# difference between turbonet & cachecard



## RobbyBoy (Apr 21, 2003)

Hi all
Looking for network capability on my tivo so decided that the cheapest route was for a used tivo with the card installed on it.
So after searching the forums i can't find the answer to what the differences are between the two cards.
Any help?
Thanks
Robert


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Turbonet = network card only, so cheaper.
Cachecard = network card + RAM slot

The cachecard speeds up the tivo when there is some RAM installed in its slot - especially for those with large hard disks and many pages of now-playing lists.


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## RobbyBoy (Apr 21, 2003)

Thanks for the reply
Robert


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## tenwiseman (Dec 3, 2006)

It's not really the "now playing" list that is a problem. I've got 2x240GB with a turbonet card, and paging through recorded programmes is fast enough.

However, shifting the program season passes around is the slow bit - Children running about you look somewhat older when you've finished ...


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## cleudo (Apr 7, 2002)

I think the cachecard had a wider databus as well so was potentially a lot faster


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## johala_reewi (Oct 30, 2002)

cachecard ethernet port = 10/100.

turbonet ethernet port = 10 (although later ones did have 10/100).


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## AMc (Mar 22, 2002)

tenwiseman said:


> However, shifting the program season passes around is the slow bit - Children running about you look somewhat older when you've finished ...


That was slow for me with a 40GB drive - since fitting the cachecard I use the Tivoweb module for reordering season passes which at least means you can use Tivo in the mean time and make all the changes in one swoop.


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## verses (Nov 6, 2002)

johala_reewi said:


> cachecard ethernet port = 10/100.
> 
> turbonet ethernet port = 10 (although later ones did have 10/100).


Does that actually make much difference? I thought the slow clock speed of the TiVo CPU limited the throughput before it reached 10Mbps anyway?

Cheers,

Ian


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## mccg (Jun 18, 2002)

I have a 100M port on my turbonet - manage to get a max of about 11M (using multiple connections), so not much benefit over a 10M port.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

No one seems to have posted the links to the Cachecard and Turbonet spec pages at:-

www.9thtee.com/tivocachecard.htm

and

www.9thtee.com/turbonet.htm

At 69 USD vs 95USD and with shipping and so on being the same for both I can't really see why there is even still a market for the Turbonet card. Most likely is that 9th Tee have never cleared their stockpiles of Turbonet cards and that some people always buy what is cheapest without considering the difference in the specification.


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## verses (Nov 6, 2002)

I have a T*e*rbonet card - it's basically a Turbonet but built by an independent company/bloke. It was considerably cheaper than a Turbonet or a Cachecard (I think it was £35 inc postage). Also, I have a 120GB HDD in my TiVo (which is more than big enough for my needs) so the benefits of a Cachecard would be minimal

By the way Pete, you didn't include the added cost of the RAM for a Cachecard (IIRC, approx £40 at the time I was buying).


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

verses said:


> By the way Pete, you didn't include the added cost of the RAM for a Cachecard (IIRC, approx £40 at the time I was buying).


Yes but you can run a Cachecard without the RAM installed so if money is a problem you can buy the Cachecard now and run it with no memory and then buy memory later when you have increased the hard drive size or when memory prices for this kind of memory have fallen through the floor (as they now apparently have).


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## NickB (Jun 29, 2002)

I never did any empirical testing, but adding 512Mb to my Cachecard didn't seem to make any discernable difference. Like AMc suggests; if you've got Season Passes to re-order, do it via TiVoWeb.


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## gyre (Nov 22, 2003)

adding 512MB to my cachecard made a huge difference. most of the menu operations were vastly speeded up. the tivo went from a slug to a tortoise 

-- gyre --


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

NickB said:


> I never did any empirical testing, but adding 512Mb to my Cachecard didn't seem to make any discernable difference. Like AMc suggests; if you've got Season Passes to re-order, do it via TiVoWeb.


The memory module in the Cachecard speeds up the operation of the Now Playing menu and the menu operations in the individual recordings if you have a large hard drive and a large number of recordings (above 150 or more).

I don't think anyone claimed that the Cachecard speeded up reordering Season Passes and in my experience with a lot of recordings and a lot of Season Passes reordering of SPs on the Tivo is horriffically slow with or without a Cachecard and 512MB of memory in it. The only sensible way to re-order a large number of Season Passes is either to use Tivoweb or to go away and make a cup of tea or whatever for 5 minutes each time if moving them on the Tivo itself .


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

It does speed up re-ordering SPs, but it's still unbearably slow.

Cachecard is capable of considerably faster download speeds that Turbonet (over twice as fast in my experience, sometimes three times, YMMV) - however super fast speeds make the tivo pretty much unusable while they are happening.


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## Des (Apr 6, 2009)

I am new to Tivo, just aquired a Tivo one and am planning to use it as a digital vcr/live TV pauser and network transfer without doing much in the way of using a programming guide. Would I benefit from the Cachecard or am I better off saving the money and getting a Turbonet card?

Thanks.

