# Why Does Tivo Take So Long To Boot Up?



## Emacee (Dec 15, 2000)

Last night another hiccup from the electric company. Power was down for a few seconds. Tivo came back but it took about seven minutes for recording to resume (seven minutes including the idiotic cartoon). PCs, smartphones, tablets all can boot in about a minute (or less). Tivo has always taken a long time. Why? Tivo has been on the market for about 13 years. You'd think this is something they could have solved by now.

Yes, I know about UPS. Still, there's no reason why a reboot should take seven minutes. And don't add insult to injury with a Tivo cartoon and a THX cartoom (much as I like George Lucas, I don't need the cartoon).


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## justen_m (Jan 15, 2004)

Emacee said:


> Last night another hiccup from the electric company. Power was down for a few seconds. Tivo came back but it took about seven minutes for recording to resume (seven minutes including the idiotic cartoon). PCs, smartphones, tablets all can boot in about a minute (or less). Tivo has always taken a long time. Why? Tivo has been on the market for about 13 years. You'd think this is something they could have solved by now.
> 
> Yes, I know about UPS. Still, there's no reason why a reboot should take seven minutes. And don't add insult to injury with a Tivo cartoon and a THX cartoom (much as I like George Lucas, I don't need the cartoon).


I don't know, but you can skip the cartoons, I think. (My Tivos are on a UPS and haven't been rebooted in... very long time).

I was an embedded systems engineer, and boot time was always a huge concern for us. We'd do everything we could to minimize it (well, after doing everything we could to make sure you never needed to reboot, but infinite unlimited energy was initially beyond our grasp. It took us a while to solve that one.)


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## steve614 (May 1, 2006)

I have read that most of the boot time consists of security checks and whatnot.
Someone else will have to give the specifics, but that is the gist of it.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Emacee said:


> Last night another hiccup from the electric company. Power was down for a few seconds. Tivo came back but it took about seven minutes for recording to resume (seven minutes including the idiotic cartoon). PCs, smartphones, tablets all can boot in about a minute (or less). Tivo has always taken a long time. Why? Tivo has been on the market for about 13 years. You'd think this is something they could have solved by now.
> 
> Yes, I know about UPS. Still, there's no reason why a reboot should take seven minutes. And don't add insult to injury with a Tivo cartoon and a THX cartoom (much as I like George Lucas, I don't need the cartoon).


TiVos have always taken some time to boot. No big deal in my use since they will typically only boot when there is a software update. A power outage does not make my TiVos reboot unless it is many, many hours long since I have always had my TiVos connected to a UPS to make sure I always get my recordings. It was no different with a VCR. They were connected to a UPS too so I wouldn't miss any recordings. At least since I started using UPSs in 1996.


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## tomhorsley (Jul 22, 2010)

aaronwt said:


> TiVos have always taken some time to boot. No big deal in my use since they will typically only boot when there is a software update.


Or a $#@! "channel not authorized" message you need to reboot to recover from (a heck of a lot more frequent than power failures .


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

Hey it could be worse. If you used a Tuning Adapter you could add 2.5 minutes for "acquiring channels" (YMMV)

And having a UPS doesn't mean you'll rarely have a reboot if you're on my TWC system with a TA. I have to power cycle the TA and restart the TiVo every several weeks when SDV channels go missing.


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

Tivos aren't all that fast when you compare them to a standard desktop PC. The internal bus speeds are much slower and the CPU is minimal at best. The software has also gotten a bit bloated over the years with all of the add-ons they've included. Factor in all this and it's no wonder Tivos take so long to boot.


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## supasta (May 6, 2006)

I as still a bit surprised at how _fast_ my Premiere boots compared to the TiVo S2 DT boxes I had years ago. The premiere is blazing by comparison.


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

I would rather Tivo concentrate on fixing other things that cause reboots than address the boot time itself. Its not a PC that is shut down every day.


