speed was so much greater. It's interesting that these SSD drives are designed to only allow so few writes to a cell. Hopefully this will be remedied one day. 

Thanks for the info guys.


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## crxssi

slowbiscuit said:


> You can talk to Tivo about any number of things, all of them potentially great ideas. Any number of them will be immediately discarded.
> 
> This one in particular was brought up years ago, it's nothing new or ingenious.


I have been telling TiVo to add it (cloud or SD storage) for years and years. I add it to every survey. I tell them every time I ever call for support on something else. I have posted on these forums several times too.

I certainly hope it is not new to them.


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## Dan203

Darkev said:


> The other benefit to the SSD is speed. When I upgraded my Mac to an SSD it was like purchasing a brand new machine the speed was so much greater. It's interesting that these SSD drives are designed to only allow so few writes to a cell. Hopefully this will be remedied one day.
> 
> Thanks for the info guys.


That speed is basically insignificant to a TiVo though. It might help reduce the time required to reboot, but how often do you do that? Other then that most of TiVos speed is CPU bound not disk bound. An HD stream has a max bitrate of 19.2Mbps. Even with 4 tuners recording, watching another recording, streaming to 3 devices and downloading from another TiVo all going at once (max TiVo can do) you're still well under the throughput of even a slow HDD.


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## wmcbrine

Dan203 said:


> Plus it doesn't really provide any benefit to a TiVo, expect maybe silent operation.


Power consumption.


----------



## moyekj

Agreed. Beefier CPU and more RAM will speed things up much more than SSD. Series 4 TiVo hardware has been below minimum Adobe specs for running Flash since inception, which is why they are so darn sluggish running HDUI and Flash apps. I expect next hardware generation should solve that problem. The Mini already gives a good reference of much speedup to expect with new hardware.


----------



## k2ue

Bigg said:


> Are we still at that point with SSDs? I thought we were getting a lot better with longevity?


I have been on design teams that created chips with the same type of memory on-board -- it remains a black art. You want to trap charge on an insulator so pure it will not leak it off for YEARS unless purposely changed, but be able to tunnel charge into and out of that node at will. There really isn't any new physics or material science on the horizon to make it dramatically easier or better.


----------



## crxssi

Bigg said:


> Are we still at that point with SSDs? I thought we were getting a lot better with longevity?


Yes, they are getting better from all standpoints. But when you need terabytes of storage, they are just not at all practical.

For smaller sizes, it is really heating up. We are right now replacing the hard drives in all the 180 Linux workstations at work with SSDs (64GB). And I just bought a 256GB SDD for my home Linux machine- I will use the multi-terabyte RAID for just large stuff like video, music, pics and install everything else (the OS and /home and such) on the SSD. It is sitting right by the keyboard waiting for a new install (Mageia 3 just released last night and I have it downloaded now! http://www.mageia.org/en/downloads/ )


----------



## innocentfreak

moyekj said:


> Agreed. Beefier CPU and more RAM will speed things up much more than SSD. Series 4 TiVo hardware has been below minimum Adobe specs for running Flash since inception, which is why they are so darn sluggish running HDUI and Flash apps. I expect next hardware generation should solve that problem. The Mini already gives a good reference of much speedup to expect with new hardware.


Hopefully this time it will also be designed to last the 2-3 years before a replacement. Sure the Mini feels fast from what people have said, but does it feel fast enough for 2-3 years from now or just what the Premiere should have had 3 years ago?

We already have an idea on the CPU which last I heard wasn't the newest chip out which old match the history of the hardware TiVo goes with. Hopefully they will up the memory especially in the 4-6 tuner.


----------



## JWhites

PotentiallyCoherent said:


> Do you actually talk to the box, or do you bug CSRs 24/7?


No I get emails from them requesting me to call in and go over each issue that I mentioned in greater detail, and troubleshoot with them. They then escalate it back to the engineers for the day before I get another email the following day for the next issue.


----------



## JWhites

compnurd said:


> I think he is bugging CSR's not realizing most of no clue what they are talking about and are just yessing him to get him off the phone


Untrue since I reference the incident number and they immediately are aware of the issues I described, they're seeing it themselves on their own TiVo's at the office and at home. As I described in the previous post, I'm being contacted and asked to contact them back for troubleshooting and note taking steps.


----------



## innocentfreak

On topic...Dave Zatz tweeted this earlier.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/336840336355770369


> More importantly new 6-tuner and 4-tuner TiVo betas are ramping up. Integrated WiFi and RF remote FTW?


----------



## Jonathan_S

Bigg said:


> Are we still at that point with SSDs? I thought we were getting a lot better with longevity?


IIRC the actual cells have gotten slightly better. But the big increase in 'real life' SSD longevity is better wear leveling algorithms and vastly larger storage space (which gives the wear leveling algorithms more room to spread the damage around).

Sizing an SSD just large enough to hold TiVo's live buffers would be absolute worst case though and woud crush it fairly quickly. The load balancing algorithm can't _do_ anything if the entire drive is constantly updating and gets overwritten roughtly every 45 minutes.

And honestly, the buffers aren't where the speed impact is - a spinning disk is plenty fast for that usage. You'd get a better performance boost by either moving the TiVo application & database to a seperate SSD; or go back to the aftermarket Series 1 TiVo Cachecard idea and give it enough memory to copy the database into RAM so it doesn't hit the disk while populating menus or searching for wishlists.


----------



## riz

I just bought a new XL4 with lifetime, got a good deal on it under $700. I dont really need 6 tuners (4 is more than enough) I don't need ota, or wifi... 

So, any chance the new Tivos coming will have a feature that I must have not listed above? $700 is still $700, your thoughts?


----------



## innocentfreak

riz said:


> I just bought a new XL4 with lifetime, got a good deal on it under $700. I dont really need 6 tuners (4 is more than enough) I don't need ota, or wifi...
> 
> So, any chance the new Tivos coming will have a feature that I must have not listed above? $700 is still $700, your thoughts?


No one knows the details about the next hardware. Personally I would wait because the hardware you have now is 3 years old. We might get a better idea at the Cable Show June 10-12th.

The speed improvement alone should be pretty significant. It could also have the Stream functionality built in which TiVo at one point said they were looking to put it in their next box.


----------



## riz

innocentfreak said:


> No one knows the details about the next hardware. Personally I would wait because the hardware you have now is 3 years old. We might get a better idea at the Cable Show June 10-12th.
> 
> The speed improvement alone should be pretty significant. It could also have the Stream functionality built in which TiVo at one point said they were looking to put it in their next box.


My thoughts against not waiting, resale value... I got the lifetime and XL4 with a resale value of $700+ now (more than I paid for new)... So in 4-6 months, if need be, sell for about even then plunker down for the new model... Going back to my TivoHD would suck lol

I guess I keep it with the calculated risk that I wont lose much if any on resale if the new hardware is worth the upgrade


----------



## innocentfreak

riz said:


> My thoughts against not waiting, resale value... I got the lifetime and XL4 with a resale value of $700+ now (more than I paid for new)... So in 4-6 months, if need be, sell for about even then plunker down for the new model... Going back to my TivoHD would suck lol
> 
> I guess I keep it with the calculated risk that I wont lose much if any on resale if the new hardware is worth the upgrade


Yeah if you are willing to resell and eat any cost you potentially might lose, I would keep the XL4 then. It probably won't be out for another 4 months so September/October.


----------



## aaronwt

innocentfreak said:


> Hopefully this time it will also be designed to last the 2-3 years before a replacement. Sure the Mini feels fast from what people have said, but does it feel fast enough for 2-3 years from now or just what the Premiere should have had 3 years ago?
> 
> We already have an idea on the CPU which last I heard wasn't the newest chip out which old match the history of the hardware TiVo goes with. Hopefully they will up the memory especially in the 4-6 tuner.


No idea if it will be fast enough to last 3 or 4 years. But the chipset that will be used is probably the same one everyone else seems to be using. The sister chipset to the one the Mini is using.


----------



## Bigg

Jonathan_S said:


> Sizing an SSD just large enough to hold TiVo's live buffers would be absolute worst case though and woud crush it fairly quickly. The load balancing algorithm can't _do_ anything if the entire drive is constantly updating and gets overwritten roughtly every 45 minutes.


Yeah, that's true. You'd burn through the whole drive every 45 minutes or so! I hadn't thought of it that way... I guess they could use a little one for the software and user data.


----------



## Dan203

aaronwt said:


> No idea if it will be fast enough to last 3 or 4 years. But the chipset that will be used is probably the same one everyone else seems to be using. The sister chipset to the one the Mini is using.


Yeah I think it's from the same family used in the Roku2 and Samsung Smart TVs. I think the Roku3 uses something newer though.


----------



## slowbiscuit

innocentfreak said:


> On topic...Dave Zatz tweeted this earlier.
> 
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/336840336355770369


That WiFi better be 802.11ac if they expect to support streaming.


----------



## wmcbrine

innocentfreak said:


> On topic...Dave Zatz tweeted this earlier.
> 
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/336840336355770369


He's not asserting any knowledge, just giving a personal wish list.


----------



## innocentfreak

wmcbrine said:


> He's not asserting any knowledge, just giving a personal wish list.


Thats not how I read it, but you might be right since WiFi doesn't make much sense.


----------



## compnurd

innocentfreak said:


> Thats not how I read it, but you might be right since WiFi doesn't make much sense.


They might... Direct TV just put Wifi in there newest whole home DVR


----------



## Dan203

innocentfreak said:


> Thats not how I read it, but you might be right since WiFi doesn't make much sense.


Actually it does. TiVos have two network requirements. One for streaming and one for accessing the internet. They are moving toward a model where there is a host DVR with 4-6 tuners and then a bunch of Minis, or other streaming devices, used to access the host around the house. With WiFi built in they could allow the host to talk to the Minis via MoCa but still access the internet via WiFi without the need for a MoCa bridge at the router or an Ethernet connection.