--Des


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## kitschcamp (May 18, 2001)

If you're not going to do much with the guide, the cachecard is overkill, really.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Des said:


> I am new to Tivo, just aquired a Tivo one and am planning to use it as a digital vcr/live TV pauser and network transfer without doing much in the way of using a programming guide. Would I benefit from the Cachecard or am I better off saving the money and getting a Turbonet card?


The Cachecard does also have a faster network port that can stream data over the network at faster speeds than the Turbonet card so you may find it is beneficial to your intended use and does not cost a great deal more than the Turbonet card. In any case you don't have to fit the Cachecard with memory (mainly beneficial to speed up large Now Playing lists appearing on the Tivo) for it to work, although that memory is now a great deal cheaper than it used to be.


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## Des (Apr 6, 2009)

Thank you for the feedback.
THe Cachecard is about $30 US more than the Turbonet card, but I get the feeling I should order it incase my needs change. Belt and suspenders I guess.

Thanks again.

--Des


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Des said:


> Thank you for the feedback.
> THe Cachecard is about $30 US more than the Turbonet card, but I get the feeling I should order it incase my needs change. Belt and suspenders I guess.


If ordering new I don't think a Turbonet card makes any sense really. Especially as you also wanted to network data from the Tivo and the Cachecard is definitely faster at that by quite a margin.

Also a Cachecard would be more saleable in the after market. Even if Tivo pull the UK service here in the end you should still be able to find an owner of a Tivo in the USA who is interested in buying it through Ebay. I doubt they would be very interested in a Turbonet card these days though.

If you order from 9th Tee make sure you factor in the high international shipping cost for a single card. Also check what the value threshold is for payment of customs duty as Parceforce International like to declare everything to customs they can so they can then collect their own ripoff customs duty payment fee of around 12 quid on top of the VAT and/or customs duty. You don't have those hassles with order from TivoCentral or TivoHeaven, even though their cards appear initially more expensive than 9th Tee. But the minimum value ceiling for payment of customs duty was raised a while back.


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## Des (Apr 6, 2009)

I received the Cachecard today and am really happy with it! I had set up a 160GB drive on my Tivo using Instantcake which installed the drivers and Tivoweb and all sorts of other things I have yet to discover. 
I put a 256mb chip in the card that I had lying around, will check EBay (and my desk at work) for a 512mb. 
Anyway, everything simply worked! No fuss, no muss. The Tivo connected via the internet during guided setup, etc.
I can access the unit via Tivoweb as well as an FTP client.

I know I can take movies off of Tivo, but is there anyway to put them onto it? I should probably start a new thread for that.

Anyway, thanks all for the advice, I couldn't be happier!

Des


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Its good to hear that you are happy with your Cachecard. However I notice that you mention InstantCake (from Weaknees) which I believe only works with US Tivos.

Does this mean you are in fact based in the USA rather than the UK?


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## Des (Apr 6, 2009)

Pete77 said:


> Its good to hear that you are happy with your Cachecard. However I notice that you mention InstantCake (from Weaknees) which I believe only works with US Tivos.
> 
> Does this mean you are in fact based in the USA rather than the UK?


Yes, I am in the USA, sorry for any confusion. I found this thread while researching the different networking cards for the Tivo 1s. I didn't realize at that time that this is the UK forum. 
I hope I haven't posted in the wrong area 

I do find the company here to be more to my liking :up:

--Des


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Des said:


> I hope I haven't posted in the wrong area


No problem at all. I think the arguments about whether a Cachecard or Turbonet card are best for your proposed application remain exactly the same on either side of the Atlantic.



> I do find the company here to be more to my liking :up:


That's certainly good to hear. At least we British chaps speak English of a kind, even if not one that is precisely the same as your own.


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## Des (Apr 6, 2009)

Pete77 said:


> That's certainly good to hear. At least we British chaps speak English of a kind, even if not one that is precisely the same as your own.


Yes, and after going to the mall today I feel we need to appologize for what we've done to the English language 
However, there is no copyright on it...

--Des


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Des said:


> Yes, and after going to the mall today I feel we need to appologize for what we've done to the English language
> However, there is no copyright on it...


The mall is a concept and a word that you guys seems to have successfully imported in to the UK in the last 20 years.

When I lived in your country in Washington DC for 6 months in 1982 we had no covered indoor shopping centres called malls back home here in the UK. Instead we only had a few outdoor "shopping precincts" (no cars allowed but not covered over between the shops) and the only Mall (pronounced MALL instead of your MAWL pronunciation for shopping centres) we had in the UK was the longs straight road that ran up to the front of the Queen's London home (Buckingham Palace).

But now the UK is full of covered over shopping Malls (pronounced the US way as MAWLS) in all its newer towns and also in some of its more ancient ones.

Fortunately we still spell apologise with an s and not with a z (zed) or zee as you fellows over there like to call it.

We also still walk on pavements and not sidewalks, use taps and not fawcetts, put our luggage in a boot instead of trunk in a car and travel up tall buildings in lifts and not elevators. And we still generally say Monday to Friday and not Monday Thru Friday although thru does seem to be starting to creep in to the language to some extent here in the UK now.


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## steveroe (Oct 29, 2002)

And we're off topic...


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

steveroe said:


> And we're off topic...


