I hope this is the right place to ask, I am sorry if it is not. I am considering getting an HD Tivo, but is it possible to take files off of the Tivo and compress using like h.264 or divx? Can I put those files back on the Tivo and watch them? I know I can take the files off of the Tivo using the Tivo desktop or something, but other than that I am clueless. I am bothered by the lack of space available for HD programing on the Tivo and would love any way of expanding that other than spending another 200 bucks on specific external hard drive.

I can't back Bicker1 up on that statement because I don't believe I've ever transferred an HD file to my computer and I won't be because I've used so much disk space storing other stuff. But not everyone has had that problem. And I have transferred HD material from my TiVo HD to TiVo S3 successfully and had no problems.

But in regard to compressing file and changing them to Xvid and such. .Tivo files are not suppose to be changed however I do believe there is a way to do it, do a google on that. But once you change the file you probably will not be able to make it a .Tivo file anymore and that is where you would lose your quality.

TiVo desktop plus does play Xvid files, however I don't know if you could keep dolby 5.1 sound with the transfer. And I don't think there is a way to convert it back to .Tivo file.

And as far as not wanting to pay the 200 bucks, I understand that may be expensive for you but that's the best way to do it.

Guys, I'm moving a bunch of files off to my TiVo HD which has huge amounts of room from my computer via wireless network. But this just takes so long! Now using TiVo Desktop 6.1 plus if I push that scale thing on the properties for performance will that speed up my transfers?

Guys, I'm moving a bunch of files off to my TiVo HD which has huge amounts of room from my computer via wireless network. But this just takes so long! Now using TiVo Desktop 6.1 plus if I push that scale thing on the properties for performance will that speed up my transfers?

Your wording is a bit confusing to me. Which direction are you moving the files ? To the PC, or to the TiVo ?

A trick that seems to work fairly well is setting each of your tuners to channels that you DO NOT receive. That way, there's nothing being written to disk, and it seems to speed up transfers quite a bit. Give it a shot.

I hope this is the right place to ask, I am sorry if it is not. I am considering getting an HD Tivo, but is it possible to take files off of the Tivo and compress using like h.264 or divx? Can I put those files back on the Tivo and watch them? I know I can take the files off of the Tivo using the Tivo desktop or something, but other than that I am clueless. I am bothered by the lack of space available for HD programing on the Tivo and would love any way of expanding that other than spending another 200 bucks on specific external hard drive.

Yes it is possible to move from the TiVo to a PC using the Tivo2Go app, but like someone else mentioned, you'll need to google around to find an additional tool to remove the .tivo wrapper. After doing so, you'll end up with a plain old .mpg with which you can do anything you choose.

If you have a mac by chance, you can burn your files directly from your tivo to blu-ray. :)

I hope this is the right place to ask, I am sorry if it is not. I am considering getting an HD Tivo, but is it possible to take files off of the Tivo and compress using like h.264 or divx? Can I put those files back on the Tivo and watch them? I know I can take the files off of the Tivo using the Tivo desktop or something, but other than that I am clueless. I am bothered by the lack of space available for HD programing on the Tivo and would love any way of expanding that other than spending another 200 bucks on specific external hard drive.

Yes.

You can pull files off of the TiVo by a few different methods. TiVo Desktop will allow you to do this. Or, you can simply point a web browser at your TiVo and achieve the same results. https://<your-tivo-IP> and use "tivo" for the login, and your Media Access Key as the password. The files will show up on your computer as ".tivo" files, which are copy protected. You can Google around a bit to find out how to work around that.

If you have non-protected video files, you can transcode them to whatever format you'd like. H.264 and Xvid/DivX seem to be the two most popular formats.

Getting the files back to the TiVo can be done by a few different methods. TiVo Desktop Plus ($25) can transcode quite a few formats and transmit them to your TiVo, and is supported on Windows and Mac (I think). pyTiVo is a free server that runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX. It doesn't have Tivo Desktop's nice GUI, but it supports many more file formats, and is completely free.

This (http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/05/18/hands-on-with-the-motorola-tuning-adapter-mtr700/) report has been published on Engadget about the first public demonstration of a working Tuning Adapter, shown installed on a TiVo HD at The Cable Show down in "Noleans" (note that New Orleans is always "down in", even when you're standing in Miami :)).

This (http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/05/18/hands-on-with-the-motorola-tuning-adapter-mtr700/) report has been published on Engadget about the first public demonstration of a working Tuning Adapter, shown installed on a TiVo HD at The Cable Show down in "Noleans" (note that New Orleans is always "down in", even when you're standing in Miami :)).

This is obviously good news. Personally, being in a former-Adelphia system that's running SA gear, I'd have loved to see the Cisco unit running. From what I gather, they had a non-functional unit on display.

This is obviously good news. Personally, being in a former-Adelphia system that's running SA gear, I'd have loved to see the Cisco unit running. From what I gather, they had a non-functional unit on display.Well, it's unknown whether the unit was capable of functioning, but it apparently wasn't functioning at the show, at least not yesterday :).

It looks as though New Orleans' primarily cable provider is a division of Cox using Moto networks, which might have made it easier for Moto to set up a demo at the show. I still think that Cisco should have a network simulator which could be used for the purpose.

Your wording is a bit confusing to me. Which direction are you moving the files ? To the PC, or to the TiVo ?

A trick that seems to work fairly well is setting each of your tuners to channels that you DO NOT receive. That way, there's nothing being written to disk, and it seems to speed up transfers quite a bit. Give it a shot.

Yes, it's PC to TiVo HD sorry for the confusion.

When you say set it to channels you do not receive are you referring to the shows the channels are on? I probably could pull that off in the evening late at night but I would have to add the channels back on later.

I still have a bunch of stuff to transfer but one of the channels is probably recording now, at least it should be and the others will start around 1:00 pm.

One of them is FOX digital, and the other is CW analog so I'll work around with that later. Thanks for the suggestion.

When you say set it to channels you do not receive are you referring to the shows the channels are on? I probably could pull that off in the evening late at night but I would have to add the channels back on later.

I manually tune one tuner to channel 888, which isn't supported by my cable system. Obviously, I get the "channel not found" banner from TiVo, and I get a blank screen. I switch to the other tuner and manually tune to channel 889, with the same results. At that point, with no live buffering happening, there's nothing being written to disk. Various folks on TCF report large network performance gains via this method.

I manually tune one tuner to channel 888, which isn't supported by my cable system. Obviously, I get the "channel not found" banner from TiVo, and I get a blank screen. I switch to the other tuner and manually tune to channel 889, with the same results. At that point, with no live buffering happening, there's nothing being written to disk. Various folks on TCF report large network performance gains via this method.

I got it. I'll give it a try tonight when I go to bed.

...the transfer back to the TiVo it doesn't work for me, for HD transfers. It fails about 1/3 of the way through, for every attempt.

I had a similar problem -- it turned out to be my antivirus program. It was suspicious of so much data being transferred in the background, and broke the connection after 2GB. A setting change fixed it for me.

Well, it's unknown whether the unit was capable of functioning, but it apparently wasn't functioning at the show, at least not yesterday :).

Non-operational, and huge as hell. Essentially, it's the size of a full-sized set top box (from which it obviously is derived). Much larger than Moto's adapter. Cisco says it'll be ready to go in the 3rd quarter of 2008. We'll see about that...

BTW, it's the the bottom box in the image attached below.

http://www.engadgethd.com/media/2008/05/ta152001md.jpg

Non-operational, and huge as hell. Essentially, it's the size of a full-sized set top box (from which it obviously is derived). Much larger than Moto's adapter. Cisco says it'll be ready to go in the 3rd quarter of 2008. We'll see about that...The Engadget article from which you took that image is here (http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/05/19/hands-on-with-the-cisco-tuning-adapter-sta1520/), in case others might care to read it, and see the pictures of the unit from other angles that are posted there. Although larger than expected (and apparently considerably larger than Moto's MTR700), I don't think that it's anywhere near the size of, say, an Explorer 8350HD. Then again, it is disappointingly large, though it can still be tucked behind your equipment cabinet somewhere--there's no IR sensor that needs to face the user. Like Moto, they're just using the enclosure of an existing product, to minimize the number of special parts they have to stock for this thing (luckily for Moto, they had a tiny, non-CableCARD, digital-only STB model in production). Very low price and speed to market has to be the focus for this product, particularly since it doesn't have to be positioned where it can be seen when in use.

Also, "nonfunctional" and "nonfunctioning" are not the same thing. Looks like the typical prototype, but since they weren't going to set up a working demo, any broken one from the scrap pile in a lab would do :D. They brought working ones to CableLabs' interop last month and say that they plan to submit it for CableLabs' Certification Wave 60, which is getting under way now.

EDIT: I asked Ben Drawbaugh to estimate the dimensions of the Cisco device and he says that it's about 10x7x2.

The Engadget article from which you took that image is here (http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/05/19/hands-on-with-the-cisco-tuning-adapter-sta1520/), in case others might care to read it, and see the pictures of the unit from other angles that are posted there. Although larger than expected (and apparently considerably larger than Moto's MTR700), I don't think that it's anywhere near the size of, say, an Explorer 8350HD. Then again, it is disappointingly large, though it can still be tucked behind your equipment cabinet somewhere--there's no IR sensor that needs to face the user. Like Moto, they're just using the enclosure of an existing product, to minimize the number of special parts they have to stock for this thing (luckily for Moto, they had a tiny, non-CableCARD, digital-only STB model in production). Very low price and speed to market has to be the focus for this product, particularly since it doesn't have to be positioned where it can be seen when in use.

I can completely understand Cisco's rationale for going the route they did in order to get the thing out the door ASAP. It's just unfortunate that they chose such a large platform to work off of. I can see some people complaining about this when it eventually rolls out. Additionally, you'd have to wonder if hidden behind such a large product is a large cost, which could imply a large rental fee from the cableco's in order to recoup their cost of acquisition.

Me ? If/when I need this beastie, it'll be tucked in my equipment closet out of sight.


Also, "nonfunctional" and "nonfunctioning" are not the same thing. Looks like the typical prototype, but since they weren't going to set up a working demo, any broken one from the scrap pile in a lab would do :D. They brought working ones to CableLabs' interop last month and say that they plan to submit it for CableLabs' Certification Wave 60, which is getting under way now.

Hell, anyone can put a casing on display and circle a date on a calendar for a release date. I'm sure every engineer out there has been subjected to such treatment on the part of the sales and management weasels out there.

I knew about the interop trials, but I'm not sure we ever heard any definitive news that came about from those trials. It certainly seems to me that Motorola is further ahead as far as getting the product up and running, and interoperating with the expected 3rd party gear (read:TiVo).

Additionally, you'd have to wonder if hidden behind such a large product is a large cost, which could imply a large rental fee from the cableco's in order to recoup their cost of acquisition.C'mon Paul--you seem far too intelligent to believe that 5 cents more plastic in an enclosure should lead to a great increase in price. There are DVD players on the market that retail for $30 which are mounted in bigger plastic boxes. I'm certain that Cisco and Moto were asked to produce these things by the cable providers and told exactly how much they were willing to pay for them and that price didn't cover design and fabrication of a new, smallest-possible board and enclosure. They retrofitted the cheapest board that their cable subscriber product divisions were making that had everything needed (probably removing a bunch of audio, video, IR control and front panel status display components from its design) and took whatever enclosure went along with it.

The cable industry created these things as a political gambit, part of an effort to convince the FCC to not force them to work on the CEA's proposed DCR+ standard, which they claim will cost them years of effort and hundreds of millions out of pocket. Producing the thing and preparing to distribute it without waiting for the FCC to draft rules to prompt them is a show of unbelievable cooperation. Charging anything much to lease them will make it a complete waste of time, ending with the FCC siding with the CEA and pretty much putting nails in the coffin of their precious <tru2way>.

EDIT: Hmmm. Cisco/SA actually had a compact digital-only STB like the one Moto retrofitted into the MTR700, the Explorer 940 (http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/video/ps8611/ps8612/ps8642/product_data_sheet0900aecd806c5958.pdf). Take a bunch of stuff off of the board (IR sensor, audio and video junk and related connectors) and add a USB interface and you got what you need in a 7.8 in. x 1.7 in. x 6.40 in. package. Don't ask me why they didn't use that instead.

C'mon Paul--you seem far too intelligent to believe that 5 cents more plastic in an enclosure should lead to a great increase in price. There are DVD players on the market that retail for $30 which are mounted in bigger plastic boxes. I'm certain that Cisco and Moto were asked to produce these things by the cable providers and told exactly how much they were willing to pay for them and that price didn't cover design and fabrication of a new, smallest-possible board and enclosure. They retrofitted the cheapest board that their cable subscriber product divisions were making that had everything needed (probably removing a bunch of audio, video, IR control and front panel status display components from its design) and took whatever enclosure went along with it.

I'm honestly not trying to hyperbolize things at all. Hmmm... I think I just invented a word. :)

Without seeing the guts of either box, I'd have to assume that the box is a certain size for a reason : the internal components. More components on the BOM, to me, infers a larger cost of manufacture. If I had to guess at the cost of each of those boxes, I'd wager the Moto box was in the $50 ballpark, and the Cisco box was in the $200-250 ballpark. It's not about the plastic enclosure, it's about the goodies inside...

Now, you and I both know that the cableco's have never met a service or rental fee that they didn't like. They're gonna try to make the money they've had to drop on these boxes back somehow. That's been their track record since Day 1. I'm not saying that this fee will be exorbitant, but it'll likely be on the order of a few bucks a month. To some folks, that's gonna be an issue.


The cable industry created these things as a political gambit, part of an effort to convince the FCC to not force them to work on the CEA's proposed DCR+ standard, which they claim will cost them years of effort and hundreds of millions out of pocket. Producing the thing and preparing to distribute it without waiting for the FCC to draft rules to prompt them is a show of unbelievable cooperation. Charging anything much to lease them will make it a complete waste of time, ending with the FCC siding with the CEA and pretty much putting nails in the coffin of their precious <tru2way>.

100% agree.


