# TiVo ToGo download speed



## RickAltman (Oct 20, 2004)

Has anyone experimented with the various factors that, on the surface, would influence the speed with which you can transfer a recording?

- Connecting TiVo to the LAN with Cat5 instead of wireless

- Dropping the quality from High to Medium


I know how fast a 1.7G file (typical size of a one-hour show) should move across the network. It should be 10 minutes, not one hour, so there is evidently more to the process than just file transfer. But anything we can do to knock that time down would be appreciated by all, I'm sure.




Rick A.
Pleasanton, CA


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## dirtypacman (Feb 3, 2004)

My transfer speeds with all wired network are as follows:

1 Hour Best---- 50-55 minutes
1 Hour Med----- 30-40 minutes
1 Hour Basic---- 15-20 minutes


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## MikeMar (Jan 7, 2005)

It does encoding as well as transfering, so your network speed and your computer speed plays into this.


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## BiloxiGeek (Nov 18, 2001)

MikeMar said:


> It does encoding as well as transfering, so your network speed and your computer speed plays into this.


The Tivo does the encoding, not the computer during transfer. The computer's speed doesn't come into the mix until you start working with the .tivo file for editing/burning. As far as the computer is concerned during transfer it's just another network connection transferring data to the hard drive.


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## rad1701 (Aug 17, 2003)

I use a typical wired 10/100 Cat 5 network. High quality shows take the same time as their length for me to transfer (2 hrs. for 2hrs, etc.). I have to believe TIVO is doing something to the file other than just moving it.


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## granoff (Jul 9, 2001)

The recording quality has nothing to do with it, except that the file size increases as you increase the quality. That is, a 1 hour basic quality recording will consume less disk space than a 1 hour best quality recording.

So, a smaller file will take less time to transfer than a larger file, regardless of what it is.

That said, on my wired network, using USB2 adapters (and I have USB2 hardware) I see about a half-realtime transfer speed for everything. That's TiVo-to-PC as well as TiVo-to-TiVo.

-Mark


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## rad1701 (Aug 17, 2003)

Mark - so a high quality one hour show for you transfers from TIVO to PC in 30 min?? I haven't seen anywhere near that speed posted yet. As you stated the file size increases with the quality so you need to state the quality as well when posting speeds - or just state a transfer rate in Mbps.


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## MikeMar (Jan 7, 2005)

BiloxiGeek said:


> The Tivo does the encoding, not the computer during transfer. The computer's speed doesn't come into the mix until you start working with the .tivo file for editing/burning. As far as the computer is concerned during transfer it's just another network connection transferring data to the hard drive.


Ok well it does something other than just straight transfering it, cause if you look at the folder it's going into and keep refreshing, the size increases in chunks for a bit, then not for a few min, then again. This leads me to believe it is encoding SOMEWHERE, whether it's the computer or the Tivo.


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## RickAltman (Oct 20, 2004)

So for the first time in my four years as a dual-drive TiVo user, I will consider switching from High to Medium. The people who staff TiVo Customer Care insist that I will not notice a difference under most conditions, but I'm skeptical.

Who here happily uses Medium, I would like to know? And who here would agree that its differences from High are negligible...?




Rick A.
Pleasanton, CA


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## dmlove51 (Mar 17, 2004)

I record everything in High quality. My 3 TiVos are all CAt-5 wired. Transferring to other TiVos is less than 1/2 time (about 22 minutes for a 1-hour show). Transferring to the PC is about 2/3 time (38 mintues for a 1-hour show).


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## DCIFRTHS (Jan 6, 2000)

RickAltman said:


> So for the first time in my four years as a dual-drive TiVo user, I will consider switching from High to Medium. The people who staff TiVo Customer Care insist that I will not notice a difference under most conditions, but I'm skeptical.
> 
> Who here happily uses Medium, I would like to know? And who here would agree that its differences from High are negligible...?
> 
> ...


I don't notice a difference on a 27" tube TV. On my 57" HD RP, I notice a huge difference.


