# Roamio TivoToGo settings



## mburnno (Oct 1, 2003)

The other night I was trying to stream a show to the Bedroom Roamio and I kept getting an error that said that "This Tivo must be on the same account". I though this message was a little odd since it worked the day before without any glitches. So I logged in to my Tivo account and notice that one of the check boxes was unchecked for "Sharing Video". So I checked the box and saved the setting and did a force check in for the Tivo having the problem. I notice on the Settings page that the Tivo To Go setting was i,i,i,i and after the force check in the Tivo To Go setting changed to a,a,a,i. This was different then my Other Tivo Roamio which was set for a,a,a,a.

I have tried multiple force connections and I still have the settings of a,a,a,i. What does this mean? I can transfer video back and forth from both devices but I can not stream from the Bedroom Tivo. I can however stream from the Living Room Tivo just fine. I have tried rebooting the Bedroom unit twice and still can only transfer. I have even gone back and toggled the settings in my tivo account for "shared video". I am more curious as to why the setting was unchecked in the first place.

If you look at the help page for Tivo it only shows the settings for Tivo To Go as a,a,a but I have a,a,a,i on one and a,a,a,a on the other? Is the Tivo support page wrong here? Has anybody else ran into this problem?


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

It can take a couple of days for that setting to propagate through their system. I'm not sure why.


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## mburnno (Oct 1, 2003)

So I decide to break down and call Tivo support last night and the guy had me doing back flips. I was told by the support person that Tivo does not officially support the use of Switches. What? half of the home network setups use not only one switch but maybe two of them. The support person said that if the setup worked fine but they official don't support it and everything needs to be on the same sub-network for MRV to work. OK, all my stuff is on the same sub-network and it has worked for years this way. The MRV quit working when I upgraded to the Roamio's.

What I find interesting is the fact that he could not tell me what the settings meant containing "a,a,a,i". Now to be fair he might not of known but he may it sound as if only the engineers knew what it meant and the support staff was not privy to this information. Really, no support staff knows this? I find this to be important because I think this is what is causing my problem for MRV to work. The funny thing is it once use to work up till a few days ago and that is when I notice the settings were different.

I find this whole thing really frustrating when the one thing I want to work is the MRV. Some items on the Tivo you just can't transfer but you can stream I am guess it is a copy right issue? To make the matters worst the support person tells me that very soon that Tivo will be pushing out a fall update as in "weeks" to make the Streaming work outside the home. That is great and all but what good does that do me if I can't even get the MRV feature to work and I have setup the system per their guidelines? Can anybody really verify if the whole switch not supported thing is true?


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

mburnno said:


> ... I was told by the support person that Tivo does not officially support the use of Switches. What? half of the home network setups use not only one switch but maybe two of them. The support person said that if the setup worked fine but they official don't support it and everything needs to be on the same sub-network for MRV to work. ....
> 
> .... Can anybody really verify if the whole switch not supported thing is true?


This is not the first time that someone has posted that a support person told them that TiVo does not support using a Switch.

So what do they support ? MOCA only for streaming?

There really is no viable way to have multiple devices connected to an Ethernet network without using a switch (excluding using a Hub which is pretty much dead tech). Even if you plug all of them directly into a Router, that Router is a Router with a built in switch, so you are still using a switch.

Come on TiVo stop the insanity.


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## jmpage2 (Jan 21, 2004)

The explanation that has been given in the past is that TiVo does not support switches and uses this support position to avoid having to troubleshoot peoples home networks when something doesn't work.

A better approach would be to say that TiVo does support switches (you have to use switches in a home network, duh) being connected to their boxes but that TiVo does not troubleshoot users home network problems.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

jmpage2 said:


> ...
> 
> A better approach would be to say that TiVo does support switches (you have to use switches in a home network, duh) being connected to their boxes but that TiVo does not troubleshoot users home network problems.


And therein lies the rub. While I agree that TiVo shouldn't have to trouble shoot peoples network issues, just deciding to blow off anyone's streaming problem because it might be a network issue isn't acceptable. After all with a whole home DVR system streaming is a core feature not some little used minor feature. I don't know what the original poster's issue is but it certainly doesn't sound like it is being caused by a bad switch and TiVo needs to step up and figure it out.


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## jmpage2 (Jan 21, 2004)

I don't disagree... and frankly since we are paying TiVo a very expensive service fee (either monthly or lifetime) they should have SOME capability to do some troubleshooting of the network, at least at a basic level and not do this cop-out of "we don't support switches" bologna.

They actually could build some tools into the TiVo that would make troubleshooting the network between units very easy, as they can use tools like RTP streaming along with an RTCP sub-stream to detect packet loss, etc, and report this to the user.


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## jmpage2 (Jan 21, 2004)

I would also add that it is in their best interest to do this. They clearly have changed from a simple transferring scheme to a full home extender scheme and all they are going to do by sticking to the line of "we don't support home networking" is alienate their customers and lose sales.


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## mburnno (Oct 1, 2003)

jmpage2 said:


> I would also add that it is in their best interest to do this. They clearly have changed from a simple transferring scheme to a full home extender scheme and all they are going to do by sticking to the line of "we don't support home networking" is alienate their customers and lose sales.


