# Watching live TV on TiVo Mini after DTA update



## AdamfromChi (Jan 11, 2005)

My TiVo Premiere was updated yesterday, and it looks like that update included support for DTA! So uh...how do I get it to work? When I try to watch Live TV on my Mini now, I get a message that all of the XL4's tuners are in use and that I can't watch live TV until one is free. How do I make one of those tuners free to allow me to view live TV?

UPDATE: I restarted the TiVo Mini, then the TiVo Premiere, and live TV on the Mini seems to be working now. Does anyone know if there's a way to solve this bug short of two restarts?


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## jaredmwright (Sep 6, 2004)

I was having the same challenge last night. I actually had all tuners in use and didn't want to interrupt the recordings so didn't try anything else. 

it would be good to know how to fix this, I assume going through guided setup on the mini might work also? 

if anyone knows that would be helpful.


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## tivosupport_jaron (Oct 17, 2013)

un alocate the tuners on the Premiere and repeate guided set up on the MiNi. That should do it.
Thanks,
Jaron


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

One thing to be aware of with DTA... If a tuner is busy recording a suggestion then it is unavailable to a Mini for live TV. So if you have suggestions enabled this can cause a situation where tuners are never available for live TV. Unfortunately the only way to get around this is to either turn off suggestions, or manually go into the My Shows list and cancel one of the recording suggestions and then grab the tuner for live TV before another one starts.


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## dave13077 (Jan 11, 2009)

Dan203 said:


> One thing to be aware of with DTA... If a tuner is busy recording a suggestion then it is unavailable to a Mini for live TV. So if you have suggestions enabled this can cause a situation where tuners are never available for live TV. Unfortunately the only way to get around this is to either turn off suggestions, or manually go into the My Shows list and cancel one of the recording suggestions and then grab the tuner for live TV before another one starts.


I don't understand why the Mini can't function the same way the XL4 does with suggestions. If all 4 tuners are recording (with at least one being a suggestion) and when you go to Live TV (on the XL4) the Tivo automatically ends the suggestion recording and makes the tuner available. I assume this same thing can be programmed with the Mini.


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## CrispyCritter (Feb 28, 2001)

dave13077 said:


> I don't understand why the Mini can't function the same way the XL4 does with suggestions. If all 4 tuners are recording (with at least one being a suggestion) and when you go to Live TV (on the XL4) the Tivo automatically ends the suggestion recording and makes the tuner available. I assume this same thing can be programmed with the Mini.


I agree that TiVo should do something about Suggestions interfering with Mini. However, it's much more complicated than you state.

First, the XL4 does not behave as you say - when you go to live-tv the TiVo does NOT end the Suggestion. The tuner is available but the Suggestion is not ended until the user actually changes to some other channel, which is later. So the Mini cannot function the same way as the XL4, since in the current implementation it does require the Suggestion to end at the earlier point before the Mini can go to live-tv (the Mini will never be using a tuner that is recording in the current implementation - it would introduce many complications to do so).

Second, the TiVo has to start worrying about what the rest of the TiVo is doing. At the moment, it doesn't have to do that as much. All the host needs to know is that there is a Suggestion recording. The Mini needs to know that there is a Suggestion recording and that that Suggestion is not being actively watched on the host (or possibly elsewhere, say being streamed to another device, though that is not handled well at the moment either.) Any time you require more current information to be known, you start to require much more complicated programming to deal with concurrency issues. All of this is doable, but often problematic on semi-real-time systems like TiVo.

So something needs to be done, but it's not simple. It also would be complicated by future plans to change how streaming is done - I view requiring that a show be recording before allowing it to be streamed as another initial implementation that should be changed later. But that will also change the logic of how Suggestions can be dealt with, since the streaming may happen on the same tuner as a Suggestion.

My hope/guess is that TiVo will initially just put a limit on the number of Suggestions recording at once (say just one), to avoid the annoying case of 3 Suggestions recording getting in the way of Mini live-tv. Then they'll fix it for good once they redo how streaming is handled.