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## DCIFRTHS (Jan 6, 2000)

All my TiVo's are wired, and hooked up to a 10/100 Linksys 8 port switch, that is hung off of a Linksys 10/100 gateway/switch. The USB adapters are not 2.0, so I am transferring at 1.1 speeds. But.....

On my night-light TiVo, it takes approximately 1 hour 30 mins to transfer a file that is 1251MB (app. 1.22 GB). On my "normal" Series 2, it takes about 30 mins *LESS* to transfer a 1,620 MB (app. 1.6 GB).

My numbers are correct. It takes a lot less time to transfer a file from the older TiVo. I am guessing that is because the newer box can't process as fast as the old one.

Anyone else seeing this?


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## rad1701 (Aug 17, 2003)

What's a night light TIVO? My guess is whichever is transferring faster either is doing less encoding and/or has a better CPU in it.


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## maiknyc (Jan 13, 2005)

MikeMar said:


> Ok well it does something other than just straight transfering it, cause if you look at the folder it's going into and keep refreshing, the size increases in chunks for a bit, then not for a few min, then again. This leads me to believe it is encoding SOMEWHERE, whether it's the computer or the Tivo.


But if you don't use Tivo Desktop to download but rather log directly into your Tivo and download the file through your web browser it does NOT do that - so I think it's just simply the Tivo Desktop software that slows things down.


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## rad1701 (Aug 17, 2003)

maiknyc said:


> But if you don't use Tivo Desktop to download but rather log directly into your Tivo and download the file through your web browser it does NOT do that - so I think it's just simply the Tivo Desktop software that slows things down.


REALLY?? So you're saying at that point it's just a simple network file transfer? Those size files should transfer in like 10-15 min max then for a 2 hour HQ file. Has anyone actually gotten that kind of speed by doing a direct file move? And then can MySonic still use the file?


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## RickAltman (Oct 20, 2004)

maiknyc said:


> But if you don't use Tivo Desktop to download but rather log directly into your Tivo and download the file through your web browser it does NOT do that - so I think it's just simply the Tivo Desktop software that slows things down.


This sounds exciting, but for the unenlightened masses out here, how do you do this?? Does it require one of the hacks about which entire books have been written and over which thousands of TiVo users cringe? Or is it something more pedestrian and approachable? The advantages of this mysterious maneuver are obvious; are there other implications, as well?

You've whetted our appetite -- now tell us more!

Rick A.
Pleasanton, CA


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## rad1701 (Aug 17, 2003)

Well, I just downloaded a couple shows to my PC using this method:

Go to

https://<tivo ip>/nowplaying/index.html

using 
user: tivo
pass: <MAK>

It gives u a nice web interface to every show on your Tivo!!!!

Make sure to use https and not http. Now the two programs I downloaded this way without Desktop were about 1.3 GB each. Each still took about 45min to download to my PC via a wired network (rate about 450 kb/sec). Now I'm going to try and use them with MySonic. Right now I don't see any speed advantage in transferring in this way.


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## peggylenox (Dec 30, 2003)

Hi; I've tried to do this four or five times and I get an error message "the page cannot be displayed" What am I doing wrong? Do I put in the < and > ? thanks,


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## peggylenox (Dec 30, 2003)

Just ignore that last post!! It still hasn't downloaded the info, but it's working on it.


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## rad1701 (Aug 17, 2003)

peggylenox said:


> Hi; I've tried to do this four or five times and I get an error message "the page cannot be displayed" What am I doing wrong? Do I put in the < and > ? thanks,


this is the format if you are still having trouble (no < > are needed, using an example IP):

https://192.168.1.101/nowplaying/index.html

using
user: tivo
pass: MAK

Obviously use your IP (the IP I put in above is just an example) for your TIVO and your MAK. The bad part to me was it didn't seem to speed up the transfer speed any.


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## peggylenox (Dec 30, 2003)

Yeah, you're right. My download speed is atrocious! I'm trying now to download a 370 MD 1/2 show using the web browser (Foxfile for a change) and it's downloading at about 13-15Kb per second. So, right now, after nearly an hour, I've only downloaded 34 MB of the show. There's got to be a better answer!


