# Stream connectivity issues



## Rob the elder (Sep 24, 2013)

Looking for advice before I give up and ship the Stream back to the mothership.

Had Tivo for about a decade several years ago. I migrated to COMCAST DVR when they came out mainly because the user interface to Tivo was slow and not very user friendly. I have been watching the technology evolve and the prices of COMCAST DVR increase. Two weeks ago I decided to buy a Romeo Tivo.

The Tivo box is working fine. The user interface is a lot more responsive if still quirky. I have a Mini which appears to be functioning ok. It frequently loses the Romeo which is a bit of a pain but I can live with that.

My problem is the Stream refuses to connect to my IOS devices. I have tried several different configurations. Currently the Romeo, the Mini and the Stream are all connected to an Apple Extreme. My two iPads are both connected to the Apple Extreme and functioning normally. The ethernet connection between the Romeo and the Mini is working reasonably well with occasional hickups. But the Stream is not visible to either of the iPads.

I have done all the trouble shooting steps. Rebooted all devices, connected the Romeo to the mothership several times etc. The Stream appears to boot up correctly. The status light changes from orange to flashing light. The ethernet status lights present normally. After a couple of minutes the status light turns to steady white. And neither iPad will see the Stream.

I have deinstalled and reinstalled the Tivo ap multiple times. One of the iPads is IOS 6 and the other is IOS 7. Both connect with the router and the outside world normally. Neither sees the Stream.

The Romeo is set for streaming / sharing and is working fine.

I can manage the Romeo using the Tivo ap on either iPad.

Any ideas?

Is there a way to log onto the Stream and see its status?

Thanks in advance for any advice you have to offer before I ship the thing back.


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## windracer (Jan 3, 2003)

You can get to the Stream's status page in your web browser by going to http://{IP address of Stream}:49152/sysinfo. You'll probably have to check your router to see what IP address your Stream has.

Do you have DHCP addresses available? The Stream requires a dynamic IP assigned by your router. Since the light is going solid white it sounds like it's getting an address. Hopefully you can get into the sysinfo page and shed some light on the problem.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Rob the elder said:


> Had Tivo for about a decade several years ago. I migrated to COMCAST DVR when they came out mainly because the user interface to Tivo was slow and not very user friendly. I have been watching the technology evolve and the prices of COMCAST DVR increase. Two weeks ago I decided to buy a Romeo Tivo.
> 
> The Tivo box is working fine. The user interface is a lot more responsive if still quirky. I have a Mini which appears to be functioning ok. It frequently loses the Romeo which is a bit of a pain but I can live with that.
> 
> My problem is the Stream refuses to connect to my IOS devices.


I can't help you, but you mean the Stream *IN* the Roamio, right? If not, you don't need a separate one, it's already built in..

Plus.. Tivo *NOT* user friendly? Even for people who *don't* like Tivos (obviously not too common around here), most agree it is BY FAR the friendliest DVR... *especially* compared to cable company DVRs..


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

mattack said:


> I can't help you, but you mean the Stream *IN* the Roamio, right? If not, you don't need a separate one, it's already built in..


Only the Plus and Pro Roamios have a built in Stream. The Basic 4 tuner Roamio still requires an external Stream.


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## Rob the elder (Sep 24, 2013)

mattack said:


> I can't help you, but you mean the Stream *IN* the Roamio, right? If not, you don't need a separate one, it's already built in..
> 
> Plus.. Tivo *NOT* user friendly? Even for people who *don't* like Tivos (obviously not too common around here), most agree it is BY FAR the friendliest DVR... *especially* compared to cable company DVRs..


Thanks for your input

I have the Romeo with 4 tuners which if you check the specs does not include Stream functionality. That is why Tivo sells a separate Stream box for use with this box.

I appreciate that you like the TIVO interface but in my personal useage patterns it does not provied the simple, easy interface that my COMCAST DVR provides.

For example, to find Oregon State Football games in COMCAST its about 4 button pushes away. It is not findable in TIVO. My work around is to go to the OSU football website, find out date, time and channel then go back to TIVO, bring up the channel and then migrate to the date and time to establish a recording task.

For my useage patterns the TIVO interface is cumbersom and old tech.

On the other hand, the TIVO app on the iPad is much more user friendly and easier to use, however the search function stil will not find many of the shows I am looking for.


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## Rob the elder (Sep 24, 2013)

Dan203 said:


> Only the Plus and Pro Roamios have a built in Stream. The Basic 4 tuner Roamio still requires an external Stream.