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## dave13077 (Jan 11, 2009)

CrispyCritter said:


> I agree that TiVo should do something about Suggestions interfering with Mini. However, it's much more complicated than you state.
> 
> First, the XL4 does not behave as you say - when you go to live-tv the TiVo does NOT end the Suggestion. The tuner is available but the Suggestion is not ended until the user actually changes to some other channel, which is later. So the Mini cannot function the same way as the XL4, since in the current implementation it does require the Suggestion to end at the earlier point before the Mini can go to live-tv (the Mini will never be using a tuner that is recording in the current implementation - it would introduce many complications to do so).
> 
> ...


Thanks for the explanation. Nothing is as easy as it seems . After the update (DTA) do you still have the option to reserve one tuner for the Mini? This has worked well up to now and would be good to still have the option after DTA is implanted.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

dave13077 said:


> Thanks for the explanation. Nothing is as easy as it seems . After the update (DTA) do you still have the option to reserve one tuner for the Mini? This has worked well up to now and would be good to still have the option after DTA is implanted.


That option (reserve a tuner) is now gone.


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## martyscholes (Apr 29, 2009)

This is creating issues for me. Our Premiere regularly records 4 shows. My son with the Mini wants to be able to channel surf, so we had given him one tuner to use. I always assumed that DTA would give a similar experience to him, but now, almost every time he goes to watch Live TV, it tells him a tuner is unavailable.

The fact that we can no longer reserve a tuner is a major step backwards as it effectively eliminates live TV on a Mini with no recourse short of managing the to do list by hand.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

You can turn off Suggestions. Not ideal if you use them a lot, but if you don't regularly watch them then it might be a better option then dealing with your son not being able to watch live TV.


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## martyscholes (Apr 29, 2009)

Dan203 said:


> You can turn off Suggestions. Not ideal if you use them a lot, but if you don't regularly watch them then it might be a better option then dealing with your son not being able to watch live TV.


Thanks for the suggestion about turning off suggestions. The suggestions are not what's eating the tuners. These are honest shows being recorded. There is no doubt that we could be better about managing what gets recorded when, but that kind of misses the point and is likely to start some disagreements in this family of five. Better to just keep a tuner available for my son.

I have opened a ticket with Tivo. Surely they envisioned this scenario when they took away the dedicated tuner option.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

martyscholes said:


> I have opened a ticket with Tivo. Surely they envisioned this scenario when they took away the dedicated tuner option.


 I think their tongue in cheek answer may be upgrade to a 6 tuner Roamio unit.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

I was actually going to suggest the same thing. If you actually have all 4 tuners going most of the time then a 6 tuner might be a better option for you.

Although I think they should still offer an option for this. Maybe make the options... Dynamic, Reserve 1 tuner, Reserve 2 tuners


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

Dan203 said:


> I was actually going to suggest the same thing. If you actually have all 4 tuners going most of the time then a 6 tuner might be a better option for you.
> 
> Although I think they should still offer an option for this. Maybe make the options... Dynamic, Reserve 1 tuner, Reserve 2 tuners


While I "ain't got no dog in this fight", I think that with the implementation of DTA, the Mini is behaving exactly as it should - as an extension of the TiVo. If all 4-tuners are engaged, you wouldn't be able to "surf" using the TiVo directly w/o stopping a recording, why should you be able to do it through the Mini?


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

lpwcomp said:


> While I "ain't got no dog in this fight", I think that with the implementation of DTA, the Mini is behaving exactly as it should - as an extension of the TiVo. If all 4-tuners are engaged, you wouldn't be able to "surf" using the TiVo directly w/o stopping a recording, why should you be able to do it through the Mini?


While I agree options are always nice for special circumstances.

Although they should change the behavior when dealing with suggestions. The way it works now is not right. I know they need to content with the fact that someone might be actively watching that suggestion via another Mini or on the main TiVo, but a simple reference count should take care of that. If a Mini requests a tuner then find a suggestion that is not being watched and stop it. Rejecting a Mini user in favor of a suggestion isn't right.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

Dan203 said:


> While I agree options are always nice for special circumstances.


