# Hints & Tips



## mikerr

I thought I'd begin a list of tips for the VM TiVo


Pressing CLEAR works as a shortcut for delete on most pages - most handy on the "my shows" page 
 Press SKIP >| to quickly jump to the top or bottom of long lists , e.g. My Shows
 Channel up/down works as page up/down in lists


Press and hold TEXT switches your TV AV sources - that's how I flip between VM TiVo / TiVo S1 / DVD
 Press and hold POWER button turn turn TV on/off - a short press makes TiVo go into standby 
Press SLOW to toggle mini TV screen at top right


 Resets the GUI if frozen on red ring (though I've never seen this luckily!)
- Thumb Down - Thumb Up - Play - Play

 The good old shortcuts still work - though it's "home" and not "TiVo" button:

Home Home : My recordings (now playing)
Home 1 : Manage series links
Home 2 : Planned recordings (todo list)
Home 3 : Wishlists
Home 4 : Search all TV
Home 5 : Browse all TV
Home 0 : full screen TV + pause ?

Whilst fast forwarding / rewinding pressing the skip forward 30sec or skip back buttons takes you to the next white bar (usually 10 mins) useful in catchup/ondemand which only have one fastforward /rewind speed.

Pressing UP while watching a recording, cycles the output through all the available video formats. e.g. 576p / 1080p

Pressing OK while watching Live TV or a recorded program brings up a small 3 line TV listing guide(screenshot)
Use the directional buttons to navigate or type a channel number to jump to a different channel.

 You can create your own folders (effectively):
Auto-record Wish List searches appear in My Recordings as a folder for items which match the search. 
This works even for recordings which weren't recorded by the Wish List itself (read more #32)


If you press Play on a folder in My Recordings, it will play everything in the folder in sequence
(date order, oldest first) 
- great for catching up on a whole series, or archiving shows overnight via scart.
- this can also save you going into the folder if it only contains one item.


You can switch between tuners by pressing Info, then scrolling down to the bottom icons.

Now the Jump buttons (>|) skip forwards 30 seconds and backwards 8 seconds. 
If you want the s1 behaviour of skipping to the start or end of a recording, press and hold them.
(They don't cycle, so you have to press the right one for the direction you want to go.)


In My Shows and Recordings/My Shows/Suggestions/Improve My Suggestions there is a list of every Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down. 
You can edit existing thumbs here too

a full listing of VM channels, useful to print out and keep by the TV is at http://www.virginmedia.com/customers/pdf/electric-channel-guide.pdf

Post your findings, and I'll keep this first post updated !


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## Filw

Discovered by accident - pressing "Slow" while in the menus toggles the existence of the mini screen top right. 

That little screen always annoyed the hell out of me on the V+ box when trying hard NOT to watch something I was recording for later..


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## Filw

Just thought of another told to me by the installer... 

Thumb Down - Thumb Up - Play - Play 

is a little sequence to reset the GUI.

Apparently might be useful if the "red worm of death" wait screen appears. Not seen that yet myself but the box only arrived today!


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## Major dude

mikerr said:


> I thought I'd begin a list of tips for the VM TiVo
> 
> 
> Pressing CLEAR works as a shortcut for delete on most pages - most handy on the "my shows" page
> 
> Press and hold TEXT switches your TV AV sources - that's how I flip between VM TiVo / TiVo S1 / DVD
> 
> That's a start - post your findings!


Have you tried the TiVo app yet?


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## mikerr

Yes I have it on my ipad, but it just sits there saying no tivos found..
http://tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=464056


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## RichardJH

mikerr said:


> I thought I'd begin a list of tips for the VM TiVo
> 
> 
> Pressing CLEAR works as a shortcut for delete on most pages - most handy on the "my shows" page





Just be careful too many presses or a long hold down and it will clear your "my shows" page.
Thank goodness for the undelete function :up::up::up:


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## dwarfofpoison

Quality post, much rather this type of theme rather than a virgin bashing.


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## frobozz

Whilst fast forwarding / rewinding pressing the skip forward 30sec or skip back buttons takes you to the next white bar. V useful in catchup/ondemand which only have one fastforward /rewind speed.


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## CeeBeeUK

I had mapped my volume controls successfully, but my TV would not power up and down, then someone posted on another thread about the TV power button.

If you hold the tivo remote power button down for a couple of seconds, the light flashes green and the TV will power power cycle. A quick press and the the light flashes red and the tivo power cycles. In theory... my third box is currently be tested by the technician!


