# Mute when the menus time-out



## wer (Jun 28, 2007)

Here's a suggestion that would address one of my pet peeves.

When I'm watching something recorded on Tivo and I get interrupted by the real world, I will often just hit the Tivo button to bring up the menus. This pauses my show, and cuts off the sound. (Or maybe I was just in the menus for some purpose when I walked away from the Tivo.) Yes I know I could hit pause, but I don't like to walk away and leave that static image, due to the risk of burn-in.

When the menus "time-out" 10 or 15 minutes later, Tivo switches back to "Live TV" and on comes the volume, full blast. Very annoying. It's like a 15 minute alarm clock that demands you go back to the Tivo, which is exactly what I'm forced to do, to cut off the sound.

It would be very nice indeed if when Tivo automatically switched back to live tv after the inactivity time out (which it does as a "screensaver" function I'm sure) it would mute the volume on the audio outputs. At the first touch of the remote, it could un-mute.

It's a simple thing to do, and it would prevent all those unwelcome interruptions.


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## Lazlo123 (Nov 7, 2006)

"Yes I know I could hit pause, but I don't like to walk away and leave that static image, due to the risk of burn-in."

The Tivo menus don't have a potential burn in to the screen?


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## wer (Jun 28, 2007)

Don't you think it's hard for them to burn-in when they time-out after 15 minutes?  Not to mention they have animations running behind them.


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## Lazlo123 (Nov 7, 2006)

nope, i don't think its hard, and the text isn't animated.
And if you're away from your TV for that long anyway, just turn your TV off................ :up:


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## wer (Jun 28, 2007)

I guess I'll have to be more straightforward. The menus don't burn in, because they time-out after 15 min. That's WHY they implemented the time-out function.

Sometimes, when humans are interrupted, they don't know how long they're going to be gone. They may assume it will be a short interruption, and it turns out not to be. I don't turn off the TV when I'm anticipating a short interruption. _And if a user has, as I do, Tivo's audio routed through their sound system instead of passing through the television, turning off the television does NOT mute Tivo's audio._

Do you turn off your computer monitor everytime you walk away from it? No, you have a screensaver. Do you manually activate your answering machine whenever you go outside? No, it answers automatically after a number of rings. A calculator turns itself off after a period of disuse.

Generally, it is desireable for electronics to revert to an appropriate and quiesced state when their user is not around. *Tivo does the opposite: when you leave it alone, it gets noisey*.

I was making a suggestion for Tivo, which is the purpose of this forum area. I wasn't asking for your instructions on how to use it. :down: Good bye.


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## Lazlo123 (Nov 7, 2006)

actually, yes, i do turn off my computer monitors when i leave the computer, because when i leave the computer i plan to be away from it. I guess I might be exceptional in knowing how long of an interruption will take me away from watching tv so i know whether to turn the tv off or not... and i don't have an answering machine, i have voice mail. And I have the Tivo's sound going to the TV, and the TV sound going to the audio system (my tv speakers suck) that way when the tv is off, the sound is off. Simple. Thanks for playing :up: See YA!


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## talphius (Aug 9, 2007)

Actually I think this is a great idea. There are many times where I've gone upstairs and turned off the TV, but forgot to turn off the AV\surround sound tuner. 

15 minutes later I get a really loud supprise...

Though I can see where some people may route their audio straight to the AV receiver, it'd still be a nice option to mute the sound for those of us who route through the Tivo

-T-


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## wer (Jun 28, 2007)

Talphius, I think you might have misunderstood me. My audio DOES come right out of the Tivo and into the receiver. So my audio bypasses the television, not the Tivo. Often people do that to avoid the bad audio circuitry on many televisions... But anyway, since my audio goes directly from the Tivo to the receiver, that's why whether the TV is on or off doesn't affect sound for me.

Thanks for seconding the suggestion.


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## Bob Williams (Apr 29, 2002)

Yes, please! For various reasons having to do with the unpredictability of life and especially of young kids, I frequently run into this problem - and often at times when I really need it to stay quiet and can't get to the remote (like one of the aforementioned young kids *finally* falling asleep in my arms).

And worse, if it happens to cut to a show that's being recorded, I'm forced to listen to the middle of the show before I've started watching the beginning. It's easy enough to avoid the visuals, not so easy the audio.

As an aside, with so many TVs now not suffering from burn-in (LCD, DLP, etc.), it'd be nice to have an option of turning the timeout feature off altogether.


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## HPD (Feb 25, 2008)

I would vote for this feature


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## refried (Dec 22, 2005)

+1

My wife falls asleep while fast fowarding through commercials. After the show ends and the TiVo menu times out, she's usually awakened by the TiVo going back to Live TV.


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## BobB (Aug 26, 2002)

Seems like a lot to ask of TiVO when you could solve the problem yourself by simply hitting the mute button along with going to the TiVo menu. It's all about self-discipline...


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## h00ligan (Nov 29, 2007)

how about a screensaver. This is perhaps my largest annoyance of TivoHD. It's a freaking HD product and doesn't offer a screensaver. Reverting to a channel doesn't help when there are station identifiers. If i go to the tivo menu or pause, after 5 mins it should rock out a screensaver... at most 5 mins - pref with an option to set the time. Especially with children in the house, you can't always be sure the tv is switched off.


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## JasonJ75 (Sep 29, 2007)

BobB said:


> Seems like a lot to ask of TiVO when you could solve the problem yourself by simply hitting the mute button along with going to the TiVo menu. It's all about self-discipline...


He could also solve the problem of needing a TiVo by watching shows when they air...

