# 20.2 HDUI/SDUI Poll



## nrc (Nov 17, 1999)

I'm wondering how the 20.2 release has affected use of the HDUI. Please only respond if you have 20.2.

Please comment below on how 20.2 has affected your preference.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

Gave HDUI a shot for about 10 days straight on 1 Premiere and then just couldn't stand the sluggishness and all the little bugs and annoyances so went back gladly to SDUI. HDUI is better than it was but nowhere near good enough for me.


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## btwyx (Jan 16, 2003)

I use both, and 20.2 hasn't affected my choice yet. The downstairs TiVo was on HDUI because the wife liked it, if it were up to me I'd still be using the SDUI. I'll carry on using the SDUI on the other one.

I haven't noticed much difference in the HDUI with 20.2 yet.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

Well I like still like the SDUI better but I do like the 2 guides in the HDUI, so for the first time the HDUI actually has something I prefer. If I could mix and match pieces of both it would be great


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## ADG (Aug 20, 2003)

Never used the HDUI prior to 20.2 but have started since. The thing I like most about it is being able to see which programs are scheduled to be recorded in the guide. What I don't like about it are:

1) The sluggishness of the interface.

2) The fact that when I scroll the right side of the guide to a different day the left side doesn't reflect the change.

3) If I'm playing a recording and back out of it, it continues playing (in the live video window) until I close the interface and return to live broadcast. When I leave a recording I'd like it to stop playing - the window should show the channel on one of the tuners.

4) The fact that if I scroll above the top recording in My Shows I end up bringing up one of the items in the Discovery Bar. I'd like to only go to the Discovery Bar if I really want to. Actually, I'd like to be able to simply disable the Discover Bar as an option.

5) I'd like the HDUI to be consistent throughout all options rather than switch to the SDUI when you make certain menu selections.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

I said it in other threads, but I will say it again here. I could never stand the HDUI for very long but would try it after each update, just to be fair. I maybe could go one or two days after each update before giving up in disgust and going back to the SDUI. With 20.2, I have actually stayed in the HDUI, full time, for the very first time. It has improved enough that I can just tolerate it. I do like the higher resolution screens. The Discovery bar is far less annoying than before. It is faster, overall, than it has ever been.

But it still has a ways to go before I will be happy/comfortable. It is just too sluggish- too many pauses between operations, key presses, and after highlighting programs. Trying to rapidly delete programs is still way too much of a pain. I hate accidentally ending up on the Discovery Bar because there was lag and I misnavigated, and then I am trapped there for many extra seconds (I really, really, really want to get rid of the Discovery Bar).

20.2 is a BIG step in the right direction, and I am hoping the next update will wipe more bugs, improve performance more, and give users more UI choice/control.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

This is one of the most interesting Poll results EVER. It was just posted and already has 34 results.... and MORE THAN ONE THIRD (33% at the moment) of those responding have switched to HDUI due to this one update??? That's 64% of the SDUI users. WOW!

Of course, we all know that polls in the forum do not represent the TiVo users out there, at large. People on the forum are picker, more demanding, and more savvy. But given that, the results are even more amazing in this case.


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

For me, it's all about speed and ease of use. TV watching is my #1 priority on my Elite; user interface is a far second.

I realize I may be a dying breed, but I don't use a single other form of content other than cable--no Hulu, NetFlix, etc. All I care about is watching my shows as easily as possible. And the SDUI works well for that. I want speed, responsiveness, stability, etc. Until the HDUI is as fast as the SDUI, or until there is a feature I can't live without that isn't on the SDUI, I will stick with the SDUI.

I love love love my Elite, but it is just a tool, not the goal.


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## sbiller (May 10, 2002)

HDUI in 20.2 is *dramatically *improved. I'm still waiting for Brentil to post some quantitative speed results (hint) but there are no plans for me to use the SDUI again, ever. I'm really looking forward to the Netflix update in the spring along with the fix to the Amazon VOD pixelation issues!


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## tomm1079 (May 10, 2005)

I have used it the entire time. It just did not bug me as much as others. 

I do love the speed improvements and i like the fact that you do not need to wait for the discovery bar to populate. I still dont get why they just do not cache that thing. Pull down the next display when showing the previous one (that was cached).


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## OC7 (Nov 17, 2006)

ADG said:


> What I don't like about it are:
> 
> 4) The fact that if I scroll above the top recording in My Shows I end up bringing up one of the items in the Discovery Bar. I'd like to only go to the Discovery Bar if I really want to. Actually, I'd like to be able to simply disable the Discover Bar as an option.


One way to get around this issue is to scroll up using the Channel Up arrow rather than the Up arrow. Trying to scroll above the top recording in My Shows with the Channel Up arrow does nothing.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

astrohip said:


> For me, it's all about speed and ease of use. TV watching is my #1 priority on my Elite; user interface is a far second.
> 
> I realize I may be a dying breed, but I don't use a single other form of content other than cable--no Hulu, NetFlix, etc. All I care about is watching my shows as easily as possible. And the SDUI works well for that. I want speed, responsiveness, stability, etc. Until the HDUI is as fast as the SDUI, or until there is a feature I can't live without that isn't on the SDUI, I will stick with the SDUI.
> 
> I love love love my Elite, but it is just a tool, not the goal.


+1 +1


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## gteague (Apr 1, 2007)

moyekj said:


> Gave HDUI a shot for about 10 days straight on 1 Premiere and then just couldn't stand the sluggishness and all the little bugs and annoyances so went back gladly to SDUI. HDUI is better than it was but nowhere near good enough for me.


+1 -- what he said.

my experience was the hdui on my elite slowed down incrementally day-by-day since the 20.2 update until it became as slow as it was when i first encountered it with 14.9.

/guy


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## hv9200 (Nov 22, 2005)

gteague said:


> +1 -- what he said.
> 
> my experience was the hdui on my elite slowed down incrementally day-by-day since the 20.2 update until it became as slow as it was when i first encountered it with 14.9.
> 
> /guy


Agreed, I tried the HDUI and really wanted it to work. Its just painful to use. SDUI for me until it becomes as quick as the SD


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## Thunderclap (Nov 28, 2005)

I just switched to a Premiere from the HD and am very happy with the HDUI. The sluggishness is barely noticeable in my opinion, and only appears occasionally.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

I dumped the SDUI when the premiere first came out and never looked back. I can't stand using the SDUI any more. With 20.2 the HDUI saw some great improvements. Hopefully this trend continues through the rest of 2012 and beyond.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

Thunderclap said:


> I just switched to a Premiere from the HD and am very happy with the HDUI. The sluggishness is barely noticeable in my opinion, and only appears occasionally.


 Don't try the SDUI then since the performance difference is still like night and day.


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## TooMuchTime (Jun 29, 2008)

I've used the HDUI since I got my Premiere. I tried to go back to the SDUI but it just wasn't what I wanted. One of my peeves was that, with an older release, if you went to the guide from a non-HD channel, the text was non-HD and a nuisance to try to read. They fixed that and I was happy with the HDUI at that point. Then I got a TiVo Advisors questionaire about the new HDUI. I just thought it was the text update because I hadn't got 20.2 yet. Two days after I answered the questionaire I got the 20.2 update! Oh, well.

By the way...I like the new look. I haven't noticed the slugishness mentioned here and find it easier to navigate. But, like others here, I really would like to be able to kill that stupid Discover Bar. I have *NEVER* used it. I think TiVo is getting better and 20.2 shows that.


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## gteague (Apr 1, 2007)

i dislike that if i leave a show i'm playing, it still plays in the thumbnail window.

what would be super is if i could have all 4 tuner channels replace the discover slots so they'd all show simultaneously and use the 5th one for playing a pre-recorded show. you'd have to mute the 4 tuner channels, but perhaps, while i'm dreaming!, they could program it so that if you selected a thumbnail you'd get audio. super pip!

/guy


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## phone man (Nov 4, 2011)

ADG said:


> Never used the HDUI prior to 20.2 but have started since. The thing I like most about it is being able to see which programs are scheduled to be recorded in the guide.


+1! Seeing scheduled recordings and being able to distinguish a season pass from a one time recording is very nice. I switched back and forth between hdui and sdui a few times since 20.1 but we're finding more things that we like about the hdui now that the cursor response has improved.


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## vurbano (Apr 20, 2004)

It still needs work


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## caddyroger (Mar 15, 2005)

Since 20.2 made I lot of improvements in speed and bugs I am using the HDUI. Ii still needs to faster.


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## nrc (Nov 17, 1999)

crxssi said:


> This is one of the most interesting Poll results EVER. It was just posted and already has 34 results.... and MORE THAN ONE THIRD (33% at the moment) of those responding have switched to HDUI due to this one update??? That's 64% of the SDUI users. WOW!


I think it's interesting that the results for before 20.2 are pretty close to this much older poll.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=8229768

That supports what we kind of already knew, that they hadn't made much headway in converting SDUI users until this update.


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## DonaldBurns65144 (Jan 11, 2011)

HDVI now and before. Was slow and PITA at times before 20.2 and still not perfect. However, I've learned to live with it. Now, while much improved, still isn't as I would like it to be, but SDVI left much to be desired too.


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## baggsey (Jan 25, 2002)

I find the HDUI much improved in speed, and the minor improvements to the colors and positioning of content have reduced the cluttered feel . Even the slimming down of the green TiVo progress bar is a subliminal improvement. Like the pop-up guide modifications as well.


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## logicman (Sep 14, 2005)

I just upgraded from an S3 HD to an Elite. Got 20.2 right after guided set up. I like the HDUI and saw no reason to even try the SDUI.


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## Drewster (Oct 26, 2000)

We had 20.2 for a couple weeks before the HDTV arrived. After setting up the new TV, the Premier XL now uses HD menus.


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## minimeh (Jun 20, 2011)

My experience seems to be unusual. I have never seen a significant (or, really, any) speed differences between HDUI and SDUI on my Premiere. I didn't in fact observe any significant difference between pre-20.2 HDUI and 20.2. 

But I know and believe that others have unacceptably slow performance with the HDUI, especially prior to 20.2.

So either I'm unobservant, a crackpot, or external factors are attributable to super-slow HDUI. I am going to choose external factors. 