I have no problem with them adding the option, even though I think it is silly. 



Dan203 said:


> Although they should change the behavior when dealing with suggestions. The way it works now is not right. I know they need to content with the fact that someone might be actively watching that suggestion via another Mini or on the main TiVo, but a simple reference count should take care of that. If a Mini requests a tuner then find a suggestion that is not being watched and stop it. Rejecting a Mini user in favor of a suggestion isn't right.


Once again, it is behaving exactly as it would if accessed directly. The Mini user has the option to stop a recording and free up a tuner.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

lpwcomp said:


> Once again, it is behaving exactly as it would if accessed directly. The Mini user has the option to stop a recording and free up a tuner.


Not quite. On the main TiVo the suggestion is canceled automatically by simply changing the channel. On the Mini you get an error that no tuners are available and then you have to manually go into My Shows, cancel the suggestion, then go back to live TV.


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## martyscholes (Apr 29, 2009)

Dan203 said:


> Not quite. On the main TiVo the suggestion is canceled automatically by simply changing the channel. On the Mini you get an error that no tuners are available and then you have to manually go into My Shows, cancel the suggestion, then go back to live TV.


That's the real point, that the Mini user is just told that nothing is available. Sure, he can go into the current recordings and start canceling, but will Tivo attempt to record that show later, or is it gone for good? Which of the four shows being recorded are important to whom in the household? None of them? All of them? Somewhere in between? For just plain channel surfing, the Mini user has to deal with all of these questions. It is much simpler to reduce the tuner count, dedicate a tuner to the Mini and have the Tivo scheduling software handle all of the questions.

Even cooler would be to have the Tivo software figure out that this episode of Sportscenter (or whatever) that is recording on tuner 3 will be rebroadcast later today / tomorrow / whenever and that it is safe not to record it right now, because it can record it later. Therefore, a tuner is available even though it is recording a requested show and can seamlessly give the tuner to the Mini.

In any event, the current solution is not working well for me.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

martyscholes said:


> Thanks for the suggestion about turning off suggestions. The suggestions are not what's eating the tuners. These are honest shows being recorded. There is no doubt that we could be better about managing what gets recorded when, but that kind of misses the point and is likely to start some disagreements in this family of five. Better to just keep a tuner available for my son.
> 
> I have opened a ticket with Tivo. Surely they envisioned this scenario when they took away the dedicated tuner option.


I am having a hard time with your problem, if you reserved one tuner as you did before DTA you can't record 4 things at once, so if you were not recording 4 things before what changed ??


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

lessd said:


> I am having a hard time with your problem, if you reserved one tuner as you did before DTA you can't record 4 things at once, so if you were not recording 4 things before what changed ??


A LOT of cable shows repeat, sometimes several times in the same night, so I could see a situation where with a tuner reserved all the shows would still get recorded just in a slightly later time slot where with all 4 "available" they would record at the same time.

Honestly Marty I think your family is a prime candidate for a Roamio 6 tuner unit. With 6 tuners You would likely always have at least 1 tuner available for live TV on the Mini.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

Dan203 said:


> A LOT of cable shows repeat, sometimes several times in the same night, so I could see a situation where with a tuner reserved all the shows would still get recorded just in a slightly later time slot where with all 4 "available" they would record at the same time.
> 
> Honestly Marty I think your family is a prime candidate for a Roamio 6 tuner unit. With 6 tuners You would likely always have at least 1 tuner available for live TV on the Mini.


I wonder if TiVo has a back door code to reserve one tuner for the Mini, they do have a back door code given out to strap down some tuners that were not working because of a cable card problem on some systems. See http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=507973


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## SugarBowl (Jan 5, 2007)

switch places with the Tivo and the Mini. Then he can cancel whichever recording he wants. 

DTA on the roamio seems to reserve a tuner at all times that the mini can't have. I have a 4 tuner roamio, and if it's recording 3 shows, the mini can't access live tv. So it's likely, that with the Premiere, even recording 3 shows at a time will restrict the mini from getting live tv.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

SugarBowl said:


> I have a 4 tuner roamio, and if it's recording 3 shows, the mini can't access live tv.