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## John McE

Wow! I've been keeping my old (deluxe!) peanut next to the new one, as it didn't appear TV on/off and AV input were included on the new one. Thanks for letting us know, as I would never have guessed either one.


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## deshepherd

mikerr said:


> Press and hold TEXT switches your TV AV sources - that's how I flip between VM TiVo / TiVo S1 / DVD


Yes ... works for me ... only problem is that my Samsung leaves the menu of source options on the screen so I have to dig out its remote to press "exit" to remove that!


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## mikerr

Found out the the good old shortcuts still work - though a bit different: 

Home+Home : My recordings (now playing)
Home+1 : Manage series links
Home+2 : Planned recordings (todo list)
Home+3 : Wishlists
Home+4 : Search all TV
Home+5 : Browse all TV


Home+0 : does something strange - it flips to full screen and pauses ?


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## deshepherd

mikerr said:


> Found out the the good old shortcuts still work - though a bit different:
> 
> Home+0 : does something strange - it flips to full screen and pauses ?


Its confused because someone stole the opening animation


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## uksurfing72

Is there any reason not to stick TiVo in standby mode?


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## doctor.steve

Thanks Mikerr,

Was stuck on what the delete was - but it's "clear" of course 

I know it's early days  - but does anyone have a discrete for the power ?
I didn't power off my V+ box as I recall it used the same amount of power on as well as off - plus it was brighter off with all the lights on it.

One thing the good lady misses is the display on the front of the old box telling you how far thru a program you were. (fast key of play tells this now).


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## mikerr

Another "obvious" one - the SKIP FORWARD button jumps to the end or start of menus and lists
e.g. View-upcoming-progs, searches
...and YouTube search is always at the bottom of searches...


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## Brangdon

uksurfing72 said:


> Is there any reason not to stick TiVo in standby mode?


So far as I know, only the inconvenience of having to push a button to do it, and then push another button to wake it up.

I don't bother because the benefit is minimal. It stops asserting its output, which can help some TVs switch off, but since my TV doesn't have a problem switching off with active inputs this isn't a benefit for me.

The second thing Standby does is tell TiVo nobody is watching it. Series 1 TiVo would only record Suggestions if it thought nobody was lookng, so if you just switched the TV off and walked away, it would wait 30 minutes to be sure you'd gone. I don't know if VM TiVo is the same. Frankly, I'm not bothered about this anyway.

*Some more tips:*

You can switch between tuners by pressing Info, then scrolling down to the bottom icons.
Now the Jump buttons skip forwards 30 seconds and backwards 8 seconds. If you want the s1 behaviour of skipping to the start or end of a recording, press and hold them. (They don't cycle, so you have to press the right one for the direction you want to go.)
While watching live, OK brings up a mini-Guide for changing channel. In the mini-Guide (or TV Guide), Blue changes the channel filter.
Series 1 TiVo automatically adds a Thumbs Up when you create a Season Pass. VM Tivo doesn't. So if you've already set up your Series Links you might want to go through and Thumb them all, to help kick-start suggestions. You can Thumb new Series Links as you create them.
Some are in the manual, but not obvious if you don't read manuals. It took me 3 days to discover the first one, and it's made me so happy.


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## daz100

My TiVo automatically thumbs up my series linked shows.:up:


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## big_dirk

me too


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## Tony Hoyle

daz100 said:


> My TiVo automatically thumbs up my series linked shows.:up:


The S1 used to do that IIRC.

Just been through the discovery bar setting Series Links, etc. It does seem quite slow at that.. as slow as the S1! I had some taking a couple of minutes (with the jam donut on screen the whole time so I couldn't do anything).

You have to be really careful what channel it's picking.. It doesn't automatically pick HD, new series, or anything - I got into the habit of always selecting options so I could check/modify.


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## Zaichik

daz100 said:


> My TiVo automatically thumbs up my series linked shows.:up:


Mine only thumbs up some series links. I've also noticed that, if I use the thumb buttons when I am playing back a recording, the thumbs don't appear unless I exit and restart the recording.


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## Brangdon

daz100 said:


> My TiVo automatically thumbs up my series linked shows.:up:


Series 1 TiVos did that, but my VM TiVo hasn't on any of the series links I've checked. Maybe it depends on how they get added; I've been doing it from the search menu. Anyway, if it works sometimes and not other times then the tip remains. Something that worked for s1 shouldn't be relied upon for VM.


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## richw

Pressing Up whilst watching a recording pops up a box telling you the video format. However it seems to be the output format rather than source format as it says 1080i for a SD recording.


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## Technix

This one may be obvious one: pressing channel up or down when in a menu with a list takes you to the top or bottom option.