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## Vlad D (Jan 23, 2005)

Using the TiVo desktop it took me just over 2 hours to download 1.5 GB. Using the technique mentioned above it took 70 mins to download the same file using my Firefox browser. My download speed was 323 KB/sec. Much better.


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## peggylenox (Dec 30, 2003)

So how com eyou get 324 kb per second and I only get 34? Doesn't make sense!


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## DCIFRTHS (Jan 6, 2000)

rad1701 said:


> What's a night light TIVO? My guess is whichever is transferring faster either is doing less encoding and/or has a better CPU in it.


It's the TiVo that has the faceplate that lights up. See it here.


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## jonvn (Feb 19, 2005)

Hi --

I've been having lots of problems with downloading stuff into the tivo desktop. Ran dreadfully slow, and the last few attempts seem to be totally stalled.

So I tried the download method here using IE, and I'm getting about 75kb/sec. It's not blazing, but it's at least moving. 

So, is this a problem many people have had? It was so slow before as to be unusable. Do I need to do something to the tivo desktop program to make this run again? 

Thanks.

PS---

Actually I just looked at my download file folder. It appears that the files were downloaded in full...but that the tivo desktop software reported them as either still in the queue waiting to be downloaded, or only partially downloaded. 

Guess that's a bug....?


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## peggylenox (Dec 30, 2003)

Hi; I've been having the same frustrating problems --very, very slow downloads -- many hours for a half hour show. I'm currently trying to download a half hour show recorded at basic speed. I decided to try using Foxfire as someone said it was faster. Well, I'm getting something like 35kb a second. Wowee! My last conversation with Tivo tech, they guy told me there really wasn't anything else they could do for me. Yes??? Come on now! I LOVE Tivo and bought the second one especially for TivotoGo, but sure am not happy with that. Hopefully, so many of us are having problems, maybe they will do something. Thanks for listening,


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## rad1701 (Aug 17, 2003)

Here's some info. for you. 
At a rate of 75 kb/sec it = 4500 kb/min = 4.4 megabytes/min
So 1 gig (1000 meg) will take about 228 min. (1000/4.4) or 3.8 hours to transfer.
This is just for 1 gig at that speed rate.

I was getting about 450 kb/sec average = 27000 kb/min = 26.4 meg/min.
So 1 gig transfer for me would take about 38 min.
(Remember I am on a wired network, Win XP, fast PC, etc.)

Here's a good computer unit convertor: http://www.unit-conversion.info/computer.html

Not sure if this helps any, but it is interesting.


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## DCIFRTHS (Jan 6, 2000)

maiknyc said:


> But if you don't use Tivo Desktop to download but rather log directly into your Tivo and download the file through your web browser it does NOT do that - so I think it's just simply the Tivo Desktop software that slows things down.


Using the browser I get about 300KB on the night-light, and 500KB on the older Series 2. Transfer speeds seem about right, and IMO this indicates that the newer hardware can't process as fast as the older harware.


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## audioscience (Feb 10, 2005)

DCIFRTHS said:


> All my TiVo's are wired, and hooked up to a 10/100 Linksys 8 port switch, that is hung off of a Linksys 10/100 gateway/switch. The USB adapters are not 2.0, so I am transferring at 1.1 speeds. But.....
> 
> On my night-light TiVo, it takes approximately 1 hour 30 mins to transfer a file that is 1251MB (app. 1.22 GB). On my "normal" Series 2, it takes about 30 mins *LESS* to transfer a 1,620 MB (app. 1.6 GB).
> 
> ...


It has been posted over and over that the 540 Series 2 units were built with cheaper parts and evidently a slower processor. This is where the bottleneck is and is why the "newer" Series 2 units with the 540 serial number are quite a bit slower than the older ones (240s).

Everyone having slower issues is usually using a 540 model. The other issue is being wired or wired to a wireless bridge. That should speed up times.

That being said, it still takes me 2 hours to download a 1 hour best quality program.