My home network is on a 100Mbps connection (yes, that's true--see webpass.net for details) and I'm in San Francisco, not far up the road from the Alviso, CA, headquarters of TiVo, so I assume their servers are also nearby. I also specify OpenDNS as the primary and Google DNS as the secondary DNS providers, both of which are also a short hop and a skip away.

I wonder how many of the 60% plus in the poll using HDUI have similar circumstances? And how many of the SDUI for performance reasons folks don't?

Not to excuse the design choices by TiVo for the HDUI implementation, but it's easy to imagine how in development and QA performance was not an issue, whereas in the real world, performance turns out to be unacceptable for some.


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## Bulldawg9908 (Feb 19, 2011)

Until I can use parental controls in the HDUI, I'll be sticking with the SDUI.

Seriously, why are parental controls not implemented in the HDUI yet? So simple, and if they'd just fix that, I'd switch back to the HDUI and be able to view all the ads in the suggestion bar. I assume they get money for those ad views, so it seems like TiVo would have a financial incentive to fix this.

Am I the only parent with a TiVo?


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

nrc said:


> I think it's interesting that the results for before 20.2 are pretty close to this much older poll.
> 
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=8229768
> 
> That supports what we kind of already knew, that they hadn't made much headway in converting SDUI users until this update.


Yes, very interesting, indeed.

We are now up to 79 SDUI responses showing that 59% of SDUI users have switched to using the HDUI due to the 20.2 upgrade, ALONE. I expect there will always be SOME people who continue to use the SDUI, regardless of the improvements in the HDUI. And I can certainly relate- less clutter, no annoying discovery bar, many years of just automatic use of the SDUI so no desire to relearn, etc. And some that still need parental controls. But the numbers say a lot.

I hope we see lots more improvements (in features AND PERFORMANCE) in the Spring update, and this poll can be repeated to see what happens.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

minimeh said:


> My experience seems to be unusual. I have never seen a significant (or, really, any) speed differences between HDUI and SDUI on my Premiere. I didn't in fact observe any significant difference between pre-20.2 HDUI and 20.2.


Yes, you are unusual 



> But I know and believe that others have unacceptably slow performance with the HDUI, especially prior to 20.2. So either I'm unobservant, a crackpot, or external factors are attributable to super-slow HDUI. I am going to choose external factors.


Well, the problems are complex and varied. The first thing is that user's perception of speed is really extremely varied. Humans are like that. Some people are very sensitive to changes even in fractions-of-seconds response, others are not. Some are more tolerant of screen updates lagging behind actions than others. Some people more regularly already know what they want to do and are in a constant fight to get there, while others think about it more. The human factor makes things like "performance" very hard to quantify.

The base system is the same for most users- the processor, memory, and base software are the same on all Premieres (of the same release). There are differences in tuning adapters or not, cable card or not, Internet connection speed and latency, number of background computations depending on schedule updates, number of recordings at the moment, number of wishlists in place, number of programs stored, etc, etc. All can affect the performance of the system. Then, performance varies greatly depending on the exact function- deleting programs, for example, is a totally different type of operation from scrolling through a menu, or searching.

You are not unobservant or a crackpot. Your system very well might be faster in the the HDUI, for general use, than many other peoples'. But I will point out that network/Internet speed only affects certain types of performance (although it is important). And you might be someone with more patience or tolerance. Me- I freely admit I am OCD, and also VERY sensitive to lag and response time. Plus my expectations are typically much higher than average users. Another interesting note- although I do find the HDUI to be *much* slower in overall performance to the SDUI, I also find the SDUI too slow for my preference. Especially the screen updating from menu to menu, when it is redrawing. I know what I want to do, and I want to do it RIGHT NOW 



> My home network is on a 100Mbps connection (yes, that's true--see webpass.net for details) and I'm in San Francisco, not far up the road from the Alviso, CA, headquarters of TiVo, so I assume their servers are also nearby. I also specify OpenDNS as the primary and Google DNS as the secondary DNS providers, both of which are also a short hop and a skip away.


We have discussed this at length in other threads. In my case, I am something like the top 4 or 5% of ISP speed/latency in the country. Yours sounds a lot faster than mine (you might be in the top 1%), but my connection is no slouch, yet I am still not that impressed by the HDUI. The design of the forced, live-Internet dependency with little caching is a poor design choice, and I would hate to know how horrible the experience is for those in the BOTTOM 4 or 5%!



> I wonder how many of the 60% plus in the poll using HDUI have similar circumstances? And how many of the SDUI for performance reasons folks don't?
> Not to excuse the design choices by TiVo for the HDUI implementation, but it's easy to imagine how in development and QA performance was not an issue, whereas in the real world, performance turns out to be unacceptable for some.


The most important thing TiVo could do to "fix" the design of the HDUI is to sync *all* the data that it would otherwise have to pull "live" over the internet to something that is delivered through the daily calls instead. There is plenty of space on the hard drive to cache all the show and channel graphics and extended descriptions (and perhaps some search metrics). We are not updating by a slow modem anymore and most people would gladly give a few GB of space and perhaps a 6 minute data connection at night instead of 1 minute. This is not to say that drawing and other operations don't also have to be threaded and sped-up, but as long as the unit has to hit a live server with every keypress or page change, certain aspects of perceived performance will always suffer. With all or nearly-all local data, performance would not only be much better, but it would also be far more reliable. Plus, certain aspects of performance would remain the same across all users, eliminating one huge variable.


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## JulienPDX77 (Jan 13, 2012)

I use the HDUI and did prior to 20.2. The only "sluggishness" I experience has to do with not every menu being availble in the HDUI. My TV will pause when it has to go from the 720p interface back to the 480i interface to display the Account/Settings and Help menus..etc. (which is still, at least to me, a "Broken" experience as it is inconsistent). 

I have noticed that more is now available in HD without leaving a video preview screen, and that i like!


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## TiVo_Fanatic (May 29, 2006)

This may be considered a useless reply but thought I would mention I have nothing to really share since I just started using the HDUI today, I got 20.2 when I ran guided setup on my first connect and was up until about 2 hrs ago using SDUI.

I will say that I do like the Live TV window when navigating the menus and the ability to switch between the Elites 4 tuners when using the info button.

I would add that I wish the banner was at the top of the screen though like it is with the SDUI.


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## chicagobrownblue (May 29, 2008)

The green circle of death was the "third strike you're out" for me with the HDUI. I switched to the SDUI a long time ago and have never looked back. Now I view my TiVo Premiere as just a DVR that does what a DVR is supposed to do. Sort of like a Honda Civic that gets me to work versus a Lamborghini that is sexy and gets me to work. I see no reason to switch to the HDUI and find out that my less than stellar Internet connection speed/reliability repeats the green circle of death problem I had or creates a new bug. 

That said, I've encountered two bugs with the SDUI. I rebooted for one and waited for the second to resolve itself. If TiVo provided some public tracking mechanism for their software, I would report them. Since they don't, I'll let TiVo development and QA figure this own on their own.


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## TiVo_Fanatic (May 29, 2006)

chicagobrownblue said:


> The green circle of death was the "third strike you're out" for me with the HDUI. I switched to the SDUI a long time ago and have never looked back. Now I view my TiVo Premiere as just a DVR that does what a DVR is supposed to do. Sort of like a Honda Civic that gets me to work versus a Lamborghini that is sexy and gets me to work. I see no reason to switch to the HDUI and find out that my less than stellar Internet connection speed/reliability repeats the green circle of death problem I had or creates a new bug.
> 
> That said, I've encountered two bugs with the SDUI. I rebooted for one and waited for the second to resolve itself. If TiVo provided some public tracking mechanism for their software, I would report them. Since they don't, I'll let TiVo development and QA figure this own on their own.


Green circle of death ?


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

No green circles with 20.2


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## Raver (Feb 25, 2009)

I've used the HDUI since day one in my Premier and the SDUI in my SII. Always preferred the HDUI function and greater ability. Occasionally once a month or so the preview shows up top wouldn't work unless I disconnected the network cable or rebooted the router. Once in a long while I'd get a green circle that would last for about a min while deleting shows. Other than that it was always stable, but the improvements are making it even better. Still getting used to it but I see no need for SDUI for me. I do find that the blue tooth qwerty remote the commands are quicker than the stock remote.

Tivo must keep the software tip top the other providers are catching them...with that said the new HDUI gets thumbs up here.


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## chicagobrownblue (May 29, 2008)

TiVo_Fanatic said:


> Green circle of death ?


[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXO_GZob0M0[/media]


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## chicagobrownblue (May 29, 2008)

aaronwt said:


> No green circles with 20.2


But Kal reports:

"TiVo Premier Freeze and Reboot Issue"

This was either strike one or two. The problem is TiVo never identifies bugs publicly so you never know when they are fixed. And fixed bugs do come back, but new bugs do appear. Haphazard developement, QA and 0 customer dissemination of issues leads to negative impressions for some users; count me in that group now.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

aaronwt said:


> No green circles with 20.2


That's because they replaced them with "blue petals of death", instead. I *have* seen them, not often, but they do appear. And a few times, I had to stare at them for many seconds. I believe they serve the same purpose... "sorry, I am busy or waiting and can't do anything right now".

I am not sure exactly when the blue petals appeared- that SHOULD be added to the change log. Did anyone see those in 14.9? Or is this really new to 20.2?


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## gteague (Apr 1, 2007)

i swear i saw the green circle (or at least blue-green) last night when kmttg was running a processor-intensive job and i'd forgotten it was running and tried to do another intensive task directly on the elite. it lasted for 2-3 minutes. it was definitely circular (looked like a color version of the one on the kindle fire android system) and not 'flower' or 'petal' shaped. i'll try to re-create it this evening and notice more closely.

/guy


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## ltxi (Feb 14, 2010)

I just really prefer the SDUI. It works well and I like it. 

It's kinda like my current wife. After the first three I finally figured it out. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.


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## caddyroger (Mar 15, 2005)

aaronwt said:


> No green circles with 20.2


I still get them but as not offend or as long as before the update. I do use the HDUI now. It stills needs some more work.


