# Premiere is to Tivo Like Vista is to Microsoft



## Adaptel (Nov 6, 2009)

OK, although I don't have anything really new to add to the endless complaints made by pantloads of other users here...... I must say that I that I am completely and totally underwhelmed by the Premiere. The lockups (green circle of death), the painfully slow HD interface, and all the other things that made me feel just as disappointed as that day in my childhood when the X-ray glasses I ordered from the back of the magazine finally showed up. Just like the Tivo Premiere, they really didn't do what they claimed to do, and turned out to be wothless and oh so disappointing. 

Has Tivo gone the way of Microsoft.....completley missing the point as to what customers want and need in a "Newer, Better, and more Usefull" improvement to their product? why can't one of hte engineers realize that any product will be a failure if the hardware isn't up to the job of running hte software? I think this new model should have been called "Tivo Vista". Epic Fail.


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

Adaptel said:


> ...why can't one of hte engineers realize that any product will be a failure if the hardware isn't up to the job of running hte software?...


I think you got it backwards. The hardware rocks. The software, not so much...


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## steve614 (May 1, 2006)

Although I think Tivo was a little optimistic with their hyped announcment, I predict things will get much better once they finish the HD menus and enable the 2nd processor core.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

orangeboy said:


> I think you got it backwards. The hardware rocks. The software, not so much...


I don't think the hardware "rocks" all that much either. It is several years since the HD was designed, yet it is just a TiVo HD with a somewhat faster board... that's about it. No removable hard drive trays, no SD card slot to store preferences/settings/ratings on that isn't lost with every hard drive failure or upgrade, no cool new remote, no RF remote, no alpha-numeric front screen, no on-front controls, no built-in tuner assistant, still 2 tuner, unable to play most native video formats, no front USB port, no USB flash drive playability, base hard drive size is underwhelming.

There are LOTS of things I can think of that COULD have been added to make the hardware "rock".


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

crxssi said:


> I don't think the hardware "rocks" all that much either. It is several years since the HD was designed, yet it is just a TiVo HD with a somewhat faster board... that's about it. No removable hard drive trays, no SD card slot to store preferences/settings/ratings on that isn't lost with every hard drive failure or upgrade, no cool new remote, no RF remote, no alpha-numeric front screen, no on-front controls, no built-in tuner assistant, still 2 tuner, unable to play most native video formats, no front USB port, no USB flash drive playability, base hard drive size is underwhelming.
> 
> There are LOTS of things I can think of that COULD have been added to make the hardware "rock".


Let's stick with facts, not a wish list of "wants".

Network:









Processor:








Only "somewhat faster"? 

Cool remote:









Thanks to bkdtv who together a great FAQ and overview that you obviously didn't read...


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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

> Premiere is to Tivo Like Vista is to Microsoft


So in other words it's a solid product that's a step forward and that in retrospect will have gotten a bad reputation from people that do not really understand what the changes meant, in the end it's actually a pretty darn good product that moves the technology forward?

I can live with that...

Diane


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## SeanC (Dec 30, 2003)

dianebrat said:


> So in other words it's a solid product that's a step forward and that in retrospect will have gotten a bad reputation from people that do not really understand what the changes meant, in the end it's actually a pretty darn good product that moves the technology forward?




When I read the thread title, I was like hunh, I wonder which way the OP is going with this.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Adaptel said:


> OK, although I don't have anything really new to add to the endless complaints made by pantloads of other users here...... I must say that I that I am completely and totally underwhelmed by the Premiere. The lockups (green circle of death), the painfully slow HD interface, and all the other things that made me feel just as disappointed as that day in my childhood when the X-ray glasses I ordered from the back of the magazine finally showed up. Just like the Tivo Premiere, they really didn't do what they claimed to do, and turned out to be wothless and oh so disappointing.
> 
> Has Tivo gone the way of Microsoft.....completley missing the point as to what customers want and need in a "Newer, Better, and more Usefull" improvement to their product? why can't one of hte engineers realize that any product will be a failure if the hardware isn't up to the job of running hte software? I think this new model should have been called "Tivo Vista". Epic Fail.