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## Brangdon

If you press Play on a folder in My Recordings, it will play everything in the folder. This can save you going into the folder if it only contains one item.


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## woobag

Bump.

Lots of useful info here, thanks everyone.


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## Fatbloke

One nice addition that doesn't appear to be on here - if you reorganise your Season Passes, you can use channel up/down to leap to the next page. No need to scroll one at a time through 30-odd other season passes.


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## Brangdon

*My Planned Recordings* does not include Suggestions. If you want to see what programmes TiVo intends to record on its own, look in *Search & Browse/Browse All TV/TV/Suggestions*. You can use this to check how TiVo is getting on (especially in the early days when few Suggestions have been recorded), and you can use the Thumbs buttons to approve or disapprove of what it is doing.

In *My Shows and Recordings/My Shows/Suggestions/Improve My Suggestions* there is a list of every Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down. This can also help diagnose problems with too few (or unwanted) Suggestions. (With s1 TiVo, Thumbs Down could easily kill off broad swatches of programme, and it was best to use it sparingly. TiVo responded better to the carrot than the stick. I don't know if this is still true for VM TiVo.)


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## cwaring

Brangdon said:


> *My Planned Recordings* does not include Suggestions. If you want to see what programmes TiVo intends to record on its own, look in *Search & Browse/Browse All TV/TV/Suggestions*. You can use this to check how TiVo is getting on (especially in the early days when few Suggestions have been recorded), and you can use the Thumbs buttons to approve or disapprove of what it is doing.


Another tip... I see that, at the bottom of this page is says 'Press Enter to review thumbs'. "Uh-oh!" I thought, "there's no 'enter' button." Then I remembered where i was on the S1 peanut and just pressed what is now labeled 'last channel'; and it worked 



> In *My Shows and Recordings/My Shows/Suggestions/Improve My Suggestions* ...


I'm not seeing this screen, but perhaps that's because I don't have 'auto-record suggestions' switched on.


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## cyril

Just like the series one, don't press right while re-prioritizing a big series link list in series link manager screen until you are 100% sure you are done. Otherwise it takes ages.

Best practice is to leave re-prioritizing to the last action of the day, as a 200 long list will probably take 15 minutes or more until Virgin and TiVo get round to speeding this up by making it a background task.


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## Royalflush

Pressing OK while watching Live TV or a recorded program brings up a small 3 line TV listing guide.
Use the directional buttons to navigate or type a channel number to jump to a different channel.
Press Clear to remove.
-
There seems to be a 24-48 hour delay before suggestions start recording, dont panic if they dont kick in straight away (as long as enabled)


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## Brangdon

Auto-record Wish List searches appear in My Recordings as a folder for items which match the search. This works even for recordings which weren't recorded by the Wish List itself.

For example, you can create a simple Category Wish List for Comedy, set it to auto-record, and then My Recordings will contain a Comedy folder that will hold all the comedies regardless of where they came from. You can use this to help organise your recordings. If you set "Record at most" to 1, and "Keep until I delete", then the Wish List itself will only add one item to the folder and the rest will be other stuff.

Programmes can appear in more than one folder. In particular, Series Links create folders of their own, which will still appear at the top level in My Recordings, so you can't get rid of the clutter completely. I think one-off recordings don't, though. For example, I have some films that only appear in my Films folder, and that does reduce the top-level list. The folders aren't retrospective: only programmes recorded after the Wish List was created go into its folder.


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## cwaring

Just accidentally found this one:

Pressing "Last Channel" (aka Enter) whilst in the _full_ EPG will take you to the "Search All TV" page.


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## Technix

EDIT - already reported.


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## Brangdon

Pressing *Up* (ie the key above *OK*) while watching a recording, cycles the output through all the available video formats. Currently this only seems to work for recordings, not for live TV, and it doesn't work if the mini-guide or info screen are visible. The setting isn't very "sticky" and may revert to the highest format if you switch to HD content.

You can use this while playing SD, to see which format is better for your TV. I am finding 576p works best for me, because my TV is better at upscaling than TiVo.

_[Edit:]_ To put this another way, currently the only reliable ways to get 576p output are:

Disable 1080i and everything else (thus degrading HD content if you have an HD TV).
Check that 576p is active whenever you switch to an SD channel:
For SD recordings, you can use *Up* directly (wait for the initial info banner to clear first).
For live SD, first watch an SD recording and adjust the output as above, then switch to the live channel, being careful not to hit any HD content on the way.