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## GordonB (Jul 16, 2003)

Another one here who has not seen any issues with HDUI, before or after 20.2. After my S2 DirectTivo died I sprang for an XL and a plain Premire. The XL went into the living room with my main AV rig, while the Premiere went into the kitchen where we currently have a little 13 inch CRT. I run SDUI on the small system in the kitchen and HDUI on my XL. 

I have never noticed a difference between the two in terms of speed or any issues. No green circles or blue petals (knock on wood). I started with 14.8 and am now on 20.2. I use both frequently and I just can't see any performance differences. I do have Fios if that makes a difference.


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## gweempose (Mar 23, 2003)

Bulldawg9908 said:


> Until I can use parental controls in the HDUI, I'll be sticking with the SDUI.
> 
> Seriously, why are parental controls not implemented in the HDUI yet? So simple, and if they'd just fix that, I'd switch back to the HDUI and be able to view all the ads in the suggestion bar. I assume they get money for those ad views, so it seems like TiVo would have a financial incentive to fix this.
> 
> Am I the only parent with a TiVo?


Amen!

I use KidZone on all 5 of my TiVos. With 7-year-old twins, it's the only responsible thing to do. It is absolutely ridiculous that TiVo has not addressed this yet. Last night I turned off KidZone just to check out the changes they made to the HDUI. I hadn't used the HDUI in a LONG time, and I have to say I was actually impressed. It's faster than I remember, and I really like the tweaks to the interface. It's a shame these changes mean absolutely nothing to me until they properly implement the parental controls. :down: :down: :down:


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

crxssi said:


> That's because they replaced them with "blue petals of death", instead. I *have* seen them, not often, but they do appear. And a few times, I had to stare at them for many seconds. I believe they serve the same purpose... "sorry, I am busy or waiting and can't do anything right now".
> 
> I am not sure exactly when the blue petals appeared- that SHOULD be added to the change log. Did anyone see those in 14.9? Or is this really new to 20.2?


I meant to put a wink after that post. Since the green circles were gone and had been replaced.


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## Bulldawg9908 (Feb 19, 2011)

gweempose said:


> Amen!
> 
> I use KidZone on all 5 of my TiVos. With 7-year-old twins, it's the only responsible thing to do.


I'm glad to know I'm not the only parent with a TiVo. Now that the HDUI menus seem to be fixed, I'd really like to use them again. But, the 7-year-old knows how to watch shows on his own. I don't need him watching Game of Thrones by accident.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

HDUI is still too slow. Sticking with SDUI.


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## Thunderclap (Nov 28, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> HDUI is still too slow. Sticking with SDUI.


I really don't see the slow response. I'm curious... those claiming slow response, are you wireless or wired? How fast do you expect the guide to be? The only reason I ask is because with my Tivo HD and the Tivo Glo remote there was always a small lag, and with the Premiere's HDUI and Glo remote I've noticed a slight increase in speed so, for me, it works great.

As for wireless vs wired, my Tivo HD was wireless but with my Premiere I've gone wired.


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## velouria28 (Sep 23, 2008)

wmhjr said:


> HDUI is still too slow. Sticking with SDUI.


Yep. I gave the HDUI another try once I updated to 20.2 and it still just crawls.


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## WayneCarter (Mar 16, 2003)

We used the HDUI on one Premier (of 2) for a few weeks but changed back to SD because of the delays and problems.

20.2 was obviously a fairly comprehensive update - we realized there were some improvements even using SDUI, so we tried HD again. There are a number of very worthwhile additions and there have been no significant delays or problems so far. Both Premiers are now running the HDUI. 

Two of our favorite new features are ...
1) streaming playback from one Premier to another,
2) status icons in program grid (a show is recording, or will be recorded due to ToDo, Season Pass, or Wishlist (I think - haven't seen a Wishlist entry in the grid yet))


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## gweempose (Mar 23, 2003)

Thunderclap said:


> I'm curious... those claiming slow response, are you wireless or wired? How fast do you expect the guide to be?


I think people expect it to be as fast as it is using the SDUI. This is hardly an unreasonable expectation. All of my TiVos are on a wired network with a VERY fast internet connection. It's better than it used to be, but the HDUI is still substantially slower than the SDUI.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

gweempose said:


> I think people expect it to be as fast as it is using the SDUI. This is hardly an unreasonable expectation. All of my TiVos are on a wired network with a VERY fast internet connection. It's better than it used to be, but the HDUI is still substantially slower than the SDUI.


 Yes I really don't understand those that claim they don't notice any difference in speed between the 2 UIs. It's still like night and day to me. Simple things like pushing into a program from My Shows to get more details takes 5-6 seconds for HDUI vs 1 second in SDUI. To be honest I still find the SDUI a little slow for my expectations as well, but it's a heck of a lot snappier than the HDUI.
What really annoyed me in the HDUI My Shows screen is pressing -> to skip to the bottom of the list which works fine in SDUI but in HDUI it takes you to some menu choices I don't care about. So it's not just the responsiveness but it's just not very well thought out either.


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## Robert2413 (Feb 1, 2008)

I'm another person who gave the HDUI another try after the latest upgrade and found the sluggishness still irritating, so I switched back. (I am very close to Alviso and have 20 Mb/sec Comcast Business-Class Internet service, so it's hard to believe that this is the limitation for me.)

I also wish that the HDUI had an option to turn off the "live TV" window. When I'm trying to do things in the UI, I find the "live TV" nothing but a distraction. Yes, it can be suppressed with the PAUSE button, but that's just another distraction.)

That being said, when I am doing serious searching for programs, I temporarily turn on the HDUI because it has features (like sorting movies by the number of stars they are rated) that the SDUI doesn't offer.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

Thunderclap said:


> I really don't see the slow response. I'm curious... those claiming slow response, are you wireless or wired? How fast do you expect the guide to be?


http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=8928312#post8928312


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## jrboddie (Feb 4, 2012)

I tried the HDUI for about 4 days but switched back to the SDUI after two events:

1. UI froze when receiving a message that some TiVo service was not available "check back later".
2. Could not delete a previously recorded program. The 'X' appeared but the deletion would not complete.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

jrboddie said:


> I tried the HDUI for about 4 days but switched back to the SDUI after two events:
> 
> 1. UI froze when receiving a message that some TiVo service was not available "check back later".


Mine didn't do that. It just complained and then let me do most of the normal stuff.



> 2. Could not delete a previously recorded program. The 'X' appeared but the deletion would not complete.


That is becoming ever more irritating for me. Now it is happening at least twice a week, sometimes longer. You CAN delete such programs, but you have to attempt to watch it TWICE, then you can delete it. Otherwise, it seems it is just impossible to delete.


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## bbrown9 (Mar 12, 2011)

gteague said:


> i dislike that if i leave a show i'm playing, it still plays in the thumbnail window.
> 
> what would be super is if i could have all 4 tuner channels replace the discover slots so they'd all show simultaneously and use the 5th one for playing a pre-recorded show. you'd have to mute the 4 tuner channels, but perhaps, while i'm dreaming!, they could program it so that if you selected a thumbnail you'd get audio. super pip!
> 
> /guy


+1
I realy like this idea!


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

crxssi said:


> That is becoming ever more irritating for me. Now it is happening at least twice a week, sometimes longer. You CAN delete such programs, but you have to attempt to watch it TWICE, then you can delete it. Otherwise, it seems it is just impossible to delete.


I think I will revise that last statement. It is MORE than twice a week. Happened yesterday, now again today. Maybe it is almost every day. And it looks like sometimes you can delete the "problem" recordings after attempting to play it once, instead of twice.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

crxssi said:


> I think I will revise that last statement. It is MORE than twice a week. Happened yesterday, now again today. Maybe it is almost every day. And it looks like sometimes you can delete the "problem" recordings after attempting to play it once, instead of twice.


 FYI. I did run into that problem with HDUI but have not had the issue yet with SDUI. Don't know if it's coincidence or not...


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## chuck95 (Sep 13, 2008)

I noticed that by pressing the slo-mo button, the live TV window disappeared! (but I still switched back to SDUI because I prefer the fast response to the fancy looking menus)


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

moyekj said:


> FYI. I did run into that problem with HDUI but have not had the issue yet with SDUI. Don't know if it's coincidence or not...


For sure let us know if you find it in the SDUI


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## ADG (Aug 20, 2003)

I've been using the HDUI for a couple of months, but it seems the recent 20.2 software update has affected the speed of the interface significantly. I'm back to the SDUI - reluctantly. Mostly I'll miss the ability to see scheduled recordings in the guide.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

If it were just me I'd probably give the HDUI another chance, since the improvements made in 20.2 seem pretty good, but my wife hates the HDUI. Maybe if they release a version that converts all the menu screens to the HDUI I'll convince her to give it another chance, but as it is right now it's not worth the effort.

Dan


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

Bulldawg9908 said:


> Until I can use parental controls in the HDUI, I'll be sticking with the SDUI.
> 
> Seriously, why are parental controls not implemented in the HDUI yet? So simple, and if they'd just fix that, I'd switch back to the HDUI and be able to view all the ads in the suggestion bar. I assume they get money for those ad views, so it seems like TiVo would have a financial incentive to fix this.
> 
> Am I the only parent with a TiVo?


We prefer HD on our 2 new premiers (one elite and one 'plain'). But can't use it on the family elite because of the lack of parental controls.

....waiting for the next update...


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

Because of the lack of parental controls we use sd on family unit and HD on the parents unit. We really don't notice the speed difference either. I'm not mentally incompetant so I'm sure if i sat with a stopwatch I coukd see the differences but in day to day use we just dont notice it.

(Got boxes days before 20.2 so could be that we dididn't have them when the speed difference was jarring. So we never got used to it b3ing pathetic so its not stuck under our skin)


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

MichaelK said:


> Because of the lack of parental controls we use sd on family unit and HD on the parents unit. We really don't notice the speed difference either. I'm not mentally incompetant so I'm sure if i sat with a stopwatch I coukd see the differences but in day to day use we just dont notice it.
> 
> (Got boxes days before 20.2 so could be that we dididn't have them when the speed difference was jarring. So we never got used to it b3ing pathetic so its not stuck under our skin)


Trust me, if you had the Premiere when it was released, and dealt with it through the many, many, many months, you would identify the major speed improvements and appreciate them tremendously


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## ADG (Aug 20, 2003)

Actually I was happy with the HDUI speed on the Elite until 20.2 - that seemed to slow it down significantly (at least in my case). I do realize you're talking about the Premiers pre-Elite though.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

ADG said:


> Actually I was happy with the HDUI speed on the Elite until 20.2 - that seemed to slow it down significantly (at least in my case). I do realize you're talking about the Premiers pre-Elite though.


