# how to get faster transfer speeds?



## carios23 (Jan 19, 2009)

I am transferring shows to my pc and it takes forever. is there any way to speed up this process?


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Depends on the type of TiVo you have and the type of network you're using.

If you're using a wireless connection then using the TiVo brand adapter will produce better speeds then any other supported 3rd party adapter, in some cases the speed increase is significant. 

If you have a S3, TiVoHD, or S2DT and a wired network then you already have the fastest connection possible. If you have an older S2 TiVo then there are a couple of wired USB adapters that work better then others, like the Linksys USB200M or the Belkin F5D5050, but don't expect miracles. Especially if you've got one of the 540 series TiVos, which include the "night light" models and the Toshiba and Humax DVD units. They are based on a horrible hardware platform that is just plain slow and nothing you do with the network will really help.

Dan

, specifically the "night light" model or any of the DVD units, then you're screwed. They are sloooooow no matter what you do. I


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## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

I've found my TiVoHD transfers somewhat faster to my PC if I park both tuners on channels I don't actually receive. (And slightly faster again if I leave it in liveTV on one of those non-channels rather than watching a recording).

But even so, it's still not exactly _quick_ at transfering shows.


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## fatespawn (Oct 14, 2007)

S3 is faster than TivoHD. The limiting factor seems to be the processor. Even if you had gigabit ethernet connecting the Tivo to the PC, the transfer rates would be about the same. The best thing you can do is unload the processor - as stated, tune to a blank channel is the best. If you're recording 2 HD channels and watching a Tivo'ed HD recording, you're in trouble. Not much you can do there. 

Also, if you don't have Cat5 access by the Tivo, you can buy a cheap access point (I have an airport express) to use the wired connection to a -n access point. but if your wireless setup is G-only or n and g mixed, just stick with the tivo adapter.


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## spocko (Feb 4, 2009)

If the Tivo is being connected via wireless, I would think that using a bridge or gaming adapter connected to the ethernet port on the Tivo would give slightly better performance than the Tivo wireless adapter. The reason is that the Tivo adapter connects via USB, which typically has more CPU overhead than ethernet. Wireless G should provide plenty of bandwidth to handle whatever throughput the Tivo is capable of.

The above is "in theory". Has anyone done testing to compare the throughput of the Tivo wireless adapter vs a bridge vs a hardwired connection? I'd be curious to know if there is a difference.

Edit: My comments were assuming a Tivo with built-in ethernet.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

The TiVo Adapter specifically offloads a lot of that overhead to the adapter itself so that it doesn't slow down the TiVo. Back when they were first released people ran speed tests and they were actually faster then Ethernet->Bridge solutions. Although that was back when Ethernet still required a USB adapter too, it may no longer be the case for units with built in Ethernet.

Dan


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## CuriousMark (Jan 13, 2005)

spocko said:


> The above is "in theory". Has anyone done testing to compare the throughput of the Tivo wireless adapter vs a bridge vs a hardwired connection? I'd be curious to know if there is a difference.


Yes, many have, all posted here, but they are not necessarily easy to find. The results vary greatly. I have seen reports that the TiVo adapter is both faster and slower than Ethernet on a variety of TiVo DVR models. lately on HD units, Ethernet reigns supreme, probably for the reasons posted above. On a series 2 single tuner the TiVo adapter does appear to be faster than some USB to wired Ethernet adapters are. The TiVo adapter has a processor and takes on many chores internally that other adapters slough off to the driver running in the DVR.


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## dougdingle (Jul 4, 2007)

Dan203 said:


> The TiVo Adapter specifically offloads a lot of that overhead to the adapter itself so that it doesn't slow down the TiVo. Back when they were first released people ran speed tests and they were actually faster then Ethernet->Bridge solutions. Although that was back when Ethernet still required a USB adapter too, it may no longer be the case for units with built in Ethernet.
> 
> Dan


Transfers between my two S3's and computer got MUCH faster when I went from wireless-g to wired connection on one of the S3's (the other was already wired). By about a factor of three, if I remember correctly. I was surprised.


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## JoeTaxpayer (Dec 23, 2008)

I was just in the basement and came up glad to find this thread. My wired connection showed a transfer rate of over 39Mbs. In english, that was enough to move HD at 2X real time, I fast forwarded right at the first commercial with no issue, and the transfer was over in 30 minutes (for the 1 hr HD show). I posted a month ago about wireless being a little flakey, and when I need to move shows to the wireless TiVo I try to do it in advance by an extra hour or so.

edit - I can't find my older post, but I recall my speed used to be quite lower. Don't know if TiVo tweaked something, or I'm just having a good router day.