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## Vlad D (Jan 23, 2005)

audioscience said:


> It has been posted over and over that the 540 Series 2 units were built with cheaper parts and evidently a slower processor. This is where the bottleneck is and is why the "newer" Series 2 units with the 540 serial number are quite a bit slower than the older ones (240s).
> 
> Everyone having slower issues is usually using a 540 model. The other issue is being wired or wired to a wireless bridge. That should speed up times.
> 
> That being said, it still takes me 2 hours to download a 1 hour best quality program.


Mine is a 540 Series 2 on a wireless network. Using the TiVo desktop it also takes me 2 hours to download a 1 hour best quality program. But using the browser it takes about half the time. IMO it still takes too long.


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## maiknyc (Jan 13, 2005)

peggylenox said:


> Hi; I've tried to do this four or five times and I get an error message "the page cannot be displayed" What am I doing wrong? Do I put in the < and > ? thanks,


You probably use HTTP instead of HTTPS - at least that's what happened to me in the beginning...


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## mrpjc (Sep 30, 2003)

so, if i'm reading this correctly, some get better thru put than others and we should just be happy with what we've got?

there are no tweaks that can be performed or configurations confirmed? 

i plan on logging into my tivo tonight via the browser and try that method, but, it wouldn't make sense to me that the desktop is causing the sluggish thru put.


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## ArtemisKitty (Mar 3, 2005)

Regardless of the 100mbit connection the card is reporting, you're STILL going to be limited to the speed of the USB port, 12mbps. The reason ReplayTV's transfer so much faster, as seems to be some people's basis for this being slow, is that they have an integrated 10/100 network card, so it's not limited to 12 by being external, it's right on the main board. I think this is an awesome development for tivo, as this was my main argument (one of two, the other being commercial skip) for getting rid of my tivo and getting a replay. Looks like my girlfriend's gonna win after all, I'm going back to the one that's easier for her to use. *grin*


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## DCIFRTHS (Jan 6, 2000)

ArtemisKitty said:


> Regardless of the 100mbit connection the card is reporting, you're STILL going to be limited to the speed of the USB port, 12mbps. ....


USB 2.0 is 480 Mbps, and a lot of TiVo's have USB 2.0. It's not the bottleneck on these units....


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## Donopittsburgh (Jan 22, 2006)

I just got the browser method working over my wireless G net and I'm getting 458k/sec. Better than my Tivo desktop speed.

What is really interesting is that I'm able to get two transfers going at the same time and I'm seeing no drop in speed for either after 20 mins. TIVO Desktop queus them up so this appears to be at least a double.


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## ffejr22 (Jan 25, 2006)

when i transfer files using ie htttps minus an extra t <joys of being new to forums cant post any htttp addresses> from tivo i get speeds around 250-333kB/s depending what else im doing on my pc

when i start another transfer from the tivo the first one stops until the second one is completed rarely does the first one timout


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## dcahoe (Jan 29, 2006)

I started transferring a handful of 2 hour movies recorded at high quality (3-4gb each) last weekend. The first 3-4 movies stalled several times but I was able to restart and get them eventually, but I was only averaging 1-2 movies per day early in the week. I then spent 3 days trying to get the last movie, i could not get it to transfer. I tried the web server approach as well as TiVo Desktop, and I cleared the cache and deleted the transfer.dat file several times.

Well, finally yesterday I flashed the firmware in my router to the latest version. It is a DLink DI-624 and I had been running v2.50 since the end of 2004 with no problems doing anything. I flashed it to v2.71 and my transfer took off and not only completed but did so much faster than any of the other transfers I had done.


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## joe123j (Jan 25, 2006)

rad1701 said:


> Those size files should transfer in like 10-15 min max then for a 2 hour HQ file. Has anyone actually gotten that kind of speed by doing a direct file move?


Exactly! A 2 hour (2GB) high quality image should take about 10 minutes to transfer. On my home PVR setup, it takes about 7 minutes to transfer a file of that size ( not 2-4 hours )  Huge Differences specially if I need to move 30 or so recordings!

Lets do the Math:
- 30 Movies @ 3hour a movie = 90 hours, or 3.75 days.
- 30 Movies @ 7 minutes a movie = 210 minutes, or 3.5 hours.