Overall, the HDUI is faster than in the previous 14.9 release. But most people have noticed that for some reason, in 20.2, it is slower to display programs, initially, under "My Recordings" (or whatever it is called now). Everywhere else seems faster.


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## DocNo (Oct 10, 2001)

When it's not spontaneously rebooting I am enjoying the HD UI post the 20.2 update. While not quick, it's finally tolerable for me - agin when the Tivo is being a Tivo and not rebooting


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

crxssi said:


> Trust me, if you had the Premiere when it was released, and dealt with it through the many, many, many months, you would identify the major speed improvements and appreciate them tremendously


i think that's probably exactly the case- and that's how "newbies" like myself can say the speed difference isn't that big a deal.

I also think that it's why people from day 1 probably are more apt to be annoyed be subtle speed differences.


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## Scooter80 (Jan 12, 2007)

I could not stand using the HDUI with the old revisions. 20.2 made it much snappier and worth using, though at times I am still disappointed with the lag. But the new features and shiny look make it too hard to revert back to the SDUI, even though they made great improvements to that as well.

Good work on this one TiVo!


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## Thunderclap (Nov 28, 2005)

From what I understand one of the cores on the processor is still inactive. Is this true? Maybe when they activate that the HDUI will blaze.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

Thunderclap said:


> From what I understand one of the cores on the processor is still inactive. Is this true? Maybe when they activate that the HDUI will blaze.


Your understanding is incorrect. Both cores are used, since 14.9. And as I and others predicted, it was not a magic pill for major performance because the software is not written to take full advantage of threading.

Of course, ANY improvement was/is welcome.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

They enabled the second core a version or two back. It helped a little but not much. The problem with multiple cores is that you have to write your code to be mufti-threaded to take advantage of them. And with UIs that's nearly impossible because almost everything that happens is in direct response to user input. They were able to move some of the background tasks, like the image caching for that top bar, to a secondary thread but it didn't help a ton.

The main thing slowing down the UI is the fact that it's written in Flash. Flash is not a compiled language, it's more like a scripting language that is interpreted on the fly. Interpreted languages require a lot more processing power to execute smoothly then compiled code, like the C code they use for the SDUI. It's kind of like comparing the speed of a website to a native program running on your PC. If you have a really fast PC you may not notice a difference, but on a slow netbook the native code is going to feel a lot faster then the website because it's more efficient to execute.

Honestly I think the UI is about as fast as it's ever going to get on the current hardware platform. They might be able to eek out a tiny bit more through optimization, but I wouldn't expect any drastic improvements. 

Dan


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## gteague (Apr 1, 2007)

despite what others tell me their experience is, i continue to see daily degradation in performance of the hdui--it gets a little slower hour by hour. i don't know if caches are filling up or what, but it's very noticeable. a reboot will help for a day or two, but then it will notch down in speed to where i'm grinding my teeth with each button press. this slowdown appears mostly in screen redrawing, but also shows up in things like displaying the season passes or the todo list although i suppose that could be a screen redrawing issue as well, although you wouldn't think so since those screens are mostly text (in the case of the todo list) or entirely text in the case of the season pass list.

/guy


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## compnurd (Oct 6, 2011)

Dan203 said:


> They enabled the second core a version or two back. It helped a little but not much. The problem with multiple cores is that you have to write your code to be mufti-threaded to take advantage of them. And with UIs that's nearly impossible because almost everything that happens is in direct response to user input. They were able to move some of the background tasks, like the image caching for that top bar, to a secondary thread but it didn't help a ton.
> 
> The main thing slowing down the UI is the fact that it's written in Flash. Flash is not a compiled language, it's more like a scripting language that is interpreted on the fly. Interpreted languages require a lot more processing power to execute smoothly then compiled code, like the C code they use for the SDUI. It's kind of like comparing the speed of a website to a native program running on your PC. If you have a really fast PC you may not notice a difference, but on a slow netbook the native code is going to feel a lot faster then the website because it's more efficient to execute.
> 
> ...


I wouldnt even say Flash is the issue. All of the major players HD User interfaces are the same speed or slightly slower then the Tivo one. I just dont think despite everything they want to say, the hardware is where it needs to be to support the type of speed everyone is expecting.

I dont even consider it slow. Comparing it to a basic text GUI, yes it is slower, but i dont ever really notice any speed issues


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

Dan203 said:


> The main thing slowing down the UI is the fact that it's written in Flash.


Just as bad are the HDUI parts/design that rely on live, Internet-download information to populate certain menus and complete certain actions. Combined with Flash, it is a double whammy.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

compnurd said:


> All of the major players HD User interfaces are the same speed or slightly slower then the Tivo one. I just dont think despite everything they want to say, the hardware is where it needs to be to support the type of speed everyone is expecting.
> 
> I dont even consider it slow. Comparing it to a basic text GUI, yes it is slower, but i dont ever really notice any speed issues


I still consider the Premiere HDUI too slow. To me, it doesn't matter if the other DVR's are also slow, that doesn't make it OK. It is better than it used to be, but it frustrates me every time I use it. (Do keep in mind that prior to 20.2, I considered the HDUI *unusable* but have now finally switched from the SDUI to the HDUI.)

Right now, the two MOST frustrating HDUI performance problems for me are 1) Populating the initial "My shows" menu and 2) Deleting multiple programs.


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## gteague (Apr 1, 2007)

that 'delete' thing used to bother me because i'm anal enough to want to actually watch the item disappear. but lately i've just been hitting delete and moving on since the operation releases you immediately and you can do other things or go elsewhere while it's taking out the trash.

that delay on displaying the show list is pretty frustrating--nothing to do but twiddle your thumbs and wait.

/guy


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

gteague said:


> that 'delete' thing used to bother me because i'm anal enough to want to actually watch the item disappear. but lately i've just been hitting delete and moving on since the operation releases you immediately and you can do other things or go elsewhere while it's taking out the trash.


No I can't, because it will redraw the screen sometimes twice, sometimes THREE TIMES while I am trying to read something. And other times it will give the petals of death for a while. I don't care when the "X" disappears, I just want to be able to keep pressing clear, read something else, clear again, etc.

And then there are all the "undeletable" programs which occur frequently when I stop a suggestion recording. Those I have to PLAY, get a stupid error that makes no sense about the channel not being available (even though it is, and it DID RECORD THE PROGRAM), and THEN I can delete it. Those seem to be getting more frequent and really, really annoy me.

At least now you know why I am upset about "delete"


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## gteague (Apr 1, 2007)

i did notice the behavior you describe (bogus error messages on delete) at least a couple of times a few weeks back, but i haven't encountered them at all lately. now i can hit delete and do nearly anything else with the delete happening in the background. of course i've been rebooting on nearly a daily basis because of my loss of signal problems which are ongoing for nearly 3 months now and that might have something to do with it.

/guy


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## northbanker (Feb 27, 2012)

MichaelK said:


> We prefer HD on our 2 new premiers (one elite and one 'plain'). But can't use it on the family elite because of the lack of parental controls.
> 
> ....waiting for the next update...


I have a new Premiere XL. I started using SDUI because it's snappier, cleaner, with less annoying junk like the discover bar. But I just switched to using HDUI (because of one feature... see "My Video Providers" below).

Yes HDUI is for sure a lot slower. And if it's true that they're rendering many page items from the Internet that is one of the more dubious architectural decisions I've heard of lately.

Not to mention switching to Flash, a now dead development platform.

But more annoying than that (for me anyway) is that they essentially abandoned parental controls in HDUI.

But then again when I tried KidZone (available in SD menu-mode only) it provided such an extremely slow & painful method of switching channels (using the up/down arrows only!) that it's a completely UNacceptible solution for us (we have a 1300 channel lineup) or I suspect anyone else whose kids are allowed to watch more than 10 channels.

It's completely baffling to me that Tivo would not allow kids to enter channel numbers but I guess this is somehow intrinsic to how KidZone channel restrictions was jury-rigged.

I don't think we'll ever use KidZone so I'm not going to bother making this request via the website form.

But what I did request was for Tivo to add password-protection to the Settings menu.

If they did that then I could effectively use "My Video Providers" in HDUI to block access to YouTube (and maybe Hulu) which is my main concern right now. And I'd be relatively overjoyed!

A password would stop my kids from going into Settings, restoring the SDUI, and easily defeating the Video Provider restrictions.

So anyway, is there any official or unofficial list of what enhancements are likely to be in the next OS release, and what rough timeframe we could expect? (or another thread where this is discussed)


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## SpikeDad (Apr 26, 2003)

I use my Tivo for 1 thing - record TV from cable. All the other crap is just that - crap which interferes with the purpose of the device. I turned on the HDUI and as soon as I saw Hulu Plus, Amazon and whatever else listed in My Shows, I turned it off.

Hulu Plus, Amazon, etc is NOT MY SHOWS and I resent more and more Tivo's intrusion into my media selection.

I don't want suggestions, shows in bars, streaming choices, etc. I want to see what I recorded so I can play it. PERIOD.

If there was a master option - NEVER SHOW ANY NON-RECORDED CONTENT, then I would be happy to switch to the HDUI. Until then, the SDUI shows me exactly what I want - what shows I recorded.

I pay for the box, I pay BIG BUCKS for the monthly service. I want it my way. That seems fair and every update, Tivo goes further into the rabbit hole away from that.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Having those features as options is one of the things I like about the Premiere. I use Hulu+, Netflix, and Amazon as well as record broadcast content.
So I do have shows in my queues in Hulu+ and Netflix. Although my purchased Amazon shows are listed like the broadcast recordings in the My SHows list.