Discussion of the original topic has been successfully completed. This is a polite social exchange between the original participants.


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

Des said:


> I know I can take movies off of Tivo, but is there anyway to put them onto it? I should probably start a new thread for that.


Short answer is no, unless they came of a TiVo in the first place.

Long answer is yes, if you really enjoy playing with file formats and metadata headers for longer then the film would take to play.


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## simbeav (Mar 14, 2005)

TCM2007 said:


> Short answer is no, unless they came of a TiVo in the first place.
> 
> Long answer is yes, if you really enjoy playing with file formats and metadata headers for longer then the film would take to play.


I'm not sure if we are still not supposed to talk about these things, but look for a South African Tivo site and there is a nice bit of free software which will load video files onto the Tivo.


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## Des (Apr 6, 2009)

Thank you.

I did find a server software that can convert and write to the Tivo, but haven't tried it yet.

I will start a new thread when I come to that bridge.

--Des


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## Des (Apr 6, 2009)

Pete77 said:


> Discussion of the original topic has been successfully completed. This is a polite social exchange between the original participants.


I have enjoyed the exchange 

I used to have a business partner from Carlisle and we would have these 'discussions' often.

I now spell Armour and Colour and he now pronounces things incorrectly 

We're still friends, but not partners.

--Des


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

A Google search for "nanview" and "Tivo" is likely to prove fruitful regarding your wish to insert external video on a Tivo.


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

des said:


> but is there anyway to put them onto it?





TCM2007 said:


> Short answer is no, unless they came of a TiVo in the first place.
> 
> Long answer is yes, if you really enjoy playing with file formats and metadata headers for longer then the film would take to play.


 Actually using the program mentioned above, no messing about is needed anymore. 
Just select your divx and click transfer,
the conversion is all done automatically.


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## RichardJH (Oct 7, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> A Google search for "nanview" and "Tivo" is likely to prove fruitful regarding your wish to insert external video on a Tivo.


minor correction it is actually NanVue


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## Des (Apr 6, 2009)

Thank you for the suggestion. I found Nanvue and began setting things up. Seems I need to install MFS_FTP, which I have tried but with little sucess.
I can FTP using Filezilla into my Tivo and download files from it to my PC, but when I attempt to upload to it only a few smaller files transfer and then I lose connection resulting in my having to restart the unit. I am also unable to perform file 'execute' and 'read/write' changes via the ftp client.
I am not certain what ftp program instantcake has set up on the Tivo HDD.

I suppose I can take the HDD out, put it into the computer with a linux boot and move the files that way, am I reluctant because I have already put the unit into the entertainment center and am simply feeling lazy now. Butit probably makes the most sense.

Thanks.

--Des


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

Des said:


> Thank you for the suggestion. I found Nanvue and began setting things up. Seems I need to install MFS_FTP, which I have tried but with little sucess. I am also unable to perform file 'execute' and 'read/write' changes via the ftp client.
> 
> I suppose I can take the HDD out, put it into the computer with a linux boot and move the files that way, am I reluctant because I have already put the unit into the entertainment center and am simply feeling lazy now. Butit probably makes the most sense.
> 
> ...


TiVoFTP doesn't support permission changes, for normal files you need to do that though a telnet/BASH connection.

However, video files are not normal files, when they are on the TiVo. In fact on the TiVo they are not really files at all, but an entry in the TiVo main database which indicates which parts of the hard disk contain raw video data. mfs_ftp is a rather clever programme which looks to an FTP client as if it's a normal FTP server, but is actually an interface to that database. You see files, but they aren't on the disk as a file. When you copy one, mfs_ftp finds the data and streams it to your FTP client which then saves it as a "proper" file on your PC, including a header which contains the other data from the database.

When you do it the other way round, mfs_ftp takes all the show data from the file header, and uses it to create the database entry, then it streams the video data in chunks all over the TiVo's disk.

You can't take the disk out and extract the files that way, because they aren't EXT2 files at all.

It's really important to understand that, or you can get yourself in a right old state of confusion, hunting for non-existent files with an FTP client.

It seems inserting video has come on a bit since I tried it - it didn't support FF or RW when I last had a go.


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## Des (Apr 6, 2009)

Thank you for the information TCM2007. I was wondering why I have been unable to find anything that 'looked' like a video file while fishing around the Tivo folders.
To clarify: the file I am trying to move over to the Tivo via Filezilla FTP are the MFS_FTP files. The server crashes on the Tivo. The files I have been able to move onto the Tivo have the worng permissions set and I have not been able to fix them. It makes sense to use Telnet to do that.
The solution I have come up with, but am lazy right now  is to move the files into the /var/hack folder manual from a Linux shell byt putting the HDD into another computer and then back into the Tivo.

I will do some more research based upon the info that you have provided and see if I can do this remotely though.

Thanks again.

--Des


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## AMc (Mar 22, 2002)

Des said:


> I know I can take movies off of Tivo, but is there anyway to put them onto it? I should probably start a new thread for that.


Try googlng nanVue. I used it to restore some recordings during an upgrade but it appears to do much more. I had very little luck working most of it out but you may have more interest/success.


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