3.5 hours verses almost 4 days!

The reason TiVo takes so long to transfer a movie to your PC, is that TiVo has to Encrypt  the movie BEFORE it leaves the TiVo box and the TiVo's have a very slow processor in general.

If your TiVo box is recording while you are transfering a high quality image, you can expect a very SLOW transfer rate.


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## Brock from WI (Mar 30, 2005)

And here I was going to say that I have noticed that if we are not watching recorded shows it transfers faster. To bad you couldn't temporarily stop the live TV part so it could use the whole processor to do the encoding and transfer.

So basically if you are watching a recorded show, recording a new one (all the time given the "live" feature) and doing a transfer it is really doing three things at once.


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## joe123j (Jan 25, 2006)

Brock from WI said:


> So basically if you are watching a recorded show, recording a new one (all the time given the "live" feature) and doing a transfer it is really doing three things at once.


Yes. TiVo is going to give the encryption/transfer a much lower priority than anything else. With a low end processor to begin with on your TiVo, you end up with what we have - very slow transfer times.

If TiVo was NOT to do encryption, then the whole process would be so much faster as it would be a simple disk to disk transfer over the network.

The reason TiVo encrypts (encodes) movies you record was probably due to pressure from the big recording studios not wanting the recordings to be freely available on the net.

Also, don't forget that on your PC, you end up with encrypted movie files which is a waste of time having to un-encrypt them for say burning. Waste waste waste.


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## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

> Also, don't forget that on your PC, you end up with encrypted movie files which is a waste of time having to un-encrypt them for say burning. Waste waste waste.


It takes a couple of minutes to "un-encrypt" a .tivo file. Not too much trouble, IMO, since they wouldn't have been allowed to do this at all if it wasn't for the enctyption.


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## joe123j (Jan 25, 2006)

MickeS said:


> It takes a couple of minutes to "un-encrypt" a .tivo file. Not too much trouble, IMO, since they wouldn't have been allowed to do this at all if it wasn't for the enctyption.


Yes. The big problem is on the Encryption part. Encrypting is usually much harder than decrypting. Also, you have the encryption going on with a low end, very slow processor on the TiVo box set with the lowest priority for encryption. On the decrypting part, most folks have a decent fast PC.

I still hate the fact that I have to un-encrypt movies which I recorded - just a lot of waste in time and money and energy.


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## mbalgeman (Feb 6, 2002)

All this is IIRC...

It's not the encryption that's slowing it down. It's already encrypted on the TiVo. In the TiVo, the show is stored as 2 separate streams. A Video Stream and an Audio Stream. Before the TiVo can send the show to the computer, it needs to "mux" the 2 streams together. That's the major bottleneck for transferring a show to your computer. That's also why it's faster to transfer a show from TiVo to Tivo than it is to transfer a show to your computer. In a TiVo to TiVo transfer, the show doesn't need to be "muxed". Of coarse, I could be misremembering and making this all up.


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## joe123j (Jan 25, 2006)

mbalgeman said:


> That's also why it's faster to transfer a show from TiVo to Tivo than it is to transfer a show to your computer. In a TiVo to TiVo transfer, the show doesn't need to be "muxed". Of coarse, I could be misremembering and making this all up.


What is the speed in transfering from TiVo to TiVo using the highest recording quality? Over or under real time viewing? Also, is this with the TiVo's doing nothing else ( idle ) or with the TiVos doing recording, etc?


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## AJ500 (Feb 22, 2002)

I just replaced my Linksys USB wireless adapter with the TiVo wireless G adapter. Using the IE https connection, I'm getting 825KBps download rates.

The adapter is connected to a TiVo model 140 Series 2

Correction: That's KBps (K Bytes/sec) not Kbps (K bits/sec).


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## RickAltman (Oct 20, 2004)

Can someone fill me in on the HTTP method of transferring TiVo files? I presume this is an alternative to the conventional use of TiVo Desktop?



Rick A.