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## northbanker (Feb 27, 2012)

Yeah but I think his point was that many of them aren't "options" per se... they are mandatory.

For example there is no option to turn off the Discover Bar so as to avoid ending up there when you scroll to the top of your list, or if you just don't care to see the trying-to-be-helpful suggestions.

But on the flip side, in HD mode you can turn off specific Video Providers like YouTube, Amazon, Netflix so that they won't be displayed.

In my ideal world, almost every Tivo item would be an option that you could toggle on/off.

One little example is how they changed the behavior of the end-key |> in playback & ff/rwd. I've spent so many years on a Series2, the old behavior is very ingrained and I like it. I just wish I had the choice on my Premiere to opt to use the old legacy end-key behavior.

But Tivo, like Apple, is not really about giving the user a lot of control and choices. That's more a Microsoft thing. So I'm not holding my breath.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

northbanker said:


> In my ideal world, almost every Tivo item would be an option that you could toggle on/off.


+1



> But Tivo, like Apple, is not really about giving the user a lot of control and choices. That's more a Microsoft thing. So I'm not holding my breath.


-1
It is more of a Linux thing to give full choice and control. In Linux, one can choose whatever desktop/window manager/user interface they want, are not forced to use a particular browser or application, don't have to "register", etc. I wouldn't use Microsoft as an example of freedom and choice.


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## northbanker (Feb 27, 2012)

crxssi said:


> It is more of a Linux thing to give full choice and control. In Linux, one can choose whatever desktop/window manager/user interface they want, are not forced to use a particular browser or application, don't have to "register", etc. I wouldn't use Microsoft as an example of freedom and choice.


Well maybe Linux allows the most choices (I wouldn't know) but I'm basically referring to MS Office products, including Outlook where there are a dizzying # of features/options/toggles. So many that you can easily get lost trying to find them. But when I compare Outlook to its biggest current rival Gmail, the freedom of choice in Outlook is miles ahead.

But we digress.  In any case we seem to agree that lots of options is not really Tivo's thing anyway.


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## nrc (Nov 17, 1999)

northbanker said:


> ...including Outlook where there are a dizzying # of features/options/toggles. So many that you can easily get lost trying to find them.


You describe a "dizzying" number of options that you can easily get lost trying to find and you think that's a user experience that TiVo should replicate?


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

nrc said:


> You describe a "dizzying" number of options that you can easily get lost trying to find and you think that's a user experience that TiVo should replicate?


I can't answer for him, but for me, there can never be too many options or controls, as long as they are very well organized. 

On some software, one that comes to mind is Xine, they even add a settings setting. On Xine it is something like "simple, intermediate, and advanced". As you went up, less options were hidden from the user, and they were typically more complex or lesser used options.


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## northbanker (Feb 27, 2012)

crxssi said:


> I can't answer for him, but for me, there can never be too many options or controls, as long as they are very well organized.


That.

You did a fine job of answering for me actually.


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## bareyb (Dec 1, 2000)

astrohip said:


> For me, it's all about speed and ease of use. TV watching is my #1 priority on my Elite; user interface is a far second.
> 
> I realize I may be a dying breed, but I don't use a single other form of content other than cable--no Hulu, NetFlix, etc. All I care about is watching my shows as easily as possible. And the SDUI works well for that. I want speed, responsiveness, stability, etc. Until the HDUI is as fast as the SDUI, or until there is a feature I can't live without that isn't on the SDUI, I will stick with the SDUI.
> 
> I love love love my Elite, but it is just a tool, not the goal.


This exactly. Well almost. I do use Amazon and YouTube occasionally... Which I can get on the SD UI. The HD UI is still too cluttered and slow. I honestly don't think we are going to see a really good (responsive) HDUI until the next generation of TiVos with a faster processor. Which sucks since I just bought an Elite with Lifetime... I can't believe they didn't upgrade the processor in the new Elite. Stupid, stupid, stupid...


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

bareyb said:


> This exactly. It's still too cluttered and slow. I honestly don't think we are going to see a really good (responsive) HDUI until the next generation of TiVos with a faster processor. Which sucks since I just bought an Elite with Lifetime... I can't believe they didn't upgrade the processor in the new Elite. Stupid, stupid, stupid...


It is not necessarily stupid. Remember, the Elite is a Premiere, which is a Series 4. It is not as simple as just throwing in a faster CPU- these are boards that are designed around embedded processors and chipsets that designed around each other. One can't just have a faster CPU without jumping a generation or two of everything else along with it. And that would mean a Series 5, which would not be compatible with the software. Make no mistake, the software is a lot more complex and difficult than just picking a new board. Dealing with all the bugs and stability problems should prove that to everyone.

I am sure when the Series 5 comes around, it will have a *much* faster everything- faster cores, more cores, faster GPU, more and faster memory, etc. The performance issues of the Series 4 will likely be a thing of the past because the raw power of the platform will make up for the shortcomings of the current software design (assuming they don't continue to chain it to live/Internet data for UI elements). As for stability, usability, reliability, design, customizability, etc.... well, we can only hope TiVo has learned some hard lessons by then.


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## bareyb (Dec 1, 2000)

I just don't understand TiVo and some of the moves they make sometimes I guess... Why didn't they make the Series 4 capable of running their own HDUI? It's stupid... People had been BEGGING for that for YEARS. Then they release it and it sucks... Great...

They always seem to undercut themselves (ostensibly to save a few bucks) and then release a disappointing product... I'd have rather paid a few bucks more and have something I can actually use... As it is, I find the HDUI "unusable" for my purposes. The only way I'd use it is if I HAD to. It's far too frustrating for me to use on a day to day basis and I don't think it's going to get much better without a major upgrade to the hardware...

Having said that, it was worth it to me to get the FOUR TUNERS. Now that's something they did quite well... Probably because the Hard Drive manufactures did all the hard work on that one... I love my TiVos and even dumped DirecTV for dumping them... I just wish they had worked a bit longer on the HDUI/Proecessor specs ahead of time to make sure it was going to work... As it is, it sucks. 

They needed a home run on the Elite what with DirecTV coming out with their own 5 tuner model... They did not get a home run... At best they got a double with the four tuners... that's about it... Hopefully they stay in business and I can sell my Elite and get the Series 5 when it comes out... Which may not be long if you look at the prices on Premieres these days...


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

bareyb said:


> They always seem to undercut themselves (ostensibly to save a few bucks) and then release a disappointing product... I'd have rather paid a few bucks more and have something I can actually use... As it is, I find the HDUI "unusable" for my purposes. The only way I'd use it is if I HAD to. It's far too frustrating for me to use on a day to day basis and I don't think it's going to get much better without a major upgrade to the hardware...


I have never been able to use/tolerate the HDUI until the 20.2 update. Since then, I have switched. But I do know what you mean... I can *barely* tolerate the HDUI most of the time. It is at the lowest threshold for me.



> Having said that, it was worth it to me to get the FOUR TUNERS [of his new Premiere Elite]. Now that's something they did quite well...


*I* don't think so, because I want OTA too  So like you said before, it is like they "undercut themselves" yet again.... at least for some people.



> They needed a home run on the Elite what with DirecTV coming out with their own 5 tuner model... They did not get a home run... At best they got a double with the four tuners... that's about it...


Well, like I said before, changing the CPU was probably not an option at this time, so they were stuck with the constraints of the Series 4.


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## bareyb (Dec 1, 2000)

crxssi said:


> I have never been able to use/tolerate the HDUI until the 20.2 update. Since then, I have switched. But I do know what you mean... I can *barely* tolerate the HDUI most of the time. It is at the lowest threshold for me.
> 
> *I* don't think so, because I want OTA too  So like you said before, it is like they "undercut themselves" yet again.... at least for some people.
> 
> *Well, like I said before, changing the CPU was probably not an option at this time, so they were stuck with the constraints of the Series 4.*


Which begs the question... Why didn't they put in a faster processor to begin with? Because they "hoped" this El Cheapo one would work? I think whoever specs out their new boxes should be fired.


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## gteague (Apr 1, 2007)

not to change the subject, because i agree with everything you are saying and i find the hdui so problematical that i change back and forth on a weekly basis as i tell myself, 'hey, was it (hdui) really as bad as you imagined it?', and, sadly, the answer is nearly always 'yes'.

but, from my perspective of trying to get my elite to stay running since i bought it last december, there's also the problem that the elite won't work with the very same environment and cable cards that the s3 worked with. at least in my situation it doesn't and i'm on my 2nd box now. and i'm on either my 6th or 8th cable card--i've lost count among the truck rolls and endless phone calls on hold with the tw pairing center. so the speed issues sort of fade into the background when you can't enjoy the shows that do get recorded because you're bouncing out to livetv every 15 minutes to check whether your channels are still there.

/guy


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## bareyb (Dec 1, 2000)

All of my CableCard problems have ended up (after many hours on the phone) to always be the fault of my CableCo. Comcast in my case. I activated my first TiVo with CableCards back in 2006 and they have not gotten any better at it. The one thing I've learned is to go directly to the "CableCard specialist" (not sure if your CableCo has one) and then insist that they talk to the people at the "Head End" here locally. THAT'S almost always been the problem. They have it right on one end but wrong at the other. 

I feel your pain. I was literally SCREAMING at Comcast when they still couldn't get my CableCards to work on my new Premiere and wanted me to go back and get some more (I brought two and neither worked). They always opt for "get another card" which only works half the time. Most of the other cards are hosed too... It's totally unforgivable, but in this one case, I can't blame TiVo. That really doesn't help much since you still have to deal with it... 

The only thing that's kept me sane is that once I've gotten my TiVos to work, they worked. For years. If I started having to have regular Truck Rolls and had constant problems, I think I'd probably have to take a hard look at going back to DirecTV... They have a 5 Tuner model out now that's supposedly not too bad at all..


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## gteague (Apr 1, 2007)

bareyb said:


> All of my CableCard problems have ended up (after many hours on the phone) to always be the fault of my CableCo.


yep, i have absolutely no reluctance to blame my local cableco. but in this case, i had a working s3 for (give or take the tuning adaptor rollout ordeal) five years and the only thing that changed was that i replaced the s3 with an elite. in that circumstance it's hard not to blame tivo for rolling out hardware that won't work under the exact same conditions their previous hardware did. and that's why i dragged them, kicking and screaming all the way, i might add, into my nightmare. if i have to suffer, the pain needs to be spread around, is my philosophy. [g]

/guy


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## bareyb (Dec 1, 2000)

Well I sure hope they get it worked out for you. If there's one thing I care about it's my DVR working as it should. That would severely stress me out...