EDIT: Hmmm. Cisco/SA actually had a compact digital-only STB like the one Moto retrofitted into the MTR700, the Explorer 940 (http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/video/ps8611/ps8612/ps8642/product_data_sheet0900aecd806c5958.pdf). Take a bunch of stuff off of the board (IR sensor, audio and video junk and related connectors) and add a USB interface and you got what you need in a 7.8 in. x 1.7 in. x 6.40 in. package. Don't ask me why they didn't use that instead.

No USB. They'd have to re-spin the boards and modify the enclosure. That alone would probably jack the cost up enough to make it not worth their while. Going with the enormo-box, which is already on-hand and likely to be obsolete soon, serves to save on up front costs and get rid of inventory. A double-win for Cisco.

I'm honestly not trying to hyperbolize things at all. Hmmm... I think I just invented a word. :)

Without seeing the guts of either box, I'd have to assume that the box is a certain size for a reason : the internal components. More components on the BOM, to me, infers a larger cost of manufacture.

mmm..I wouldn't bet on that, as michael notes, it's probably an existing stock case. Have you ever looked inside one of those $30 DVD players? There's nothing in those cases but a drive and a small PCB. Most of them are 1/2 to 3/4 empty. Probably most of the case size is to facilitate connection jack placement and aesthetics. With the SDV box I don't imagine there's a need for multiple connections, so my guess would be it's simply an available case being used for a different application.

I had a similar problem -- it turned out to be my antivirus program. It was suspicious of so much data being transferred in the background, and broke the connection after 2GB. A setting change fixed it for me.I'll try to look into that. I'm using Microsoft One Care -- what are you using?

mmm..I wouldn't bet on that, as michael notes, it's probably an existing stock case. Have you ever looked inside one of those $30 DVD players? There's nothing in those cases but a drive and a small PCB. Most of them are 1/2 to 3/4 empty. Probably most of the case size is to facilitate connection jack placement and aesthetics. With the SDV box I don't imagine there's a need for multiple connections, so my guess would be it's simply an available case being used for a different application.

While you're absolutely correct about the DVD players, I can't see how that relates to the tuning adapter. Moto and Cisco/SA have essentially hot-rodded existing products to provide the new functionality. Given the extremely fast turn-around times exhibited by both companies, I doubt that these two manufacturers had enough time to make hardware changes large enough to warrant a case change.

So, what existing Cisco/SA product is their adapter a derivative of ? I'd expect the cost of the resolver would be close that that box's cost, unless they were fortunate enough to be able to de-populate the board enough to shave costs.

While you're absolutely correct about the DVD players, I can't see how that relates to the tuning adapter. Moto and Cisco/SA have essentially hot-rodded existing products to provide the new functionality. Given the extremely fast turn-around times exhibited by both companies, I doubt that these two manufacturers had enough time to make hardware changes large enough to warrant a case change.

So, what existing Cisco/SA product is their adapter a derivative of ? I'd expect the cost of the resolver would be close that that box's cost, unless they were fortunate enough to be able to de-populate the board enough to shave costs.
Oh, I have no idea, I'm not familiar at all with Cisco's(SA) cable devices. We're Moto where I am at.

Are you saying there's "extra" electronics in the boxes, and that's why they are the size they are? That could very well be, dictating the physical size.

While you're absolutely correct about the DVD players, I can't see how that relates to the tuning adapter. Moto and Cisco/SA have essentially hot-rodded existing products to provide the new functionality. Given the extremely fast turn-around times exhibited by both companies, I doubt that these two manufacturers had enough time to make hardware changes large enough to warrant a case change.Please. They've had 10 months or more to work on this, possibly more. No doubt when the NCTA proposed the "Tuning Resolver" solution to the FCC last August, they had breadboarded stuff in the lab. And what are you talking about, "hot-rodded"? Hot-rods are hand-tweaked enhancements of base automobile, much more powerful than the original. What they've done here is redesign to remove large amounts of existing functionality to minimize manufacturing costs.

Both these companies (Cisco and Motorola) had divisions which already made devices, DOCSIS cable modems, which were in mass production for low cost which had a substantial superset of the requirements for this miniscule application--everything but coax pass-through. (Rarely in the history of networking has a standalone product been designed to do something so, very, very trivial). Unfortunately, the task of getting these Tuning Adapters to market would have been given to a cable subscriber equipment R&D group which would have been totally unfamiliar with the tool-chains for working with those cable modem platforms--it would have cost a lot of money and time to bring them up to speed, much more than required to downgrade the functionality of one of the cable STB platforms that they were already familiar with.

We're talking about the SDV tuning here--something added to a mass of software running on normal cable STBs with a minor firmware update :rolleyes:. I'm betting that the function to download software upgrades into these things is more complex and interesting than the "application" itself.

We're talking about the SDV tuning here--something added to a mass of software running on normal cable STBs with a minor firmware update :rolleyes:. I'm betting that the function to download software upgrades into these things is more complex and interesting than the "application" itself.

Well boys let me tell you what's going on around here. Currently as I have mentioned TW has realigned it's lineup with former Adelphia, Comcast, and their own customers because TW "Thinks it thinks like we do.":rolleyes:

So they are taking many of their SA boxes that had Passport and the ones that had SARA, which I know is a real pos and they are dumping Navigator software in them. Now this Navigator software from what I understand has more bugs in it then a tenement in the middle of a downtown slum area.

I also know that inside of it is the words SDV: NO.

But that's obviously what they are looking at.

And for all those folks who are Comcast customers with their Moto boxes, well for right now they are just sol because they can't even get on demand on those things.

If you get a chance check out the local Cleveland area thread, maybe lookup a guy by the name of nickdawg (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=13406312&postcount=12010). He's a champion of the SA, specially passport and while with every post he makes he continues to complain and gripe about what a piece of crap it is. See if you can find out when he becomes "accepting" as he continues to complain each thread. Great reading.

I also know that inside of it is the words SDV: NO.What do you mean by this? Compose your reply in English, please.

I do know that current versions of Navigator have support for SDV. SDV isn't even in use on TWC San Diego yet and there's a "Switched Digital Broadcast" page in the diags (which says that the feature is enabled and that our box is registered).

There are also TWC divisions actively using SDV with SARA. I believe that TWC Oceanic is one such.

Please. They've had 10 months or more to work on this, possibly more. No doubt when the NCTA proposed the "Tuning Resolver" solution to the FCC last August, they had breadboarded stuff in the lab. And what are you talking about, "hot-rodded"? Hot-rods are hand-tweaked enhancements of base automobile, much more powerful than the original. What they've done here is redesign to remove large amounts of existing functionality to minimize manufacturing costs.


Perhaps "hot-rodded" wasn't the perfect term to use. Perhaps "hacked" would have been more appropriate. That doesn't negate the rest of the point I was trying to make. Not sure why you didn't include the rest of my post, which kind of relates to what you were trying to point out...

Be that as it may, I'd trust Moto far more to crank this product out on time than I would Cisco/SA. The name on the front may be Cisco, but it's still the SA engineers (the semi-trained monkeys who have tortured thousands of users with their feeble 8300 w/ SARA) who will have to get this adapter up and running. Yes, it's a relatively simplistic product, but the SA guys have a knack for screwing stuff up. This is borne out by the fact that Moto's was completely up and running this week, while SA's unit was not. I hope they prove me wrong, since I live in an SA area, but I'm not holding my breath...

Perhaps "hot-rodded" wasn't the perfect term to use. That doesn't negate the rest of the point I was trying to make. Not sure why you didn't include the rest of my post, which kind of relates to what you were trying to point out...

Be that as it may, I'd trust Moto far more to crank this product out on time than I would Cisco/SA. The name on the front may be Cisco, but it's still the SA engineers (the semi-trained monkeys who have tortured thousands of users with their feeble 8300 w/ SARA) who will have to get this adapter up and running. Yes, it's a relatively simplistic product, but the SA guys have a knack for screwing stuff up. This is borne out by the fact that Moto's was completely up and running this week, while SA's unit was not. I hope they prove me wrong, since I live in an SA area, but I'm not holding my breath...You may be right, but supposedly both units passed muster at CableLabs' interop and both units have been turned in for certification in CableLab's Certification Wave 60. Since we're both on SA systems (most people threatened by SDV are), let's hope that they've done an adequate job. The fact that it wasn't running at The Cable Show is probably due to the local cable system being a Moto network. (Apparently only one or the other company was running cable subscriber equipment demos at CES, for the same reasons).

I don't know what box Cisco/SA based the STA1520 on--it was supposed to be an all-digital STB called the Cisco RNG-100, but I can't find the product listed anywhere. From the LightReading.com article (http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=152093&site=cdn) which announced it:
Cisco is calling its entry the STA-1520, and the first-generation version will look much like the RNG 100, a new standard-definition cable box that will support MPEG-4 and the removable CableCARD.

Personally, I don't blame them for SARA, though I have never hated any piece of consumer electronics firmware so much, and hopefully never will. I've openly theorized that it was a proof-of-concept reference IPG implementation which was never intended for use by normal human beings. Some bone-headed cable executives saw it demonstrated and decided "Well--why should we allocated money to development of an IPG or to license one from a third party when we could just use that?" :rolleyes:

I do know that current versions of Navigator have support for SDV. SDV isn't even in use on TWC San Diego yet and there's a "Switched Digital Broadcast" page in the diags (which says that the feature is enabled and that our box is registered).



That's what I was trying to say. It's on the diagnostic page.

As far as the smart comment about English I don't know what's up with that. Maybe that's part of your digital wiseguy personality. My English was fine, I just didn't explain it well.

I'll try to look into that. I'm using Microsoft One Care -- what are you using?
My antivirus program is Kaspersky Internet Security.

I don't recall seeing this posted over here yet. I know some of you guys are already well aware of it but for those who arn't this is the SDV Converter (http://gizmodo.com/391871/tivo-switched-video-tuning-adapters-appear-at-cablelabs). Interesting article as well

I don't recall seeing this posted over here yet. I know some of you guys are already well aware of it but for those who arn't this is the SDV Converter (http://gizmodo.com/391871/tivo-switched-video-tuning-adapters-appear-at-cablelabs). Interesting article as wellI'd posted an update on that stuff in this thread a few weeks ago (here (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=13756799#post13756799)), but I hadn't seen that specific report from The Cable Show (I'd seen a couple of brief posts on Engadget by bdraw, here (http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/05/19/hands-on-with-the-cisco-tuning-adapter-sta1520/) and here (http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/05/18/hands-on-with-the-motorola-tuning-adapter-mtr700/) (the second is of the Moto MTR700, which was in a working demo with lots of pictures). Thanks for the link.

EDIT: BTW, that's "Tuning Adapter" (formerely known as "Tuning Resolver"), not "SDV Converter".

EDIT: BTW, that's "Tuning Adapter" (formerely known as "Tuning Resolver"), not "SDV Converter".

OMG, apples and oranges. Also formerly known as "the dongle."

OK Tuning Adapter. Michael and Paul are on another planet.

That was a compliment by the way.:)

OMG, apples and oranges. Also formerly known as "the dongle."

OK Tuning Adapter. Michael and Paul are on another planet.

That was a compliment by the way.:)Sorry--I just thought that you might like to know the actual name of the thing :).

BTW, I posted the link to the Gizmodo article in a on TCF this morning and gave you credit for spotting it, here (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=6306027#post6306027).

Sorry--I just thought that you might like to know the actual name of the thing :).

BTW, I posted the link to the Gizmodo article in a on TCF this morning and gave you credit for spotting it, here (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=6306027#post6306027).

Well, I'd like to take credit for finding it but actually someone else found it and I just copied it. And thanks for the link for the Tivo forum but you know I would be breaking the rules if I were to go there and I would NEVER do anything like that.;)

Right Sooka?:D

Well, I'd like to take credit for finding it but actually someone else found it and I just copied it. And thanks for the link for the Tivo forum but you know I would be breaking the rules if I were to go there and I would NEVER do anything like that.;)

Right Sooka?:DYou're banned from reading the forum? How the hell would that work. It's an open site on the Internet. You don't have to be logged into the forum or even have an account to read it and I'm sure that many people who never register do read it.

You're banned from reading the forum? How the hell would that work. It's an open site on the Internet. You don't have to be logged into the forum or even have an account to read it and I'm sure that many people who never register do read it.

They ban your IP address as well. Like that will stop you from getting in.:D

I suppose they believe that people arn't creative enough to know how to change their ip address.

I don't recall seeing this posted over here yet. I know some of you guys are already well aware of it but for those who arn't this is the SDV Converter (http://gizmodo.com/391871/tivo-switched-video-tuning-adapters-appear-at-cablelabs). Interesting article as well
Hook – Thanks for the heads up. Now, if the thing actually works and is rolled out to TiVo's S3 and HD customers, my cup will runneth over. Alas, I won’t be holding my breath.

So far, I’ve been lucky in that Cox OKC does not yet use SDV for anything but its PPV channels. Now, I’ve just got to hope that the converter, nee dongle, gets to me before SDV does.

Consider yourself lucky--there are people who've been living with SDV for quite some time now, mostly Time Warner customers. Some plaes are horrible--there are at least 20 channels in San Antonio TWC's SDV group. I recently moved across San Diego County from a Cox neighbor (Oceanside) into a TWC-held territory within the city limits (Clairemont Mesa); luckily TWC hasn't begun using SDV yet, though they do have the hardware and software in place and have been internally testing it.

Cox has expanded their real bandwidth by 750 MHz to 1 GHz in most of their systems nationwide (if not all, by now), which should put off the necessity of going to SDV for a while, though probably not forever. The Tuning Adapter was originally expected start distributing by the end of the 2nd quarter, but now looks like it'll be here around the end of summer.

When I purchased my S3 back in September of 2006 (hard to believe that long ago!) I knew SDV was going to come around but I also knew that TW and Comcast had bought Adelphia. I also knew that TW would have to come up with a plan to align the lineups before SDV would ever come to the Northeast Ohio area, basically Cleveland/Akron.