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## Donz0r (Mar 30, 2009)

I have a Tivo HD, *Wired* connection to Mac using iTivo, with the tivo tuned to *unavailable channels on both tuners, nothing recording or playing*.
I'm transferring the '*decrypt' mode* which does no conversion - just copies the show to the computer. It's an hour long HD show that is 7500 MB.

I'm transferring at about *1.5 MB/s*
(Hour and a half to transfer hour long show)
What's wrong?


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## classicsat (Feb 18, 2004)

Dan203 said:


> Especially if you've got one of the 540 series TiVos, which include the "night light" models and the Toshiba and Humax DVD units.


Read: Any TiVo with a TSN beginning with "5". They used an integrated processor/decoder chip with a slightly better than USB 1.1 built in.
The Series 2s with a TSN beginning with "2" are best, since they use a separate full USB 2.0 controller.


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## dougdingle (Jul 4, 2007)

Donz0r said:


> I have a Tivo HD, *Wired* connection to Mac using iTivo, with the tivo tuned to *unavailable channels on both tuners, nothing recording or playing*.
> I'm transferring the '*decrypt' mode* which does no conversion - just copies the show to the computer. It's an hour long HD show that is 7500 MB.
> 
> I'm transferring at about *1.5 MB/s*
> ...


I'm not sure there's anything wrong. That's about the same speed I get from a Series3 to a Windows box.

S3 to S3 takes about half an hour to transfer an hour show, but S3 to computer takes much longer. The computer is doing MANY other things with a ton of overhead while the transfer is happening, even if you're not doing anything on it, while the S3 just lives to move files between TiVos.


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## DeWitt (Jun 30, 2004)

Donz0r said:


> I have a Tivo HD, *Wired* connection to Mac using iTivo, with the tivo tuned to *unavailable channels on both tuners, nothing recording or playing*.
> I'm transferring the '*decrypt' mode* which does no conversion - just copies the show to the computer. It's an hour long HD show that is 7500 MB.
> 
> I'm transferring at about *1.5 MB/s*
> ...


That is about as fast as it will go in my experience. I have a wired network and see this speed TIVO HD to computer. The time will depend on your cable provider. I have a friend with Cablevision and the same show on his Tivo is a much smaller file than mine recorded from Fios. As this means more quality I see it as a good thing, but it sure takes a while to transfer a long program.

When I had a slower computer, doing anything on the computer would lower the rate. On my current much faster machine I get 1.5 even when I am downloading from the Internet etc. That leads me to believe that 1.5 megabytes per second is a Tivo HD limit for PC Transfers.


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## jilter (Oct 4, 2002)

All my recent posts are evidence I am trying to grapple with this.
I am trying to learn everything I can to assess what I should purchase
to have the best possible speeds between my Tivos and PC.
I have a Series 2 (240), a Dual Tuner (649), and a new Tivo HD (652).
I am using wireless(G) LInksys adaoters/router, and obviously have to get something
for the TivoHD.

Here are my questions:
When transferring between Tivos, how do I monitor the speed of transfer?

I understand there are limitations when transferring between Tivo to PC and also Tivo Series 2 to TivoHD: Is it a waste of money to buy hardware that will enable faster speeds when the Tivos themselves have limitations?



Thanks for any assistance....I am a definite Tech/don't-know-it-all.

Finally, what brought me to Sugg Ave.....
Please make Tivos with faster transfer speeds!

Jill


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## larry99 (Jan 31, 2009)

On monitoring speed, I use the free Sygate firewall. It has a menu that shows speed in real-time.

My experience with an S3 is that the speed is about the same wired and wirless, about 1 to 2 Mbs. I remember reading some posts where people have gotten considerably faster speeds. Don't know the reason. I am using a 100 ft cablle for wired so its possible the speed would be higher with a shorter cable.


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## dougdingle (Jul 4, 2007)

jilter said:


> Here are my questions:
> When transferring between Tivos, how do I monitor the speed of transfer?


Frankly, the only way to measure speeds between TiVos is a stopwatch, unless you have some moderately sophisticated network monitoring tools available. Sometimes the old empirical methods are good .

If you're running PC's, a network speed monitoring utility like DuMeter (www.dumeter.com) will show you transfer rates between your computer and the TiVos. DuMeter is not free after a trial period, but there are others which are. I have no idea what might work for a Mac.



> I understand there are limitations when transferring between Tivo to PC and also Tivo Series 2 to TivoHD: Is it a waste of money to buy hardware that will enable faster speeds when the Tivos themselves have limitations?