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## gteague (Apr 1, 2007)

oh, there's stress! [g]

i'm to the point where i remote control into my mac from work since i'm there for up to 14 hours at a time (and remote control wasn't easy to get working considering we have some of the most aggressive firewalls and proxies in the industry), then run kmttg remotely on my imac to see if it looks like shows are recording or not. usually, if the channels are out a recording will stop or abort in about 6-12 minutes after it starts, complaining there's no signal.

my only recourse in that instance is using the kmttg remote control tool to issue a blind ( i can't see the tivo screen) series of about 12-15 remote keypresses to try to reboot the tivo from the menu system. the kicker is that every remote keypress has to work and the timing has to be perfect because if the tivo doesn't respond to a single keystroke it'll throw the whole sequence off. yes, it's come down to that, blindly stabbing out in the dark ether to surgically save just a few recordings--how bad is that! [g]

/guy


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## bareyb (Dec 1, 2000)

gteague said:


> oh, there's stress! [g]
> 
> i'm to the point where i remote control into my mac from work since i'm there for up to 14 hours at a time (and remote control wasn't easy to get working considering we have some of the most aggressive firewalls and proxies in the industry), then run kmttg remotely on my imac to see if it looks like shows are recording or not. usually, if the channels are out a recording will stop or abort in about 6-12 minutes after it starts, complaining there's no signal.
> 
> ...


Wow. Seriously? I can see how that may be tough to pull off. 

Have you thought of hooking up a Webcam and pointing it at your TV? At least you could see where you're navigating to...


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## gteague (Apr 1, 2007)

bareyb said:


> Have you thought of hooking up a Webcam and pointing it at your TV? At least you could see where you're navigating to...


why yes, yes i have! but then i'd have to find a way to turn on the tv remotely and then i'd be watching the shows, and it would probably all spiral out of control ... i'm only one step ahead of the outsourcers as it is ... [g]

but i guess it could be worse--i could be married and waking up my wife at 0330 in the morning saying, 'honey--go see if the tivo is still running'. course i wouldn't me married very long ... [g]

/guy


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## bareyb (Dec 1, 2000)




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## bareyb (Dec 1, 2000)

UPDATE: I'm using the HDUI and I have to admit, it's gotten a lot less sluggish over time. Perhaps it has to cache all those channels and items in "My Shows". Not sure, but if you are like me and were having it literally CRAWL, give it a few hours and try it again. 

At first, I'd go into the guide and it would show no channels, then I'd wait and wait and wait and then they'd finally show up. That's not happening anymore. The "My Shows" menu is considerably faster now too. So not as bad as my previous rant would indicate.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

bareyb said:


> At first, I'd go into the guide and it would show no channels, then I'd wait and wait and wait and then they'd finally show up. That's not happening anymore. The "My Shows" menu is considerably faster now too. So not as bad as my previous rant would indicate.


 Wait a few days and will be sluggish again. The other day I switched to HDUI and pulled out a stopwatch and timed how long it takes to push into program details from My Shows screen and wait for the whole screen to refresh (including Discovery Bar). Total time was 13.5 seconds. Repeating it again for exact same show was 11 seconds. Maybe if I stay in HDUI a day or 2 that time comes down a little, but it's still on the order of 7-8 seconds is about as fast as I've seen it. If that's what people call "acceptable" it will never be so for me. Anything more than 2 seconds already gets on my nerves.


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## bareyb (Dec 1, 2000)

moyekj said:


> Wait a few days and will be sluggish again. The other day I switched to HDUI and pulled out a stopwatch and timed how long it takes to push into program details from My Shows screen and wait for the whole screen to refresh (including Discovery Bar). Total time was 13.5 seconds. Repeating it again for exact same show was 11 seconds. Maybe if I stay in HDUI a day or 2 that time comes down a little, but it's still on the order of 7-8 seconds is about as fast as I've seen it. If that's what people call "acceptable" it will never be so for me. Anything more than 2 seconds already gets on my nerves.


Oh... I'll have to wait and hope that doesn't happen. It's fairly snappy at the moment... If it stayed like this, I could live with it.


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## ADG (Aug 20, 2003)

It's true for me. It just gets slower and slower.


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## gteague (Apr 1, 2007)

yes, i've remarked several times in several threads that it degrades over time and have been pooh-poohed by many who are not observing that behavior. over the last 5 days i've observed it slowing down so much that it was literally redrawing elements of the screen when switching between certain options. usually i get fed up and reboot, but since i was starting a 3-day work swing i decided to see whether it would get any worse, but it seems to have actually recovered quite dramatically over the course of 1-2 days.

perhaps caches are filling up and flushing, but more likely, i'd say, is that tivo's servers are sometimes responding more slowly and then catching up. that seems a likely theory except for the fact that the slowdown gradually gets worse over the course of 3-5 days and if it was solely tivo's servers you'd think it would be more erratic. so i'm falling back on the hypothesis of internal processing being the culprit.

/guy


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## eddieb187 (Jan 17, 2009)

Even though 20.2 is a big improvement.
I agree with others that the HDUI is still so frustratingly slow at times.
I really wish TiVo could fix that. Seems to bog down over time.
My Shows takes too long to populate at times as well.
Sometimes rebooting the HDUI helps a little.
Even with a fast internet connection those tiles up at the top take long to load.
Where the hell are those loading from? Where ever it is they need a faster connection.
Maybe TiVo's servers are overloaded.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

eddieb187 said:


> Even with a fast internet connection those tiles up at the top take long to load. Where the hell are those loading from? Where ever it is they need a faster connection. Maybe TiVo's servers are overloaded.


No. They should not be loaded from anywhere at all except a local cache. That is one of the primary reasons the HDUI design is so flawed. It should not depend on a live Internet connection or live servers to feed it stuff to display on basic menus. Everything it needs SHOULD be at least cached, or at most downloaded during the daily service connections.


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## northbanker (Feb 27, 2012)

crxssi said:


> No. They should not be loaded from anywhere at all except a local cache. That is one of the primary reasons the HDUI design is so flawed. It should not depend on a live Internet connection or live servers to feed it stuff to display on basic menus. Everything it needs SHOULD be at least cached, or at most downloaded during the daily service connections.


If that's really true, that they're depending on live Internet for menus to be populated, then that could be one of the most naiive programming decisions ever.

Tivo acts as a front-end for content which is mostly delivered via CABLE service. For them to architect such a functional dependency on Internet service that must be always on and always fast, in order to navigate their menus ... that would be just plain dumb.

And especially dumb when you think that much of the time Tivo menus are just allowing you to get to content that's already been copied to your local DVR. That should have nothing to do with the Internet.

And if they did make that architectural mistake awhile back, and now have to live with it for awhile, the least they could do is to provide more control of Settings, e.g. to disable the discover bar at top, which seems to annoy and slow down a lot of folks.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

The alternative would be to cache thousands of thumbnails and the info to go with it. Since there would be thousands of items that could come up depending on the show being watched.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

aaronwt said:


> The alternative would be to cache thousands of thumbnails and the info to go with it. Since there would be thousands of items that could come up depending on the show being watched.


That is exactly what I propose. And yes, it would be thousands of images. Each being a small number of kilobytes. It is exactly what web browser have done for many years, and they do it quite well. The difference, is that it could be used completely off-line (Web browsers still ping the server for every image to make sure they are current. With daily updates, this would simply be unnecessary in a TiVo application).

I bet it would only take a few hundred megabytes to store everything that currently has to be downloaded on-the-fly right now. Premiere drives are all a MINIMUM of a third of a terabyte, so this is like no space at all. We are talking about what, sacrificing 10 min of HD video storage?

And this can be done in parts/sections for new machines to prevent too much data during the first call. And once the bulk is obtained, updates wouldn't take that much data or time (plus it is done in the background, anyway).

There are still other design flaws in the HDUI that hurt performance, but I suspect this would address one of the bigger ones.


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## northbanker (Feb 27, 2012)

There've been a lot of comments in this thread about how the HDUI crawls sometimes but then gets better for a spell then gets worse again.

My general menu responsiveness hasn't been as snappy as my old Series 2 but it also has not been so unbearable as to force me to abandon HDUI.

However, I have had one annoying problem that may be related. When I fast forward one-click (one fwd arrow) it usually has not gone faster and the fluidity is totally inconsistent... it will just be going normal live speed for 10-15 secs then speed up all of a sudden for several seconds then back to normal live speed.

This is in stark contrast to my Series 2 which always fast-forwarded very FLUIDLY, none of this speeding up then slowing down, over and over, that my new Premier does.

Particuraly annoying because I watch a ton of soccer, sometimes in FF mode and I need it to be consistently fluid.

Now here's the weird thing that makes me wonder if it's similar to the other people's speed complaints... tonite it fixed itself! At least for the one game I watched. One-click FF was just the right speed and very consisent at that.

I think we can rule out the Internet dependency theory for fast-forwarding, right? (I sure hope so!) It has to be all local processing right? And as such, then maybe it's just a matter of a frequently over-burdened, under-sized CPU?


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

northbanker said:


> However, I have had one annoying problem that may be related. When I fast forward one-click (one fwd arrow) it usually has not gone faster and the fluidity is totally inconsistent... it will just be going normal live speed for 10-15 secs then speed up all of a sudden for several seconds then back to normal live speed.
> 
> This is in stark contrast to my Series 2 which always fast-forwarded very FLUIDLY, none of this speeding up then slowing down, over and over, that my new Premier does.


 That's because your series2 is encoding to mpeg2 itself with a fixed GOP structure. On Premiere you are recording the mpeg2 stream as provided from cable company and depending on the GOP structure (iframes, pframes, etc) FF can be smooth or choppy. i.e. On the Premiere you are at the mercy of cable company encoding, for series 2 TiVo is doing its own encoding which is why it's consistent there.