Now I was so frustrated over the SA 8300 even if that wasn't going on I probably would have bought but I figured it would take a while before TW could get it together. Adelphia had several lineups and adding Comcast would further complicate the matter.

Well now they have almost completed the realignment except I think in the former Comcast areas, or at least part of them. The ex Comcast people are p.o'd because their Moto boxes won't do On Demand and that's another thing they will have to deal with before SDV gets here. They are going with the SA 8300 with Navigator software. And as I said before in the diagnostic screen the letters SDV are in there.

Realistically I didn't figure there would be anyway that the Tuning Adapter would not really be ready right at the start of the second quarter so as far as I'm concerned everything is moving just nicely.

Hook – Thanks for the heads up. Now, if the thing actually works and is rolled out to TiVo's S3 and HD customers, my cup will runneth over. Alas, I won’t be holding my breath.

So far, I’ve been lucky in that Cox OKC does not yet use SDV for anything but its PPV channels. Now, I’ve just got to hope that the converter, nee dongle, gets to me before SDV does.Consider yourself lucky--there are people who've been living with SDV for quite some time now, mostly Time Warner customers. Some places are horrible--there are at least 20 channels in San Antonio TWC's SDV group. TWC Oceanic (Hawaii) supposedly offers around 100 channels that you can't access with CableCARDs, including all the non-OTA HD services (they didn't just add new stuff as SDV, they took stuff away that people used to be able to get and moved it into SDV). I recently moved across San Diego County from a Cox neighbor (Oceanside) into a TWC-held territory within the city limits (Clairemont Mesa); luckily TWC San Diego hasn't begun using SDV yet, though they do have the hardware and software in place and have been internally testing it.

Cox has expanded their real bandwidth by 750 MHz to 1 GHz in most of their systems nationwide (if not all, by now), which should put off the necessity of going to SDV for a while, though probably not forever. The Tuning Adapter was originally expected start distributing by the end of the 2nd quarter, but now looks like it'll be here around the end of summer.

EDIT: Ooops--sorry, hookbill. My delete-and-repost-to-avoid-stupid-edited-by-label put my post ahead of your quote of it.

Just think of how confusing that's going to be!

No problem, just maybe when somebody comes in and looks around they may have to scratch their heads.

Consider yourself lucky--there are people who've been living with SDV for quite some time now, mostly Time Warner customers. Some places are horrible--there are at least 20 channels in San Antonio TWC's SDV group. TWC Oceanic (Hawaii) supposedly offers around 100 channels that you can't access with CableCARDs, including all the non-OTA HD services (they didn't just add new stuff as SDV, they took stuff away that people used to be able to get and moved it into SDV). I recently moved across San Diego County from a Cox neighbor (Oceanside) into a TWC-held territory within the city limits (Clairemont Mesa); luckily TWC San Diego hasn't begun using SDV yet, though they do have the hardware and software in place and have been internally testing it.

Cox has expanded their real bandwidth by 750 MHz to 1 GHz in most of their systems nationwide (if not all, by now), which should put off the necessity of going to SDV for a while, though probably not forever. The Tuning Adapter was originally expected start distributing by the end of the 2nd quarter, but now looks like it'll be here around the end of summer.
Michael – Yeah I realize that Cox has done a better job than most of beefing up its infrastructure and avoiding SDV. Thus, I have, indeed, been lucky. For example, Cox OKC added about a half dozen new HD channels yesterday, including USA, Sci-Fi, and Bravo as conventional HD, which my S3 can easily deal with. This is not to say that I had not been wondering whether I would be lucky and didn’t learn, for sure, until yesterday that I had been, when I was actually able to tune them in.

Hook has me beat on seniority of S3 ownership, as I did not order mine until a little after Christmas 2006. I did, however buy my first TiVo S1 in 2000. Time flies when you’re having fun. :)

Mike or Paul you might be able to figure this one out.

I mentioned having a handshaking issue with the 9.3 release on my TiVo HD and my Sanyo DVI which worked fine previously.

I went back to component, had issues with that and decided to go back to the HDMI-DVI adapter as it seemed less of a problem to fix.

So playing around with the settings on the TiVo HD I went to the setting for picture. I chose "smart choice" which really I never cared for in the past as it made anything that wasn't HD 4:3.

But when I put this setting on it seems like at that point my Sanyo, which is set for wide screen responds with, "nope we're not doing that" when it attempts to change and for a split second I get a little snow and bingo there is the correct picture! I can see the side bars in the snow for a second then it goes wide screen. Now I don't have to turn my set on and off to get the handshaking right.

Problem solved. Somehow.:)

I mentioned having a handshaking issue with the 9.3 release on my TiVo HD and my Sanyo DVI which worked fine previously.

Same here, except my problem is with my S3, Lumagen Scaler, and Optoma HD70 DLP projector. Was perfect with 9.2, and became problematic with 9.3a.


So playing around with the settings on the TiVo HD I went to the setting for picture. I chose "smart choice" which really I never cared for in the past as it made anything that wasn't HD 4:3.

What's "smart choice" ? I don't recall seeing that in the video settings menu.


But when I put this setting on it seems like at that point my Sanyo, which is set for wide screen responds with, "nope we're not doing that" when it attempts to change and for a split second I get a little snow and bingo there is the correct picture! I can see the side bars in the snow for a second then it goes wide screen. Now I don't have to turn my set on and off to get the handshaking right.

Problem solved. Somehow.:)

There's definitely something funky going on when you have an HDMI->DVI link involved. When I took my scaler out of the loop (which takes out an HDMI->DVI and a DVI->HDMI link) my results were very similar to yours. There would be a slightly extended flash of snow while the S3 and projector re-established the HDMI (HDCP) handshake, and then the video would restore.

What's "smart choice" ? I don't recall seeing that in the video settings menu.




When you go to Video in your settings you will see "set aspect ratio" which gives you 3 choices: 16:9, Smart Setting, and 4:3.

They may have something else before it in the description but in parenthesis you will see it says "smart set" or something like that.

Same here, except my problem is with my S3, Lumagen Scaler, and Optoma HD70 DLP projector. Was perfect with 9.2, and became problematic with 9.3a.



What's "smart choice" ? I don't recall seeing that in the video settings menu.




There's definitely something funky going on when you have an HDMI->DVI link involved. When I took my scaler out of the loop (which takes out an HDMI->DVI and a DVI->HDMI link) my results were very similar to yours. There would be a slightly extended flash of snow while the S3 and projector re-established the HDMI (HDCP) handshake, and then the video would restore.

I've had the issue when I loop my S3 through my Onkyo receiver (HDMI) to my Sony XBR910 (DVI) but not when I go directly to the Sony. I called Sony and Onkyo and they both said to send their units in for service. I just by passed the Onkyo but now I only have a single HDMI port that I can use.

I've had the issue when I loop my S3 through my Onkyo receiver (HDMI) to my Sony XBR910 (DVI) but not when I go directly to the Sony. I called Sony and Onkyo and they both said to send their units in for service. I just by passed the Onkyo but now I only have a single HDMI port that I can use.

Hmmm... Another DVI-connected device.

Quality HDMI switches are relatively inexpensive now. I've been considering picking up one of the monoprice.com switches, since they're quality items for short money (less than $50). Sooner or later I figure I'll pick one up.

Hmmm... Another DVI-connected device.

Quality HDMI switches are relatively inexpensive now. I've been considering picking up one of the monoprice.com switches, since they're quality items for short money (less than $50). Sooner or later I figure I'll pick one up.

Well, I paid about 5 bucks for mine.:) From Monoprice.

I think the shipping was another 3 bucks. Guess mine isn't "quality."

But really you shouldn't have to purchase anything if it was working with 9.2 it should work with 9.3.

Bad TiVo. Bad.:(

Well, I paid about 5 bucks for mine.:) From Monoprice.

I think the shipping was another 3 bucks. Guess mine isn't "quality."

I'm talking about the remote controlled 4:1 or 5:1 switches that they're selling now.

But really you shouldn't have to purchase anything if it was working with 9.2 it should work with 9.3.

Bad TiVo. Bad.:(

Yup.

It's not like me to bad mouth TiVo, in the TCF I was considered one of the "fanboys" because I would tell people how stupid they were for their complaint, or what an iidotic idea it was to have a class action law suit. Go Hokies! and I were quite a team. That of course got me the boot.....

Anyway I have been complaining a bit about the HDMI-DVI issue and also about TiVo Desktop 6.1. So a week or so ago I called stressing I was complaining about the memory leak and oh by the way, auto record wasn't working.

So tonight at dinner of course TiVo calls me to tell me about a certificate which I had already installed and fixed my auto record problem which I'm not using now anyway. I said "What about the memory leak?" He said yes, I see you "mentioned" something about a memory leak. This is a known issue and I'll put you on the list of people who have called about it. Our engineers are working on this and they will give you a call when they resolve that.

Which will probably be with the release of 6.2 which I will have installed when they call me.:rolleyes:

Memory leak is an issue yes, but thank you TiVo for working on the Tuning Adapter (scrolled down so I used the proper name) which IMHO is far more important then having to reboot my computer once a day.

Memory leak is an issue yes, but thank you TiVo for working on the Tuning Adapter (scrolled down so I used the proper name) which IMHO is far more important then having to reboot my computer once a day.

You really should try to get pyTivo up and running. It truly is a far better video server than TiVo Desktop right now. I know you tried it before, but you really owe it to yourself to try again. Rather than continually banging your head against the wall trying to deal with TiVo Desktop's shortcomings...

You really should try to get pyTivo up and running. It truly is a far better video server than TiVo Desktop right now. I know you tried it before, but you really owe it to yourself to try again. Rather than continually banging your head against the wall trying to deal with TiVo Desktop's shortcomings...

pyTiVo is a pia. I did have it up and running but I had some problems.

If anything I'd use .tivo but hey, that only caused my hard drive to crash but I'm pretty stupid. Why not try it again?

6.1 is fine, really. And I haven't rebooted since this morning and it's only running at 23,400K. That's not bad at all.

Hey- I need some help- I think I read a long time ago that the S3 will not work with multistream cards. Is this still true? Comcast here in Memphis says that it will- the reason I am asking is that I do not get any of the encore channels with my current cards (chanels 280-286)- I am paying for these channels but have not gotten them since the cable cards were replaced for about the fifth time since July of 07. So.. my dilemma is- do i suck it up and pay for channels I dont get or go for the multistream? i think that's all they have now. Thanks for your help.

pyTiVo is a pia. I did have it up and running but I had some problems.

Gonna have to disagree here. It should be as simple as installing Python, installing pyTivo, and making one or two edits to a 8-line text file. It's gotten FAR better over the past six months, especially as far as simplifying the configuration. The only thing it doesn't replicate (or exceed) from TiVo Desktop is the web video feature, and that's coming along.


2.6.1 is fine, really. And I haven't rebooted since this morning and it's only running at 23,400K. That's not bad at all.

Gee, one whole day without a reboot ? Stop the presses.... :)

Hey- I need some help- I think I read a long time ago that the S3 will not work with multistream cards. Is this still true? Comcast here in Memphis says that it will- the reason I am asking is that I do not get any of the encore channels with my current cards (chanels 280-286)- I am paying for these channels but have not gotten them since the cable cards were replaced for about the fifth time since July of 07. So.. my dilemma is- do i suck it up and pay for channels I dont get or go for the multistream? i think that's all they have now. Thanks for your help.

Series3 can use M-Cards, but only in support of a single tuner (effectively making them S-Cards). You need two of them to get the full dual-tuner functionality. The TiVoHD can use a single M-Card to support both tuners.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that your problems are not related to the CableCARDs at all. There's very little chance that you've had FIVE seperate cards fail in exactly the same way. There's got to be another answer, outside of the cards. It could be that Comcast has munged your account's configuration in their database, or it could be that the signal you're feeding the S3 is making it unhappy (either too high or too low).

Have you had a tech take a reading on your signal to see if it's too "hot", or too low ?

thanks for responding- yes- they always do a read of the signal- it is not split or anything- but i have had a lot of card failures- could it be the (now out of warranrty) TiVo?- Actually i think it is Comcrap- the techs here in Memphis are idiots except for the one i requested come back next week- so I should have good luck with the m-cards- right?

and BTW- it has not always been the same prob- sometimes a carw goes out- sometimes both- this is the first time I'v had the prob of not getting specific channels

thanks for responding- yes- they always do a read of the signal- it is not split or anything- but i have had a lot of card failures- could it be the (now out of warranrty) TiVo?- Actually i think it is Comcrap- the techs here in Memphis are idiots except for the one i requested come back next week- so I should have good luck with the m-cards- right?

and BTW- it has not always been the same prob- sometimes a card goes out- sometimes both- this is the first time I've had the prob of not getting specific channels

Your S3 can accommodate M-Cards, so there shouldn't be a problem there. Just make sure you use TWO of them, because the S3 will revert to single-tuner mode with only one card. Provided, of course, that the tech in your house and tech on the phone know what they're doing. If not, watch out... Above all, once you get a card working, DO NOT SCREW WITH IT. :)

Remember that you can always call TiVo, and have their CableCARD specialists try to hold Comcast's hands through the configuration process. Might be worth a shot if things continue to not work out for you.

Good luck!

Thanks! u are absolutely right- good to know the m cards will work- and we'll see what hwppens- thanks again

Thanks! u are absolutely right- good to know the m cards will work- and we'll see what hwppens- thanks again

Just want to get my 2cents in on this but I found that finding out who the manager or a higher up is in the cable department is extremely helpfull.

And fwiw you're not the only person I've seen say they have had problems with comcrap and M cards with the S3. I have the email to the President of TW NEO so whenever I have a problem I email him. I also have a direct line to the manager of my service department in my area and a direct line to headend.

Sometimes it takes a bit to get this kind of info but once you get the President involved, all kiinds of doors open. :)

Thanks! u are absolutely right- good to know the m cards will work- and we'll see what hwppens- thanks again
I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings but the dreary fact is that some of us have been unable to get M cards to work in our S3s. I don’t pretend to know why M cards wouldn’t work in my S3 but I can say unqualifiedly that they didn’t.