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## bshrock (Jan 6, 2012)

tomhorsley said:


> Or a $#@! "channel not authorized" message you need to reboot to recover from (a heck of a lot more frequent than power failures .


 Is this something to do with a tuning adapter? You can't just change the channel or exit live TV?


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## tivogurl (Dec 16, 2004)

dlfl said:


> I have to power cycle the TA and restart the TiVo every several weeks when SDV channels go missing.


I preemptively power-on restart my TA twice a month to prevent that.

I believe the TiVo is computing checksums on every system file to detect modifications and keep the box locked down.


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## caddyroger (Mar 15, 2005)

I believe if you press the tivo button it will take to your now playing list by passing the animated tivo guy and the THX start.


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## MPSAN (Jun 20, 2009)

caddyroger said:


> I believe if you press the tivo button it will take to your now playing list by passing the animated tivo guy and the THX start.


..or hit the live tv button. That is what I do.


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## MHunter1 (Oct 11, 2007)

After the Fall update v20.2.2.1 in December 2012 my Premiere 4/XL4/Elite's reboot time dropped from 12 minutes to just 5 and recordings that were in progress resume after about 6 minutes instead of 11. Pressing the TiVo button or going to Live TV doesn't speed up those lost 6 minutes.

If TiVo could shave more than 50% off the reboot time with a software update, who knows what other unnecessary startup junk could be eliminated to reduce it even further for those of us whose Premieres are more prone to frequent crashes.


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## HenryFarpolo (Dec 1, 2008)

For those of us who used dial-up internet in the past, some web pages took as long to load as it does for TIVO to boot.

I can live with the boot time since it is used infrequently. Getting more patient with age, I guess!!


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## Emacee (Dec 15, 2000)

aaronwt said:


> TiVos have always taken some time to boot. No big deal in my use since they will typically only boot when there is a software update. A power outage does not make my TiVos reboot unless it is many, many hours long since I have always had my TiVos connected to a UPS to make sure I always get my recordings. It was no different with a VCR. They were connected to a UPS too so I wouldn't miss any recordings. At least since I started using UPSs in 1996.


In my case, even the briefest power interruption makes Tivo re-boot. If it's recording at the time, that means seven minutes of the show are missing. Fortunately, Comcast Xfinity On Demand now supports Tivo Premieres so most shows are available that way.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

Emacee said:


> In my case, even the briefest power interruption makes Tivo re-boot. If it's recording at the time, that means seven minutes of the show are missing. Fortunately, Comcast Xfinity On Demand now supports Tivo Premieres so most shows are available that way.


Have you tried a UPS ??


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## tomhorsley (Jul 22, 2010)

bshrock said:


> Is this something to do with a tuning adapter? You can't just change the channel or exit live TV?


No tuning adapter. Apparently this has been traced to firmware on the Scientific Atlanta cablecard which comcast says they may roll out an update for in June/July.


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## bensonr2 (Feb 4, 2011)

To actually answer the question I believe (based only on my suspicions so take with a grain of salt) that upon reboot Tivo performs a full error check of the hard drives file system.

I base this on the fact that the boot times seem to be effected by the size of the hard drive, how many recordings you have and whether you are using the external hard drive.

I suspect Tivo does this during the boot up process because reboots should be rare. And if the Tivo is rebooting it likely the reboot may have been unexpected. If the reboot was unexpected then the file system could be corrupted.


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## bmgoodman (Dec 20, 2000)

I always assumed it was 2.5 minutes to load the actual Tivo operating system, and all the rest of the time for the Digital Rights Management junk, plus a few seconds all the Charmin/Bounty ads.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

supasta said:


> I as still a bit surprised at how _fast_ my Premiere boots compared to the TiVo S2 DT boxes I had years ago. The premiere is blazing by comparison.


The Mini boots even faster, which bodes well for whatever new TiVos are coming down the pipe since the Sister chip to the one in the Mini is even faster. Although the Mini might be helped along by it's SSD storage which the new unit likely wont have.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

Dan203 said:


> The Mini boots even faster, which bodes well for whatever new TiVos are coming down the pipe since the Sister chip to the one in the Mini is even faster. Although the Mini might be helped along by it's SSD storage which the new unit likely wont have.