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## northbanker (Feb 27, 2012)

moyekj said:


> That's because your series2 is encoding to mpeg2 itself with a fixed GOP structure. On Premiere you are recording the mpeg2 stream as provided from cable company and depending on the GOP structure (iframes, pframes, etc) FF can be smooth or choppy. i.e. On the Premiere you are at the mercy of cable company encoding, for series 2 TiVo is doing its own encoding which is why it's consistent there.


Wow, so you're saying that the lack of FF fluidity is dependant on which channel/program I recorded??

Last night's recording that was smooth was from Espn2 whereas most of what I watch(which is not smooth) is from Fox Soccer.

I don't understand all of the technical stuff (e.g. GOP?) but I have to say it doesn't make sense to me that something that was recorded by Tivo and is being played back locally shouldn't be fluid in FF mode.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

I have been using the HDUI again for awhile because I really do like HDUI's Guide better than the guide in the SDUI. 

On my Premiere the HDUI is still slower than the SDUI however the Premiere's HDUI is certainly much faster than my old Series 2's UI, and very close to my TiVo HD and Original Series 3's UIs. I do have the live TV preview window turned of most of the time, which does seem to help the HDUI function better. I am OTA only so no cable cards or tuning adapters to mess up but I have upgrade the drive to a 2TB and it is 94% full with about 40+ season passes. My units are all hard wired and I have Frontier DSL so my Internet isn't anything to write home about. 

My point to all this is that everyone's Premiere should be functioning adequately (yes there still is room for more improvement) at this point in the HDUI (unlike 2 or even a year ago) so if yours isn't I would say you have issues not inherent to all Premieres that should be correctable if you can figure out what the issues are.

Good Luck,


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

atmuscarella said:


> My point to all this is that everyone's Premiere should be functioning adequately (yes there still is room for more improvement) at this point in the HDUI (unlike 2 or even a year ago) so if yours isn't I would say you have issues not inherent to all Premieres that should be correctable if you can figure out what the issues are.


 Adequate by your definition does not mean adequate for everyone. Push into show details from HDUI My Shows screen and time how long it takes with a stopwatch. It's several seconds for the right side of the screen to fully refresh and a few more seconds for Discovery Bar. The total time for both is ridiculous for my standards, but even ignoring the Discovery Bar refresh several seconds to see show details is way beyond my patience threshold but might be fast enough for you.
The SDUI is still available and I know it's much faster than the HDUI. Probably on a future platform SDUI will be history but for series 4 platform knowing that a much faster SDUI is available I will always be inclined to choose it over the existing HDUI implementation regardless of bells and whistles I may be missing out on.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

moyekj said:


> Adequate by your definition does not mean adequate for everyone. Push into show details from HDUI My Shows screen and time how long it takes with a stopwatch. It's several seconds for the right side of the screen to fully refresh and a few more seconds for Discovery Bar. The total time for both is ridiculous for my standards, but even ignoring the Discovery Bar refresh several seconds to see show details is way beyond my patience threshold but might be fast enough for you.
> The SDUI is still available and I know it's much faster than the HDUI. Probably on a future platform SDUI will be history but for series 4 platform knowing that a much faster SDUI is available I will always be inclined to choose it over the existing HDUI implementation regardless of bells and whistles I may be missing out on.


When I say adequate I mean compared to the SDUI on a Series 3 as the Premiere's HDUI is now not noticeably slower than the Series 3 SDUI (I believe it is still slower but only slightly).

But of course you are correct "Adequate" means something different to each of us. However my Premiere doesn't take seconds to do anything; at least anything I ask it to do which maybe more limited than other people, such as using the Discovery Bar as I never go to it.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

northbanker said:


> Wow, so you're saying that the lack of FF fluidity is dependant on which channel/program I recorded??
> 
> Last night's recording that was smooth was from Espn2 whereas most of what I watch(which is not smooth) is from Fox Soccer.
> 
> I don't understand all of the technical stuff (e.g. GOP?) but I have to say it doesn't make sense to me that something that was recorded by Tivo and is being played back locally shouldn't be fluid in FF mode.


Actually, it does make sense, but it would be hard to describe why in a non-technical manner....

Put it this way- the people *encoding* the video can use a variety of methods. Some use a method that is more friendly to "scanning" (FF) than others. It is outside the control of TiVo. In any typical, modern compressed video stream, each frame of video depends on the previous many frames for decoding. But there are frames that are uncompressed, every now and then in the stream and those are the frames that are used for fast motion. The fewer of those "full"/"uncompressed" frames, the jerkier the fast forward will be, but the less efficiently compressed the total video stream becomes.

Hopefully that description will help.


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## northbanker (Feb 27, 2012)

crxssi said:


> Put it this way- the people *encoding* the video can use a variety of methods. Some use a method that is more friendly to "scanning" (FF) than others. It is outside the control of TiVo. In any typical, modern compressed video stream, each frame of video depends on the previous many frames for decoding. But there are frames that are uncompressed, every now and then in the stream and those are the frames that are used for fast motion. The fewer of those "full"/"uncompressed" frames, the jerkier the fast forward will be, but the less efficiently compressed the total video stream becomes.


Thanks, that helps me understand it better.

Earlier, Moyekj wrote: "That's because your series2 is encoding to mpeg2 itself with a fixed GOP structure"

So this begs the question, why doesn't the Premier just do the same thing... use a fixed GOP structure?

Was this another one of those "worse-for-usablity" architectural decisions they made when redesigning for Premiere/HD?

And so when I'm in FF mode and 10-15 secs worth of frames go by at normal speed, are those the frames that are compressed or uncompressed?


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

northbanker said:


> Thanks, that helps me understand it better.
> 
> Earlier, Moyekj wrote: "That's because your series2 is encoding to mpeg2 itself with a fixed GOP structure"
> 
> ...


 The Series 2 is taking in an analog input and encoding to mpeg2 itself, hence it has control over how the resulting encoding is. Series 4 units are basically taking the digital stream from cable company already encoded as mpeg2 and saving them to disk - i.e. It does not do any mpeg2 encoding for digital channels and you wouldn't want it to since that would mean further degradation of quality beyond whatever the cable company transmits. If you happen to record an "analog" channel with Series 4 unit then it will encode to mpeg2 similar to Series 2 units. But for most cable companies now once you have CableCard installed in your Series 4 unit there won't be any analog channels to record from. The days are numbered for cable companies broadcasting analog channels anyway since they are bandwidth hogs and cable companies eventually want to get rid of them completely.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

northbanker said:


> Thanks, that helps me understand it better.
> 
> Earlier, Moyekj wrote: "That's because your series2 is encoding to mpeg2 itself with a fixed GOP structure"
> 
> So this begs the question, why doesn't the Premier just do the same thing... use a fixed GOP structure?


oops- you missed it again 
The series 2 was analog. It was the TiVo that did the encoding (digitizing) and storage of video. The series 4 is pretty much a digital-tv-only device. It does no encoding/recording at all, it just copies the already-encoded digital stream to a hard drive. Thus, the TiVo has zero control about video bitrate, resolution, quality, encoding, etc.



> And so when I'm in FF mode and 10-15 secs worth of frames go by at normal speed, are those the frames that are compressed or uncompressed?


I am not confirming that different "I" frames (what moyekj called "GOP") is what affects the FF behavior YOU are seeing, only that it *can* affect FF behavior. I could be wrong, but typically whenever you use any type of fast play on digital video, the only frames you see displayed are "I" frames. The video decoders found in most equipment typically cannot decode regular 1080i video "B" frames fast enough for faster-than-realtime playback. If the number of "I" frames per second do not mesh well with the selected fast-play playback speed, it can lead to unusual jerkiness. It should not lead to seconds of realtime and seconds of fast-play alternating back and forth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_compression_picture_types


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## northbanker (Feb 27, 2012)

moyekj said:


> The Series 2 is taking in an analog input and encoding to mpeg2 itself, hence it has control over how the resulting encoding is. Series 4 units are basically taking the digital stream from cable company already encoded as mpeg2 and saving them to disk


Yeah that's what I was guessing about the analog.

So I wonder if other DVR companies e.g. those from cable providers, have the same problem with non-fluid, stuttered fast-forwarding?

And I don't mean the expected jerkiness due to the I-frame mechansim that Crxssi just discussed but I mean the seconds of real-time play followed by seconds of FF play, back and forth in random durations.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

aaronwt said:


> The alternative would be to cache thousands of thumbnails and the info to go with it. Since there would be thousands of items that could come up depending on the show being watched.


I'd vote that merely caching the few hundred items that are in the my shows and suggestions lists would probably work for the vast majority of the time and would be a lot less than the thousands you think.

A little bit of logical algorithms and you could probably add another couple hundred and get the majority of the next tier.

Even if it is thousands- how much room is that really on the hard drive? The same amount of room as a 30 second showcase clip? (and I'm not suggesting they do away with showcases- they use them no where near to where they used to in the beginning so just observing that they have plenty of room in the "reserved space" they put on each drive.


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## bareyb (Dec 1, 2000)

atmuscarella said:


> *When I say adequate I mean compared to the SDUI on a Series 3 *as the Premiere's HDUI is now not noticeably slower than the Series 3 SDUI (I believe it is still slower but only slightly).
> 
> But of course you are correct "Adequate" means something different to each of us. However my Premiere doesn't take seconds to do anything; at least anything I ask it to do which maybe more limited than other people, such as using the Discovery Bar as I never go to it.


That hasn't been the case for me so far. I still have two Series 3 OLEDS and the SDUI is significantly snappier than the HDUI on my new Premiere Elite.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

bareyb said:


> That hasn't been the case for me so far. I still have two Series 3 OLEDS and the SDUI is significantly snappier than the HDUI on my new Premiere Elite.


 +1. S3 OLED SDUI is much snappier than Premiere HDUI and in fact only a little slower than Premiere SDUI.


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## MeInDallas (Jul 31, 2011)

bareyb said:


> That hasn't been the case for me so far. I still have two Series 3 OLEDS and the SDUI is significantly snappier than the HDUI on my new Premiere Elite.