Vista was one of the better operation systems. I had six PCs running Vista and I had no problems with any of them. Visat was so much better than XP ever was. Vista had none of the issues XP always had. And now Windows 7 is even better.
So if the Premiere is like Vista than I would call it a home run. Since Vista improved on WinXP in so many ways and everything about it was so much better than windows previous operating systems.


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## turbobozz (Sep 21, 2006)

aaronwt said:


> Vista was one of the better operation systems. I had six PCs running Vista and I had no problems with any of them. Visat was so much better than XP ever was. Vista had none of the issues XP always had. And now Windows 7 is even better.
> So if the Premiere is like Vista than I would call it a home run. Since Vista improved on WinXP in so many ways and everything about it was so much better than windows previous operating systems.


Vista was pretty good about a year or so after release... The problems for me were that it sucked for games and the drivers were iffy at best (since I wasn't upgrading my hware just for Vista).
Vista also had a serious faux pas in the memory management area... I tend to use a lot of programs simultaneously... and some of them demanding on memory.

Vista was like Win95... tons of problems initially because of drivers and poorly conforming (unupdated, legacy) software that people still needed to use.
By my recollection Win95 launch problems were far worse than Vista.

Win7 is pretty damn good.


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## brewman (Jun 29, 2003)

aaronwt said:


> Vista was one of the better operation systems. I had six PCs running Vista and I had no problems with any of them. Visat was so much better than XP ever was. Vista had none of the issues XP always had. And now Windows 7 is even better.
> So if the Premiere is like Vista than I would call it a home run. Since Vista improved on WinXP in so many ways and everything about it was so much better than windows previous operating systems.


I don't know the numbers, but my gut feel is you are in the minority. There's a reason PC suppliers continued to offer XP as an option over Vista and many people were happy to pay the additional $50 to "downgrade" to XP.

That being said, the Vista/Premiere analogy is flawed, because Vista worked as designed and many just didn't like it. Premiere was just released before it should have been and it's not possible at this time to fairly evaluate it. Be mad at TiVo for releasing incomplete software, but the potential appears to be there for Premiere - it's just a matter of seeing if that potential is realized.


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## gamo62 (Oct 12, 2002)

orangeboy said:


> I think you got it backwards. The hardware rocks. The software, not so much...


Exactly like my computer system when I ran Vista.


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## cica (Apr 2, 2002)

While I agree that the Premiere was released before it was ready, if it hadn't been released yet this post would be about Tivo taking too long to release the Premiere.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

ferrumpneuma said:


> TiVo enabling the second core and finishing the HD interface is just wild speculation. Comments by TiVo employees on this site are unofficial and in no way co-relate to the actions or intentions of TiVo Inc.


Big smiley noted but just to clarify your FUD...
while it is not official and in no way constitutes a promise you can later say TiVo did not fulfill - it is hardly _wild speculation_ that TiVo is working on getting the 2nd core going and finishing out the HD menus. This would effect every single premiere out there and obviously needs to be done to get the premiere out of its half finished state. YMMV on how well you think TiVo will accomplish this.


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

cica said:


> While I agree that the Premiere was released before it was ready, if it hadn't been released yet this post would be about Tivo taking too long to release the Premiere.


Exactly. It's just not possible to please all of the people all of the time.


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## BruceShultes (Oct 2, 2006)

aaronwt said:


> Vista was one of the better operation systems. I had six PCs running Vista and I had no problems with any of them. Visat was so much better than XP ever was. Vista had none of the issues XP always had. And now Windows 7 is even better.
> So if the Premiere is like Vista than I would call it a home run. Since Vista improved on WinXP in so many ways and everything about it was so much better than windows previous operating systems.