How much SSD storage do you think it has ?? I would think just enough for the software, 4Mb or 8Mb like a USB stick.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

More then that. I think TiVo uses about 500MB for the OS partition and it has two of them so that if a software update fails it can fall back to the old one. Although since the Mini doesn't have to maintain a DB for guide data it might be able to use less, but these days SSD is so cheap they probably have a couple GB in there just in case.


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## NotNowChief (Mar 29, 2012)

bmgoodman said:


> I always assumed it was 2.5 minutes to load the actual Tivo operating system, and all the rest of the time for the Digital Rights Management junk, plus a few seconds all the Charmin/Bounty ads.


Ugh. I can honestly say I STOPPED buying their products because of their advertisements on TiVo.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

NotNowChief said:


> Ugh. I can honestly say I STOPPED buying their products because of their advertisements on TiVo.


Unless you actually *informed* the advertisers, what you did was meaningless.

BTW, it was mentioned before briefly in this thread, but IIRC, in previous threads, people have mentioned (paraphrase) that the binaries' signatures are actually checked, or something like that. Basically, a very thorough security check.

But yeah, Premiere 4 is a ZILLION times better than Series 3 OLED... But none is anywhere near as fast at rebooting as a S1, which is SO FAST. Though a S1 is SO SLOW when getting into Now Playing if you have an expanded drive (like 20 seconds or so..)


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

mattack said:


> Though a S1 is SO SLOW when getting into Now Playing if you have an expanded drive (like 20 seconds or so..)


That cache card helped with that. But those were simpler times. They've added a LOT of features since then, and gotten a lot more strict with security.


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## rifleman69 (Jan 6, 2005)

Dan203 said:


> The Mini boots even faster, which bodes well for whatever new TiVos are coming down the pipe since the Sister chip to the one in the Mini is even faster. Although the Mini might be helped along by it's SSD storage which the new unit likely wont have.


That's because the Mini doesn't have a "hard drive" to boot up so to speak like the other boxes. But you're right, it's night and day with the Mini compared to any other TiVo.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

While the hard drive may play a role, I still think a big portion of the time is CPU bound. TiVo performs a lot of security checks during the boot up all of which should be sped up by a faster CPU. If it does in fact do a full scan of the HDD, like someone above suggested, then that may slow down a real TiVo a little but with a faster hardware that should be helped along a bit as well.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

For a properly working TiVo boot time should never be much of a problem, not the same as a computer. I don't think TiVo should spend any time reducing the boot time as that will not sell anymore TiVos and it not a feature needed by anybody.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

I agree. My TiVos are on a UPS, so unless they get a software upgrade or I intentionally pull the plug for some reason they never reboot.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

lessd said:


> For a properly working TiVo boot time should never be much of a problem, not the same as a computer. I don't think TiVo should spend any time reducing the boot time as that will not sell anymore TiVos and it not a feature needed by anybody.


Great in theory, less in the real world. Tivos hang just like everything else, and sometimes need to e rebooted (as workarounds for other bugs)..

and the power goes out. You shouldn't HAVE to have a UPS. (I used to have one, mostly for my XS32, which CAN easily corrupt the hard drive.. battery died, so it ironically wasn't UPSing at all and would beep at ~6:30 AM.)


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

mattack said:


> Great in theory, less in the real world. Tivos hang just like everything else, and sometimes need to e rebooted (as workarounds for other bugs)..
> 
> and the power goes out. You shouldn't HAVE to have a UPS. (I used to have one, mostly for my XS32, which CAN easily corrupt the hard drive.. battery died, so it ironically wasn't UPSing at all and would beep at ~6:30 AM.)