Another potential usage... If the next TiVo has built in Stream capabilities then it could act as an access point and stream directly to an iPad without the need for any other equipment.

Since the Minis don't have WiFi I doubt they intent to use WiFi for streaming between rooms, but for the two cases mentioned above it makes perfect sense.


----------



## innocentfreak

I can see that. It just seems to fly in the face of keeping it simple which TiVo tends to aim for. 

It just seems to be a potential support issue since I could see customer confusion by including it but not supporting it for streaming.


----------



## compnurd

Dan203 said:


> Actually it does. TiVos have two network requirements. One for streaming and one for accessing the internet. They are moving toward a model where there is a host DVR with 4-6 tuners and then a bunch of Minis, or other streaming devices, used to access the host around the house. With WiFi built in they could allow the host to talk to the Minis via MoCa but still access the internet via WiFi without the need for a MoCa bridge at the router or an Ethernet connection.
> 
> Another potential usage... If the next TiVo has built in Stream capabilities then it could act as an access point and stream directly to an iPad without the need for any other equipment.
> 
> Since the Minis don't have WiFi I doubt they intent to use WiFi for streaming between rooms, but for the two cases mentioned above it makes perfect sense.


And that is how the HR44 does it for Direct TV


----------



## Dan203

innocentfreak said:


> I can see that. It just seems to fly in the face of keeping it simple which TiVo tends to aim for.
> 
> It just seems to be a potential support issue since I could see customer confusion by including it but not supporting it for streaming.


The alternative is to force the user to use Ethernet, which may not be an option, or to buy a MoCa bridge and install it near their router. Including WiFi for just the internet leg seems simpler, and less confusing, then either of those two options.


----------



## Bigg

Dan203 said:


> The alternative is to force the user to use Ethernet, which may not be an option, or to buy a MoCa bridge and install it near their router. Including WiFi for just the internet leg seems simpler, and less confusing, then either of those two options.


Even just for the internet leg, Wifi has WAY too many reliability and throughput issues.


----------



## Dan203

Bigg said:


> Even just for the internet leg, Wifi has WAY too many reliability and throughput issues.


Perhaps, but it's more convenient. Some people are willing to trade reliability for convenience.

Plus it's not like this is going to be the only option. You'll still be able to use MoCa or Ethernet if you want.


----------



## crxssi

slowbiscuit said:


> That WiFi better be 802.11ac if they expect to support streaming.


Again, you can stream with WiFi N, even G, if everything is *perfect* and you are only pushing a single stream (well, at least with G). But since things are rarely perfect with wireless, it just doesn't make sense for TiVo to subject themselves to the certain support NIGHTMARE than wireless would bring.

They might also add it just for "normal" use and even H264 streaming (not MRV) and then program it to not allow MRV streaming over it (that would be fairly complex to do). But I can see that as also a major negative as customers will then complain endlessly of a "bait and switch" type situation and be very confused.


----------



## Dan203

crxssi said:


> it just doesn't make sense for TiVo to subject themselves to the certain support NIGHTMARE than wireless would bring.


Why would it be a nightmare? They could simply say video streaming is not available via WiFi. Since the Mini doesn't have built in WiFi the only way someone could even try streaming via WiFi is if they used a bridge. And if they get that far then they likely already know what they're doing. (or at least think they do)

TiVo could put a note in the instructions that WiFi is for internet access only and that MoCa or Ethernet is required for streaming. CSRs could be trained to tell customers the same thing.

Or maybe they'll just change their stance on WiFi and allow streaming. They might be able to detect when the user is only using WiFi and limit the number of streams accordingly. (perhaps it would only allow one stream at a time if using WiFi)


----------



## aaronwt

Since when do people read instructions?


----------



## Dan203

The most user friendly option would be to detect the connection type and limit streaming and throw up a message explaining the issue when the limit was hit. However adding UI elements seems to be hard for TiVo so I'm not sure that will happen.


----------



## crxssi

Dan203 said:


> The most user friendly option would be to detect the connection type and limit streaming and throw up a message explaining the issue when the limit was hit. However adding UI elements seems to be hard for TiVo so I'm not sure that will happen.


Actually take that idea go a bit further- just quickly TEST the connection throughput first and if it fails, then throw up the message. That way it doesn't matter what type of network you are using. A crappy wired connection could fail while a great wifi setup would work.


----------



## Bigg

The problem is reliability. The Wifi could be doing a nice 40mbps, and all of the sudden, Mrs. Next Door gets a new router and interferes, or someone uses a microwave, or a zillion other things that can interfere with wifi...


----------



## crxssi

Bigg said:


> The problem is reliability. The Wifi could be doing a nice 40mbps, and all of the sudden, Mrs. Next Door gets a new router and interferes, or someone uses a microwave, or a zillion other things that can interfere with wifi...


Extremely true


----------



## Dan203

Given that the Mini doesn't have Wifi I doubt many people would try to use Wifi for streaming, even if it's built in. I think 99% of people would use it "as intended" for connecting the TiVo to the internet. If they're going to get a Mini then they might as well use MoCa since both devices will have that built in.

I wonder if the TiVo built in WiFi could be used as an Access Point? That might be cool. I have a MoCa bridge for connecting my TiVo to the internet, but I also have a WiFi AP in the same room. If I could use the TiVo as an AP it would eliminate one more box from my A/V rack.


----------



## lessd

If all TiVos and the Mini are on Moca does the streaming still go through the router, or can you use a slow WiFi connected to one of the TiVos as a bridge to get to the internet just for updates.


----------



## JWhites

lessd said:


> If all TiVos and the Mini are on Moca does the streaming still go through the router, or can you use a slow WiFi connected to one of the TiVos as a bridge to get to the internet just for updates.


If all the TiVo's are on MoCA either natively on the 4 tuner and Mini or using a MoCA bridge adapter, it doesn't pass through the router when streaming or transferring files between each other unless it's accessing the internet for updates or web streaming with Netflix or obtaining an IP address from the router DHCP server. I think that because of how the TiVo's are programmed, if you want to use a 4 tuner TiVo as a bridge to supply internet and IP addresses to other MoCA enabled TiVo's, you'd need to use an Ethernet cable.


----------



## aaronwt

That's how my boxes are setup. One ELite connects to my LAN with an EThernet cable. Then over MoCA it connects to my two Minis and my other ELite. Then my OTA Premiere is connected to that second ELite with an Ethernet cable. Internet access is fed to all the TiVos from the ethernet cable on the first Elite. And my router assigns the IP address I have reserved for each of those devices based on their MAC address.


----------



## gweempose

I have a hardwired network going to every viewing location in my home. Would there be any advantage of going with MoCA instead of ethernet?


----------



## drebbe

gweempose said:


> I have a hardwired network going to every viewing location in my home. Would there be any advantage of going with MoCA instead of ethernet?


No. Wired ethernet > MoCA.


----------



## moyekj

gweempose said:


> I have a hardwired network going to every viewing location in my home. Would there be any advantage of going with MoCA instead of ethernet?


 Technically it would reduce load on your ethernet LAN so it may be worth it. For example when using MRS to stream between 2 units that are MoCA connected they will not use up any ethernet bandwidth. Of course if you don't have much else on your network and/or have 1 Gbps ethernet setup then even multiple MRS streams wouldn't affect things much, but if you have 100Mbs setup then it may be worthwhile. But normally I would just say stick to ethernet over MoCA wherever possible for most people not too worried about little details. (Ethernet > MoCA >> HomePlug >> WiFi).


----------



## atmuscarella

gweempose said:


> I have a hardwired network going to every viewing location in my home. Would there be any advantage of going with MoCA instead of ethernet?





drebbe said:


> No. Wired ethernet > MoCA.


Well I would say it depends on how things are wired and how much traffic is on your network. If you had a direct COAX from a P4/XL4 to a Mini using MoCA for the Mini would keep streaming off your Ethernet segments while providing a direct dedicated line for streaming to the Mini.


----------



## Bigg

moyekj said:


> Technically it would reduce load on your ethernet LAN so it may be worth it. For example when using MRS to stream between 2 units that are MoCA connected they will not use up any ethernet bandwidth. Of course if you don't have much else on your network and/or have 1 Gbps ethernet setup then even multiple MRS streams wouldn't affect things much, but if you have 100Mbs setup then it may be worthwhile. But normally I would just say stick to ethernet over MoCA wherever possible for most people not too worried about little details. (Ethernet > MoCA >> HomePlug >> WiFi).


Gig should be more than fast enough, even with other heavy traffic on the network. I have found HomePlug to not work any better than Wifi, and actually be less consistent, but YMMV.


----------



## aaronwt

drebbe said:


> No. Wired ethernet > MoCA.


In my use, from a users perspective, it was identical. Just like when I connected to wireless bridges the perfomance was also identical. I'm sure if I measured some speeds there may have been a difference, but from just the perspective of using and wathing content between the TiVos, the experience was identical. 
But I'm also using a gigabit backbone and my MoCA segment is only in use by the TiVo. I'm sure if the backbone was only 100BT there could be congestion issues with other devices.


----------



## JWhites

Dan203 said:


> Given that the Mini doesn't have Wifi I doubt many people would try to use Wifi for streaming, even if it's built in. I think 99% of people would use it "as intended" for connecting the TiVo to the internet. If they're going to get a Mini then they might as well use MoCa since both devices will have that built in.
> 
> I wonder if the TiVo built in WiFi could be used as an Access Point? That might be cool. I have a MoCa bridge for connecting my TiVo to the internet, but I also have a WiFi AP in the same room. If I could use the TiVo as an AP it would eliminate one more box from my A/V rack.