My new Elite is horribly slow as well. The regular Premiere I have is so so, but my God this Elite I cant hardly use the HDUI on it, I just have it on the SDUI. Totally not what I expected from a Tivo with a faster processor.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

Sorry- too lazy to read every post- but have people with the really slow machines fiddled with the settings for the ribbon (or whatever it's called)- and tried setting it to only display stuff from your my shows list? 

I'm not positive in any way But i think that would minimize the amount of pictures it could possibly want to download (and in a perfect world much of it would be cached already on the tivo)- so maybe that would speed things up?

I know i fiddled with those settings as soon as I got my premieres and they don't annoy me with their speed on a regular basis. (again what's "OK" for any one person is clearly subjective) 

After having the 2 premiers for some time now- I have in fact found some times when for whatever reason the HDUI stalls while it seems to be waiting on pcitures for the ribbon to download. It's not regular but it happens. It might be related to me telling it more recently that it's ok to put suggestions in the top bar also. So now it's looking for things beyond just my shows. Might also be that my shows is filling up way more. But again I'm not positive at all.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

MichaelK said:


> Sorry- too lazy to read every post


/\/\ega Lazy!!!!!! You have to read all 1,000 posts to each thread before commenting!!!! 



> - but have people with the really slow machines fiddled with the settings for the ribbon (or whatever it's called)- and tried setting it to only display stuff from your my shows list?
> 
> I'm not positive in any way But i think that would minimize the amount of pictures it could possibly want to download (and in a perfect world much of it would be cached already on the tivo)- so maybe that would speed things up?


I have no proof, but I don't think it matters much. The settings really don't give that much latitude, and even at the "lowest" settings, it still has to get thumbnails for everything you have already recorded and all the "suggestions" it comes up with. Plus, it doesn't seem to cache much, if at all. Your logic is certainly sound, though.


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## bareyb (Dec 1, 2000)

moyekj said:


> Wait a few days and will be sluggish again. The other day I switched to HDUI and pulled out a stopwatch and timed how long it takes to push into program details from My Shows screen and wait for the whole screen to refresh (including Discovery Bar). Total time was 13.5 seconds. Repeating it again for exact same show was 11 seconds. Maybe if I stay in HDUI a day or 2 that time comes down a little, but it's still on the order of 7-8 seconds is about as fast as I've seen it. If that's what people call "acceptable" it will never be so for me. Anything more than 2 seconds already gets on my nerves.





bareyb said:


> Oh... I'll have to wait and hope that doesn't happen. It's fairly snappy at the moment... If it stayed like this, I could live with it.


Yeah. It got me too. Slowed to a crawl. I'm done messing with it. I don't think we will see this UI work correctly until the next hardware upgrade. I'm back on the SDUI again.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

bareyb said:


> Yeah. It got me too. Slowed to a crawl. I'm done messing with it. I don't think we will see this UI work correctly until the next hardware upgrade. I'm back on the SDUI again.


Interesting, I finally had this happen to me now. For almost a whole day it was slow, slow, slow. One time I finished watching a show and deleted it and spent 18 seconds staring at the petal animation on a black screen!

But, then it seemed to return to "normal" speed just as mysteriously, the next day.


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## bareyb (Dec 1, 2000)

crxssi said:


> Interesting, I finally had this happen to me now. For almost a whole day it was slow, slow, slow. One time I finished watching a show and deleted it and spent 18 seconds staring at the petal animation on a black screen!
> 
> But, then it seemed to return to "normal" speed just as mysteriously, the next day.


As far as I can tell, the only real "upgrade" to the UI was putting "check marks" next to shows you plan to record in the guide. Am I missing anything else?

If that's the only new feature (couldn't care less about the ribbon) that I'd actually USE then I'm okay leaving the HDUI behind until they can get it to work a little more reliably. Unfortunately, I don't think that's going to happen until they come out with the Series 5. They may tweak the software a bit more, but honestly, I don't think it's going to get much better than it is now until there's a faster processor in there.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

bareyb said:


> As far as I can tell, the only real "upgrade" to the UI was putting "check marks" next to shows you plan to record in the guide. Am I missing anything else?


http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=481338
There were actually significant changes and performance increases.



> If that's the only new feature (couldn't care less about the ribbon) that I'd actually USE then I'm okay leaving the HDUI behind until they can get it to work a little more reliably. Unfortunately, I don't think that's going to happen until they come out with the Series 5. They may tweak the software a bit more, but honestly, I don't think it's going to get much better than it is now until there's a faster processor in there.


There was a big performance boost with 14.9+20.2. I do think it could be much faster, but believe it would require significant redesign. Good things are promised for the Spring update, but I think it will be more about adding new Netflix, Youtube, etc modules.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

crxssi said:


> /\/\ega Lazy!!!!!! You have to read all 1,000 posts to each thread before commenting!!!!
> 
> I have no proof, but I don't think it matters much. The settings really don't give that much latitude, and even at the "lowest" settings, it still has to get thumbnails for everything you have already recorded and all the "suggestions" it comes up with. Plus, it doesn't seem to cache much, if at all. Your logic is certainly sound, though.


Honestly I think it does make a BIG difference. (i think the old settings were "more" or "less"? but )The current software settings are yes or no for- 
popular on live tv
sports on live tv
top picks
suggestions
my shows
new on demand
popular on the web.

1) when i first got my elite i set it to only show me the shows in MY Shows and I thought it was plenty fast enough (sorry not sure if my comments where in this thread or another)- BUT recently i told it to allow suggestions in the discovery bar too and since then a few times it's noticeably lagged on me. (it COULD be that as i get more content on it the box slows down.

-BUT- what really makes me thing it matters is-

2) last night I got an error that my box was fine connecting to the internet but couldn't connect to the tivo service (I think it was error N23...) - the box had limited functionality- there were some screens it didn't let me access. BUT i did notice that every show in My shows had the picture for it when i selected it (the picture it shows in the right hand column). There's times when i know i select things and the picture doesn't always pop up immediately over there- but even when not connected to the tivo service i was seeing the pictures for everything there. Leads me to believe that tivo is smart enough to cache the pcitures for the my shows list locally. Assuming that those are the same pictures that are used in the discovery bar then those pictures are already cached on the tivo locally.

for those who think the HD UI is too slow- I'd love for you folks to try and set the discovery bar to ONLY my shows and see if you think it speeds it up. I'm curious what others might see.

Currently i use top picks, suggestions, my shows, new on demand to fill my bar and while not as fast as when i had it set to my shows only it still is 'good enough' to me. I'd like someone else to experiment and see if my experience is only related to the amount of stuff on my box or if fiddling with the settings matters.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

MichaelK said:


> for those who think the HD UI is too slow- I'd love for you folks to try and set the discovery bar to ONLY my shows and see if you think it speeds it up. I'm curious what others might see.


Since day one of using the HDUI, I set it to only "my shows". The HDUI is too slow.
And if you turn everything off, then it reverts to just "now showing on channel", perhaps also "may also like". No change in performance.


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## yragha (Sep 22, 2011)

Anyone think any other radio streaming will ever be available such as Radio IO?

Thanks


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## northbanker (Feb 27, 2012)

crxssi said:


> Interesting, I finally had this happen to me now. For almost a whole day it was slow, slow, slow. One time I finished watching a show and deleted it and spent 18 seconds staring at the petal animation on a black screen!
> 
> But, then it seemed to return to "normal" speed just as mysteriously, the next day.


Funny I also noticed my first really big slowdown in HDUI last night. (around the time you did?) It was painfully slow to drill down, e.g. when setting a show to record or changing its options. Also dog slow to delete.

p.s. I've noticed something else which seems to be a bug. When I try to permanently delete the topmost show in Recently Deleted, it won't delete that item... but it WILL allow me to delete the 2nd, 3rd, 4th show down in the list no problem. Whenever I can't permanently delete a show it seems to always be the top one in the list.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

northbanker said:


> p.s. I've noticed something else which seems to be a bug. When I try to permanently delete the topmost show in Recently Deleted, it won't delete that item... but it WILL allow me to delete the 2nd, 3rd, 4th show down in the list no problem. Whenever I can't permanently delete a show it seems to always be the top one in the list.


That is already in the changelog for many weeks. For me, it is an extremely annoying bug. It happens all the time to me and appears to be mostly triggered when I try to stop two recordings- the top one becomes undeleteable and unplayable until you TRY to play it (and get an error).

3.2.7 http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=8891071#post8891071


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## northbanker (Feb 27, 2012)

I've been using my Premiere for 1-2 mos and although I was disappointed in its sluggishness & poor OS design, tonite was the first time it actually crashed/rebooted (right in the middle of selecting something in My Shows).

So now I've experienced first hand what I'd heard from others (but secretly hoped I'd be immune from).

In the 4 years I've had my Series2, I can't recall it ever doing this once. So clearly their rewrite of the OS for Premiere went backwards on several fronts.

No news there I guess. 

Sad... Tivo was such a well-designed, solid appliance in its heyday.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

northbanker said:


> In the 4 years I've had my Series2, I can't recall it ever doing this once. So clearly their rewrite of the OS for Premiere went backwards on several fronts.


The OS is Linux. Trust me, the stability problems are not due to the OS, it is all about the TiVo stuff (UI/etc) added on top of it. Linux, itself, is very, very solid. I know, it is just semantics, but sometimes wording is important.


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## northbanker (Feb 27, 2012)

crxssi said:


> The OS is Linux. Trust me, the stability problems are not due to the OS, it is all about the TiVo stuff (UI/etc) added on top of it. Linux, itself, is very, very solid. I know, it is just semantics, but sometimes wording is important.


Sorry I didn't mean OS in the strict sense. I meant OS as in "Tivo OS" or possibly "Tivo firmware". Yes of course Linux is very solid, depending on what you do with it.

Was the Series2 also built on Linux?


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

northbanker said:


> Sorry I didn't mean OS in the strict sense. I meant OS as in "Tivo OS" or possibly "Tivo firmware". Yes of course Linux is very solid, depending on what you do with it.
> 
> Was the Series2 also built on Linux?


Yes. And the series 1. And the series 3. TiVo DVR's have always been built around Linux. But the Premiere was the first time they dove completely into Flash for the UI.


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