Outside of October 2011 (when I lost power for 7 days and made good use of my back up generator) I have a power loss less than once a year, I can handle a 5 min re-boot, if one were having a power loss every week than get a UPS, even a 1 minute re-boot would be a pain every week when your recording/watching. As for hang ups, that also use to happen a few times in a year with xfers using the wireless system, with Moca in the last 6 months I never had any hang-up on my TiVos.


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

I wish my power was that reliable.

Even if it's flawless I think a UPS is worth it. When lightning blasted the heck out of my house and burned down a fair chunk of it my TiVos survived. I can't say the same for any electronic equipment that wasn't protected.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

I also have brownouts and power surges that my UPS kick on to protect my TiVos and other electronic devices. Every weekday morning at 9AM there is a power surge that kicks on all my UPSs. 

One time one leg of the local transformer died and for close to ten minutes there was only around 75 volts on the electrical outlets before the transformer finally died. My dozen or so UPS units protected all my electronics during this. Although one or two of my lamps died during the brownout that were not on a UPS and only on a surge protector.

Sent from my HTC ReZound using Forum Runner


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## SugarBowl (Jan 5, 2007)

Lightening strikes just mean it's time to upgrade.


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## mattycb (Aug 6, 2008)

I've been told the slow TiVo boot time comes down to one simple word ...

Linux

Matt B
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## stahta01 (Dec 23, 2001)

mattycb said:


> I've been told the *fast* TiVo boot time comes down to one simple word ...
> 
> Linux
> 
> ...


FYP.

It would be 10 times slower if windows!

Tim S.


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## justen_m (Jan 15, 2004)

mattycb said:


> I've been told the slow TiVo boot time comes down to one simple word ...
> Linux





stahta01 said:


> It would be 10 times slower if windows!


Both these statements are incorrect, IME. My main system is dual-boot. Windows 7 Pro x64, Ubuntu 13.10 Linux x64. Boots in about the same time with either OS. I've got a netbook that is XP x32 and Ubuntu 13.10 x32, and the same thing applies. Both OSes boot in about the same time.

It ain't the fault of the OS.


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## stahta01 (Dec 23, 2001)

justen_m said:


> Both these statements are incorrect, IME. My main system is dual-boot. Windows 7 Pro x64, Ubuntu 13.10 Linux x64. Boots in about the same time with either OS. I've got a netbook that is XP x32 and Ubuntu 13.10 x32, and the same thing applies. Both OSes boot in about the same time.
> 
> It ain't the fault of the OS.


Please compare the boot time of a custom Linux kernel to a standard Windows kernel!

Edit: The main difference is file checking on the file system; so, compare Windows file checking to Linux file checking!

Tim S.


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## Thom (Jun 5, 2000)

One thing that slows a TiVo's bootup is the security checks it performs on the root filesystem. It checks for unauthorized modifications to the TiVo software, and will overwrite them with approved software, if detected.


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## justen_m (Jan 15, 2004)

stahta01 said:


> Please compare the boot time of a custom Linux kernel to a standard Windows kernel!


I have compared boot times with custom Linux kernels (which I helped program, specifically drivers) with versions of _embedded_ Windows. When we add needed support features to Linux to match what comes with Windows... yeah, not all that different. Sure, if we compile our Linux kernel disabling a bunch of features we can boot in 1/10 the time of a standard embedded Windows system. But we need those features to make a product. We're not out to evangelisize about an OS. Our product makes us more money if we don't have to pay a license fee to MS. I am guessing the same for Tivo - they don't want to pay $$$/unit to MS when Linux works just as well.


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## Worf (Sep 15, 2000)

Yeah, as an embedded developer, Android has been likewise a godsend - before that doing a GUI in Linux was generally painful - either you do your own UI system (like TiVo), or try to use X and various libraries.

Embedded Windows makes doing a GUI easy as it comes with it and the development is like normal Windows GUIs.

But then Android came around and changed the rules - doing a GUI in Linux means just putting Android on it. Making it easier is that most SoCs have Android support out of the box (less Linux support other than drivers and command line). Plus doing the GUI now just involves hiring a cheap Android developer - they're much easier to find than Linux GUI developers.