Yeah, any version of Windows of windows is such a "great" operating system, that my former employer used Linux exclusively on all their services as well as local PC's.

On my home machines, I have run DOS, OS2, Linux and Snow Leopard. The only time I even consider running windows is when I need to use a program that is not available on another operating system.


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## DaveWhittle (Jul 25, 2002)

cica said:


> While I agree that the Premiere was released before it was ready, if it hadn't been released yet this post would be about Tivo taking too long to release the Premiere.


The win-win in this scenario would be Tivo holding back the retail release of the Premiere until the HD-UI was finished (probably this month). Then notifying web-orders of the delay, but allowing the willing to opt-in and get it on it's originally intended launch day and help them test it in the wild.

I, for one, would have been happy and honored to be one of the "early ones", and felt a part of the TiVo experience by giving feedback and bug reports. The buzz generated from the early adopters/testers of the faster SD-UI and MRV would have been positive, and any negatives of HD-UI crashing, reboots, hangs and lagginess would have been treated with an acceptable "when it's finished" caveat.


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## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

BruceShultes said:


> Yeah, any version of Windows of windows is such a "great" operating system, that my former employer used Linux exclusively on all their services as well as local PC's.
> 
> On my home machines, I have run DOS, OS2, Linux and Snow Leopard. The only time I even consider running windows is when I need to use a program that is not available on another operating system.


In other words, you don't even use Windows.


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## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

ZeoTiVo said:


> Big smiley noted but just to clarify your FUD...
> while it is not official and in no way constitutes a promise you can later say TiVo did not fulfill - it is hardly _wild speculation_ that TiVo is working on getting the 2nd core going and finishing out the HD menus. This would effect every single premiere out there and obviously needs to be done to get the premiere out of its half finished state. YMMV on how well you think TiVo will accomplish this.


The rest of the UI in HD? Absolutely, they will get that done (who knows when, but I bet it will be done).

Enabling the second core? I wouldn't hold my breath. I doubt it will ever happen. Happy to be proven wrong, of course.


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## retired_guy (Aug 27, 2004)

Seems to me the problem with the Premiere is not with the hardware delivered or the software design; rather the problem was with TiVo Marketing which released the product before the software was ready and then over-hyped it. Customers get really unhappy when the delivered product doesn't match what they thought they were buying. Had TiVo released it as a fast SD product with an option for early testers of a new HD interface, I think we'd have seen a lot of enthusiasm about the potential of the product instead of widespread frustration with immature software. I assume TiVo marketing thought marketing based upon the reality of the product wasn't going to be exciting enough to get many orders.


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## MediaLivingRoom (Dec 10, 2002)

dianebrat said:


> So in other words it's a solid product that's a step forward and that in retrospect will have gotten a bad reputation from people that do not really understand what the changes meant, in the end it's actually a pretty darn good product that moves the technology forward?
> 
> I can live with that...
> 
> Diane


After they FIXED IT and FIXED IT and FIXED IT. So we wait for 2 years since TiVo is slower that Microsoft and Microsoft only fixed Vista with SP1 about a year later.


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## Videodrome (Jun 20, 2008)

steve614 said:


> Although I think Tivo was a little optimistic with their hyped announcment, I predict things will get much better once they finish the HD menus and enable the 2nd processor core.


Just like Tivo enabled M card on the series 3. Oh wait that didnt happen...


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

ferrumpneuma said:


> Your speculation about my speculations are wildly speculative.:up::up::up:
> 
> In other words _neither_ of us know what TiVo is or is not working on.
> 
> ...


well once again you throw up a whole bunch of strawman arguments that only serve to reduce your credibility. Not once have I ever said not to trust what a TiVo associate says. the rest of your post is so completely wrong and ridiculous it is not even worth further comment except that you have no clue what I know.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

MediaLivingRoom said:


> After they FIXED IT and FIXED IT and FIXED IT. So we wait for 2 years since TiVo is slower that Microsoft and Microsoft only fixed Vista with SP1 about a year later.