 You can, if you make one of the recording shows on the host Roamio the foreground tuner.


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## martyscholes (Apr 29, 2009)

Dan203 said:


> A LOT of cable shows repeat, sometimes several times in the same night, so I could see a situation where with a tuner reserved all the shows would still get recorded just in a slightly later time slot where with all 4 "available" they would record at the same time.
> 
> Honestly Marty I think your family is a prime candidate for a Roamio 6 tuner unit. With 6 tuners You would likely always have at least 1 tuner available for live TV on the Mini.


Part of the issue is that one son loves sports, so it grabs every episode of Sportscenter _at a very low priority_. If some episodes (out of the dozen or so each day) are missed, no problem. My wife and I also love good suspense movies, so we have a general wish list that says to record all suspense movies and keep the most recent 25, again at a very low priority. We just like having a selection of movies to choose from on movie night. If some of the movies do not get recorded, no problem. We have other wishlists that behave similarly.

I agree that the 6 tuner Roamio is what we need and we will likely get one in the next year, but Tivo has forced me to consider this $600 outlay now because this past week they broke a working solution.

Besides that, is it possible that our to do list will saturate a 6 tuner Roamio, leaving us with the same problem all over again. Of course, we could say to our son, "You are no longer allowed to record Sportscenter." We could also stop all of the wishlists, but that ability is part of the value from Tivo that we have grown to expect over the past decade, and as of the past week, I have to choose between that value and the Tivo Mini. Not cool.

I should stop ranting. Apologies.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

I think the answer is really quite simple - tell your son to stop watching live TV. That's what you have a DVR for so you don't have to do that. As long as you record everything you want to watch you'll never have a problem.


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## martyscholes (Apr 29, 2009)

moyekj said:


> I think the answer is really quite simple - tell your son to stop watching live TV. That's what you have a DVR for so you don't have to do that. As long as you record everything you want to watch you'll never have a problem.


You may be on to something there...


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

moyekj said:


> I think the answer is really quite simple - tell your son to stop watching live TV. That's what you have a DVR for so you don't have to do that. As long as you record everything you want to watch you'll never have a problem.


If he's into sports that's not really the best option as most sports junkies like to watch their games live.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

HarperVision said:


> If he's into sports that's not really the best option as most sports junkies like to watch their games live.


 For me it's the opposite - I watch more sports now that I can watch them time delayed enough to skip all commercials. Before DVR watching sports was excruciatingly painful to have to sit through all the commercials. Especially something like NFL games where there are more commercials than game.
(I never understood the "have to watch sports live" mentality as if by watching live you are somehow making a difference in the outcome. As long as you don't know the outcome and are watching within hours of the actual event it doesn't bother me at all to watch time delayed. Even "live TV" has some delay associated with it by the time broadcast gets to your house, then DVR buffering adds more delay, so you are never watching truly live anyway unless you are at the game).


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

I agree with most of that, but there's still something about watching it "live", especially with a bunch of brews and buds! I also get a lot of my friendly rival family and friends who are watching it that like to text me with little digs if they're winning and vice versa. And if you're a betting man, well........


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## ellinj (Feb 26, 2002)

1. Does the new update still require your xl4 to be using the HD menus for the mini to work?

2. What causes the tuner to be released? I am aware of the new 4hr timeout but does entering Tivo central on the mini also cause the tuner to be released?


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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

ellinj said:


> does entering Tivo central on the mini also cause the tuner to be released?


By all accounts, yes


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## telamon (Mar 29, 2008)

I sense this might justify my upgrading to a Roamio.


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## martyscholes (Apr 29, 2009)

We have removed the tuner allocation and it now has dynamic allocation with the tuner. This means that when the TiVo Mini goes to find a tuner it will find one that is available. If you are recording on all four tuners that means that he will not find a tuner to be able to watch from the Main TiVo box.​
I probably could have predicted that response.