Yes, you are correct. Thanks :up:


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## Rob the elder (Sep 24, 2013)

Update
I spent 2 hours on the phone with TIVO support last night. After going through several trouble shooting exercises, they concluded that the issue I am having is not with the Stream but as a result of the iPad TIVO app not finding the Romeo. They stated that the issue is due to the Romeo not being findable on my internal ethernet. They gave me a number of recommendations to address this and told me to call them back when / if they did not work. 

I performed reboots, reconfiguation, reconnection etc to no avail.

Then I went to the Romeo and pulled up its IP address. I went to one of my Win7 PCs and entered the IP address just to see if the PC could see the TIVO. To my surprise the Romeo came right up with the web page welcome page for my Romeo box. Obviously the PC was seeing the Romeo just fine.

I then discovered the desktop TIVO application, downloaded it and it immediately connected with the Romeo!

I downloaded to the PC several shows from the Romeo and successfully watched them. Since they are MPEG4, I improrted them into iTunes and streamed them to one of my 4 Apple TVs successfully.

Obviously connectivity with the Romeo on my home network is not an issue.

I then went to my two iPads, one IOS 6 and the second IOS 7 and executed the TIVO stream app. Neither would find the Romeo . .. 

So I went into both iPads, did a web search on the Romeo IP address and . . .. drum roll . .. BOTH iPads found the Romeo.

So . .. I am left with the conclusion that there is something wrong with the finder on the iPad TIVO app that is not allowing it to find the Romeo which IS connected to the iPad.

If anyone has any suggestions I would love to learn them.


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## herbman (Apr 8, 2008)

I would assume something involving zeroconf/bonjour or other broadcast or multicast-related settings on your router need to be played with, or the type of router/AP you have isn't playing well with these technologies.


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## Rob the elder (Sep 24, 2013)

After the Romeo lost connectivity twice yesterday and the Mini stopped streaming, and in light of the fact that the Stream never did work, I called yesterday and cancelled my TIVO account. All the hardware is going back today.

Too bad but I am no longer paying to be a beta tester for a system that is not ready for shipping to users.


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## jmpage2 (Jan 21, 2004)

Rob the elder said:


> After the Romeo lost connectivity twice yesterday and the Mini stopped streaming, and in light of the fact that the Stream never did work, I called yesterday and cancelled my TIVO account. All the hardware is going back today.
> 
> Too bad but I am no longer paying to be a beta tester for a system that is not ready for shipping to users.


You can see from the other threads on this forum that while it is unfortunate that you are having problems, you are in the minority on this one.

The fact that your PC can connect to the Roamio only proves that at the time you made that test connection, on your wired LAN the connectivity was functional.... it doesn't say anything as to the configuration/reliability of your wireless network or settings in your wireless access point or router that could monkey with connectivity that the TiVo mobile app might rely on, like Bonjour.

In general I am sympathetic to people having technical issues and even volunteer some of my own time to help troubleshoot, but it seems like you gave up fairly quickly on getting this to work.

You should have also noted that a TiVo vice president commented several days ago that a fix for connectivity related to "green switches" was coming in the span of a couple of weeks.... which, depending on your configuration might have fixed your issue.


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## Rob the elder (Sep 24, 2013)

jmpage2 said:


> You can see from the other threads on this forum that while it is unfortunate that you are having problems, you are in the minority on this one.
> 
> The fact that your PC can connect to the Roamio only proves that at the time you made that test connection, on your wired LAN the connectivity was functional.... it doesn't say anything as to the configuration/reliability of your wireless network or settings in your wireless access point or router that could monkey with connectivity that the TiVo mobile app might rely on, like Bonjour.
> 
> ...


I appreciate your comments however I am a 35+ year EE and have 15 boxes running currently in my home. I have 4 servers hosting among other things 3.5 TB of movies, TV, music and books currently. I am running multiple networks and have for years. I verified that the Winbox was connecting and then verified that both the ios devices were connecting to the DVR at the same time that the stream remained invisible.

This is not rocket science. Stuff either works or it does not. The design is either stable or its not. In my experience some of the design functioned some of the time, some of it failed to function at all. None of the hardware functioned for any appreciable period of time.

If I was looking for an engineering development program I would find something more interesting than this.

But thanks for your input.


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## jmpage2 (Jan 21, 2004)

Interesting perspective as I am also an engineer. In my case there is a 15TB SAN class SMB box in my basement (hosting 450+ movies, 1000+ TV episodes and assorted other media) and I have over 45 devices on my network, spanning multiple switches... one of those switches used to actually be a fully managed switch.

Since my Minis + TiVo work completely fine and streaming to my iPad and iPhone work great, I am left to assume that you clearly don't know what you are doing


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