First, check this out http://www.actiontec.com/products/product.php?pid=305#.UczW97XD_4Y which has a gigabit Ethernet port and both 2.4GHz and 5GHz WiFi, and second what kinda MoCA bridge are you using and third I really hope customers will use the TiVo as intended because it really allows the full experience as it was meant to be experienced.


----------



## Dan203

I use the TiVo XL4 as the bridge and an ActionTech adapter on the other end. However I also have a Wifi AP in the same room as the TiVo. Would be nice if the TiVo could act as an AP so I could eliminate one more thing sucking power.


----------



## Bigg

Dan203 said:


> I use the TiVo XL4 as the bridge and an ActionTech adapter on the other end. However I also have a Wifi AP in the same room as the TiVo. Would be nice if the TiVo could act as an AP so I could eliminate one more thing sucking power.


Unlikely. I'd also be a little leery about a bunch of other crap going through the TiVo as opposed to dedicated network hardware. I don't mind the Minis, since they are part of a system, but I wouldn't want a computer using them for access.


----------



## Dan203

I already bridge a bunch of devices through the XL4. Everything in my entertainment center connects to an Ethernet switch, which then connects to the XL4, which then bridges via MoCa to my office, which then connects to a bunch of other stuff via Ethernet and finally to my router. Works fine.


----------



## pcbrew

Dan203 said:


> I already bridge a bunch of devices through the XL4. Everything in my entertainment center connects to an Ethernet switch, which then connects to the XL4, which then bridges via MoCa to my office, which then connects to a bunch of other stuff via Ethernet and finally to my router. Works fine.


I did not realize you could do this.... 
... Just checked TiVo site and see that this is limited to Premier 4, so my original Premier cannot do this and I am not missing anything.
But, I just ordered a Premier 4 under an offer to transfer my GF'd 6.99/mo plan so I will be able to do this with the new box and use the free Moca adapter in another room.


----------



## Bigg

Dan203 said:


> I already bridge a bunch of devices through the XL4. Everything in my entertainment center connects to an Ethernet switch, which then connects to the XL4, which then bridges via MoCa to my office, which then connects to a bunch of other stuff via Ethernet and finally to my router. Works fine.


I'm not doubting that it works, I'm just a bit leery of it.


----------



## Dan203

No reason to be. I've been using this setup for a long time and never had any trouble with it.


----------



## compnurd

Dan203 said:


> No reason to be. I've been using this setup for a long time and never had any trouble with it.


Same Here.. Direct TV boxes do it also


----------



## mike123abc

www dot broadcastingcable dot com slash article shash 495029-FCC_Grants_Tivo_Waiver_From_Analog_Tuner_Mandate dot php



> The FCC said Monday it will allow Tivo to sell more digital-only devices.
> 
> The commissioner granted the company a waiver, which was unopposed, of the FCC's analog tuner requirement.
> 
> TiVo had argued that having to include an analog tuner in its set-tops increased power consumption and price to little net consumer effect. The FCC agreed, saying that it would help TiVo provide consumers a more competitive retail alternative to cable-leased devices--the FCC has for years been trying to increase retail competition to cable set-tops.


Does this now mean that the new boxes can ship soon? TiVo should be able to save some bucks by not having the analog tuners and the analog to digital conversion chips.

I do not have enough posts to make the link work.


----------



## innocentfreak

Hopefully, but nothing announced yet.

Another thread on it.
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=505624


----------



## MeInDallas

You need to make your way over to this forum, I dont know how you missed it!

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=505624


----------



## MeInDallas

UGH you beat me to it!


----------



## Gavroche

Mike-Wolf said:


> You are correct, I just checked TiVo's clearance center and it's listed as out of stock. I just got off the phone with a support agent after being on for an hour and forty minutes and said no one on their end seem to know why it was discontinued either.


Maybe because they were totally unreliable and never worked?

Yeah, I'm sure I'll get 100 replies stating "Mine works fine! Never had any issues!" or something like that... but I've purchased 4 of those damned things and every single one of them crapped out after a while, for no reason at all.

I've yet to find a keyboard solution that works correctly with every text input on the TiVo... even the TiVo android app has a few characters that tivo won't accept and I have to get the regular remote and move around the on-screen lettering thingamagummy...

I've pretty much given up on trying to enter text with any sort of keyboard.

(Yeah I also have some of those little wireless mini pc keyboards... which work great... but again, don't work in every place where u need them and don't work for all characters. So what's the point?)

[EDIT]

I guess THAT would be on MY wishlist for the next TiVo! Some keyboard-entry system that actually works, accepts all necessary characters, and works on every app on TiVo that requires text input!


----------



## aaronwt

Gavroche said:


> Maybe because they were totally unreliable and never worked?
> 
> Yeah, I'm sure I'll get 100 replies stating "Mine works fine! Never had any issues!" or something like that... but I've purchased 4 of those damned things and every single one of them crapped out after a while, for no reason at all.
> 
> ....................
> [EDIT]
> 
> I guess THAT would be on MY wishlist for the next TiVo! Some keyboard-entry system that actually works, accepts all necessary characters, and works on every app on TiVo that requires text input!


 I use three slides and have not had any issues with them. With text entry I'm not using that every day, but when I do it's typically for a search. And that has worked without problems on my three slide remotes for the 2.5 years or so that I've been using them.

Of course I don't drop my Slide remotes either. It seems like some people are prone to dropping their remotes for some reason which could decrease it's life. No idea though if you fall into that category. But having four Slides crap out it is completely opposite of the experience I have had with my three Slide remotes.

I only wish I had picked up an extra Slide remote when prices were so low. Since if any of my Slides do take a dump, I won't be able to replace it since they aren't made anymore and prices are sky high for any that are for sale. I've become too accustomed to using the Slide so the normal size TiVo remote seems foreign to me now. Plus text entry, without the keyboard on the Slide, is a PITA.


----------



## nooneuknow

aaronwt said:


> I use three slides and have not had any issues with them. With text entry I'm not using that every day, but when I do it's typically for a search. And that has worked without problems on my three slide remotes for the 2.5 years or so that I've been using them.
> 
> Of course I don't drop my Slide remotes either. It seems like some people are prone to dropping their remotes for some reason which could decrease it's life. No idea though if you fall into that category. But having four Slides crap out it is completely opposite of the experience I have had with my three Slide remotes.
> 
> I only wish I had picked up an extra Slide remote when prices were so low. Since if any of my Slides do take a dump, I won't be able to replace it since they aren't made anymore and prices are sky high for any that are for sale. I've become too accustomed to using the Slide so the normal size TiVo remote seems foreign to me now. Plus text entry, without the keyboard on the Slide, is a PITA.


As stated in the other new product speculation thread, I KNEW you would post this BEFORE you even posted it.

Is there anything you own that breaks, or has issues you are bothered by (since nothing TiVo-related is ever in those categories)?

I should have asked, in the other thread (actually I will): Why are you so active in saying how great everything TiVo is, and how much value it retains, while never posting any help for those who need help? That seems to be the main draw here (people who Googled a TiVo issue and found themselves here).

It's like as if an Apple iFanBoy droid lost his way and landed here and converted, where most people (seem to be) griping, or seeking help...


----------



## crxssi

aaronwt said:


> I use three slides and have not had any issues with them. With text entry I'm not using that every day, but when I do it's typically for a search. And that has worked without problems on my three slide remotes for the 2.5 years or so that I've been using them.
> 
> Of course I don't drop my Slide remotes either. It seems like some people are prone to dropping their remotes for some reason which could decrease it's life.


I love the Slide, it is the best product TiVo ever created.
But mine does get dropped a lot... mostly due to meows, and my first one did fail (acting slow, missing key presses). Thankfully I got another before they were discontinued.

It was really stupid of them to discontinue it without having the replacement ready.


----------



## slowbiscuit

I only have one Slide and it works great except for one issue - pressing select or enter on the keyboard generates the letter 'A' for some reason, not enter. Weird but not a big issue since it works fine on the remote.

It will also randomly decide that it's not sync'd to the BT receiver on the Tivo (which I have moved up to the front of the Elite with a USB cable, it's less than 8 feet from me) but this is rare. It always re-syncs on its own after a few button presses.

It's a great remote otherwise except for the random button presses when I drop it etc. that you don't get with an IR remote.


----------



## JWhites

nooneuknow said:


> As stated in the other new product speculation thread, I KNEW you would post this BEFORE you even posted it.
> 
> Is there anything you own that breaks, or has issues you are bothered by (since nothing TiVo-related is ever in those categories)?
> 
> I should have asked, in the other thread (actually I will): Why are you so active in saying how great everything TiVo is, and how much value it retains, while never posting any help for those who need help? That seems to be the main draw here (people who Googled a TiVo issue and found themselves here).
> 
> It's like as if an Apple iFanBoy droid lost his way and landed here and converted, where most people (seem to be) griping, or seeking help...


Converted? or do you mean defected?


----------



## aaronwt

nooneuknow said:


> As stated in the other new product speculation thread, I KNEW you would post this BEFORE you even posted it.
> 
> Is there anything you own that breaks, or has issues you are bothered by (since nothing TiVo-related is ever in those categories)?
> 
> I should have asked, in the other thread (actually I will): Why are you so active in saying how great everything TiVo is, and how much value it retains, while never posting any help for those who need help? That seems to be the main draw here (people who Googled a TiVo issue and found themselves here).
> 
> It's like as if an Apple iFanBoy droid lost his way and landed here and converted, where most people (seem to be) griping, or seeking help...


What the crap?? As I stated in the other thread, I have always posted my positive and negative experiences with TiVos. Just recently I was the first one to report the TiVo Mini rebooting with Netflix when it switches to 1080P24 output. I guess you have selective memory or something?

And have I owned anything that's broken of course, but it is certainly not the norm for an electronic device I own to break. But they do. I've owned hundreds of electronic devices over the last 35 or 40 years. Most of them have worked without issue but sometimes you can have a problem.