The good news is that the HD menus don't seem to force 1080i; only actual video content do that. (I've not tested YouTube et al.) Hopefully this mess will be sorted out by a future update.


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## John McE

I've tried this and it doesn't work for me. Maybe it only works if you have all the various formats ticked?


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## dwarfofpoison

Yep, for Brangdons's tip (quality tip!) to work another output has to be ticked in video output settings.


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## Brangdon

It cycles through available video formats. Formats that aren't ticked, aren't available. (Convenient as it saves time cycling through formats that don't make sense for your TV.)

It also shows the format on the screen, in a brownish box in the lower right. The box appears even if you have only one format ticked.


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## Tony Hoyle

That's interesting.. can compare 576i vs 1080i directly that way. Have to say I prefer the tivo doing the upscaling, having seen it, as the picture is slightly softer which hides the ugly mpeg artefacts you get on SD these days.


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## mikerr

Updated first post (and a little thread bump!)


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## MrHoggie

I have posted a link to this page on the virgin help and support page.
this is amazing work and you all deserve to have your names in lights 

Thank You
Phil


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## SPR

Someone mentioned in the thread that Suggestions are not listed in the to record section but can be viewed separately.

To switch them on in the Home 2 area use the S1 method of TD TD TU Back


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## pythagorasuk

If you set up the remote to control your TV and then you set it up to control your AV reciever, you get the following

power button switches tv in and out of standby
text button switches sources on TV
volume up/down controls volume of AV reciever.

Regards

John.


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## bradleyem

here's my current wishlist:

"Ignore" some channels channels (i.e all the BBC1 variants)
A button to click between tuners
Set thumbs directly from a search screen
One series link on multiple channels - not wishlists per se, but the ability to record (eg) "Time Team" on C4/C4+1/More4 but not Discovery.
Ability to create Smart folders (i.e one for all Films)
The ability to group programs into seasons within a folder.
An EndPad replacement - i.e soft padding.
A tracker replacement - to not to keep recording repeat ad-infinitum. I don't trust the "new" flag.


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## brightonjohn

pythagorasuk said:


> If you set up the remote to control your TV and then you set it up to control your AV reciever, you get the following
> 
> power button switches tv in and out of standby
> text button switches sources on TV
> volume up/down controls volume of AV reciever.
> 
> Regards
> 
> John.


Wonderful - works perfectly with my ONKYO TX-SR875 using code 1002.
Many thanks for this one.:up::up::up:


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## mikerr

bradleyem said:


> Ability to create Smart folders (i.e one for all Films)


Partially works now, see post #32


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## Royalflush

SPR said:


> Someone mentioned in the thread that Suggestions are not listed in the to record section but can be viewed separately.
> 
> To switch them on in the Home 2 area use the S1 method of TD TD TU Back


Could someone elaborate on this, in sounds quite usefull but I dont understand the "S1 method"


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## sjp

td = thumbs down - tu = thumbs up

don't have suggestions turned on so can't verify if it works but i've no reason to believe it won't.


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## RichardJH

Royalflush said:


> Could someone elaborate on this, in sounds quite usefull but I dont understand the "S1 method"


When in my recordings which you get to via single button My Recordings or by pressing Home then 2 to show recorded suggestions in the list press Thumbs down Thumbs Down Thumbs Up Back in that order


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## Royalflush

sjp said:


> td = thumbs down - tu = thumbs up
> 
> don't have suggestions turned on so can't verify if it works but i've no reason to believe it won't.


Thanks (& to RichardJH) for the extra info, makes sense now


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## Moe UK

SPR said:


> Someone mentioned in the thread that Suggestions are not listed in the to record section but can be viewed separately.
> 
> To switch them on in the Home 2 area use the S1 method of TD TD TU Back


Nice one just tried and then added a sequence to my Harmony to do it all in one button press


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## Brangdon

With series 1, and I imagine VM, the backdoor settings got reset after a reboot, so this Suggestions listing thing is probably a way to find out if your TiVo has rebooted recently.

I recently disabled Suggestions too, but I'm going to try enabling them again to see if this works.


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## kmusgrave

Brangdon said:


> With series 1, and I imagine VM, the backdoor settings got reset after a reboot, so this Suggestions listing thing is probably a way to find out if your TiVo has rebooted recently.


I don't think it is. It seems not even to survive leaving the suggestions page.


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## Brangdon

You're right. Curses! Foiled again.


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## Royalflush

This may be slightly off topic but the link below has a full listing of VM channels, useful to print out and keep by the TV:

http://www.virginmedia.com/customers/pdf/electric-channel-guide.pdf


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## mikerr

Updated first post.


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