# TIVO Roamio will only transfer one show at a time



## bartman1956 (Dec 14, 2006)

For some reason, my TIVO Roamio will only allow me to transfer one show at a time from other TIVOS. I have a Series 2 and a Premiere. It does not allow any other shows to be transferred until the first one is completed. My older TIVOs simply put the additional shows requested for transfer into the To Do List. The Roamio will not do that. When I contacted TIVO Customer Service the guy said basically "Thats the way the Roamio works, Have a Nice day"! 

Anyone else have this problem?:


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## Grey Griffin (May 24, 2007)

This is the way transfers between tivos has always worked.


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## RoyK (Oct 22, 2004)

Grey Griffin said:


> This is the way transfers between tivos has always worked.


No. It isn't. With my s3s if a show is being transferred and additional transfers are requested they are queued (the to do list) and automatically transferred in order.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

bartman1956 said:


> For some reason, my TIVO Roamio will only allow me to transfer one show at a time from other TIVOS. I have a Series 2 and a Premiere. It does not allow any other shows to be transferred until the first one is completed. My older TIVOs simply put the additional shows requested for transfer into the To Do List. The Roamio will not do that. When I contacted TIVO Customer Service the guy said basically "Thats the way the Roamio works, Have a Nice day"!
> 
> Anyone else have this problem?:


The transfer rate from my Premiere basic to my Roamio basic is 90+Mb/s with all tuners active. It wouldn't be different if I was doing two programs at once. What speed are you getting?

Putting them on the To Do List is normal and what the screen indicates.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

RoyK said:


> No. It isn't. With my s3s if a show is being transferred and additional transfers are requested they are queued (the to do list) and automatically transferred in order.


It still works that way. The OP is doing something wrong and the CSR he talked to doesn't know what he's talking about.

I just queued up a bunch of shows to transfer a few days ago and it worked fine.


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## bartman1956 (Dec 14, 2006)

The speed of the transfer is not the issue. The issue is that the TIVO Roamio is not allowing additional requests to go to the To Do List.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

bartman1956 said:


> The speed of the transfer is not the issue. The issue is that the TIVO Roamio is not allowing additional requests to go to the To Do List.


It does too. I just tried it again with 3 episodes of Tosh.0 from my wife's TiVo to mine. The first started right away, the other two were added to the To Do List


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## bartman1956 (Dec 14, 2006)

Thanks to all of you that confirmed that the CSR doesn't know what he is talking about and that the TIVO Roamio should be putting the additional transfer requests into the To Do List. I don't know where to go from here with the problem. Any suggestions?


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

bartman1956 said:


> Thanks to all of you that confirmed that the CSR doesn't know what he is talking about and that the TIVO Roamio should be putting the additional transfer requests into the To Do List. I don't know where to go from here with the problem. Any suggestions?


What exactly happens when you try to queue up the second xfer? Does it acknowledge it and say it will be added to the To Do list and then not actually do it or does it just ignore it? If the former, have you checked the To Do list to see if it is there?


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## bartman1956 (Dec 14, 2006)

It just ignores any additional transfer requests.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

bartman1956 said:


> It just ignores any additional transfer requests.


How full is the TiVo? Also, I assume that you are trying to xfer from the TiVo 2 to the Premiere.

Edit: Wired or wireless?


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

lpwcomp said:


> How full is the TiVo? Also, I assume that you are trying to xfer from the TiVo 2 to the Premiere.
> 
> Edit: Wired or wireless?


Post #1 seems to imply this is from the older devices due to requests by the Roamio being ignored. At least that's how I read it, but I could be wrong.


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## bartman1956 (Dec 14, 2006)

To clarify. It is the Roamio that will not allow multiple transfers from the older TIVOs to the Roamio. The older TIVOs all allow for mulitple transfers and simply puts the ones requested after the 1st one into the To DO List.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Reboot everything. That should fix it


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## bartman1956 (Dec 14, 2006)

I've tried the reboot, the "Blow on the plug" I just think it is a problem with the TIVO Roamio.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

I guess there could be some sort of conflict between the Roamio and the older units, but I doubt it. I don't have any older units left here, but I have queued up multiple transfers Roamio to Roamio and PC to Roamio and both work fine. (PC transfers use the old UI, just like an older TiVo)

I've seen the issue you describe before. Usually it happens because there is a transfer already in the To Do List that is stuck. Try deleting any transfers listed in your To Do List, then reboot the Roamio.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

I also had it happen once where I couldn't transfer a specific show and it turn out I had a partial transfer in the Recently Deleted folder for that same episode and I couldn't transfer again until I deleted it from Recently Deleted.


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## justen_m (Jan 15, 2004)

Dan203 said:


> I guess there could be some sort of conflict between the Roamio and the older units, but I doubt it.


I've queued up multiple transfers from my TivoHD to my Roamio Plus dozens of times. No problems. I just tried again this afternoon after reading this thread. No problems. One transfer starts, I queue up a couple more, everything is normal.