One example was a 40" Westinghouse LCD TV I bought in 2007. It was the only TV I've purchased that I did not get an extended warranty on. And it has been the only TV I've owned that went belly up. Within a month or two after the warranty expired the backlight went out. I never got it fixed and eventually I trashed it since it would have cost more to fix it than to get a new one.

Another example is a ROku 2 I bought sometime over the last couple of years. I got it home and it had some issues. I don't remember the problem but I took it back to best buy to exchange it. I have not had any major issues since with my two Roku2 boxes or my Roku3.

I recently started having problems with my Algolith FLea. So I removed it from my broadcast video chain. But that is over six years old. They stopped making it many years ago and I more than got my $800 out of it. Everything will break if you give it enough time. Nothing can last forever.

What about my launch xbox 360 in 2005?. It had a Red Ring of Death before it was even called that. It happened within a few weeks of launch and MS replaced it within a few days. Out of the dozen or so 360's I've owned I had one other 360 that had a warranty repair during the extended warranty period.

And I've owned at least a couple dozen HD DVD and BD players over the last seven years. I had a couple of the combo HD DVD/BD players that needed to get repaired by BestBuy during the extended warranty period. But only two players out of 24+ players I've owned.

There are other things I've had issues with over the years but it is certainly nowhere near the norm to have problems with electronic devices.

You make it sound like every TiVo should fail or even 25% of TiVos should fail or a very large percentage of electronic devices should fail. And that is just nowhere near reality.


----------



## wmcbrine

Gavroche said:


> I guess THAT would be on MY wishlist for the next TiVo! Some keyboard-entry system that actually works, accepts all necessary characters, and works on every app on TiVo that requires text input!


Have you tried my network remote (see sig)? On a Series 4, it can use the KEYBOARD command, for which I have all of the Slide's codes mapped. The Series 3 is limited to the less powerful IRCODE version of direct text input. (This is purely a software issue, though -- the Series 3 could be upgraded to support KEYBOARD, if TiVo were still updating it. With a USB keyboard, you can actually do a bit more on a Series 3 than with a network remote. I've thought about making a Bluetooth software remote for this reason.)

The apps are another issue... there are different APIs that have been available in different versions of HME, and I'm not sure that the Flash API even supports direct text input. But, my remote can also help with these situations, by translating text to arrow/select sequences. (This only works with TiVo-standard A-Z layouts, numbers, and spaces.)


----------



## jrtroo

aaronwt said:


> Of course I don't drop my Slide remotes either. It seems like some people are prone to dropping their remotes for some reason which could decrease it's life. No idea though if you fall into that category. But having four Slides crap out it is completely opposite of the experience I have had with my three Slide remotes.


The one issue there is with the Slide is that there is an internal connector that can be dislodged when dropped. Easy to repair, but the unit does need to be taken apart to do so. I did this often enough I just glued the cable down. Fixed evermore.


----------



## nooneuknow

aaronwt said:


> What the crap?? As I stated in the other thread, I have always posted my positive and negative experiences with TiVos. Just recently I was the first one to report the TiVo Mini rebooting with Netflix when it switches to 1080P24 output. I guess you have selective memory or something?<snip>


Well when 99% of what you post about TiVo is glowingly positive, is it really "selective" that I may have missed or forgotten the 1% of "other"?

I guess the next logical questions would be:

If I put a TiVo sticker on it, before you received it, would you report in the same manner?

If I sold you the worst car on earth, with a TiVo bumper sticker, would you still report in the same manner?

Now I really am pushing it, but it's tongue-in-check, now (and some of it already was). 

Your points are taken and considered.


----------



## compnurd

nooneuknow said:


> Well when 99% of what you post about TiVo is glowingly positive, is it really "selective" that I may have missed or forgotten the 1% of "other"?
> 
> I guess the next logical questions would be:
> 
> If I put a TiVo sticker on it, before you received it, would you report in the same manner?
> 
> If I sold you the worst car on earth, with a TiVo bumper sticker, would you still report in the same manner?
> 
> Now I really am pushing it, but it's tongue-in-check, now (and some of it already was).
> 
> Your points are taken and considered.


and 99% of what you post is negative. just switch to a cable DVR and leave already


----------



## nooneuknow

compnurd said:


> and 99% of what you post is negative. just switch to a cable DVR and leave already


Not until something better becomes available.


----------



## Dan203

Unfortunately the standalone DVR business is not really a good business to be in. Between the economics, the push back from the cable companies, and the head aches of dealing with CableCARDs I don't think we're ever going to see a viable alternative to TiVo in the standalone market. I'm actually kind of surprised TiVo stuck it out this long. I'm betting that if they ever make any significant inroads into the cable industry, with the major players not these smaller companies, the standalone product is going to die.


----------



## nooneuknow

Dan203 said:


> Unfortunately the standalone DVR business is not really a good business to be in. Between the economics, the push back from the cable companies, and the head aches of dealing with CableCARDs I don't think we're ever going to see a viable alternative to TiVo in the standalone market. I'm actually kind of surprised TiVo stuck it out this long. I'm betting that if they ever make any significant inroads into the cable industry, with the major players not these smaller companies, the standalone product is going to die.


Sadly, I agree with you...


----------



## HarperVision

I think the thing that's holding them back is the initial costs for hardware. They should model it like the cell companies and subsidize the hardware costs and give them totally or almost free and then charge for services. I personally think they'd explode into the market if they had, say, a Best Buy kiosk with the tivos next to a crappy cable dvr playing on a pair of nice HD sets and a sign saying "try me out and take me home for FREE" *monthly service fees apply. 

Just my humble opinion anyway. :/


----------



## CrispyCritter

Dan203 said:


> Unfortunately the standalone DVR business is not really a good business to be in. Between the economics, the push back from the cable companies, and the head aches of dealing with CableCARDs I don't think we're ever going to see a viable alternative to TiVo in the standalone market. I'm actually kind of surprised TiVo stuck it out this long. I'm betting that if they ever make any significant inroads into the cable industry, with the major players not these smaller companies, the standalone product is going to die.


I think that the standalone TiVo product is still good for another technology cycle at least. It's a very valuable resource for developing and demonstrating leading edge DVR capabilities, as well as audience measurement and targeted advertising capabilities.

But I agree that TiVo has always been focused on the long-term, and the standalone market is not a long-term market. If Tivo plowed half a billion dollars in to the standalone product (price, product, and ads), they might double or triple their standalone numbers, but would hardly influence their long-term survival possibilities. Their future is the cable companies.


----------



## HarperVision

So why not try to take over the cable co's from the consumer's end by implementing my suggestion above?


----------



## nooneuknow

HarperVision said:


> I think the thing that's holding them back is the initial costs for hardware. They should model it like the cell companies and subsidize the hardware costs and give them totally or almost free and then charge for services. I personally think they'd explode into the market if they had, say, a Best Buy kiosk with the tivos next to a crappy cable dvr playing on a pair of nice HD sets and a sign saying "try me out and take me home for FREE" *monthly service fees apply.
> 
> Just my humble opinion anyway. :/


I get what you are saying. Back in the days when I used to talk to real TiVo high-level types, I was told that for every Premiere they sold, they were already selling them at a loss. I asked what would happen if people hoarded them and never got service. They said that would be a very bad thing for them.

However, many people who get a discount price, versus full-retail, and agree to a 1 or 2 year contract, have been very vocal about how they wound up with a TiVo that didn't work, but still had to fulfill the contract, or pay the price difference, plus penalties.

I think a lot of TiVo users are of the type who don't deal with change well. Look at how many people use the SD UI on their Premieres, which basically makes them a TiVo HD v2.

The last time TiVo updated their policies it rocked the forum. You still see signature lines that reflect that sentiment.

I honestly don't have a "plan" that I could present to reinvigorate TiVo, that would sit well with the masses...


----------



## CrispyCritter

HarperVision said:


> I think the thing that's holding them back is the initial costs for hardware. They should model it like the cell companies and subsidize the hardware costs and give them totally or almost free and then charge for services. I personally think they'd explode into the market if they had, say, a Best Buy kiosk with the tivos next to a crappy cable dvr playing on a pair of nice HD sets and a sign saying "try me out and take me home for FREE" *monthly service fees apply. /


They tried free TiVos in the Series 2 era. It didn't work then, and I don't see any reason it would work now, given that experience.

I'm not sure people realize how vulnerable TiVo is to the cable companies, especially in an era of changing technologies. The cable companies can effectively kill off TiVo if they really wanted to. TiVo can't make enemies of the cable company - and has amazingly managed not to do so, considering how much cable cards are a thorn in the side of the cable companies.


----------



## atmuscarella

HarperVision said:


> I think the thing that's holding them back is the initial costs for hardware. They should model it like the cell companies and subsidize the hardware costs and give them totally or almost free and then charge for services. I personally think they'd explode into the market if they had, say, a Best Buy kiosk with the tivos next to a crappy cable dvr playing on a pair of nice HD sets and a sign saying "try me out and take me home for FREE" *monthly service fees apply.
> 
> Just my humble opinion anyway. :/


They did offer the Premiere for free with a $20/mo service cost and 2 year commitment several times, I don't think many people like the deal. Also both my Series 2 units were free after rebates. So TiVo has kind tried what you recommend.


----------



## CrispyCritter

atmuscarella said:


> They did offer the Premiere for free with a $20/mo service cost and 2 year commitment several times, I don't think many people like the deal. Also both my Series 2 units were free after rebates. So TiVo has kind tried what you recommend.


Yes, they've continued to dabble in trying free TiVos in their special offers. The particular Series 2 attempt I had in mind was a complete revamping of their pricing, and for a long time (4-5 months?), they paid for every weekly Best Buy circular to advertise the Series 2 TiVo for free. This was a major effort, and was unsuccessful. I can't really see it being more successful today, given the top cable and satellite DVRs are much closer in many respects to TiVo (better in some respects, worse in others).