A couple of months ago (about) I had a CableCARD failure, so Cox OKC came out to replace them. The tech was using M cards and was here for 9 hours! Sometimes he was helped by his supervisor and they both were in frequent telephone communication with the head end. No matter, they never could get the M cards to work. I only got back up and running after somebody at the head end told the tech that M cards wouldn’t work and to use S cards instead. He then installed S cards and that did the job. The installation has been working well ever since, so I have no reason to believe that there is anything wrong with my S3’s hardware.

And since, many, many, many other people, including myself, have had two M-Cards working in their S3s for months, there is something strange about your situation. You are the only person I've heard say that specifically M-Cards wouldn't work in your box (in this thread--I haven't looked for mention of the problem at TCF.

In my case, my initial installation was done with two S-Cards, one of which failed twice. It failed, they came out and initialized it again and it worked until the next day. When they came out the third time, they replaced both cards with M-Cards which have worked perfectly ever since.

Does TiVo or anyone else provide a "test pattern" for setting TV colors, etc.?

Does TiVo or anyone else provide a "test pattern" for setting TV colors, etc.?

TiVo doesn't. If you have a HD DVR there is a nice complicated (my opinion) and long DVD called Digital Video Essentials, or you can use the SD version it works well in my opinion.

If you have HDnet they have a calibration test they show usually every other Saturday morning.

Does TiVo or anyone else provide a "test pattern" for setting TV colors, etc.?

I don't believe TiVo supplies any test patterns, either on shipped units or from their web site.

Here are some free MPEG-2 video test patterns, of varying size and bitrate : HERE (http://www.w6rz.net/)

Here are some free GIFs, which should help with covergence and overscan : TIGER DAVE (http://www.tigerdave.com/)
Here are some images from Nokia : NOKIA (http://freepctech.com/rode/004.shtml)
Here are some images from Display Mate : DISPLAY MATE (http://www.displaymate.com/)

Keep in mind that the TiVo will introduce padding on all sides of the fixed images, so you're not likely to get good overscan results using the HD Photo App that TiVo provides.

I don't believe TiVo supplies any test patterns, either on shipped units or from their web site.

Here are some free MPEG-2 video test patterns, of varying size and bitrate : HERE (http://www.w6rz.net/)

Here are some free GIFs, which should help with covergence and overscan : TIGER DAVE (http://www.tigerdave.com/)
Here are some images from Nokia : NOKIA (http://freepctech.com/rode/004.shtml)
Here are some images from Display Mate : DISPLAY MATE (http://www.displaymate.com/)

Keep in mind that the TiVo will introduce padding on all sides of the fixed images, so you're not likely to get good overscan results using the HD Photo App that TiVo provides.

You don't believe TiVo has test patterns? Did you not see me say they don't?:D;)

I've never seen those links before! Man you're just like a wealth of knowledge. Seriously how long have they been around, I can't believe I've never heard about them until now.

You don't believe TiVo has test patterns? Did you not see me say they don't?:D;)

Check the timestamps. I was writing my response while you were just finishing up yours... :)

I've never seen those links before! Man you're just like a wealth of knowledge. Seriously how long have they been around, I can't believe I've never heard about them until now.

Ummmm..... There's this thing called Google. Check it out sometime. :)

Ummmm..... There's this thing called Google. Check it out sometime. :)

OK, wiseguy. The thing is that I've seen this question asked oh, I don't know, maybe over a hundred times and nobody has ever posted that. Now you would have thought between all the times I've seen that question asked both here and on the TCF someone would have posted that link. That's why I was so surprised to see it.

Just the same it's something I really want to look at, thanks for the links.

I've noticed from time to time that there seems to be a bit of delay when I have the same show on my TiVo S3 and TiVo HD. Sometimes it seems about a second and sometimes I don't think I hear any delay. But watching the Cleveland Indians game today I heard at least a 5 second delay.

Now I'm thinking since all the cable stuff is in the basement and my TiVo S3 is on the first floor and the TiVo HD is upstairs that it takes a bit longer for the signal to reach the TiVo HD.

JUST KIDDING!!!!!!:D:D

My real guess is that I have a HDMI to DVI hook up on my TiVo HD where my TiVo S3 is straight HDMI.

Or it could be that my S3 cost at this time about 300.00 more then the TiVo HD. But I really don't think that since they both say in the System Information Platform: S3.

Anybody else notice one faster then the other?

Hey everyone - I just wanted to ask a question about the S3 (I don't know if this is an issue with my local NBC station (WOOD-DT), or NBC itself.

I have noticed that when I record NHL games on NBC (in HD), when I fast forward at the lowest FF speed setting, the speed doesn't actually change. It does go faster at the "2nd arrow" speed, but it is faster than I think the "1 arrow" speed is (I assume it is the real "2 arrow" speed). When I record the hockey games on Versus HD, the 1-arrow speed does seem to work correctly.

Does anyone else see this?

Thanks...

Hey everyone - I just wanted to ask a question about the S3 (I don't know if this is an issue with my local NBC station (WOOD-DT), or NBC itself.

I have noticed that when I record NHL games on NBC (in HD), when I fast forward at the lowest FF speed setting, the speed doesn't actually change. It does go faster at the "2nd arrow" speed, but it is faster than I think the "1 arrow" speed is (I assume it is the real "2 arrow" speed). When I record the hockey games on Versus HD, the 1-arrow speed does seem to work correctly.

Does anyone else see this?

Thanks...

I can't say I have but to be honest I very rarely use that button. I use the 30 sec skip most of the time. But you got me a bit curious so I just went out and rewound the news that was on live. I checked the speeds on all 3 settings on the rewind and each one went faster then the other. Then I went forward and got the same results, each speed faster then the other.

Mine seems to be working fine.

I can't say I have but to be honest I very rarely use that button. I use the 30 sec skip most of the time. But you got me a bit curious so I just went out and rewound the news that was on live. I checked the speeds on all 3 settings on the rewind and each one went faster then the other. Then I went forward and got the same results, each speed faster then the other.

Mine seems to be working fine.

I am wondering if it is just during certain programming. Or perhaps only on recorded programs. Or even just during HD broadcasts...

If you think of it, please try recording part of the NHL games that are on Wednesday and Saturday (I think they are all 8pm EDT games). I find it easy to tell if it is running at real-time speed while you FF by watching the game clock ticking.

Thanks!

Now I'm thinking since all the cable stuff is in the basement and my TiVo S3 is on the first floor and the TiVo HD is upstairs that it takes a bit longer for the signal to reach the TiVo HD.


Or it could be that my S3 cost at this time about 300.00 more then the TiVo HD. But I really don't think that since they both say in the System Information Platform: S3.


This is because the faster one is THX certified and the other isn't. See, that certification does make a real difference, just like you've always suspected! :p




RE: erratic ff/rewind behavior:

Does anyone else see this?

Thanks...

I haven't recorded hockey games, but I have noticed odd ff/rewind behavior on occasion, though I've never narrowed it down to a specific station, type of programming, etc.

Mine is more akin to choppy/jumpy action when ff or rewinding, not reaching the full speeds of forwarding & rewinding due to this choppiness, particularly noticeable when jumping up to the double and triple arrow speeds. Single arrow speeds are normal. I've never understood why this happens. Doesn't sound quite like what you are talking about, however.

I got the Tivo HD 20 hr free with the purchase of my Samsung ln52a550 through Amazon.com. I'm perfectly happy with my cable HD SA DVR, the new ones that Time Warner is putting out in NYC are total crap, I lucked out by still having the old one (3 yrs).

I had Tivo once but it was the one with the infrared adapter over the cable box which was total garbage, I hated the delay.

Question... Would you guys honestly recommend getting rid of my DVR for the Tivo system? I understand I have to do cablecards and those can be a pain...

Is the HD quality the same?

Sorry if this has been inquired about before.

I've got a Moto 6416 and the picture quality off my S3 is way better even though the S3 is connected through component and the 6416 is connected through HDMI. I'm only keeping the 6416 on the second TV for the firewire output in case I want to archive a game or something and tivo2go doesn't work for whatever reason. I use the S3 for pretty much everything on the main TV.

Question... Would you guys honestly recommend getting rid of my DVR for the Tivo system?Honestly, no I cannot -- not anymore. My TiVo S3 is subject to frequent pixelization. Right now, watching Robin Hood from BBC America. Every 40-45 seconds, it skips a few seconds. The same thing happened with the Mole marathon on Fox Reality this weekend. It has happened a lot recently. This never happened when I had the cable company DVR. When similar problems have happened in the past, TiVo tech support has refused to help at all. Their modus operandi is always to blame the cable company (even though the cable company DVR, sitting right next to the TiVo, worked fine).

The TiVo is a great box. It unfortunately suffers from a lack of robustness. This doesn't affect that many people, but enough that you should be worried about investing so much money, yourself, and taking the chance that you can be affected as well.

bicker1, you might want to compare your signal strength on the tivo to the cable box. I've found the Tivo's tuner to be a weaker than the motorola boxes, but the Tivo was better in every other way. When I first set up my Tivo I had one HD channel that wouldn't tune in until I replaced my 3 way splitter with a 2 way instead.

[QUOTE=chelloveck;13999863Question... Would you guys honestly recommend getting rid of my DVR for the Tivo system? I understand I have to do cablecards and those can be a pain...

Is the HD quality the same?

Sorry if this has been inquired about before.[/QUOTE]


HD quality is superior, I have no pixelation problems, SD quality is superior, reliability, ease of search functions, plus all the other features TiVo offers like TiVo Desktop, if you got kids, there is kids world.

No doubt about it, TiVo runs circles over anything out there. Bicker1 has had some bad luck but I would never go back to that pos SA 8300.

And cable cards are not a pain if your smart. What I did was I complained before my install by email. I said "I see people having problems with cable cards, how come you can't deal with this technology, and in a nice way said basically are you a bunch of morons?" Result, Supervisor comes out with a lead and install went smooth.

Then I got my TiVo HD. Set up an appointment for install of cable cards. Couldn't get an appointment for two weeks. I have the email to the President of Time Warner Northeast Ohio and once again I bitched before the install, how do I know this is going to go right you know I am only available on weekends and this better go good, your techs are idiots (I had been switched to a different service office with the merge of TW and Adelphia)." Result: Got a call from the Concord supervisor who sent two techs down the next day, not two weeks later and did the install. I also have his direct line number.

A tip on cable card install. First, make sure they do the install EXACTLY like it says. Don't let them do two cards at once. Second, you hold the remote and navigate the cable card screens. They have no idea where anything is at on thos screens and they will need to look for things like mmm's and such. That's on a screen that flashes info so they may miss it.

Also do not let them leave before you have tested every channel and make sure that they test every cable connection from inside your house to the street for proper signal.

Cable card can be a pia if you allow it to be. Be prepaired, remind them it's your equipment not theirs. Make sure they write down the numbers correctly, I caught them making a mistake the last time and made them go through it again.

After that you don't have to worry about cable cards anymore.

TiVo Rocks.

bicker1, you might want to compare your signal strength on the tivo to the cable box. I've found the Tivo's tuner to be a weaker than the motorola boxes, but the Tivo was better in every other way. When I first set up my Tivo I had one HD channel that wouldn't tune in until I replaced my 3 way splitter with a 2 way instead.I had swapped the two back and forth, to see if it made a difference, and it didn't. Sometimes, folks have indicated, the problem is that the signal is too strong.

However, in this case, the prevailing wisdom indicates that the problem is simply a result of using an eSATA drive, due to an implementation lacking robustness. The "solution" offered on TCF is to disconnect the eSATA, thereby losing all your recordings, which defeats the purpose of the eSATA in the first place.

However, in this case, the prevailing wisdom indicates that the problem is simply a result of using an eSATA drive, due to an implementation lacking robustness. The "solution" offered on TCF is to disconnect the eSATA, thereby losing all your recordings, which defeats the purpose of the eSATA in the first place.


First the "wisdom" in the TCF TiVo S3/HD thread on anything is questionable as you and I have discussed before.;) Second what kind of a moronic solution would that be?

In a way it's kind of ironic. When I had the SA 8300 my biggest complaint was that it would miss recordings or only do partial recordings. After spending all kinds of time on the SA8300 thread and taking suggestions from the most knoweledgeable people over there I discovered that disconnecting my eSATA put an end to my partial recording problem. But I couldn't survive on 200MB of space, specially during sweeps months.

I have a great deal of respect for Bicker1, he presents fair and logical arguments. Unfortunately I think as I seemed to be the "exception" he is as well. That doesn't mean Bicker1 is the only exception, I wasn't either. On this thread gwsat is another person who had major issues with cable DVR, but I have to say I feel that the majority of people who purchase an S3 or TiVo HD are happy with their product. Heck the only problem I have really had was the DVI-HDMI connection problem that occurred with 9.3 and by making a change on my television I was able to overcome that.

The best way to find out is purchase a TiVo HD or S3 from a big box store, and order your cable card install asap, maybe even before you make your purchase. Keep your cable box and compare for a few weeks. If you can avoid using a splitter as a signal decrease could cause problems but in most cases it doesn't seem to make too much difference. I could see immediately the difference in the way TiVo handled analog channels over the way the SA 8300 did. I will admit that the pq is difficult to see on HD, but in my situation I noticed that on recorded programs the constant warped pictures, sound drop offs, macro blocking and pixelation didn't occurre with the TiVo S3. I actually thought this was "normal" for HD television. I didn't realize the problem was with the cable box.

And for the record I went through 3 cable boxes over a 2 year period. I spent more time trying to get that thing to work correctly then I did watching the darn thing.

That's really the best advice: Buy a TiVo HD planning specifically to completely run it through its paces for a couple of weeks before it would be too late to return it and get your money back, from the store you bought the device from, from TiVo for the service, and with regard to your cable company, from any commitments you would make to them based on your assumption that you'll have working TiVo HD.

Of course, for me, these problems didn't start until after I realized that 250 GB was not enough, and that I needed the eSATA expansion. That was months after it was too late to effect a refund of the three year TiVo service contract without penalty.