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## cherry ghost (Sep 13, 2005)

martyscholes said:


> We have removed the tuner allocation and it now has dynamic allocation with the tuner. This means that when the TiVo Mini goes to find a tuner it will find one that is available. If you are recording on all four tuners that means that he will not find a tuner to be able to watch from the Main TiVo box.​
> I probably could have predicted that response.


Have you thought about setting up a repeating manual recording and putting it at the top of the priority list? Whenever all tuners are in use and he wants to surf, he can stop and delete that recording.


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## martyscholes (Apr 29, 2009)

cherry ghost said:


> Have you thought about setting up a repeating manual recording and putting it at the top of the priority list? Whenever all tuners are in use and he wants to surf, he can stop and delete that recording.


That's a good idea. I also canceled our suspense movie recordings and it seems we mostly have a tuner available. Kind of annoying, though.


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

lessd said:


> I am having a hard time with your problem, if you reserved one tuner as you did before DTA you can't record 4 things at once, so if you were not recording 4 things before what changed ??


To OP:

As mentioned previously in above quote, you still have use of the same 3 tuners you always had to record the other programs when the tuner was dedicated to the mini, so why all the sudden is it an issue now that dynamic tuner allocation has occurred? If anything it gives you more recording options for the times the mini isn't being used for live tv!


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## supasta (May 6, 2006)

Tonight I found myself with the same issue as the OP. I was getting the 'no tuner for live TV available' message on the Mini. However, the Premiere was only recording 3 shows at the time. A restart of the Premiere 4 fixed the problem.


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## CrispyCritter (Feb 28, 2001)

supasta said:


> Tonight I found myself with the same issue as the OP. I was getting the 'no tuner for live TV available' message on the Mini. However, the Premiere was only recording 3 shows at the time. A restart of the Premiere 4 fixed the problem.


That's expected in some circumstances.

Remember the host has a tuner for itself to output live-tv. If live-tv on the host happens to be one of the recording channels, then 4 channels can be recorded. But if it is a different channel, then all 4 tuners are taken up by 3 recording shows and the host live-tv show, and in that case the Mini will not be able to get a tuner until one is freed up (by either stopping a recording or changing the host live-tv tuner to one of the recording shows.)

You shouldn't need to restart.


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## supasta (May 6, 2006)

CrispyCritter said:


> You shouldn't need to restart.


Correct. I_ shouldn't_ have needed a restart, but I _did_.

The Premiere appeared to have three tuners (all recording) and one tuner appeared to still be tied to the Mini (live TV). This was the correct behavior prior to the most recent update. However, that update should have corrected that with the inclusion of DTA. I checked immediately after the restart. The behavior was different than prior to the restart. The restart clearly corrected the issue, as was also suggested by previous posters in this thread.

I remembered seeing this thread a while back. I thought that a post on what I experienced may help someone in a similar circumstance, just as previous posts had helped me.


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## CrispyCritter (Feb 28, 2001)

Ah, I misunderstood, sorry. I thought you were complaining about a general situation of only recording 3 shows, but instead you were saying that a one-time reboot to set up DTA correctly might be needed (and I agree with that).


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

supasta said:


> Correct. I_ shouldn't_ have needed a restart, but I _did_.
> 
> The Premiere appeared to have three tuners (all recording) and one tuner appeared to still be tied to the Mini (live TV). This was the correct behavior prior to the most recent update. However, that update should have corrected that with the inclusion of DTA. I checked immediately after the restart. The behavior was different than prior to the restart. The restart clearly corrected the issue, as was also suggested by previous posters in this thread.
> 
> I remembered seeing this thread a while back. I thought that a post on what I experienced may help someone in a similar circumstance, just as previous posts had helped me.


It's also possible that prior to the restart, you had 3-tuners recording and the foreground tuner in "Live TV" tied to the _*Premiere*_. After the restart, the foreground tuner might be on one of the recording channels and thus a tuner is available to the Mini. The only way to test this is, if it happens again, make one of the recording tuners the foreground tuner and see if a tuner becomes available to the Mini.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

Mine just worked.


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