----------



## Gavroche

aaronwt said:


> Of course I don't drop my Slide remotes either. It seems like some people are prone to dropping their remotes for some reason which could decrease it's life. No idea though if you fall into that category. But having four Slides crap out it is completely opposite of the experience I have had with my three Slide remotes.


Have to agree with you here... my housemates ALWAYS drop their remotes on the hardwood floor... which I assume has contributed to the demise of at least 2 of my slide remotes.

But I've had some that I've never dropped... and they still stop working after a while, or work only on IR, which of course doesn't support the actual keyboard.


----------



## Gavroche

wmcbrine said:


> Have you tried my network remote (see sig)? On a Series 4, it can use the KEYBOARD command, for which I have all of the Slide's codes mapped. The Series 3 is limited to the less powerful IRCODE version of direct text input. (This is purely a software issue, though -- the Series 3 could be upgraded to support KEYBOARD, if TiVo were still updating it. With a USB keyboard, you can actually do a bit more on a Series 3 than with a network remote. I've thought about making a Bluetooth software remote for this reason.)
> 
> The apps are another issue... there are different APIs that have been available in different versions of HME, and I'm not sure that the Flash API even supports direct text input. But, my remote can also help with these situations, by translating text to arrow/select sequences. (This only works with TiVo-standard A-Z layouts, numbers, and spaces.)


I haven't... but now feel that I must, because your stuff is always remarkably solid. But yes, lack of support in all apps is a major sticking point. It was mentioned that the most often-use for the keyboard is search, and I agree, but if you're setting up a new TiVo and have a bunch of passwords to enter for the various services (apps), it's seriously a pain without a keyboard.

While we're on the subject... has anyone else noticed that the TiVo website accepts characters for the login password that the android app simply will not accept? (Example: underscore)

I hope they fix that in the next iteration of the app as well. Ugh... really? I can't use an underscore in my password? At LEAST make it consistent! ARRGH!

I asked for help on this on Twitter from TiVo, which TiVo ignored, but they were quick to favorite my tweet congratulating them on the Emmy win this year.


----------



## Davisadm

This week is going to be very exciting...

A lot of *TiVo* stuff happening!!!!


----------



## aaronwt

I hope the S5 shows up!!


----------



## DCleary

I don't understand why the Premiere has an incomplete interface or why it is slow, particularly with apps, but I hope the Series 5 fixes that and that TiVo provides some good incentive to upgrade.


----------



## slowbiscuit

Because Tivo likes to do everything half-assed?


----------



## Jonathan_S

Gavroche said:


> Maybe because they were totally unreliable and never worked?
> 
> Yeah, I'm sure I'll get 100 replies stating "Mine works fine! Never had any issues!" or something like that... but I've purchased 4 of those damned things and every single one of them crapped out after a while, for no reason at all.


My first one flaked out early, and dispite repair attempted the RF never really worked. It would often fail to sent keypresses, or else there'd be an unacceptable delay then several presses at once would get processed; almost like the connection dropped and it had to resync and then send buffered commands. (I ended up pulling the dongle and using it as an IR remote which meant no keyboard use)

I picked up a 2nd on clearance and, so far (fingers crossed), it's worked perfectly. (I wouldn't have risked it, but I'd previously borrowed a friend's and confirmed that his worked fine at my house; so it clearly wasn't a site issue)
But the slide's really do seem to be hit or miss...


----------



## Dan203

DCleary said:


> I don't understand why the Premiere has an incomplete interface or why it is slow, particularly with apps, but I hope the Series 5 fixes that and that TiVo provides some good incentive to upgrade.


I don't know why the interface is incomplete, but the reason it's slow is because the hardware is not up to the task. The UI on the Mini is faster and acts the way I've always wanted the Premiere to act. As long as the UI on the new hardware works at least as well as the Mini then I'll be happy.

As for the UI completeness.... There are rumors we'll be seeing a few more HD screens in the next software update. So it looks like they're continuing to plug away at it. Maybe in a year or two so we'll eventually have a complete HDUI.


----------



## rogmatic

I really don't understand the HD screens. What needs to be in HD? It is just a blue screen with words on it. All you have to do is make it 16:9 and it looks HD to me. 

I will admit to being technologically challenged, but I also don't see why my phone can add third party apps so easily but my TiVo takes 3 years to develop a Netflix app that works.


----------



## Dan203

rogmatic said:


> I really don't understand the HD screens. What needs to be in HD? It is just a blue screen with words on it. All you have to do is make it 16:9 and it looks HD to me.
> 
> I will admit to being technologically challenged, but I also don't see why my phone can add third party apps so easily but my TiVo takes 3 years to develop a Netflix app that works.


The HD screens make better use of the space and resolution then the old screens. The old screens were designed for 4:3 SDTVs and were inefficient when simply stretched to fill new 16:9 HDTVs.


----------



## nooneuknow

Dan203 said:


> The HD screens make better use of the space and resolution then the old screens. The old screens were designed for 4:3 SDTVs and were inefficient when simply stretched to fill new 16:9 HDTVs.


I miss being able to use Page Up and Page Down to be able to go up and down an episode from the description screen. While I agree on making better use of the screen space, navigation takes a lot more button pressing and waiting for laggy screen changes, than switching to SDUI and getting to use less presses, with less lag.


----------



## Dan203

My wife hates that change too. I hope they bring it back eventually so she stops complaining to me. She acts like I made the decision or something.


----------



## stack

Sorry I am new to the forum. When is the release date for the new ones. I am looking to pick up an older unit and mini with lifetime and figure I should wait until then since everyone will probably be looking to upgrade.


----------



## Dan203

No official announcement yet, but from what I'm hearing it might be tomorrow.


----------



## stack

Dan203 said:


> No official announcement yet, but from what I'm hearing it might be tomorrow.


Thanks! I'll be on the lookout.


----------



## lessd

Dan203 said:


> No official announcement yet, but from what I'm hearing it might be tomorrow.


Check out http://www.petra.com/catalogsearch/result/index/?p=1&q=tivo+roamio


----------



## HarperVision

Nice!


----------



## wco81

$599 for the flagship?

And are they going to boost the Lifetime too?

So over $1000 just for the DVR, then add Minis or other DVRs as clients ...


----------



## innocentfreak

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=507596

Looks like we need a Roamio subforum.


----------



## Arcady

wco81 said:


> $599 for the flagship?
> 
> And are they going to boost the Lifetime too?
> 
> So over $1000 just for the DVR, then add Minis or other DVRs as clients ...


Same price as the Elite when it came out.


----------



## innocentfreak

Arcady said:


> Same price as the Elite when it came out.


Elite was $499 not $599.


----------



## rothsss

Has anybody managed to order lifetime for less than $499.99?


----------



## aaronwt

innocentfreak said:


> Elite was $499 not $599.


Yes and back then BestBuy had 10% off coupons every couple of months so I only paid $450 for my first Elite. But they don't put out coupons very often now.

A 10% off coupon for the Roamio Pro would be nice. So now it just comes down to what Io can sell my Elites for. If the sale of my Elites will cover 85% of the cost of a Roamio pro with an extended warranty I will be fine with that. But I really need to get a coupon. Since if a 4 year extended warranty from Bestbuy runs $80, that brings the price plus $400 MSD lifetime to $1080 before taxes. So I need to bring in around $470 from each of my Elites to get to around 85% of the cost.

The video of the S5 interface looked very fast and also a little different. I wonder if the TiVo Mini interface will be changed to look like the Roamio interface?


----------



## innocentfreak

Forgot about the coupon. You could do a Smartypig but it only nets you 2%. Not sure how long it takes for giftcards either.


----------



## Troy J B

wco81 said:


> $599 for the flagship?


Cheaper then the original Series 3 at launch by $200.


----------



## wco81

Wifi is only for streaming to mobile devices or for the Netflix feed and so on, not for streaming to the Mini?


----------



## bradleys

wco81 said:


> Wifi is only for streaming to mobile devices or for the Netflix feed and so on, not for streaming to the Mini?


Streaming is not supported with a wifi connection. Might work, might not - but isn't supported.

Wifi just cannot consistently handle it, use MOCA instead - everything over you COAX cable.

YOU DO NOT NEED AN ETHERNET DROP, ONLY A CABLE COAX DROP!


----------



## amseven11

Just ordered mine, can't wait to check it out.


----------



## curiousgeorge

Wait, so the base Roamio has HD antenna OR Digital cable recording, but the Plus and the Pro have NO HD ANTENNA recording? WTH, TiVo? The premium models have LESS features?

Waiting to see what the performance is like, but if it's as laggy and unfinished as the existing Premiere (no Roamio streaming - the KEY FEATURE - at launch until "November", sound familiar?) I'm probably passing.


----------



## curiousgeorge

Troy J B said:


> Cheaper then the original Series 3 at launch by $200.


That's possible with rock-bottom build quality. This is nowhere near the S3's league in build quality. It screams "cost reduction" in the pics.


----------



## Dan203

innocentfreak said:


> Elite was $499 not $599.


Price per tuner is less. 

Plus it has a built in Stream ($85 accessory) and an extra 1TB of disc space. All in all I'd say it's on par with the Elite, or maybe even a slightly better value.


----------



## Millionaire2K

curiousgeorge said:


> Wait, so the base Roamio has HD antenna OR Digital cable recording, but the Plus and the Pro have NO HD ANTENNA recording? WTH, TiVo? The premium models have LESS features?
> 
> Waiting to see what the performance is like, but if it's as laggy and unfinished as the existing Premiere (no Roamio streaming - the KEY FEATURE - at launch until "November", sound familiar?) I'm probably passing.