I once had a weird problem with transfers, but I can't remember the details. As you mention, I think I had an old partial or failed transfer stuck in my todo list, and I deleted it manually, but it was a long time ago. Not sure if I even had my Roamio back then. It might have been between my S2DT and TivoHD.

A reboot wouldn't clear things out of the todo list. If I unplug a Tivo while it is in the middle of recording something, it will just resume after the reboot. Not sure what happens if you reboot in the middle of a transfer. A reboot doesn't necessarily clear everything that might be leaving the Tivo in a bad state.


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## bartman1956 (Dec 14, 2006)

There are no pending transfers in the To Do list.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

bartman1956 said:


> There are no pending transfers in the To Do list.


Including "Recently Deleted", how full is the TiVo?


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## dougdingle (Jul 4, 2007)

When I first got my Roamio Pro about two weeks ago, I queued up a bunch of shows to transfer from the existing S3 overnight. Hardwired network.

It got about half way through the list and just stopped transferring. It did finish the last show it did transfer.

When I called up the todo list and the next program in line, the screen said "This program will transfer soon!". So I waited a couple of hours, and nothing. 

I rebooted the Roamio. When it finished booting, the todo list was empty - it had cleared out about fifty shows that I had painstakingly put on there, and I had to start over.

Weird stuff happens, lots of strange little issues I've found, stuff that really shouldn't be happening with a product this mature. Just sayin'...


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

I've seen that as well. When moving to a new TiVo I find it best to queue up no more then about 20 shows at a time. Otherwise you risk an error wiping out them queue and you having to do it all over again.

I wish there was a way to transfer shows between TiVos programmatically. Would be nice if one of us here on the forum could write a PC app that could queue up all the transfers in one shot rather then having to do it one by one using the remote.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

Dan203 said:


> I've seen that as well. When moving to a new TiVo I find it best to queue up no more then about 20 shows at a time. Otherwise you risk an error wiping out them queue and you having to do it all over again.
> 
> I wish there was a way to transfer shows between TiVos programmatically. Would be nice if one of us here on the forum could write a PC app that could queue up all the transfers in one shot rather then having to do it one by one using the remote.


There's no mechanism by which an app could schedule a direct TiVo-TiVo transfer.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

No. I wish there were.


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## dougdingle (Jul 4, 2007)

Dan203 said:


> I've seen that as well. When moving to a new TiVo I find it best to queue up no more then about 20 shows at a time. Otherwise you risk an error wiping out them queue and you having to do it all over again.


Yeah, lesson learned there.

I find it disheartening that this many years into development TiVo still has no way to transfer an entire folder of shows without having to go back again and again to select each show individually.

It just couldn't be that tough to add some code so that when you click on a folder on a remote TiVo, or alternately, when you select the first show in the folder to transfer, a prompt comes up that says "Transfer all folder contents?"


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Yeah they don't make migrating to a new unit very easy. I wish they would add some sort of migration wizard that would copy all your shows, thumb ratings, SPs, etc... to a new unit in one shot. There are separate ways to do most of these things, but none are really easy. (they could even copy protected shows using the same move and delete method they use for the new iOS app)


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## dougdingle (Jul 4, 2007)

Dan203 said:


> Yeah they don't make migrating to a new unit very easy. I wish they would add some sort of migration wizard that would copy all your shows, thumb ratings, SPs, etc... to a new unit in one shot. There are separate ways to do most of these things, but none are really easy.


Exactly. I installed KMTTG just to be able to copy Season Passes since the online version on tivo.com is so horrendous, then I had to copy about 125 shows and movies from two older S3's. What a pain.



> (they could even copy protected shows using the same move and delete method they use for the new iOS app)


Now that would be a wonderful feature. A move (copy+delete) would accomplish both the letter and spirit of DRM, where there still existed only a single copy of the program, it just got moved.

It would be ridiculously simple to implement if they had the will to do so.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

Dan203 said:


> No. I wish there were.


You can schedule a mass TiVo-PC-TiVo transfer using kmttg but of course in addition to the obvious one there are at least two problems.

!. I'm not convinced the metadata is always preserved, even with the recent changes.

2. All of the recordings end up copy protected on the destination TiVo.

There is one potential advantage to this method - they could be converted to a smaller format before pushing them.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Yeah TiVo-PC-TiVo loses some metadata. Especially the push from PC to TiVo. I've had issues doing that where shows didn't group properly or they lost their episode numbers in the transfer.


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## dougdingle (Jul 4, 2007)

lpwcomp said:


> 2. All of the recordings end up copy protected on the destination TiVo.


That's a deal killer for me. The current DRM scheme is onerous enough without me adding to it. That's what pretty much moved me away from the available 'push' technologies, which are really a sort of 'reach-around pull', if you will.



> There is one potential advantage to this method - they could be converted to a smaller format before pushing them.


I see very few shows that can stand more compression than is there already on a decent size (>50") screen.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

I think he's referring to converting to H.264. H.264 can compress video 30-40% without any loss in quality compared to the original MPEG-2 stream.


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## dougdingle (Jul 4, 2007)

Dan203 said:


> I think he's referring to converting to H.264. H.264 can compress video 30-40% without any loss in quality compared to the original MPEG-2 stream.