 I do not disagree with what you said at all but talking to the support people they could really care less IMO. I am really starting to wonder if this is getting to close to false advertising when looking at the retail box? If you look at their webpage it advertises all the cool features it can do like streaming but I guess the detail is in the fine print. Which if that is the case it really makes you skeptical of anything you read anymore which is sad. Stuff should just work out of the box most of time if you have followed their setup.

Is it asking to much just to get MRV working like it should be. I can't wait for Tivo to turn on outside of the house streaming. I bet that is going to generate some phone calls. I can see their response now "We don't support that kind of router" Sorry you have an iPhone we only work on Windows Mobile but you can upgrade to the next version that does support IOS 6 because we don't support IOS 7 yet.

Yes I know I am being hard on Tivo but damn they could at least act like they wanted to help instead of coping out.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

mburnno said:


> ...
> Yes I know I am being hard on Tivo but damn they could at least act like they wanted to help instead of coping out.


I don't think you are being hard on TiVo at all. A new Roamio should be able to stream to another Roamio, Premiere, or Mini via a wired network or TiVo should trouble shoot it/fix it until they determine it is a problem with your network. For TiVo support to just say they don't support an Ethernet Network that uses a switch is pure B.S., in fact they know they have a problem with green switches and it is being worked on per this post:



TiVoMargret said:


> TODAY'S update has fixes that include:
> - fixed an issue where customers might see error V301 when trying to launch Xfinity On Demand
> - fixed an issue where all six tuners would display video, but one was missing audio
> 
> ...


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## mburnno (Oct 1, 2003)

So to update my problem with the Roamio MRV settings. I decided to do some more trouble shooting since TIVO apparently wont help or at least I was unlucky enough to get a lazy support agent. So I decide to go to the Tivo settings page and uncheck both options to "Share Video" and forced a connection on both of my Tivo Roamio's and see what the Tivo to Go options are set at. For the one Roamio that is correctly working I see the Tivo To Go settings set at "i,i,i,a" and the one that has been a pain in my ass for some reason the options are set at "i,i,i,i".

Hum that seems weird? So I wait two hours to let the settings go through the Tivo network even though it can take up to 24 hours if you read the fine print but I suspect that is if you let the Tivo units check in on their own. So later in the day I change the settings back to allow "share video" and wait a few more hours and forced a connection to both units. 

When I looked at the Roamio that is working the "living room" unit the Tivo To Go settings are "a,a,a,a" which is correct from what it was in the past. The pain in the ass Tivo "Bedroom" unit shows the Tivo To Go settings as "a,a,a,i" which started this whole damn problem in the first place.

I still can not use MRV but Tivo only allows me to transfer shows which does not work for me since some shows do not allow you to transfer but will allow you to use MRV instead. So I am fairly convinced that Tivo has problems with their software and it is NOT my damn network or the switch. Until Tivo can prove to me it is on my side then it is their buggy software that has the problem. I have even rebooted both box and still the same issue.

If I am proving wrong I will eat crow and post it on this form.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

Did you transfer service from an older TiVo model by any chance? I had similar problem years ago when transferring a 3 year pre-pay service from an S3 to a Premiere unit (in period of time when lifetime was not available). Turns out when doing so TiVo carried over incorrect configuration of my unit on their servers and nothing I could do on my end could be done to fix it. TiVo had to fix the configuration for the unit on their end. I highly suspect that is going to be your case too - a bad configuration on TiVo end for your unit.


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## mburnno (Oct 1, 2003)

moyekj said:


> Did you transfer service from an older TiVo model by any chance? I had similar problem years ago when transferring a 3 year pre-pay service from an S3 to a Premiere unit (in period of time when lifetime was not available). Turns out when doing so TiVo carried over incorrect configuration of my unit on their servers and nothing I could do on my end could be done to fix it. TiVo had to fix the configuration for the unit on their end. I highly suspect that is going to be your case too - a bad configuration on TiVo end for your unit.


The funny thing is it was working for a number of weeks and then quit working one day. When I check the configs at the Tivo website, this is when I notice the settings for "video Sharing" was unchecked. My question is how did it get unchecked for this to start happening. No one in my family has the password except me.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

It's a configuration problem that only TiVo can solve on their end.


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## Gadfly (Oct 27, 2007)

Using multiple "switches" should not be confused with using multiple "routers". There is no justification not to support the first one and actually TIVO wouldn't know if you are using multiple "switches" or not. Using multiple routers however can lead to IP addresses to be on different subnets (a.k.a. different "networks").

If you are using multiple routers, you may want to save yourself some headache and have only one of them to act as a DHCP server and set up the other one with a static reserved IP address on the list of IP addresses given away by the one that acts as a DHCP server. in other words, use the non-DHCP one just as an "L2 switch". This should make it possible for all your devices to get IP addresses that are on the same subnet.

p.s. I am a little bit over-simplifying here. obviously a router does not have to be a DHCP server and you can potentially get two DHCP servers working together with some effort and not every device has the problem TIVO has.


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## jmpage2 (Jan 21, 2004)

It is actually surprisingly common for people to staple multiple routers (and invariably multiple subnets) together when trying to extend a network in their home. The average consumer does not have any inkling of the difference between a hub, router or switch and does not understand things like NAT.


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## whynow (Jan 11, 2016)

Did you ever figure this out? I see a,a,a,i and my streaming services aren't working anymore either.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

whynow said:


> Did you ever figure this out? I see a,a,a,i and my streaming services aren't working anymore either.


You jumped into a 2year old thread, so you might want to be a little more specific what your problem is.


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