Well the reviews are in and its VERY fast. 1 review said it took like 6 secs to go from live TV to a rec shows via 5 button presses.


----------



## Hi8




----------



## magnus

Dan203 said:


> Price per tuner is less.
> 
> Plus it has a built in Stream ($85 accessory) and an extra 1TB of disc space. All in all I'd say it's on par with the Elite, or maybe even a slightly better value.


Speed alone makes it worth the $100. But yeah, the streaming deal helps out too.


----------



## buscuitboy

The feature I am seeing and am interested in is the "*Watch Live TV from remote location*" (Plus & Pro). Is this basically a built-in slingbox feature? If so, nice, but its not officially in it just yet & simply "coming soon". With TiVo's track record, that probably means the feature will be active sometime in 2014. 

I'd also like to know if it basically just uses one of the 6 tuners independently without really affecting what is being watched by the viewer. I am thinking (& REALLY hoping) yes. If so, that might be a big selling point for me personally since I have recently been looking at some similar devices (Slingbox, Volkuno & Belkin products). None of them allow you to watch live shows independantly (I think only a DISH Network setup allows this)

However, I also tend to wonder how happy this is making cable companies as someone could essentially allow a family/friend across the street or across the nation to watch a full live cable TV lineup. I think several of the cable companies allow a similar thing to take place, but ONLY within the main scubsriber's home (in fear of losing subscribers). No on-the-go option and outside of the home.


----------



## NoVa

Man, I go off the forums last night around 11.30 & all Roamio happens. HAHA


----------



## BiloxiGeek

Just placed an order for one Roamio Plus.


----------



## JWhites

Video. http://reviews.cnet.com/video-players-and-recorders/tivo-roamio-plus/4505-6463_7-35826605.html

Glad to see the standard model is only 4 tuners and supports analog. Now to see what is in store for the Premiere models. http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-33199_7-57599108-221/tivo-updates-coming-for-premiere-owners-but-when/

I do wonder if the HTML5 interface can be overlayed onto the Premiere which I would think would be less hardware intensive.

I've noticed that even though the Roamio has wifi it still requires a TiVo Stream on the standard base model.


----------



## innocentfreak

JWhites said:


> Video. http://reviews.cnet.com/video-players-and-recorders/tivo-roamio-plus/4505-6463_7-35826605.html
> 
> Glad to see the standard model is only 4 tuners and supports analog. Now to see what is in store for the Premiere models. http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-33199_7-57599108-221/tivo-updates-coming-for-premiere-owners-but-when/
> 
> I do wonder if the HTML5 interface can be overlayed onto the Premiere which I would think would be less hardware intensive.


It doesn't support analog. None of them do. The 4 tuner supports OTA.


----------



## JWhites

innocentfreak said:


> It doesn't support analog. None of them do. The 4 tuner supports OTA.


Yup. Exactly.


----------



## mr_smits

buscuitboy said:


> The feature I am seeing and am interested in is the "*Watch Live TV from remote location*" (Plus & Pro).


No Slingbox capability for the Roamio basic 4 tuner? Ouch, that burns. Along with the no Stream without a separate box... no love for OTA.


----------



## innocentfreak

mr_smits said:


> No Slingbox capability for the Roamio basic 4 tuner? Ouch, that burns. Along with the no Stream without a separate box... no love for OTA.


The 4 is entry level so they did it to cut costs.

The Slingbox capability requires the Stream functionality.


----------



## refried

Glad to see something on the low end with a tuner for us cord cutters. I was worried if I would have to abandon TiVO after my HD died. Looks like I will be ordering a Roamio in the next year. I hope the Netflix and Hulu performance is as good as the PS3.


----------



## JWhites

Is it beyond the realm of possibility that TiVo intentionally broke the Premiere in non critical areas because they knew the Roamio was coming out?


----------



## mr_smits

innocentfreak said:


> The 4 is entry level so they did it to cut costs.
> 
> The Slingbox capability requires the Stream functionality.


That's understandable. At least the capability will be available with the Stream box (standalone). I hope they've fixed whatever fan issues I've read about here in the forums. Also, they need Android support.


----------



## JWhites

According to the video, Android support was hinted at being soon if that means anything.


----------



## NoVa

Engadget wrote: _The other new update -- *also coming to existing hardware* -- is the long-awaited dynamic tuner allocation for the TiVo Mini, which frees up more tuners for recording and expands the new room limit to nine._

Does it mean they will apply a software update for current Premiere 4/4XL owners for DTA?


----------



## JWhites

Maybe. The problem according to the CNet article is that TiVo wouldn't confirm anything specifically and kept stating that "it's under consideration" which seems to be the standard party line at this point. I wouldn't be surprised if absolutely NOTHING was added to the Premiere line and they just did bug fixes and that's it.


----------



## jrtroo

mr_smits said:


> No Slingbox capability for the Roamio basic 4 tuner? Ouch, that burns. Along with the no Stream without a separate box... no love for OTA.


Well, many were expecting the death of the OTA Tivo in this iteration, so it got quite a bit of love. I imagine it was built to a price point and thus stream was jettisoned.

I bet used streams will start to hit the market shortly.


----------



## tivoboy

I don't really like that there is either a choice for 1TB or 3TB, and nothing in between. The two top boxes seem the same, just HD space. Why would anyone buy the higher unit, and not simply get a nice external and buy the cheaper box?


----------



## aaronwt

tivoboy said:


> I don't really like that there is either a choice for 1TB or 3TB, and nothing in between. The two top boxes seem the same, just HD space. Why would anyone buy the higher unit, and not simply get a nice external and buy the cheaper box?


Because they are married to the internal drive. And once they are married, if anything happens to the internal or external drive, all your recordings will be lost.

I've always replaced the internal hard drive if I wanted to increase my storage. i've been doing that for almost twelve years now and it's worked out great so far.


----------



## button1066

JWhites said:


> Is it beyond the realm of possibility that TiVo intentionally broke the Premiere in non critical areas because they knew the Roamio was coming out?


I would imagine so, yes.


----------



## tivoboy

aaronwt said:


> Because they are married to the internal drive. And once they are married, if anything happens to the internal or external drive, all your recordings will be lost.
> 
> I've always replaced the internal hard drive if I wanted to increase my storage. i've been doing that for almost twelve years now and it's worked out great so far.


I see you updated your post.. ;-)...

Married or not, does it really make sense to pay 200$ just to have 2TB more internal drive space? Couldn't one just add some nice external for 150$ or so, get even MORE space,

or, have a 2TB drive internally (bout 90-100$), and have 300HD hours plus have the 1TB drive left over.

I GET the pricing model, we've all been around apple long enough to understand it. It just seems like quite a bit of margin to tivo for not as much value.

I would have thought they'd at least put a small premium on integrated, but not that much.


----------



## Jed1

I see it says that the Roamio's can do 1080p24/60. Can anybody confirm this in the setup menu? This will be a small plus over my two Premiere 4's. 
https://www.tivo.com/shop/roamio#tab2
Other than this and two extra tuners I think I would need a good incentive and a discount on the box to move up any time soon. $399.99 is pretty steep for the plus.

I don't have any cellular telephones or Ipads so the stream portion is a waste to me. I really don't see the use for this as I paid some serious cash for my two HD televisions and it would be stupid to watch HD programming on something as small as a phone.


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## Philmatic

The TiVo Roamio supports 1080p24 and 1080i60, just like the TiVo Premiere does. It's 1080i for TV and the interface, and 1080p24 for some Netflix streams. It does NOT support 1080p60.

They should have labeled it 1080p24/1080i60.


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## Dan203

Jed1 said:


> Can anybody confirm this in the setup menu?


No one actually has one yet. We wont be seeing people with actual units in hand for at least another day or two.


----------



## crxssi

Overall, very disappointed.

1) There is no larger storage option for those that want the ability to have OTA + cable.

2) No built-in Stream option for those that want the ability to have OTA + cable.

3) The new RF remote has NO KEYBOARD like the Slide remote. STUPID!!!!

4) No mention of Flash or cloud storage for settings, so they will all be lost again with every device failure. Along with channels and all your ratings.

5) Haven't seen the actual performance yet, but even the optimistic claims of 1.7 times as fast still isn't the screaming performance I was hoping for (I was hoping for 2 to 3 times) 

6) Still have to put up with a damn tuning adapter  (Yes, I know it is not TiVo's "fault")

7) The 4 tuner model is not standard component width, which is very annoying for those of us stacking things.

8) Released with lots of incomplete features. Here we go again. How many months or years until custom folders? Android streaming? Amazon Instant or Prime video? Streaming outside the local network?

9) Still slow booting. Perhaps faster than the Premiere, but still... it is 2013. My Linux desktop takes about 10 seconds to boot... waiting several MINUTES seems like forever. Hopefully it will be a lot more stable so reboots are rare. But during troubleshooting, it is a pain waiting so long.

10) Blech- the 4 tuner model uses a freaking power brick. It also lacks component output like the other models. AND the composite/analog audio is non-RCA with no mention of an appropriate cable included in the box.

11) We still can't disable the Discovery bar....

I get so frustrated with the Premiere performance, I might upgrade AGAIN, despite all the limitations.


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## Jeff_DML

Philmatic said:


> The TiVo Roamio supports 1080p24 and 1080i60, just like the TiVo Premiere does. It's 1080i for TV and the interface, and 1080p24 for some Netflix streams. It does NOT support 1080p60.
> 
> They should have labeled it 1080p24/1080i60.


how do you know that? HW at least supports 1080p60


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## Jed1

Philmatic said:


> The TiVo Roamio supports 1080p24 and 1080i60, just like the TiVo Premiere does. It's 1080i for TV and the interface, and 1080p24 for some Netflix streams. It does NOT support 1080p60.
> 
> They should have labeled it 1080p24/1080i60.