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## dcahoe (Jan 29, 2006)

RickAltman said:


> Can someone fill me in on the HTTP method of transferring TiVo files? I presume this is an alternative to the conventional use of TiVo Desktop?
> 
> Rick A.


Browse to https://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/nowplaying/index.html

Fill in your units IP Address in place of the xxx's. You will need to authenticate to the web interface. Use 'tivo' as the username, and your 'MAK' (Media Access Key) as the password.

This will only work on units with software version 7.X.


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## kyle8979 (Feb 24, 2005)

DCIFRTHS said:


> USB 2.0 is 480 Mbps, and a lot of TiVo's have USB 2.0. It's not the bottleneck on these units....


True, but from what I have read, the most current version of the Tivo software treats these USB 2.0 ports like they are 1.1 still. And this must be true, as I am running a USB-to-Ethernet adapter off the TiVo into a wired network. Transfer speeds from TiVo-to-PC are SIGNIFICANTLY slower than PC-to-PC transfers. If these ports were running at 480Mbps, then my network would be the bottleneck, not the port, and that is definitly not the issue.

Part of the reason they may have not enabled the ports to run at 480 is due to the nature of USB data transfer. USB is a bursting-type of data transfer, where data is pushed down the pipe as much and as fast as possible. This leads to data corruption and bad sectors on HDD. (I know about this, as I used to share lots of data over my network from USB 2.0 drives until I starting losing data). It maybe that TiVo has seen the same kind of problems using USB 2.0 with data transfers and have decided not to enable it up to 2.0.

The Series 3 is going to have a bulit in 10/100 port, so maybe thats what they will use to entice us all to upgrade . . . flazing-fast transfers!


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## greg_burns (May 22, 2004)

kyle8979 said:


> True, but from what I have read, the most current version of the Tivo software treats these USB 2.0 ports like they are 1.1 still. And this must be true, as I am running a USB-to-Ethernet adapter off the TiVo into a wired network. Transfer speeds from TiVo-to-PC are SIGNIFICANTLY slower than PC-to-PC transfers. If these ports were running at 480Mbps, then my network would be the bottleneck, not the port, and that is definitly not the issue.
> 
> Part of the reason they may have not enabled the ports to run at 480 is due to the nature of USB data transfer. USB is a bursting-type of data transfer, where data is pushed down the pipe as much and as fast as possible. This leads to data corruption and bad sectors on HDD. (I know about this, as I used to share lots of data over my network from USB 2.0 drives until I starting losing data). It maybe that TiVo has seen the same kind of problems using USB 2.0 with data transfers and have decided not to enable it up to 2.0.
> 
> The Series 3 is going to have a bulit in 10/100 port, so maybe thats what they will use to entice us all to upgrade . . . flazing-fast transfers!


This thread is very old and some of the information in it has been beat to death! 

You are skipping over the idea that it is not the port but the Tivo cpu itself. Some suggestions for speeding it up include pressing pause and putting the unit into standby while transferring.

AFAIR the 7.x software has USB 2.0 support, newer hardware has USB 2.0 (most but not all series 2's). The bottleneck is on the Tivo itself. Either the muxing the audio and video streams together or perhaps the encryption itself. I don't think it can feed it to the USB port quick enough. IMO


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## greg_burns (May 22, 2004)

kyle8979 said:


> The Series 3 is going to have a bulit in 10/100 port, so maybe thats what they will use to entice us all to upgrade . . . flazing-fast transfers!


And hopefully a faster processor.


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## tfratzke (Jul 11, 2003)

rad1701 said:


> Well, I just downloaded a couple shows to my PC using this method:
> 
> Go to
> 
> ...


This is what i don't get. My Tivos are on a 802.11b wireless network and when i use this method i get speeds of about 490 kb/sec. Faster than you wired network? Strange. However, transferring from Tivo to Tivo, recorded at Medium, i am no where near realtime...it's waaaaay slower, sometimes takes twice as long to transfer as the show is long.


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## classicsat (Feb 18, 2004)

joe123j said:


> If TiVo was NOT to do encryption, then the whole process would be so much faster as it would be a simple disk to disk transfer over the network.