That's really the best advice: Buy a TiVo HD planning specifically to completely run it through its paces for a couple of weeks before it would be too late to return it and get your money back, from the store you bought the device from, from TiVo for the service, and with regard to your cable company, from any commitments you would make to them based on your assumption that you'll have working TiVo HD.




One other thing I forgot to mention and it is important. You don't have to purchase TiVo service for the first seven days from the moment you plug in your TiVo. So if cable card install will be delayed you can either test it without cable cards (not recommended) or wait until cable cards arrive and then plug it in maybe the day before.

Getting to know how to navigate around the TiVo is beneficial but thinking back to the first install I really didn't know where the information was that they were looking for back then. Still try to get to know how to navigate, it isn't difficult before they do the install. And ALWAYS hold the remote.;)

That's really the best advice: Buy a TiVo HD planning specifically to completely run it through its paces for a couple of weeks before it would be too late to return it and get your money back, from the store you bought the device from, from TiVo for the service, and with regard to your cable company, from any commitments you would make to them based on your assumption that you'll have working TiVo HD.

Of course, for me, these problems didn't start until after I realized that 250 GB was not enough, and that I needed the eSATA expansion. That was months after it was too late to effect a refund of the three year TiVo service contract without penalty.

You could always crack the case and pop in a larger internal hard drive.

I have owned TiVo DVRs since 2000 and despite some weaknesses, I have loved them. My S3 has been in service for nearly a year and a half. Here are its plusses and minuses.

On the plus side, the extraordinary sophistication of its search features put it in a class by itself. No other DVR comes close. TiVo is so superior in this regard that it may outweigh all of its minuses.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of minuses. As Bicker correctly observed, the S3, and apparently the HD, lack robustness, mostly because of their reliance on CableCARD technology but in some other ways, too. My first S3 failed after only two months, although TiVo overnighted a brand new replacement to me. Then, the CableCARDs in the replacement failed several months ago and the exercise involved in getting replacement cards installed that would work was a nightmare. After many hours, though, Cox OKC finally installed cards that worked and have continued to work.

The biggest downside of TiVo DVRs is the high price of the TiVo subscription, which, of course, is on top of what you have to pay the cable company and the price of the DVR. It was worth it to me only because I had a lifetime subscription on my old S1, which I was able to transfer to the S3 for a one-time payment of $200. Even that was a lot of money when you consider that I can rent one of Cox OKC’s DVRs for ten bucks a month. The clincher in favor of TiVo to me was how absolutely horrible Cox OKC’s SA8300HDs are. Their SARA software has all the sophistication of a brick. All in all I’m glad I bought my S3 but it wasn’t cheap and it hasn’t been easy.

I have owned TiVo DVRs since 2000 and despite some weaknesses, I have loved them. My S3 has been in service for nearly a year and a half. Here are its plusses and minuses.

On the plus side, the extraordinary sophistication of its search features put it in a class by itself. No other DVR comes close. TiVo is so superior in this regard that it may outweigh all of its minuses.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of minuses. As Bicker correctly observed, the S3, and apparently the HD, lack robustness, mostly because of their reliance on CableCARD technology but in some other ways, too. My first S3 failed after only two months, although TiVo overnighted a brand new replacement to me. Then, the CableCARDs in the replacement failed several months ago and the exercise involved in getting replacement cards installed that would work was a nightmare. After many hours, though, Cox OKC finally installed cards that worked and have continued to work.

The biggest downside of TiVo DVRs is the high price of the TiVo subscription, which, of course, is on top of what you have to pay the cable company and the price of the DVR. It was worth it to me only because I had a lifetime subscription on my old S1, which I was able to transfer to the S3 for a one-time payment of $200. Even that was a lot of money when you consider that I can rent one of Cox OKC’s DVRs for ten bucks a month. The clincher in favor of TiVo to me was how absolutely horrible Cox OKC’s SA8300HDs are. Their SARA software has all the sophistication of a brick. All in all I’m glad I bought my S3 but it wasn’t cheap and it hasn’t been easy.

If it was all about "Cheap", we'd all be driving a Ford Focus. As they say, "You get what you pay for". Having an S3 in the Living Room, a TiVo HD in the Bedroom, an e-sata drive on the main unit, and everything networked is like driving an expensive import compared to the lame boxes the Cable Cos offer. Yes, even the most expensive car ends up in the shop now and then.

I have owned TiVo DVRs since 2000 and despite some weaknesses, I have loved them. My S3 has been in service for nearly a year and a half. Here are its plusses and minuses.

Same here. My first TiVo was the $99 DirecTV TiVo back in 2001. I'd have to rate it a toss up between the S3 and the DirecTiVo as far as being the "best" one I have. The DirecTV unit was absolutely ROCK SOLID in every aspect, although it never had HD or the networking features that my S3 has now.

On the plus side, the extraordinary sophistication of its search features put it in a class by itself. No other DVR comes close. TiVo is so superior in this regard that it may outweigh all of its minuses.

Yup. SeasonPass, WishList, SwivelSearch are really compelling features.


The clincher in favor of TiVo to me was how absolutely horrible Cox OKC’s SA8300HDs are. Their SARA software has all the sophistication of a brick. All in all I’m glad I bought my S3 but it wasn’t cheap and it hasn’t been easy.

Horrible is understating how truly dreadful that steaming pile of excrement is. It is by far the worst piece of electronics that I have ever used. The one year that I had to use that piece of crap (the S3 wasn't available yet) was an exercise in patience and misery.

You could always crack the case and pop in a larger internal hard drive.In retrospect, that would have been a much better approach for us, but who knew that the eSATA would screw up recordings so much? We surely weren't warned, and TiVo still won't acknowledge that they need to fix something in this regard. As it is now, I can't readily switch without losing everything I have now: There is no way to transfer recordings that are spread across the internal HD and the eSATA onto a single internal drive.

And the other option, which would be to transfer all the recordings to our network terabyte drive, replace the TiVo HD, and then transfer the recordings back -- THAT won't work either because of another TiVo bug that hasn't been fixed. For some of us, HD transfers via TTCB terminate at the 20 minute point, both with TiVo Desktop and pyTiVo.

And that also ignores the fact that we bought this 500 GB drive on TiVo's recommendation that, given either approach, assuming either worked, would be useless to us (or at least not necessary).

And the other option, which would be to transfer all the recordings to our network terabyte drive, replace the TiVo HD, and then transfer the recordings back -- THAT won't work either because of another TiVo bug that hasn't been fixed. For some of us, HD transfers via TTCB terminate at the 20 minute point, both with TiVo Desktop and pyTiVo.

Something is definitely not right in your set up, whether it be on the network or hardware side of things. I use pyTivo a LOT with my S3+eSATA set up, and have never seen a transfer terminate in that fashion. The fact that you see similar results from TD and pyTivo only serves to strengthen this fact.

Do all files terminate abnormally, or only files that were originally sourced from the TiVo itself ? Can you transfer a file to your TiVo that originated elsewhere, such as a video source from the internet ?

ELEPHANTS DREAM (http://orange.blender.org/download) is a free, open-source generated, HD movie that you could try.

All HD recordings from the TiVo S3 terminate at exactly the 20 minute point via TTCB. I have never tried to use TTCB on anything else. I could try transferring a recording to my PC from my TiVo S2 and then try to transfer that from the PC to the TiVo S3, but I suspect that will work... the recording length bug appears to only affect HD. (This same bug, incidentally, results in a problem in Windows Media Player, where the recording appears to be only 20 minutes long. If you zip to just before the "end", the program continues playing for the remaining 41 minutes.)

I'll try downloading that movie. It is only 815MB so I don't know how it would compare to the 7GB behemoths that TiVo generates.

Horrible is understating how truly dreadful that steaming pile of excrement [the SA8300HD with SARA software] is. It is by far the worst piece of electronics that I have ever used. The one year that I had to use that piece of crap (the S3 wasn't available yet) was an exercise in patience and misery.
There are a lot of scare stories about the SA8300HD out there. I used one of them with my primary HDTV, and before that its predecessor, an 8000HD, before I got my S3. The hardware was always just fine in both boxes. In fact, I’m still running an 8300HD on my kitchen-eating area HDTV and it’s been stable, too. All of my SA boxes have recorded everything I told them to record. The trouble, though, was getting the primitive, limited SARA software to find what I wanted in the first place.

If it was all about "Cheap", we'd all be driving a Ford Focus. As they say, "You get what you pay for". Having an S3 in the Living Room, a TiVo HD in the Bedroom, an e-sata drive on the main unit, and everything networked is like driving an expensive import compared to the lame boxes the Cable Cos offer. Yes, even the most expensive car ends up in the shop now and then.
I agree that you get what you pay for, otherwise I wouldn’t have bought my S3 in the first place but whether doing so makes sense is a close call. My post was in response to the guy who asked,

“Question... Would you guys honestly recommend getting rid of my DVR for the Tivo system? I understand I have to do cablecards and those can be a pain...”

The answer to that question is not simple and I wanted to make sure he understood what I thought the plusses and the minuses were. There is a BIG difference between the cost of ownership of a TiVo and its attendant subscription and renting a DVR from the cable company for ten bucks a month. Thus, it’s important to know what you are getting into before taking the leap.

There are a lot of scare stories about the SA8300HD out there. I used one of them with my primary HDTV, and before that its predecessor, an 8000HD, before I got my S3. The hardware was always just fine in both boxes. In fact, I’m still running an 8300HD on my kitchen-eating area HDTV and it’s been stable, too. All of my SA boxes have recorded everything I told them to record. The trouble, though, was getting the primitive, limited SARA software to find what I wanted in the first place.

I would go so far as to say the SA 8000 was a better machine then the SA 8300. The only reason I turned in the SA 8000 was so I could have the HDMI connector. and SA had said they did not intend to turn on the DVI since they produced the SA 8300.

One of the guys on my local thread still has his. Never has a problem with it.

Now there are scare stories all over the SA 8300HDC running Navigator Software, which is replacing Passport and SARA to make SDV possible.

I agree that you get what you pay for, otherwise I wouldn’t have bought my S3 in the first place but whether doing so makes sense is a close call. My post was in response to the guy who asked,

“Question... Would you guys honestly recommend getting rid of my DVR for the Tivo system? I understand I have to do cablecards and those can be a pain...”

The answer to that question is not simple and I wanted to make sure he understood what I thought the plusses and the minuses were. There is a BIG difference between the cost of ownership of a TiVo and its attendant subscription and renting a DVR from the cable company for ten bucks a month. Thus, it’s important to know what you are getting into before taking the leap.

Verizon charges 17 bucks a month, so the math is easier. Ten bucks a month for an HD DVR is a sweet deal.

In retrospect, that would have been a much better approach for us, but who knew that the eSATA would screw up recordings so much? We surely weren't warned, and TiVo still won't acknowledge that they need to fix something in this regard.

Now I'm not certain how much this is talked about over at the TiVo Forum because you know of my situation over there and how I'm not suppose to even go in there, which of course I don't.;) But I can probably assume it is being talked about on the esata thread which I never have read and is now a sticky. I know that because a friend told me so.:rolleyes:

Then I thought "Hey! I never have transfered a HD program yet. Maybe I ought to try it." Then just as I got ready to move a copy of Law & Order from my TiVo HD to my S3 I remembered that the last two episodes of Supernatural that I watched were recorded in HD and I had no problems with either show. They both played fine. Matter of fact I think I have two more HD episodes left to watch, both transfered from my TiVo HD.

My TiVo HD has eSATA as does my S3. No problems! So maybe the reason TiVo is not acknowledging it is because, and I know you're not going to like this, is because it's not a problem?

Now before you tear me from limb to limb for that I'm merely suggesting that there is either a problem with your eSATA, one of your TiVo's, or something else is going on. Maybe something in your area is causing a problem, i.e. if I turn on the microwave all communication with anything on my wireless network gets stopped. Also a question: Have you tried to do a transfer from one of your TiVo's to a laptop via USB?

Horrible is understating how truly dreadful that steaming pile of excrement is. It is by far the worst piece of electronics that I have ever used. The one year that I had to use that piece of crap (the S3 wasn't available yet) was an exercise in patience and misery.I never knew that anyone here held as deep a hatred of SARA as I do. My brother :)! And you actually endured a year of using it :eek:--I feel your pain. (I do not blame the hardware at all, BTW--I was perfectly happy using an SA box running Passport Echo).