Dan203 said:


> No one actually has one yet. We wont be seeing people with actual units in hand for at least another day or two.


I would hope that TiVo did because my cable company's Pace RNG200 DVR I just turned in when I got my two TiVo's had the ability of 1080p60 output.

Anyway it is not a deal breaker to me as I pass everything to my Kuros in native mode. Besides there is no 1080p60 content available over OTA, cable, or satellite.


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## Dan203

crxssi said:


> Overall, very disappointed.
> 
> 1) There is no larger storage option for those that want the ability to have OTA + cable.
> 
> 2) No built-in Stream option for those that want the ability to have OTA + cable.
> 
> 3) The new RF remote has NO KEYBOARD like the Slide remote. STUPID!!!!
> 
> 4) No mention of Flash or cloud storage for settings, so they will all be lost again with every device failure. Along with channels and all your ratings.
> 
> 5) Haven't seen the actual performance yet, but even the optimistic claims of 1.7 times as fast still isn't the screaming performance I was hoping for (I was hoping for 2 to 3 times)
> 
> 6) Still have to put up with a damn tuning adapter  (Yes, I know it is not TiVo's "fault")
> 
> 7) The 4 tuner model is not standard component width, which is very annoying for those of us stacking things.
> 
> 8) Released with lots of incomplete features. Here we go again. How many months or years until custom folders? Android streaming? Amazon Instant or Prime video? Streaming outside the local network?
> 
> 9) Still slow booting. Perhaps faster than the Premiere, but still... it is 2013. My Linux desktop takes about 10 seconds to boot... waiting several MINUTES seems like forever. Hopefully it will be a lot more stable so reboots are rare. But during troubleshooting, it is a pain waiting so long.
> 
> 10) Blech- the 4 tuner model uses a freaking power brick. It also lacks component output like the other models. AND the composite/analog audio is non-RCA with no mention of an appropriate cable included in the box.
> 
> 11) We still can't disable the Discovery bar....
> 
> I get so frustrated with the Premiere performance, I might upgrade AGAIN, despite all the limitations.


1) You can add an eSATA drive. Or you can wait and see what Weaknees can do with them.

2) You can get a free standalone Stream right now if you use the coupon GROUPER

3) The keyboard on the Slide was problematic and prone to breakage. They wouldn't want to include something like that with every unit. Think of this as a step up from the basic IR remote included with previous TiVos and not as a step down from the Slide which was an $80 option.

4) There actually was some talk of cloud "services" in a report from Dave. He wasn't sure exactly what it was referring to though. Maybe they will add cloud backup in the future.

5) From what I've been told it's faster then the Mini, and the Mini, in my opinion, is at least 3x faster then the Premiere. Basically it's as fast as it should be when responding to the remote with the only lag coming when it's having to load something from the internet.

6) As you said, not TiVo's fault and nothing they can do about it.

7) Just put it on the top of the stack 

8) The CEO has publicly said that Android and streaming outside the home will be available in the "Fall". They have not said anything about Prime or custom folders. Although they upgraded to a new HTML5 based apps platform so that could lead to more apps like Prime. I don't think custom folders is anything we'll ever see.

9) Agree. Modern OSes boot in seconds, TiVo should be faster.

10) I actually think this is a good thing. Power supply failures have been one of the major causes of TiVo deaths in the past. Being able to replace a $10 power brick to fix it is a lot cheaper and easier then having to crack the thing open and replace a $100 power supply from Weaknees.

10a) I assume the A/V port on the Roamio is the same as the one on the Mini and uses the breakout cable to get standard yellow/white/red RCA outputs.

11) Did you really expect that? This is TiVo's new advertising space. It's never going away.

Edit: Based on your comments it seems like you might use a combination of OTA and Cable. Is that the case? If so you'll also be disappointed to know that the Roamio can only be setup to do one or the other, not both like previous units. So it may not be a suitable replacement for your current Premiere.


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## aaronwt

Philmatic said:


> The TiVo Roamio supports 1080p24 and 1080i60, just like the TiVo Premiere does. It's 1080i for TV and the interface, and 1080p24 for some Netflix streams. It does NOT support 1080p60.
> 
> They should have labeled it 1080p24/1080i60.




What??!! So even with the newer chip they use they still don't have 1080P60 or 1080P24 scaling. Just 1080P24 pass through again?

Is this actually true? If so it really makes no sense. Although I guess the Mini is the same way which also made no sense either.


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## astrohip

JWhites said:


> Is it beyond the realm of possibility that TiVo intentionally broke the Premiere in non critical areas because they knew the Roamio was coming out?


Yes, it is beyond the realm of possibility. It's pure paranoia.


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## JWhites

Dan, the coupon code GROUPER only takes 49.99 off the price.


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## Am_I_Evil

JWhites said:


> Dan, the coupon code GROUPER only takes 49.99 off the price.


pay attention to the price of the stream AND the TiVo...both get discounted making the stream free...


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## crxssi

Dan203 said:


> Edit: Based on your comments it seems like you might use a combination of OTA and Cable. Is that the case?


Yes. OTA is much better picture than cable. Plus it never has any outages.



> If so you'll also be disappointed to know that the Roamio can only be setup to do one or the other, not both like previous units. So it may not be a suitable replacement for your current Premiere.


Are you kidding me? WTF????? I read every word on their site and didn't see anything about that HUGE GLARING limitation! So now I search and see other people saying that. Great going, TiVo. Way to ruin the product completely for many people. I actually had it in my cart was was ready to click on buy and saw your response and stopped. I honestly don't know what to do now.

I could care less about 6 tuners. And I don't really need more space than the base model. But I have always used both OTA and cable on the TiVo HD and Premiere for what, 7 years?


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## crxssi

Am_I_Evil said:


> pay attention to the price of the stream AND the TiVo...both get discounted making the stream free...


If you have a Plus or Pro in your cart, it applies an $80 discount to the $130 Stream only, making it $50.

If you have a base Roamio in your cart, it applies an $80 discount to the $130 Stream AND a $50 discount on the base Roamio, making it essentially free.

Why would one do the former?
If one has a TiVo Premiere already with no Stream, it could be a way to pick up a cheap Stream for your older DVR while buying the newer DVR.


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## Philmatic

crxssi: You extremely high expectations, which is unusual because you have been a TiVo customer for a while and should know better. How you can be anything less than completely blown away with the out of home streaming and rebuilding of the app platform is beyond me.


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## crxssi

Philmatic said:


> crxssi: You extremely high expectations, which is unusual because you have been a TiVo customer for a while and should know better.


LOL- You are right that I have high expectations. And at least I wasn't surprised by all of this, just pissed.



> How you can be anything less than completely blown away with the out of home streaming


Well, since it doesn't work with Android, it does nothing for me at all. And there might be other strange limitations I don't know about quite yet.



> and rebuilding of the app platform is beyond me.


Well, the speed and new platform are the two best things about it.

EDIT: I must be an idiot. I just ordered a Pro with Lifetime and max warranty. I don't even know if it will work with PyTiVo yet, AND I am throwing away OTA. I don't need 6 tuners, and I certainly don't need 450 hours of storage. Yeesh, this is what happens when I stay up too late.


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## jfh3

crxssi said:


> I must be an idiot. I just ordered a Pro with Lifetime and max warranty. I don't even know if it will work with PyTiVo yet, AND I am throwing away OTA. I don't need 6 tuners, and I certainly don't need 450 hours of storage. Yeesh, this is what happens when I stay up too late.


Ditto. But I went one step further and got a base box for OTA as well.


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## Dan203

crxssi said:


> If you have a Plus or Pro in your cart, it applies an $80 discount to the $130 Stream only, making it $50.
> 
> If you have a base Roamio in your cart, it applies an $80 discount to the $130 Stream AND a $50 discount on the base Roamio, making it essentially free.
> 
> Why would one do the former?
> If one has a TiVo Premiere already with no Stream, it could be a way to pick up a cheap Stream for your older DVR while buying the newer DVR.


The Plus/Pro have built in Streams and can still stream from any TiVo Premiere/Roamio on your network, not just itself. So the standalone Stream is completely redundant, and basically useless, if you're buying a Plus/Pro. Although you could probably sell it for a profit since the still go for $97 on Amazon.


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## Dan203

crxssi said:


> Are you kidding me? WTF????? I read every word on their site and didn't see anything about that HUGE GLARING limitation!


Must have missed the picture where it shows it only has one coax input.


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## Hi8

crxssi said:


> Overall, very disappointed.
> 
> I might upgrade AGAIN, despite all the limitations.


 that's why they continue to release products the way they do.

I just bought my PremiereXL4 & Mini -- I was considering returning it (Amazon/TiVo) and going for the Series 5 Roamio - however it appears that there really isn't much more there for me, 2 extra tuners I really don't need, Streaming I don't use much and I have an SlingBox HD already ...

It seems like improving and or adding features while retaining previous model features is not the way they seem to be going. I lost my OLED display from my Series3-> Premiere. Continue to have a NetFlix app that I don't use because of it's so so performance and ability to work without issues. Don't have the OTA option that I will need when I move to my retirement home ...

TiVo still makes the best DVR, but how much longer will I be able to say that? They had plenty of time to develop a "knock your socks off" DVR, but we got what we got.

The improved 'speed' issue should just be a given between models, not perceived as a feature!


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## slowbiscuit

LOL, as an Elite owner if I were you I'd return that XL4 ASAP, keep the Mini and get a Roamio. The Elite is a slug overall.

I'm going to upgrade to the Plus as soon as I can get an upgrade deal or price discount on it - I don't pay full retail.


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## crxssi

Dan203 said:


> Must have missed the picture where it shows it only has one coax input.


Yep. That didn't even occur to me at the time.