Nothing to fix with Vista. It worked extremely well for me. The only issue I had was slow file deletion when I was deleting something like 10K or 20K files. SP1 solved that quirk, but otherwise I had no problems with Vista on six machines. Just like I have no problems with Win7 on eight machines.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

orangeboy said:


> Let's stick with facts, not a wish list of "wants".


The processor is only that fast if they use both cores, which they don't. So yes, it is "somewhat" faster... about 15%. And when you add the HD interface, it feels slower than a series 1. When or *if* they enable the second core.... some day... then it should perform faster, but only in ways that are optimized for multi-threading. So that diagram is hardly accurate in real world use.

The network *is* much faster (which is why I gave it credit for that).

The remote you listed is what we call "vaporware", meaning it does not yet exist or cannot be purchased.

As I said in my original post retort- the hardware in the Premiere absolutely does not "rock" compared to their last version, the HD.


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## TrueTurbo (Feb 19, 2008)

crxssi said:


> As I said in my original post retort- the hardware in the Premiere absolutely does not "rock" compared to their last version, the HD.


Oh yes it does. You just don't realize it yet!


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

TrueTurbo said:


> Oh yes it does. You just don't realize it yet!


Well, I keep hoping. A lot of what I would want *can* be done with software changes...


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## Adaptel (Nov 6, 2009)

I have been away for the past week and tried to summon some positive thoughts about my Premiere. I thought since the Premiere has more of a "real-time" connectrion to the tivo service, I could schedule some shows to record while I was away (without giving it a ton of advance notice). Well, the premiere did get my requests, but for some reason, it decided to randomly unpair with my cablecard. Not surprisingly, my TivoHD did what it was supposed to...as expected.

I didn't think so many people would have an opinion on this analogy, but my thinking is that both Tivo and Microsoft don't give thier products away. I shelled out $300 for the premiere, and now I am comitted to pay monthly fees for a period of time based on how much "better" the new version was. Yes, I could of returned it...but didn't. Yes, MS did get Vista to a point where is was "usable" after SP1, but this was done on the backs of paying customers acting as beta testers. No matter what type of technology it is, I believe that the number one goal is transparency in its functionality. You should be able to focus on the task and not the tool you are trying to use to get it done. ESPECIALLY whne it comes to something like watching tv!!! Tivo has been such a success, in part because it was snappy to respond to your commands and just did what it was supposed to. 

Even "if" they enable a rumored second core (I thought that linux ran on two cores in its sleep....why would that be so hard to do if true?), the drawing of all the icons on the HD interface is SO FRIGGIN SLOW. To me, this is like having a 3-second wait between the time when i push "channel up" and when the channel actually moves up. I really had higher hopes with the networking capabilities. I had and LOVED my replaytvs 10 years ago, and even then, you could play/stream shows on other units or computers without having to "copy" them first plus you could delete shows on remote dvrs. Anyway, I will bite my tongue and hope that Tivo fixes the problems. If they don't, they will have a real tough time selling people on their next generation. Just like Windows 7.....a fine product in my opinion (for MS), but they are sure having to work to get the masses to migrate.


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## Videodrome (Jun 20, 2008)

Adaptel said:


> I had and LOVED my replaytvs 10 years ago, and even then, you could play/stream shows on other units or computers without having to "copy" them first plus you could delete shows on remote dvrs. Anyway, I will bite my tongue and hope that Tivo fixes the problems. If they don't, they will have a real tough time selling people on their next generation. Just like Windows 7.....a fine product in my opinion (for MS), but they are sure having to work to get the masses to migrate.


In my mind except for HD, replaytv was a superior product. Zero lag in menu presentation, ability to stream to other units on demand. Unit had watchdog, so if it froze it would automatically reboot. The only difference is integrated cablecard, and Hd, otherwise replay is still a winner.


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