BTW, someone in the Time Warner Cable Navigator (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=723830) thread, exasperated with the terrible experience of using that POS, asked about TiVo, to which I posted the following rundown of some of its strength (and a few weaknesses) when compared to using leased cable boxes (here (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=13797397#post13797397)):

The advantages of TiVo are too many to list here, but I'll try to hit the high points :): Rock Solid Engineering. TiVo has far, far fewer bugs than any of the cable system DVRs and they update it frequently, fixing bugs and adding new and useful features.
Better UI. Many DVR systems out there steal copiously from TiVo's UI design, which is very clean and functional. Playback navigation is improved with the addition of "skip-to-tick" (depending upon the length of the recording, there are tick-marks every 15, 30 or 60 minutes on the progress bar--you can instantly skip forward or back to one of these points). There's also an undocumented/unsupported 30-second-skip-forward/8-second-skip-back feature which can be enabled.
Superior Guide Data. TiVo gets its guide data from Tribune Media Services (the same source as Zap2It.com--in fact you can set up your Zap2It account to allow programming your TiVos). It has decently long program descriptions with a ton of ancilliary information (directors, guest stars, producers, episode number, original air date, etc), and it keeps 14 days of it available at all times.
Great Guide Search Capability. TiVo has incremental title search with genre and subgenre filtering. Additionally, it has:
Wishlists. Wishlists are essentially stored complex guide searches which you can either use to immediately search the guide or which can be set up to automatically record any matching programs. You can set up a wishlists like "all high-definition science-fiction movies starring Tom Cruise" or "all tennis sporting events".
Networked Features. Connect your TiVo to your LAN and the Internet (with either an Ethernet cable or an available USB wireless adapter) and you get access to a world of stuff, including but not limited to: File Transfers. Unless the content provider has marked it Copy One Generation (and lots of stuff on pay and subscription cable is so marked on many cable systems), you can copy programs from your TiVo onto disk on your PC, where it can either be played back directly, reformatted for playback on portable devices or just stored to be transferred back to TiVo later. A certain range of video formats can be transferred from your PC onto TiVo for playback, including most camcorder video.
Music and Photos. You can display photographs and play MP3s as stored in shared directories on the PCs on your LAN.
Remote Scheduling. If you hear about something coming on tonight or later in the week from someone at work, you can program your TiVo to catch it from any handy networked PC.
Amazon Unbox. Amazon sells and rents movies and TV series episodes (sale only for the TV), which can be downloaded unto TiVo over the Internet. Check out http://unbox.amazon.com .
TiVoCasts. There are a plethora of online video programs which can be downloaded onto TiVo either automatically as they're published or manually. See this (http://www3.tivo.com/tivo-tco/cds/index.do).
Rhapsody. A subscription online music service. See this (http://www.tivo.com/mytivo/whatsnew/rhapsodymusicservice/index.html?WT.srch=1) for details.
Universal Swivel Search. Difficult to describe--see a little article about this here (http://www.zatznotfunny.com/2007-05/tivo-unveils-swivel-search/).
Suggestions. TiVo pays attention to what you watch, and you can further inform it of your likes and dislikes by rating programs while you view them with the THUMBS UP and THUMBS DOWN buttons. TiVo can use this knowledge to guess at other things that you'd like to see and record them on a provisional basis (they get deleted first if it needs to make space for something that you've scheduled recording of). I've never particularly cared for this but some people love it.
Expansion Disk Drive. TiVo supports the use of an external eSATA HDD to expand the recording space of the TiVo HD and TiVo Series3. For support, you have to be using a drive from their list, which consists of a single item thus far, the 500GB Western Digital "My DVR Expander". Out of the box, TiVo HD will only use this drive, though there's some hack that will make it accept others; TiVo Series3 will work with most any external eSATA drive, some better than others, but TiVo will not support their use. (You can add an eSATA drive to an SA8300HD as well, and it reportedly works fine with Navigator, but I'm unaware of any cable provider supporting this and they won't help you to get it to work or if it stops working).In the interest of fairness, I'll list a few things that I think that Navigator has over TiVo: Access To Interactive Cable Services. You can access Impulse Pay-Per-View and free, subscription and pay Video On Demand services with Navigator, and all of that content is matched by guide searches. You cannot watch any of it with TiVo. (There are some systems in which you can order Pay Per View for CableCARD devices on a web page or by calling the cable company).
Disk Usage Meter. Navigator has a display of what percentage of recordable disk space is in use. I find this less than terribly useful in this day of digital television with wildly varied bit rates, but there are those who love having the information. TiVo is aware that there is a certain demand for the feature, but they don't think that it's very high and implementing it remains so low on their list that it might never happen.
Bigger Buffer. TiVo only buffers 30 minutes of live play, whereas Navigator keeps an hour buffer. That hour can be occasionally very useful when you happen to sit down 40 minutes into an hour-long program that you take an interest in. Of course, it's an hour (or more) of lost permanent recording capacity. I don't know about Navigator, but Passport Echo allocated 16GB to those big buffers.

I never knew that anyone here held as deep a hatred of SARA as I do.

Dude! How can you say that. What does my signature say?

My TiVo HD has eSATA as does my S3. No problems! So maybe the reason TiVo is not acknowledging it is because, and I know you're not going to like this, is because it's not a problem? Now before you tear me from limb to limb for that I'm merely suggesting that there is either a problem with your eSATA, one of your TiVo's, or something else is going on. Other folks have the same problem. Not everyone; not even a majority of folks. However, the bug is known and not specific to me. The folks in the thread you mentioned are the ones suggesting the unacceptable solution I mentioned earlier. They are basing that recommendation on their informed experience.

Also a question: Have you tried to do a transfer from one of your TiVo's to a laptop via USB?USB? I don't know what you mean.

USB? I don't know what you mean.


On the back of your TiVo there is a USB (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB) port. You take a USB cable, plug it into the TiVo and transfer it to a computer, like a laptop if you have a desktop and can't reach it.

Many people use it for their internet connection instead of wireless.

I have to admit I'm a bit surprised by your response. Or were you just joking?

And I do realize you're not the only one with this issue. Kind of like the pixelation problem that some experienced and most didn't. That was eventually acknowledged and fixed, at least that's what scsiraid confirmed.

Uh... You can take a USB cable, connect laptop to TiVo, and access the hard drive? I. Did. Not. Know. That.

Really?

No server software? No hub? No media access key?

Does it work the other way? Can I shove files back?

I can't find any information about this. Could you please provide me a link, so I can read up on it on my trip home?

Uh... You can take a USB cable, connect laptop to TiVo, and access the hard drive? I. Did. Not. Know. That.

Really?

No server software? No hub? No media access key?

Does it work the other way? Can I shove files back?

Ummmmm..... No. Not sure what hook's talking about.

You can't hook anything up to the TiVo's USB port except for a wired ethernet or wireless 802.11b/g dongle, or any generic USB-powered device. As far as I know, there is no support for any other type of USB connection, be it networking, file sharing, or anything else.

I never knew that anyone here held as deep a hatred of SARA as I do. My brother :)! And you actually endured a year of using it :eek:--I feel your pain. (I do not blame the hardware at all, BTW--I was perfectly happy using an SA box running Passport Echo).

The hardware seemed reasonably well constructed. It was always that cluster-f*** SARA software that was at fault. It simply made no sense to me, as a networking and video software engineer, why that box was made to function (or not) as it did. Tack on the Fisher-Price level GUI, and it just added to the recipe of ineptitude.

Ummmmm..... No. Not sure what hook's talking about.

You can't hook anything up to the TiVo's USB port except for a wired ethernet or wireless 802.11b/g dongle, or any generic USB-powered device. As far as I know, there is no support for any other type of USB connection, be it networking, file sharing, or anything else.

OK, maybe I'm saying the wrong thing. Just went upstairs and took a look. I guess it's the ethernet port that you would hook up to the PC and you would use TiVo Desktop software to transfer.

Sorry for the confusion. So, does that make sense? And have you tried that?

Ummmmm..... No. Not sure what hook's talking about. You can't hook anything up to the TiVo's USB port except for a wired ethernet or wireless 802.11b/g dongle, or any generic USB-powered device. As far as I know, there is no support for any other type of USB connection, be it networking, file sharing, or anything else.Okay, that's what I thought.

Hook? What were you referring to?

The hardware seemed reasonably well constructed. It was always that cluster-f*** SARA software that was at fault. It simply made no sense to me, as a networking and video software engineer, why that box was made to function (or not) as it did. Tack on the Fisher-Price level GUI, and it just added to the recipe of ineptitude.

I just new damn good and well Fisher-Price had to be involved with that machine. Thanks for confirming my suspicions, Paul.:D

OK, maybe I'm saying the wrong thing. Just went upstairs and took a look. I guess it's the ethernet port that you would hook up to the PC and you would use TiVo Desktop software to transfer. Sorry for the confusion. So, does that make sense? And have you tried that?Okay, as I mentioned, I tried TTG and TTCB and encountered the (known) recording length bug. So that won't work either.

Okay, as I mentioned, I tried TTG and TTCB and encountered the (known) recording length bug. So that won't work either.

OK now I'm confused. When you say TTG you are saying you are attaching a wire to the eithernet port and attempting the transfer?

Sorry for the confusion. That's what you must have meant and I've never done it. But if your laptop is connected to your wireless network you could get TTG that way as well. So that's why I specifically asked about doing it by wire as opposed to a wireless network.

Okay, as I mentioned, I tried TTG and TTCB and encountered the (known) recording length bug. So that won't work either.

Let's try and break up the test a bit, since you're actually testing two things serially. Should either one of them break, you're hosed.

Since you mentioned that your TTG recordings fail in Windows Media Player, it's very likely that TTG is busted either from a networking or hardware perspective. Have you tried throttling/limiting the TiVo->PC transfer speeds ? Have you run any MPEG-2 datastream analysis utilities against the TTG videos ?

Transferring large externally-sourced HD files from your PC to your TiVo via pyTivo should confirm whether or not TTCB is broken or not.

OK now I'm confused. When you say TTG you are saying you are attaching a wire to the eithernet port and attempting the transfer?

Sorry for the confusion. That's what you must have meant and I've never done it. But if your laptop is connected to your wireless network you could get TTG that way as well. So that's why I specifically asked about doing it by wire as opposed to a wireless network.

Regardless of how the network is fashioned, TTG simply means copying the video from a TiVo onto a locally-networked computer.

Your suggestion is perfectly valid, though. A wired versus wireless test could definitely rule out problems with the wireless topology.

The hardware seemed reasonably well constructed. It was always that cluster-f*** SARA software that was at fault. It simply made no sense to me, as a networking and video software engineer, why that box was made to function (or not) as it did. Tack on the Fisher-Price level GUI, and it just added to the recipe of ineptitude.I'm sure that being engineers exacerbated the IPG's problems for both of us.

I've always assumed that SARA is probably SA's reference platform for their boxes. I've worked with a number of engineering reference platforms before and they're all equally crude. Qualcomm has one for their mobile phone chipsets. It's ugly and awkward and no one would ever ship a phone with it loaded, but it runs and provides a set of practical code examples for engineers who need to implement the various phone features which can be constructed using the RTOS and available middleware packages. I think that SARA was used to demonstrate some SA STB's capabilities to an MSO's high-level management and someone said, "Well what's wrong with us providing that IPG to our customers? Seems fine to me." :rolleyes:

OK now I'm confused. When you say TTG you are saying you are attaching a wire to the eithernet port and attempting the transfer? TTG is the service that allows you to transfer programs from the TiVo to a personal computer. I've tried the transfer connected two ways: By connecting the TiVo to the LAN via the TiVo wireless adapter, and also by connecting the TiVo to the LAN via a direct, wired Ethernet connection.

Let's try and break up the test a bit, since you're actually testing two things serially. Should either one of them break, you're hosed.Sounds good, but we should keep in mind that actually both could be broken, separately. :(

Since you mentioned that your TTG recordings fail in Windows Media PlayerNo not "fail". The recording play, all the way through to the end. The only problem is that it looks to WMP as a 20 minute recording, but a one hour recording simply continues to play for 40 minutes past the 20 minute point.

it's very likely that TTG is busted either from a networking or hardware perspective.My understanding is that this is called the "recording length problem" but don't quote me on that.

Have you tried throttling/limiting the TiVo->PC transfer speeds ?Tried and probably didn't actually manage to do it correctly.

Have you run any MPEG-2 datastream analysis utilities against the TTG videos ?No, I haven't. I'm not really a video guy, so this stuff is a bit beyond my knowledge, unless there is a simple, documented step-by-step process to follow.

Transferring large externally-sourced HD files from your PC to your TiVo via pyTivo should confirm whether or not TTCB is broken or not.Still downloading that video...

Thanks for your assistance with this.

Your suggestion is perfectly valid, though. A wired versus wireless test could definitely rule out problems with the wireless topology.I should note that I've tried various topologies: wired/wired; wireless/wired; and wireless/wireless.

I should note that I've tried various topologies: wired/wired; wireless/wired; and wireless/wireless.

I didn't mean to say I didn't know what TTG was, I was just wondering if you had tried it with a wire. Now I understand you have.

No not "fail". The recording play, all the way through to the end. The only problem is that it looks to WMP as a 20 minute recording, but a one hour recording simply continues to play for 40 minutes past the 20 minute point.

So, is the size of the file on disk on your PC is the same size as reported from the TiVo (via "Info" or the embedded web server on the Tivo) ?

If so, then the datastream probably has a small MPEG-2 hiccup in it that can likely be patched by any number of video editing/massaging utilities.

If not, you're hosed. You're dropping data on the floor.



Tried and probably didn't actually manage to do it correctly.

(re : throttling/rate-limiting the transfer) Some of the pyTivo guys use an app called BWMeter to limit the speed of transfers between the PC and TiVo. It was found, in other situations, that limiting the speed of transfers to 8Mbps would resolve some problems. Give it a shot. You can verify the speed of the transfer by pulling up the networking tab on the Windows task manager.

If so, then the datastream probably has a small MPEG-2 hiccup in it that can likely be patched by any number of video editing/massaging utilities.This is almost surely the case, and it is one of the remedies folks have suggested, but that doesn't help folks who aren't video editing capable, like me.

(re : throttling/rate-limiting the transfer) Some of the pyTivo guys use an app called BWMeter to limit the speed of transfers between the PC and TiVo. It was found, in other situations, that limiting the speed of transfers to 8Mbps would resolve some problems. Give it a shot. You can verify the speed of the transfer by pulling up the networking tab on the Windows task manager.I did try BWMeter, but I doubt I ever figured out how to get it to work. Thanks for the Task Manager hint -- I never thought of using that to check.

BWMeter only works on wireless, right?

And after all that, I've got about 80 hours of video to transfer. I just want to set it up and have it work; given TiVo's product offering description, I should be able to get that right?

This is almost surely the case, and it is one of the remedies folks have suggested, but that doesn't help folks who aren't video editing capable, like me.

I honestly haven't been following that thread, so I'm coming at this from a purely diagnostic standpoint. I don't have an MPEG2 error correction utility handy, but I'm sure a quick Google search could fix that ASAP.


I did try BWMeter, but I doubt I ever figured out how to get it to work. Thanks for the Task Manager hint -- I never thought of using that to check.

BWMeter only works on wireless, right?

Should work regardless of network topology. It's running on Windows, so it should be able to throttle any traffic coming in on any active network port.

And after all that, I've got about 80 hours of video to transfer. I just want to set it up and have it work; given TiVo's product offering description, I should be able to get that right?

I should hope so.