It IS faster, as pre TTG "unmentionable" transfers are. I get ~ 3MB/S, using the backport drivers and some tweaks.


> The reason TiVo encrypts (encodes) movies you record was probably due to pressure from the big recording studios not wanting the recordings to be freely available on the net.


I don't think they were actually pressured to DRM the .tivo files, instead they took it upon themselves to employ DRM, to keep big media off their back.


> Also, don't forget that on your PC, you end up with encrypted movie files which is a waste of time having to un-encrypt them for say burning. Waste waste waste.


Muxing also has to happen, either on the slow TiVo or on the fast PC.
Decryption don't take much time, really.


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## WADE16 (Dec 28, 2005)

Speed is my problem and from what I read it is common. However, I have only recently set my Tivo up on my home network (this weekend), and the trasfer rate seems extreemly slow. I had a two hour show recorded at best quality, and it took over eight hours to download.

Any suggestions - what am I doing wrong?


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## greg_burns (May 22, 2004)

WADE16 said:


> Speed is my problem and from what I read it is common. However, I have only recently set my Tivo up on my home network (this weekend), and the trasfer rate seems extreemly slow. I had a two hour show recorded at best quality, and it took over eight hours to download.
> 
> Any suggestions - what am I doing wrong?


Wired or wireless?


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## joan151 (Oct 10, 2004)

Keep in mind that transfer speeds are also dependent on product performance. Think of it. The tivo only has 1 harddrive. The TiVo has to Record realtime, Compress video and write it to hard drive sectors (when recording in anything other than best), transfer programs (to and from), Run the OS, and any usual function (menu navigation, channel changing, Buffer recharge etc...), all on ONE hard drive. This will cause bottle necks on any network transfer, via wired or wireless. Specially if the products main purpose is to record video at high bit rates. As stated in earlier posts, the larger the file the longer the transfer. In the perfect scenario, when non of my tivo's are recording any programs, just live tv and I am transferring form tivo to tivo or from pc to tivo, It takes me about 14 minutes to transfer to 1.3GB file. 
If any one of my TiVo units starts to record anything then I will start getting bottle necks and I do see a drop in speed. From 600kb to about 300 or so. I think that TiVo Unit encoding , compressing of video if the quality is other than best, and having to write to one sector of the drive while accessing and transferring from another sector will eventually take a toll on transfer speeds. 
This will affect wired or wireless hookups.
This makes the most sense.


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## greg_burns (May 22, 2004)

joan151 said:


> In the perfect scenario, when non of my tivo's are recording any programs, just live tv...


Others have determined the perfect scenario (strangely) is to playback a recording and press pause on it.

This is the state you want to have your Tivo in when you start benchmarking transfer speeds. You'll see the greatest speeds in this state. Anything else and speeds drop.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Actually the best way to increase speeds is to tune your TiVo to a channel which you do not actually receive and just leave it on the sad TiVo screen. If you take away the stress caused by both recording and playback you can free up the maximum amount of CPU cycles and hard drive throughput for the TTG transfer. I've seen an increase of 60%+ when I do this before transferring something via TTG. 

Dan


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## WADE16 (Dec 28, 2005)

My network is wired. I try the unused channel method.

Sorry to ask such a basic question: where would I see the trasfer rate (kbs) at?

-Thanks,


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## greg_burns (May 22, 2004)

WADE16 said:


> My network is wired. I try the unused channel method.
> 
> Sorry to ask such a basic question: where would I see the trasfer rate (kbs) at?
> 
> -Thanks,


Galleon (a third part program you can install) will show you. But normally, people just calculate it on their own. Just note the time when you start the transfer. When it is finished look at the timestamp on the file in Windows explorer. Then just do the math.

Although I think TivoDesktop does calculcate it, but won't display it. If you look at this registry key, you see a rate per tivo's IP. Not sure the units it is in off hand.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\TiVo\Desktop\Transfer\Rates]


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## jsheinz1234 (Jun 28, 2004)

Is there any way to upload _TO _the tivo using this method?


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