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## Hi8

slowbiscuit said:


> LOL, as an Elite owner if I were you I'd return that XL4 ASAP, keep the Mini and get a Roamio. The Elite is a slug overall.
> 
> I'm going to upgrade to the Plus as soon as I can get an upgrade deal or price discount on it - I don't pay full retail.


 I paid $290 for my Premiere4XL (Amazon), I can't see spending $599 for 2 additional tuners.

( for that $ I could have bought 2x$290=$580 and had 8 Tuners and still been ahead of the game)


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## JWhites

Am_I_Evil said:


> pay attention to the price of the stream AND the TiVo...both get discounted making the stream free...


OOhh I just had the Stream in the cart. Darn.


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## wmcbrine

Dan203 said:


> Must have missed the picture where it shows it only has one coax input.


Yeah, this is all about parts reduction. And I'm sure that the vast majority of people pick either cable _or_ OTA, and won't miss a thing. But I've been using dual inputs since the HR10-250 in 2004, so it's a bit sad for me.


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## DaveDFW

wmcbrine said:


> Yeah, this is all about parts reduction. And I'm sure that the vast majority of people pick either cable _or_ OTA, and won't miss a thing. But I've been using dual inputs since the HR10-250 in 2004, so it's a bit sad for me.


Is it possible to put a diplexer in front, or will Tivo's software make the user choose from antenna-only or cable-only guides?


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## JWhites

DaveDFW said:


> Is it possible to put a diplexer in front, or will Tivo's software make the user choose from antenna-only or cable-only guides?


I'm betting it's going to be the latter and not the former.


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## JWhites

Too bad the interface isn't coming to the Premiere  https://www.tivo.com/shop/roamio#tab4


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## slowbiscuit

Hi8 said:


> I paid $290 for my Premiere4XL (Amazon), I can't see spending $599 for 2 additional tuners.


The Roamio Plus is $399, not $599. And if you don't mind a refurb (I don't), woot.com has a great deal on an XL4 with a free Stream for $250. Return that box.


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## Hi8

slowbiscuit said:


> The Roamio Plus is $399, not $599. And if you don't mind a refurb (I don't), woot.com has a great deal on an XL4 with a free Stream for $250. Return that box.


not gunna happen...

the difference in cost is not worth it to me to go through the EXTREME hassle of re-pairing my Cable Cards. It took Comcast a week to get it working, and me two trips to pick up cable cards. That task is behind me for the foreseeable future. Hopefully until I retire, and probably go OTA. Thats where 2 of my Series3 boxes are heading .... (Florida home) in 3 weeks time.


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## wmcbrine

DaveDFW said:


> Is it possible to put a diplexer in front, or will Tivo's software make the user choose from antenna-only or cable-only guides?


That's not really a matter of software, since cable and OTA use the same spectrum. You can't join them together unless you shift one to frequencies outside its normal range.


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## Bigg

JWhites said:


> Maybe. The problem according to the CNet article is that TiVo wouldn't confirm anything specifically and kept stating that "it's under consideration" which seems to be the standard party line at this point. I wouldn't be surprised if absolutely NOTHING was added to the Premiere line and they just did bug fixes and that's it.


The MSO's aren't going to allow that. They want DTA, and they already have a lot of Premiere boxes out there.



Hi8 said:


> not gunna happen...
> 
> the difference in cost is not worth it to me to go through the EXTREME hassle of re-pairing my Cable Cards. It took Comcast a week to get it working, and me two trips to pick up cable cards. That task is behind me for the foreseeable future. Hopefully until I retire, and probably go OTA. Thats where 2 of my Series3 boxes are heading .... (Florida home) in 3 weeks time.


It's not that hard. Just call the number and re-pair.


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## JWhites

Bigg said:


> The MSO's aren't going to allow that. They want DTA, and they already have a lot of Premiere boxes out there.


So what does this mean? 
According to the FAQ the new interface isn't gonna come, and for all we know, the UI and software on those MSO Premieres are customized, and the plans TiVo has for them may be different then the plans they have for the retail version.
I mean what choice does TiVo have regarding the retail Premiere? Either they bring all the new software and UI features of the Roamio to the Premiere and market the Roamio for its hardware enhancements as a step up of the Series 4 (highly unlikely), they throw Premiere users under the bus and just issue bug fixes and security patches, or they come up with something I haven't thought of yet.


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## CoxInPHX

JWhites said:


> So what does this mean?
> According to the FAQ the new interface isn't gonna come, and for all we know, the UI and software on those MSO Premieres are customized, and the plans TiVo has for them may be different then the plans they have for the retail version.
> I mean what choice does TiVo have regarding the retail Premiere? Either they bring all the new software and UI features of the Roamio to the Premiere and market the Roamio for its hardware enhancements as a step up of the Series 4 (highly unlikely), they throw Premiere users under the bus and just issue bug fixes and security patches, or they come up with something I haven't thought of yet.


Margret says it (DTA for Premiere 4/XL4s) is coming, She would not post that if it was not a fact.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/369942645851705347


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## Beryl

Bigg said:


> The MSO's aren't going to allow that. They want DTA, and they already have a lot of Premiere boxes out there.
> 
> It's not that hard. Just call the number and re-pair.


It has improved since I did it 2 years ago.


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## JWhites

CoxInPHX said:


> Margret says it (DTA for Premiere 4/XL4s) is coming, She would not post that if it was not a fact.
> 
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/369942645851705347


Yeah but what else? DTA has no meaning for me since I don't have a Mini.


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## wco81

What is DTA? I thought it was just a cheap alternative to a set top box (including DVRs) for someone who wanted to tune into digital channels at the lowest cost.

It has to be used with Tivo?


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## lpwcomp

wco81 said:


> What is DTA? I thought it was just a cheap alternative to a set top box (including DVRs) for someone who wanted to tune into digital channels at the lowest cost.
> 
> It has to be used with Tivo?


In this context, it stands for "Dynamic Tuner Allocation".


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## nooneuknow

lpwcomp said:


> In this context, it stands for "Dynamic Tuner Allocation".


In other contexts:

Digital To Analog (converter/conversion)

Digital Terminal Adapter

Digital Transport Adapter

Dynamic Transport Adapter

Death To Analog

...and a few other things, could have the same initials.

I too recall some sort of not-quite-a-STB device that the MSOs were giving to customers to transition them, or let them keep their analog devices working without the MSO having to keep analog in their spectrum. I do believe it was called a DTA. Much like how the gov't was giving out free vouchers for Digital To Analog converters for OTA for the analog to digital-only transition...

Until now, I didn't even make the link to Dynamic Tuner Allocation, since I don't own any 4-Tuner Premieres or TiVo Mini boxes. I kept thinking of those not-quite-a-STB devices.


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## lpwcomp

nooneuknow said:


> I too recall some sort of not-quite-a-STB device that the MSOs were giving to customers to transition them, or let them keep their analog devices working without the MSO having to keep analog in their spectrum. I do believe it was called a DTA. Much like how the gov't was giving out free vouchers for Digital To Analog converters for OTA for the OTA digital to analog transition...


Comcast for one still uses them. They are SD only, with RF modulator output (CH 3/4 selectable via h/w switch). For a limited time, the FCC mandated that at least 2 be provided free to customers of any cable co transitioning to all digital. Shortly after the mandate expired last year, Comcast started charging a monthly fee for them (naturally, I can't find that part of the local rate sheet, but I think it is @$2.00/mo ea.).


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## HarperVision

Comcast is releasing new HD DTAs as well. You're close, they're $1.99 each/month.


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## nooneuknow

nooneuknow said:


> In other contexts:
> Digital To Analog (converter/conversion)
> Digital Terminal Adapter
> Digital Transport Adapter
> Dynamic Transport Adapter
> Death To Analog
> ...and a few other things, could have the same initials.
> 
> I too recall some sort of not-quite-a-STB device that the MSOs were giving to customers to transition them, or let them keep their analog devices working without the MSO having to keep analog in their spectrum. I do believe it was called a DTA. Much like how the gov't was giving out free vouchers for Digital To Analog converters for OTA for the analog to digital-only transition...
> 
> Until now, I didn't even make the link to Dynamic Tuner Allocation, since I don't own any 4-Tuner Premieres or TiVo Mini boxes. I kept thinking of those not-quite-a-STB devices.


I forgot one: Digital Tuning Adapter

There's also a fresh article over at zatznotfunny with a HDMI output "DTA":

http://www.zatznotfunny.com/2013-08/meet-tivo-mini-dta/


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## JWhites

How did this thread get so sidetracked talking about HD DTA's?


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## lpwcomp

JWhites said:


> How did this thread get so sidetracked talking about HD DTA's?


A TCF thread get sidetracked? Heaven forfend!


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## JWhites

I don't get it. Either you are implying that this is common or you are being sarcastic.


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## slowbiscuit

It is extremely common but you've only been here a few months.


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## innocentfreak

Its not a TCF thread if it doesn't go wildly off the subject.


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## chiguy50

innocentfreak said:


> Its not a TCF thread if it doesn't go wildly off the subject.


I don't know what you're talking about. And what are you wearing?


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## lpwcomp

chiguy50 said:


> I don't know what you're talking about. And what are you wearing?


I only give that information out if you call my 1-900 line. 

JWhites,
Lighten up. wco81 was confused about the use of the letters "DTA", which resulted in a _*slight*_ divergence.

BTW, when applied to the "mini cable box", it is officially "Digital Transport Adapter"


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## Loach

chiguy50 said:


> I don't know what you're talking about. And what are you wearing?


Khakis.

- Jake from State Farm


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## Bigg

Yeah, it sucks that they got the same name, since they're both about cable STB's. You just have to be context-sensitive.


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## HerronScott

Loach said:


> Khakis.
> 
> - Jake from State Farm


LOL beat me to it.

Scott


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## JWhites

:up:


----------