I wonder if you are possibly running FAT32 as your file system with the Windows computer. That would limit your maximum file size to about 2GB. If so, you would have to convert to NTFS to use larger file sizes. Just a thought...

in one process? Or, do I have to go through the entire folder?

Right now, you have to go thru the entire folder. With the new summer update, Ver 9.4, you can delete the entire folder with two key presses, press clear then press select to confirm delete.

Right now, you have to go thru the entire folder. With the new summer update, Ver 9.4, you can delete the entire folder with two key presses, press clear then press select to confirm delete.

9.4 is out? When did they release that?

It's the "early bird" release, or whatever they call it, started a few days ago I think.

It's the "early bird" release, or whatever they call it, started a few days ago I think.

It hit my S3 early today.

It's the "early bird" release, or whatever they call it, started a few days ago I think.

Not that I don't have faith in TiVo but I don't like getting the early release. I've got it twice and then they send you the real one later.

I just don't like the reboot twice I guess. Anyway, this way you guys can tell me what it does, doesn't do.

I'll bet they are already complaning about something on it at the TiVo Forum.:)

It hit my S3 early today.
I haven't got it yet myself...

hookbill, I think you have to sign up to get the early release, I don't think it's sent randomly. I like to know when new FW is coming myself as I've been caught going through the re-boot cycle when I was scheduled to record something, kind of irritating. :D

I haven't got it yet myself...

hookbill, I think you have to sign up to get the early release, I don't think it's sent randomly. I like to know when new FW is coming myself as I've been caught going through the re-boot cycle when I was scheduled to record something, kind of irritating. :D
I didn't sign up for anything, and it interrupted the middle of a show I was watching last night. At first I thought is was a random reset (a problem I fortunately don't have with my TiVos), but I eventually got the "Installing service update...." message on my screen. After another reset, the next message said it could take over an hour, so I left it and went to bed. Seems fine today.

I haven't got it yet myself...

hookbill, I think you have to sign up to get the early release, I don't think it's sent randomly. I like to know when new FW is coming myself as I've been caught going through the re-boot cycle when I was scheduled to record something, kind of irritating. :D

Actually, it is. Once TiVo feels that the code has solidified enough in beta testing, they'll semi-randomly seed it to a few folks and see if they see any problems. After that, they expand the list of folks to receive the new release and listen for any bug reports. Once they're satisfied, the open the flood gates and let everyone have.

So, for the 9.4 release, we're still at the very early stages of post-beta activity, where a relatively small number of folks receive the release.

You can usually also add yourself to a "priority" list on the TiVo website (http://www.tivo.com/priority), to try and get the release earlier than you normally would, although I'm not sure that there is one for the 9.4 release.

Right now, you have to go thru the entire folder. With the new summer update, Ver 9.4, you can delete the entire folder with two key presses, press clear then press select to confirm delete.

So it continues to add to my storage until deleted.....okay that explains it. Thanks.

Actually, it is. Once TiVo feels that the code has solidified enough in beta testing, they'll semi-randomly seed it to a few folks and see if they see any problems. After that, they expand the list of folks to receive the new release and listen for any bug reports. Once they're satisfied, the open the flood gates and let everyone have.

So, for the 9.4 release, we're still at the very early stages of post-beta activity, where a relatively small number of folks receive the release.

You can usually also add yourself to a "priority" list on the TiVo website (http://www.tivo.com/priority), to try and get the release earlier than you normally would, although I'm not sure that there is one for the 9.4 release.
Thanks, I couldn't remember exactly how it worked. :)

I have only recently started using my primary S3 as my everyday tuner, even though I've had it a long time. (Got a new TV that doesn't accept CableCard, and HATE the Comcast box.) Last night I noticed that the audio & video were out of sync while I watched Letterman. I have noticed the same thing on my other S3 upstairs. Seems to depend on the program, but since that S3 (which has always been used as an everyday tuner) is watched far less frequently, I can't really generalize about its behavior.

I'm sorry if this has been discussed already, but has it been more or less determined whether this is a TiVo issue or a signal issue? Anybody know of any solution when it's happening?

I have only recently started using my primary S3 as my everyday tuner, even though I've had it a long time. (Got a new TV that doesn't accept CableCard, and HATE the Comcast box.) Last night I noticed that the audio & video were out of sync while I watched Letterman. I have noticed the same thing on my other S3 upstairs. Seems to depend on the program, but since that S3 (which has always been used as an everyday tuner) is watched far less frequently, I can't really generalize about its behavior.

I'm sorry if this has been discussed already, but has it been more or less determined whether this is a TiVo issue or a signal issue? Anybody know of any solution when it's happening?

It's a signal issue.

http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6579511.html

CableLabs OK's Switched Video Tuners From Cisco, Motorola
Devices Designed to Let Third-Party Devices Like DVRs Access Switched Channels

By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 7/17/2008 7:02:00 PM

CableLabs has certified the switched digital video tuning resolvers developed by Cisco Systems and Motorola that are designed to give third-party devices like TiVo DVRs access to switched TV channels.

In May, Cisco and Motorola submitted their adapters, which are the size of small set-top boxes, to CableLabs for qualification testing.

CableLabs senior vice president of communications Mike Schwartz on Thursday confirmed that the Cisco and Motorola devices have been qualified, noting that the research consortium does not typically announce certifications.

Currently TiVo DVRs and other consumer electronics can access linear cable programming through an operator-provided CableCard.

However, CE products based on the CableLabs-developed tru2way specification—which would allow them to access two-way services such as switched digital video—are not currently available. Nor do all cable systems support tru2way technology (formerly referred to as the OpenCable Application Platform).

Until then, another mechanism is required to let third-party devices access channels delivered through SDV systems, which transmit TV channels only when a subscriber requests them.

The Cisco STA1520 or Motorola MTR700 switched digital video tuning adapters would handle communication to and from the headend for SDV channels, communicating with a TiVo DVR via a USB connector.

The SDV adapters are expected to be offered by MSOs including Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications and Cablevision Systems, to subscribers in areas where they are deploying switched digital video technology. The cable operators and TiVo have said they plan to work cooperatively to notify TiVo subscribers that they will need the new external adapter.

Initially, the cable industry had expected the SDV tuners to be ready to deploy in the second quarter of 2008.

http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6579511.html

CableLabs OK's Switched Video Tuners From Cisco, Motorola
Devices Designed to Let Third-Party Devices Like DVRs Access Switched Channels

By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 7/17/2008 7:02:00 PM

CableLabs has certified the switched digital video tuning resolvers developed by Cisco Systems and Motorola that are designed to give third-party devices like TiVo DVRs access to switched TV channels.

In May, Cisco and Motorola submitted their adapters, which are the size of small set-top boxes, to CableLabs for qualification testing.

CableLabs senior vice president of communications Mike Schwartz on Thursday confirmed that the Cisco and Motorola devices have been qualified, noting that the research consortium does not typically announce certifications.

Currently TiVo DVRs and other consumer electronics can access linear cable programming through an operator-provided CableCard.

However, CE products based on the CableLabs-developed tru2way specification—which would allow them to access two-way services such as switched digital video—are not currently available. Nor do all cable systems support tru2way technology (formerly referred to as the OpenCable Application Platform).

Until then, another mechanism is required to let third-party devices access channels delivered through SDV systems, which transmit TV channels only when a subscriber requests them.

The Cisco STA1520 or Motorola MTR700 switched digital video tuning adapters would handle communication to and from the headend for SDV channels, communicating with a TiVo DVR via a USB connector.

The SDV adapters are expected to be offered by MSOs including Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications and Cablevision Systems, to subscribers in areas where they are deploying switched digital video technology. The cable operators and TiVo have said they plan to work cooperatively to notify TiVo subscribers that they will need the new external adapter.

Initially, the cable industry had expected the SDV tuners to be ready to deploy in the second quarter of 2008.

Thanks for the info. Sounds good to me.:)

... So, for the 9.4 release, we're still at the very early stages of post-beta activity, where a relatively small number of folks receive the release.

You can usually also add yourself to a "priority" list on the TiVo website (http://www.tivo.com/priority), to try and get the release earlier than you normally would, although I'm not sure that there is one for the 9.4 release.There isn't. Clicking on your "priority" URL passes one straight through to "93priority/index.htm", which is all about 9.3c for certain DVRs (not including my HR10-250) being used with OTA input. Everyone who can use 9.3c should be getting it; you don't have to request it -- unless you're not using OTA right now but plan to.

Usually when it's an S3 only or TiVo HD release only they don't provide priority links.

Patience, just be patient.:)

[extracted from http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6579511.html]
... The SDV adapters are expected to be offered by MSOs including Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications and Cablevision Systems, to subscribers in areas where they are deploying switched digital video technology. The cable operators and TiVo have said they plan to work cooperatively to notify TiVo subscribers that they will need the new external adapter...Good news for some TiVo owners (which ones? I dunno).

But I'm currently a DirecTV/TiVo user looking to switch to Comcast+TiVo, and what I'm hoping to see is an HD TiVo that incorporates the new technology for SDV (and hopefully VOD too?) without requiring an external adapter.

I'd buy TiVos that can do SDV and VOD natively right away, almost without thinking. ;)

9.4 is out? When did they release that?It's the "early bird" release, or whatever they call it, started a few days ago I think.... So, for the 9.4 release, we're still at the very early stages of post-beta activity, where a relatively small number of folks receive the release...I just realized you guys were all talking about a release that I've had on both my DirecTV TiVos for over a month:

• RCA DVR40 updated 13 Jun 2008 to 6.4a-01-2-121
• HR10-250 updated 28 May 2008 to 6.4a-01-2-357

Even the front-line triage people at D* had at their fingertips, a couple of weeks ago, the knowledge that this release occurred in the late May/early June time frame.

I just realized you guys were all talking about a release that I've had on both my DirecTV TiVos for over a month:

• RCA DVR40 updated 13 Jun 2008 to 6.4a-01-2-121
• HR10-250 updated 28 May 2008 to 6.4a-01-2-357

Even the front-line triage people at D* had at their fingertips, a couple of weeks ago, the knowledge that this release occurred in the late May/early June time frame.I strongly doubt that DirecTiVo release 6.4a is related to TiVo release 9.4. DirecTiVo's releases are almost certainly on a completely different code branch.

I believe that 9.4 is going to be the first release that implements functionality for TiVo Series3 and TiVo HD that will not be supported on TiVo Series2 (other than the obvious HD tuning and recording). For one thing, they're due to use the MPEG4 decoding capability of the Series3 models to add a YouTube browser (here (http://gizmodo.com/5026092/tivo-getting-youtube-streaming-today)'s a blurb at zatznotfunny.com which confirms that). Eventually this should also allow support of high-definition Amazon Unbox downloads, which I've heard that they've had working in unreleased code for some time. If it's not coming in 9.4 it should come sometime soon thereafter.

I strongly doubt that DirecTiVo release 6.4a is related to TiVo release 9.4. DirecTiVo's releases are almost certainly on a completely different code branch.

I believe that 9.4 is going to be the first release that implements functionality for TiVo Series3 and TiVo HD that will not be supported on TiVo Series2 (other than the obvious HD tuning and recording). For one thing, they're due to use the MPEG4 decoding capability of the Series3 models to add a YouTube browser (here (http://gizmodo.com/5026092/tivo-getting-youtube-streaming-today)'s a blurb at zatznotfunny.com which confirms that). Eventually this should also allow support of high-definition Amazon Unbox downloads, which I've heard that they've had working in unreleased code for some time. If it's not coming in 9.4 it should come sometime soon thereafter.
I suspect it will also have SDV adapter support.

I just realized you guys were all talking about a release that I've had on both my DirecTV TiVos for over a month:

• RCA DVR40 updated 13 Jun 2008 to 6.4a-01-2-121
• HR10-250 updated 28 May 2008 to 6.4a-01-2-357

Even the front-line triage people at D* had at their fingertips, a couple of weeks ago, the knowledge that this release occurred in the late May/early June time frame.

Umm.... No.

6.4a is the crippled version (no networking support, for example) of the TiVo software that DirecTV loads onto their DirecTiVo boxes. I believe it adds groups to the NPL, which the rest of us have had since the 8.X releases last year.

9.4a is the 2008 Summer Update that TiVo is just now beginning to roll out to the masses. It includes a bunch of small interface tweaks, as well as the first stab at H.264 support (via the YouTube HME app).

I suspect it will also have SDV adapter support.


There is a "tuning adapter' section in the menu's.

9.4 hit my S3 a couple days ago.

I suspect it will also have SDV adapter support.

There is a settings screen for the tuning resolver, which certainly implies support. However, since none of us has one of these buggers, it's hard to tell what level of support is actually in the code.

For one thing, they're due to use the MPEG4 decoding capability of the Series3 models to add a YouTube browser (here (http://gizmodo.com/5026092/tivo-getting-youtube-streaming-today)'s a blurb at zatznotfunny.com which confirms that). Eventually this should also allow support of high-definition Amazon Unbox downloads, which I've heard that they've had working in unreleased code for some time. If it's not coming in 9.4 it should come sometime soon thereafter.

That's the REALLY interesting thing about this release, IMHO. TiVo could go either (or both) of two ways in supporting Amazon HD stuff now : traditional downloads of Amazon Unbox, or streaming with Amazon Video On Demand. Since both of these features really revolves around an HME app to acquire the content, support of either wouldn't require a new version of the TiVo software. All they'd have to do is release a new HME app to do the dirty work. Neat!

As a side note, we've been trying to get pyTivo to play nicely with the new H.264 goodies in the 9.4a release. We've made some progress, but no clear-cut success. Perhaps over the weekend we'll have some better news to report.

There is a "tuning adapter' section in the menu's.

9.4 hit my S3 a couple days ago.

Thought so, I can't remember where I read about it...I don't have 9.4 yet myself.

On the bright side, it doesn't look like my Comcast system is going to implement SDV anytime soon, so when they do, you guys will have all the bugs worked out. :D

I think that it's probable that 9.4 contains the full Tuning Adapter support that they submitted to CableLabs Certification Wave 60 for certification as a Tuning Adapter client. If they passed, then they're good to go. They've been working closely with Moto and Cisco on TA since the beginning and will have fully tested that stuff against every version of the Moto and Cisco TA boxes up and to and including the ones that just received certification.