I'm going to have to try that. While I consider h.264 to be an excellent viewing codec, compressing the crappy 8 bit 4:2:0 already compressed to death MPG stream with an additional compression engine can't do the images much good, especially on dense or fast moving or excessively bright images.

I watch on a 70" JVC DiLA screen, so perhaps am more sensitive to compression artifacts than some. But I will give it a try, see what happens.


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## Connor (Oct 13, 2002)

I've had issues transferring before. Reboot the Source TiVo. Not the one making the request.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

Dan203 said:


> Yeah they don't make migrating to a new unit very easy. I wish they would add some sort of migration wizard that would copy all your shows, thumb ratings, SPs, etc... to a new unit in one shot. There are separate ways to do most of these things, but none are really easy. (they could even copy protected shows using the same move and delete method they use for the new iOS app)


Considering the experiences I've had with Microsoft "migration wizards", I'm not sure how confident I'd be in theirs being better.


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## dougdingle (Jul 4, 2007)

Connor said:


> I've had issues transferring before. Reboot the Source TiVo. Not the one making the request.


Second this. In fact, reboot both machines. A lot of weirdness seems to get fixed when you do that.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

dougdingle said:


> I'm going to have to try that. While I consider h.264 to be an excellent viewing codec, compressing the crappy 8 bit 4:2:0 already compressed to death MPG stream with an additional compression engine can't do the images much good, especially on dense or fast moving or excessively bright images.
> 
> I watch on a 70" JVC DiLA screen, so perhaps am more sensitive to compression artifacts than some. But I will give it a try, see what happens.


It wont get better, but if you set the params right you can get a smaller file with very little loss in quality.


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

dougdingle said:


> That's a deal killer for me. The current DRM scheme is onerous enough without me adding to it. That's what pretty much moved me away from the available 'push' technologies, which are really a sort of 'reach-around pull', if you will. I see very few shows that can stand more compression than is there already on a decent size (>50") screen.


Hey, at least they're giving you the courtesy of a "reach around"!


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## pghkirwan (Jan 4, 2003)

I just got a new Roamio Plus that I'll install on my network which consists now of an S3 and an HD. My plan is to transfer the shows now on those 2 boxes (after I install a 3TB drive) via the network, hardwiring the Roamio in to the router. 

The question is: once I have the Roamio ready, do I need to keep the two S cards in the S3 while I'm transferring shows? Logically, since I'm no longer recording on the S3, I shouldn't have to have them in there. (I'll be trading 2 S cards for an M card for FIOS.)


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

pghkirwan said:


> I just got a new Roamio Plus that I'll install on my network which consists now of an S3 and an HD. My plan is to transfer the shows now on those 2 boxes (after I install a 3TB drive) via the network, hardwiring the Roamio in to the router.
> 
> The question is: once I have the Roamio ready, do I need to keep the two S cards in the S3 while I'm transferring shows? Logically, since I'm no longer recording on the S3, I shouldn't have to have them in there. (I'll be trading 2 S cards for an M card for FIOS.)


Access to recorded content over the network does not require a cable card. I have a Premiere that saves movies from my Roamio all the time. All that's required is that the units have service.

Note that transfers initiated by the older box may be slower than transfers initiated by the Roamio. I don't know why.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

pghkirwan said:


> I just got a new Roamio Plus that I'll install on my network which consists now of an S3 and an HD. My plan is to transfer the shows now on those 2 boxes (after I install a 3TB drive) via the network, hardwiring the Roamio in to the router.
> 
> The question is: once I have the Roamio ready, do I need to keep the two S cards in the S3 while I'm transferring shows? Logically, since I'm no longer recording on the S3, I shouldn't have to have them in there. (I'll be trading 2 S cards for an M card for FIOS.)


if you're not using the S3 to access cable, it doesn't need the CableCARDS.


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## dougdingle (Jul 4, 2007)

pghkirwan said:


> I just got a new Roamio Plus that I'll install on my network which consists now of an S3 and an HD. My plan is to transfer the shows now on those 2 boxes (after I install a 3TB drive) via the network, hardwiring the Roamio in to the router.
> 
> The question is: once I have the Roamio ready, do I need to keep the two S cards in the S3 while I'm transferring shows? Logically, since I'm no longer recording on the S3, I shouldn't have to have them in there. (I'll be trading 2 S cards for an M card for FIOS.)


I just went through this *exact *scenario.

Be aware that if you load up the transfer queue with dozens of recordings to transfer, at some point the process will go belly up and stop transferring.

At that point, when you select the next show from the ToDo list to see what's going on, you'll see "This show will transfer soon!" or something similar. The show will *never *transfer, nor will any of the rest of them.

The only thing to do at that point is to reboot, and when you do, the pending shows will have been wiped off the ToDo list, forcing you to start the process for those shows over.

*Remarkably annoying to be this far into the Roamio's life and have this kind of bug, Tivo!*

Anyway, what you want to do is queue up no more than 10-15 at a time for transfer. That works.


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