I've been burned by this several times...A show with a soothing soundtrack/dialog is playing, baby or wife falls asleep, dad falls asleep, show ends, and after 15 minutes TiVo dumps us to live TV and a very unpleasant awakening. It's just bad manners.

An honest to goodness screensaver with no audio wouldn't be that hard to implement.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

I agee it would be a nice feature provided it were user selectable, butr I don't see how it's possible. The Mute button doesn't do anything to the TiVo's volume, it mutes the A/V receiver or TV.

It's true I often answer the phone and stop what I am doing only to have the TiVo time out and interrupt my phone conversation. Not knowing how long the conversatiion will last, I don't usually hit the mute button. I also often walk away from the TV to do something trivial only to be interrupted by some more involved action.

To my mind the only practical solution would be the one mentioned earlier in this thread. Instead of dropping to Live TV, bring up a screensaver. That's what Galleon does.


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## refried (Dec 22, 2005)

I often found that I would hit the power button on my TiVo remote to turn off the TV then go to bed. After I'm comfortable in bed I'd hear voices in the house. TiVo had gone back to Live TV and I left my receiver still on. If there was an option to turn off the TV and the receiver, that would reduce the number of times I need to get out of bed to turn my receiver off.


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## WayneCarter (Mar 16, 2003)

wer said:


> Here's a suggestion that would address one of my pet peeves.
> 
> When I'm watching something recorded on Tivo and I get interrupted by the real world, I will often just hit the Tivo button to bring up the menus. This pauses my show, and cuts off the sound. (Or maybe I was just in the menus for some purpose when I walked away from the Tivo.)  Yes I know I could hit pause, but I don't like to walk away and leave that static image, due to the risk of burn-in.
> 
> ...


How would you get the audio back when you return? The obvious thing to do would be to unmute or change the volume, but the TV isn't muted.


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## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

WayneCarter said:


> How would you get the audio back when you return? The obvious thing to do would be to unmute or change the volume, but the TV isn't muted.


True, but if the TiVo cut the audio output then you could set it up so it reenabled it if you pressed any TiVo relivant buttons on the remote (Now Playing, channel up/down, number buttons, guide, TiVo, FF/RW/Pause/skip, etc.)

That would be a fairly resonable way to build this function. That would pretty well guarentee that the TiVo's audio would turn back on when you wanted it to. (Yeah, if you turned on the TV and then didn't press any buttons you'd be watching whatever happened to be on silently, but that's a pretty unusual case. I'd tend to think problems the other way of accidentally causing the TiVo to unmute would be more common)


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## BobB (Aug 26, 2002)

> Originally Posted by BobB
> Seems like a lot to ask of TiVO when you could solve the problem yourself by simply hitting the mute button along with going to the TiVo menu. It's all about self-discipline...





JasonJ75 said:


> He could also solve the problem of needing a TiVo by watching shows when they air...


You're seriously equating the effort of pushing one button with having to schedule your life around the air times of broadcast shows? Sheesh...


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## BobB (Aug 26, 2002)

wer said:


> Talphius, I think you might have misunderstood me. My audio DOES come right out of the Tivo and into the receiver. So my audio bypasses the television, not the Tivo. Often people do that to avoid the bad audio circuitry on many televisions... But anyway, since my audio goes directly from the Tivo to the receiver, that's why whether the TV is on or off doesn't affect sound for me.


You do realize you can program your TiVo remote turn to switch the power on the TV and A/V receiver together, yes? The programming sequence is:

1. press and hold TIVO & TV POWER, enter TV code
2. press and hold TIVO & MUTE, enter A/V receiver code
3. press and hold TIVO & TV POWER, enter A/V receiver code again

Works like a charm. You can still use the A/V's own remote to turn it on when you just want to play audio.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

BobB said:


> You do realize you can program your TiVo remote turn to switch the power on the TV and A/V receiver together, yes? The programming sequence is:


Well,

In the guest room the TV doesn't have a remote, but it's power is switched dirtectly by the A/V receiver, so I'm OK there.

In the livingroom, the TV controls the A/V receiver, so I only need to program the TV's remote code.

In the theater, both the A/V receiver and the projector have separate <Power On> and <Power Off > buttons. So I really don't need the feature in two rooms and I'm screwed in the other. Thanks for the sugestion, though. 

I do have the respective remotes set to control the volume in all three rooms, however.


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## JanS (Oct 18, 2004)

refried said:


> +1
> 
> My wife falls asleep while fast fowarding through commercials. After the show ends and the TiVo menu times out, she's usually awakened by the TiVo going back to Live TV.


I'm relieved to know that I'm not the only one that falls asleep while fast forwarding through the commericals, to just be awakened later when the TiVo times out. 

Thanks for the laugh


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## JohnJohnD (Mar 25, 2008)

I just got my first TiVo (HD), after having been a ReplayTV users for many years. I also use an AppleTV unit.

The TiVo's most annoying feature so far is the pause timeout....that's just bad behavior, for all of the reasons mentioned in this thread. My ReplayTV would stay paused forever: it did what I told it to do, no blasting me with resuming after I've fallen asleep or whatever.

There are good arguments against that, for screen burn-in, etc, but AppleTV then has a lesson for TiVo: a great screensaver that shows your uploaded pictures swirling around slowly or a choice of other options...and when you hit a key on the remote, the screensaver disappears and you're right back where you were. This is what all users expect from using any computer.

I'm absolutely shocked that at this very late date TiVo still doesn't have this screensaver functionality and obnoxiously resumes playing at some point after you've told it to pause. Considering that I've heard that TiVo is supposed to be the "Mac of DVRs" (i.e. good UI design), this is a huge lack of functionality still exists.


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