Pretty much. I have two Series 3 TiVos (they are the fastest of all, faster than the HD's, especially S3 to S3), and dual tuner and single tuner S2's all networked together. I used to have one of the S3's on a wireless connection. Going to a wired connection there doubled my speeds between S3's. Putting them on the same network switch helped as well. To give you an idea, I can transfer a one hour HD show (about 4.5 gigabytes) between the two S3 machines in about 20 minutes or less. I can start watching a show as soon as the transfer starts, and by the first commercial break I can skip commercials. It used to take longer between S3's, but then TimeWarner cranked up the compression to "11" and the size of the shows got smaller (and they got uglier).

None of the TiVo's are gig network enabled, so faster hardware won't help unless your network is very old. Going wired vs. wireless helped significantly with my S3's, but may make no difference with your setup.

The S2's are a LOT slower, approaching more like real time (or slower).



> Finally, what brought me to Sugg Ave.....
> Please make Tivos with faster transfer speeds!


Unfortunately, they seem to be going in the opposite direction, if the HD unit is any example.


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## larry99 (Jan 31, 2009)

To JoeTaxpayer: The 39 Mbs is the fastest I have ever seen posted. Can you give more detail on your setup and the two devices (was it TIVO to PC? What format file? Which transfer program?) Thanks, it would be great if some of us could learn how to duplicate.

Also, are all HD TIVOs S3's, if not what is the difference?


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## bkdtv (Jan 9, 2003)

larry99 said:


> My experience with an S3 is that the speed is about the same wired and wirless, about 1 to 2 Mbs. I remember reading some posts where people have gotten considerably faster speeds. Don't know the reason. I am using a 100 ft cablle for wired so its possible the speed would be higher with a shorter cable.


That is normal.



larry99 said:


> To JoeTaxpayer: The 39 Mbs is the fastest I have ever seen posted. Can you give more detail on your setup and the two devices (was it TIVO to PC? What format file? Which transfer program?) Thanks, it would be great if some of us could learn how to duplicate.


That refers to throughput between TiVos.

I would recommend you read the stickied FAQs linked in my signature. From the _Download Recordings_ link:



> *Why do recordings download so slowly?*
> 
> High-definition recordings are relatively large files. They are stored on the TiVo's hard drive as transport streams in a proprietary format. When you download a recording from the TiVo with a web browser (or TiVo Desktop), the TiVo remuxes the recorded streams stored on the hard drive into a single MPG file that can be played on a PC or Mac. This on-the-fly remuxing does not have any effect on quality, but it does cut throughput by 50-70% compared to MRV between two TiVos.
> 
> When transferring recordings between two TivoHD DVRs, throughput is about twice as fast (20-24Mbps), because recorded files are transferred just as they are stored on the hard drive.


If you set your TiVo to two channels you do not receive, that will improve PC download throughput somewhat. But there's no way to significantly increase throughput without a hardware modification to the TiVo's PROM. With such a PROM modification, one can achieve up to 40-60Mbps download throughput to a computer. Specific discussion of PROM hacks is not not permitted on TiVoCommunity; you can research that subject by googling "TiVo prom mod."

Throughput to another TiVo is substantially higher than transfers to a PC, for the reasons noted above. From the _Multiroom Viewing_ section:



> *How fast can I transfer recordings between TiVos?*
> 
> MRV performance on the TivoHD and Series3 is limited by the CPU and memory performance of their Broadcom DVR CPUs. The more you are doing on the DVR, the slower files will transfer between TiVos. For example, if you are recording two different HD programs while watching a third, previously recorded HD program, MRV transfer speeds will be slower than if you were watching live TV with both tuners set to SD channels (or channels you don't receive).
> 
> ...


Answers to every common question (that I've seen) can be found in my signature.


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## jilter (Oct 4, 2002)

bkdtv.
Thank you for the elaborate posting and easy linkage.
I will spend some time pouring over it.

I really appreciate it, but please expect some dumb questions when I return <smile>.

Jill


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## larry99 (Jan 31, 2009)

I'd like to also thank you for that very thourough explaination. One additional point. I most often transfer mp4 files from the PC to the TIVO with Desktop 2.7 or Steambaby. In these cases, I believe there is no transcoding and transfer speed stays closer to 2 mbs but never higher than that. (Also, I have a newer HD per the explaination and not an S3.)


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## touchemall (Aug 9, 2002)

I'm considering buying the Tivo Wireless G adapter to go with my 802.11g router, but I'm not sure if it will be any better than the Siemens 802.11b adapter I'm using now. This is because I've got a Series 2 130040 with USB 1.1. I know that the maximum theoretical rate of 12Mbps for USB 1.1 will keep me from realizing the full gains of 802.11g, but does anyone know if the "offloading" done by the Tivo adapter will speed transfers at USB 1.1 rates? Thanks for any advice. --David


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