It's also one reason why Android is ported to other platforms - MIPS is common in various markets and it too has Android for the same reason - easy and cheap UI development.


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## jcaudle (Aug 16, 2004)

dlfl said:


> Hey it could be worse. If you used a Tuning Adapter you could add 2.5 minutes for "acquiring channels" (YMMV)
> 
> And having a UPS doesn't mean you'll rarely have a reboot if you're on my TWC system with a TA. I have to power cycle the TA and restart the TiVo every several weeks when SDV channels go missing.


Not to mention that the tuning adapter would cause problems constantly, I had 2 of them from Cox. Now going on my third year with Fios, No TA, and no copy 1 flag on any channel like Cox. Not to mention significantly better internet.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

The new XBox one takes about 1:20 to do a cold boot. That's why they added a standby mode that draws 19w but can boot up in about 20 seconds. It's basically running Windows 8.

My Roamio boots up in about 2 minutes, which is significantly faster then any TiVo I've owned in the past which took a minimum of about 5 minutes.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Does that mean 2 minutes *to the time it actually is recording*? Like I've said before, my Premiere 4 is way faster than my S3s (OLED & Tivo HD), but those are nowhere near as fast as the S1 in booting.. I know, it didn't have the security verification stuff going on..

and the Premiere 4 starts recording (at least showing the record light on, which I trust is recording) before I can actually use it -- it's showing the "wait" gear for quite a while doing network stuff..


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## Bob_Newhart (Jul 14, 2004)

I have the Directv DVR and I've never timed it but could swear it takes closer to 10 minutes to reboot. I finally replaced the battery in my UPS a couple weeks ago so hopefully I won't have that issue for a while.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

mattack said:


> Does that mean 2 minutes *to the time it actually is recording*? Like I've said before, my Premiere 4 is way faster than my S3s (OLED & Tivo HD), but those are nowhere near as fast as the S1 in booting.. I know, it didn't have the security verification stuff going on..
> 
> and the Premiere 4 starts recording (at least showing the record light on, which I trust is recording) before I can actually use it -- it's showing the "wait" gear for quite a while doing network stuff..


Yes. On the Roamio units the HDUI boots up almost instantly. Not like the Premiere units that give you the spinning circle for a minute or so before the UI shows up and it can actually start doing stuff.


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## Ennui (Sep 2, 2008)

Dan203 said:


> Yes. On the Roamio units the HDUI boots up almost instantly. Not like the Premiere units that give you the spinning circle for a minute or so before the UI shows up and it can actually start doing stuff.


I had COX service out to work out a couple of problems. One was installation of a new Roamio. Yes, it is quicker than either the HD's I have or the one Premiere. He said the Roamio was quicker than the standard Cox box.


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## tomhorsley (Jul 22, 2010)

I'd dispute that "almost instantly". It is faster, but still a few minutes. My linux box with the SSD system disk and fedora 19 takes about 15 or 20 seconds from power up to login prompt, and that seems slow too .


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

OK, yeah, my Premiere 4 crashed last night while I was recording The Simpsons, Once Upon a Time, and The Amazing Race. ONE of them was luckily *mostly* over a commercial break, but I still lost some content.

So this is still one issue about 'consolidating to one unit', but I still think I'll do it. (Consolidate P4 & TivoHD to one Roamio 6 tuner.. Though I MIGHT keep the TivoHD, at least temporarily.)


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

tomhorsley said:


> I'd dispute that "almost instantly". It is faster, but still a few minutes. My linux box with the SSD system disk and fedora 19 takes about 15 or 20 seconds from power up to login prompt, and that seems slow too .


I meant once the Roamio boots up the HDUI appears almost instantly. The boot up takes a couple minutes. On the Premiere units the boot up takes like 4-5 minutes and then you get to sit there and look at a spinning circle for another minute while the HDUI boots up. That last part is the part I was referring to being almost instant on the Roamio.


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