There isn't. Clicking on your "priority" URL passes one straight through to "93priority/index.htm", which is all about 9.3c for certain DVRs (not including my HR10-250) being used with OTA input. Everyone who can use 9.3c should be getting it; you don't have to request it -- unless you're not using OTA right now but plan to.

Actually TiVoPony just commented on TCF about the lack of a priority list for the 9.4 release. LINK (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=6491757#post6491757).

The bottom line is that this release is only for S3 and THD units, and since there are relatively few of them out in the field (as compared to S1 and S2 units) the rollout will happen quite quickly anyways. So, no need for a priority list.

That's the REALLY interesting thing about this release, IMHO. TiVo could go either (or both) of two ways in supporting Amazon HD stuff now : traditional downloads of Amazon Unbox, or streaming with Amazon Video On Demand. Since both of these features really revolves around an HME app to acquire the content, support of either wouldn't require a new version of the TiVo software. All they'd have to do is release a new HME app to do the dirty work. Neat!Another interesting bit from Dave Zatz' blog is this (http://www.zatznotfunny.com/2008-05/tivo-to-add-disney-vod-via-cinemanow/), revealing that they've made a deal with CinemaNow for downloadable rentals, which will include Disney films (which Amazon doesn't have a deal to offer) and some HD content (CinemaNow's current HD selection is pretty anemic, so don't get too excited :rolleyes:). Apparently the CinemaNow rentals will be available to both Series3 and Series2 users, though I suspect that the HD stuff will be encoded in WMDRM protected VC-1 for size consideration (which the Broadcom chipsets in TiVo Series3 and TiVo HD are also capable of decoding).

I don't see HD streaming as much of a possibility. Very few people have Internet service at a reliably high bit rate to make it profitable.

Aren't there more S3s and THDs out there now then when the spring release came out? They had a priority list for that one.

Aren't there more S3s and THDs out there now then when the spring release came out? They had a priority list for that one.

Very likely.

Don't shoot the messenger, though. I'm just letting everyone know what TiVoPony has explained as the rationale for the decision.

I don't see HD streaming as much of a possibility. Very few people have Internet service at a reliably high bit rate to make it profitable.

I think plenty of folks have a somewhat reliable 3-5Mbps pipe, which might be just enough to handle a very compressed H.264 720p. Just look at what Apple's done with their "HD" movie downloads. Same thing I'd expect Amazon and/or TiVo to do.

Another thing to consider is how TiVo implemented the "streaming" for the YouTube app. It can't possibly be buffering the content in memory, since neither the S3 and THD have sufficient physical memory to make that happen. So, it's on disk somewhere. If it's in TiVo's "reserved" area, which is a smallish and fixed size, they may not be able to fit an entire HD movie in there.

9.4 also has access to YouTube videos. I was looking at some the other day. Although only one of my seven boxes received 9.4 so far.

I have a 50mbs pipe with FiOS so HD would be no problem for me.

9.4 also has access to YouTube videos. I was looking at some the other day. Although only one of my seven boxes received 9.4 so far.

I have a 50mbs pipe with FiOS so HD would be no problem for me.

Seven??

I think plenty of folks have a somewhat reliable 3-5Mbps pipe, which might be just enough to handle a very compressed H.264 720p. Just look at what Apple's done with their "HD" movie downloads. Same thing I'd expect Amazon and/or TiVo to do.Apple TV does full file downloads, with viewing once enough of the clip is down (like Amazon Unbox on TiVo). VUDU does streaming of HD over 4 Mbps links, but they accomplish by making every active VUDU box a peer-to-peer client/server, and you get bits and pieces of what you want from the nearest box. (They imply 1080p24 encodings, but I don't buy it, at 4 Mbps. I also don't believe that it's true streaming, just "instant start" play-while-downloading).

Everything on YouTube is pathetically low quality video; I wouldn't be surprised if the bit rate is measured in the low hundreds of Mbps. Streaming it isn't a very challenging proposition.

Everything on YouTube is pathetically low quality video; I wouldn't be surprised if the bit rate is measured in the low hundreds of Mbps. Streaming it isn't a very challenging proposition.

Let's hope so. Any more than a few hundred Mbps, and we're all screwed (even the FIOS folks). :) :) :)

The YouTube app is quite quick in pulling stuff down, given the low resolution and bitrate of the content. Only takes a few seconds to pull down everything but the longest of videos. Probably not a good gauge of what HD streaming would look like on a TiVo.

Sorry--I obviously meant Kbps :rolleyes: :). I can't find an official source on this, but this (http://blog.jimmyr.com/High_Quality_on_Youtube_11_2008.php) blog suggests that standard YouTube is 320x240 video at 200 Kbps (you need a higher bit rate for a good quality MP3 audio encoding) with a 64 Kbps mono audio track and that they have some limited clips encoded as 480x360 at 900 Kbps with a 96 Kbps mono audio track.

The sample clip that I've been using for my pyTivo testing is 6.3MB in size, for 1min28sec worth of content.
video : 480x320, H.264, 29.97fps @ 500kbps
audio : 2 channel AAC, 44.1KHz @ 100kbps

So, that follows your second, higher quality variation. It doesn't look that bad blown up to 84" (albeit in MPEG-2 form for the moment), but it's certainly not HD.

We need to get pyTivo to walk before it can run, obviously. Once we shoehorn the H.264 YouTube stuff into the TiVo, then we'll start to tackle higher resolution stuff.

edit : just followed your link. Those numbers are for the FLV encoded stuff, but they nearly mirror what I'm seeing on the H.264 side of things.

The sample clip that I've been using for my pyTivo testing is 6.3MB in size, for 1min28sec worth of content.
video : 480x320, H.264, 29.97fps @ 500kbps
audio : 2 channel AAC, 44.1KHz @ 100kbps

So, that follows your second, higher quality variation. It doesn't look that bad blown up to 84" (albeit in MPEG-2 form for the moment), but it's certainly not HD.

We need to get pyTivo to walk before it can run, obviously. Once we shoehorn the H.264 YouTube stuff into the TiVo, then we'll start to tackle higher resolution stuff.

edit : just followed your link. Those numbers are for the FLV encoded stuff, but they nearly mirror what I'm seeing on the H.264 side of things.

Or you can now get TiVo Desktop 6.2.:rolleyes:

I don't get it. Just how much crap do we need? If I really want YouTube I'll use my computer. I also don't do any podcasts. Most of what I see isn't that great when I do look at YouTube.

I always have enough to watch just from regular SD and HD cable. I also don't use "guru" guides, and all that other happy horse manure. TiVo Cast are a waste of time as well.

Just my opinion. YMMV, of course.

Or you can now get TiVo Desktop 6.2.:rolleyes:

I don't get it. Just how much crap do we need? If I really want YouTube I'll use my computer. I also don't do any podcasts. Most of what I see isn't that great when I do look at YouTube.

I always have enough to watch just from regular SD and HD cable. I also don't use "guru" guides, and all that other happy horse manure. TiVo Cast are a waste of time as well.

Just my opinion. YMMV, of course.

+1 Yes!! I get tired of manufacturers always trying to cram more junk into all my products. I just want them to be really good at the thing they are actually designed to do. Pretty soon they'll have stock quotes scrolling across my toaster oven. :rolleyes:

+1 Yes!! Pretty soon they'll have stock quotes scrolling across my toaster oven. :rolleyes:

That would be pretty useless unless you could hit a button and place a buy order right to your brokers desk!

Or you can now get TiVo Desktop 6.2.:rolleyes:

I don't get it. Just how much crap do we need? If I really want YouTube I'll use my computer. I also don't do any podcasts. Most of what I see isn't that great when I do look at YouTube.

I always have enough to watch just from regular SD and HD cable. I also don't use "guru" guides, and all that other happy horse manure. TiVo Cast are a waste of time as well.

Just my opinion. YMMV, of course.

You're missing the point. We're using YouTube videos because we already know that they work with the S3/THD. Once we figure out the specifics of how to get h.264 into the TiVo, we can then use that knowledge to try and put more interesting and useful stuff into our TiVo's. Like podcasts, archived DVDs, downloaded content, etc. At that point, I don't need TiVo Desktop, VUDU, AppleTV, NetFlix downloads, etc. Everything is done through the TiVo.

That would be pretty useless unless you could hit a button and place a buy order right to your brokers desk!

Yeah, well they offer that crap on my XM radio and I don't want that either! Why in God's name do you need stocks scrolling acrosss the radio display?

You're missing the point. We're using YouTube videos because we already know that they work with the S3/THD. Once we figure out the specifics of how to get h.264 into the TiVo, we can then use that knowledge to try and put more interesting and useful stuff into our TiVo's. Like podcasts, archived DVDs, downloaded content, etc. At that point, I don't need TiVo Desktop, VUDU, AppleTV, NetFlix downloads, etc. Everything is done through the TiVo.

You're looking at it from the point of PyTiVo. I'm looking at it from the fact that I already got enough stuff and I don't really need anymore.

Archived DVD's? I can't even imagine what that means. I have a ton of them archived in my closet.:D

You're looking at it from the point of PyTiVo. I'm looking at it from the fact that I already got enough stuff and I don't really need anymore.

But that's EXACTLY the point! We're trying to extend the functions and usefulness of the TiVo so you don't HAVE to go get MORE stuff. The TiVo can do it all for you.

But that's EXACTLY the point! We're trying to extend the functions and usefulness of the TiVo so you don't HAVE to go get MORE stuff. The TiVo can do it all for you.

Call me when it will mow my lawn every Saturday :D

Call me when it will mow my lawn every Saturday :D

Yeah, I'm still waiting for it to serve me breakfast in bed.;)

Sorry Paul, I'm just not all that excited about all that. There are only a few things I want and most are on the way. The digital converter. The new thing that will make TiVo work with the True2Way stuff. And a good nights sleep.

TiVo does help me obtain that. I find something that I think is very interestin on the History HD channel and I'm out in 20 minutes.:)

There is a "tuning adapter' section in the menu's.

9.4 hit my S3 a couple days ago.
Good call, I had not noticed that. I guess we will be good to go when the SDV adapters are rolled out.

I think plenty of folks have a somewhat reliable 3-5Mbps pipe, which might be just enough to handle a very compressed H.264 720p. Just look at what Apple's done with their "HD" movie downloads. Same thing I'd expect Amazon and/or TiVo to do.
I run periodic speed checks of Internet download speeds via my Cox high speed internet connection. It varies so wildly that there is simply no telling from one minute to the next how fast it is. It runs anywhere from a high of more than 5 Mbps to a low of less than 1 Mbps. Nevertheless, I have had good success with downloading HD movies from iTunes for my Apple TV. They stream reliably and their PQ, while not quite that of cable or OTA HD, is nonetheless, very good.

Good call, I had not noticed that. I guess we will be good to go when the SDV adapters are rolled out.


I run periodic speed checks of Internet download speeds via my Cox high speed internet connection. It varies so wildly that there is simply no telling from one minute to the next how fast it is. It runs anywhere from a high of more than 5 Mbps to a low of less than 1 Mbps. Nevertheless, I have had good success with downloading HD movies from iTunes for my Apple TV. They stream reliably and their PQ, while not quite that of cable or OTA HD, is nonetheless, very good.

All the YouTube video I've looked at finished downloading in 5 to 20 seconds.
My speed is reliable on my FiOS connection. I regularly get 50mbs download speeds from the closer test sites, no matter the time of day or the day in the week. WHen I had a 30mbs connection with FIOS it was the same way. When I had my Comcast connection it would vary all over the place depending on how many other people were using the bandwidth in my area. It always slowed down in the evenings which was very annoying.

Cox has a feature that they call "Turbo Boost" which allocates some currently unused bandwidth to subscriber Internet traffic. You pay for a certain guaranteed speed, but you might get quite a bit more than that depending upon the time of day. I moved from a Cox neighborhood in February and I think that their standard broadband speed was up to 8 Mbps but I was often able to get 15 Mbps or better.

I also periodically check speeds and these days I find that I usually get the advertised rate any time of day.

Comcast just boosted my area to 16/2 full time. Quite a bit of a jump from the 6/384 I had just a year ago...

I think plenty of folks have a somewhat reliable 3-5Mbps pipe, which might be just enough to handle a very compressed H.264 720p. Just look at what Apple's done with their "HD" movie downloads. Same thing I'd expect Amazon and/or TiVo to do.On this topic, it looks as if Amazon is going to start streaming, according to this (http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/17/amazon-video-on-demand-store-streams-video-launches-today) Engadget blurb (of course, it's not HD--yet). I wonder if TiVo will add a client for it? They may not be so happy about TiVo's cheating on them with CinemaNow :D. (The blurb indicates that they have a deal with Sony to support the service on their overpriced little "Internet Video Link" gadget).

I wonder if TiVo will add a client for it? They may not be so happy about TiVo's cheating on them with CinemaNow :D. (The blurb indicates that they have a deal with Sony to support the service on their overpriced little "Internet Video Link" gadget).

Copied from TCF:

To reinforce what's already stated: The name is changing, but the service for TiVo DVRs is staying.

In fact, certain small improvements are right around the corner....
__________________
E. Stephen Mack, Director of TiVoCast Operations at TiVo (estephen@tivo.com)
http://www.tivo.com/support/

Comcast just boosted my area to 16/2 full time. Quite a bit of a jump from the 6/384 I had just a year ago...

Same here, and not bad at all for $52 a month.

On this topic, it looks as if Amazon is going to start streaming, according to this (http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/17/amazon-video-on-demand-store-streams-video-launches-today) Engadget blurb (of course, it's not HD--yet). I wonder if TiVo will add a client for it? They may not be so happy about TiVo's cheating on them with CinemaNow :D. (The blurb indicates that they have a deal with Sony to support the service on their overpriced little "Internet Video Link" gadget).

As hook said, the Tivo reps on TCF have been hinting that something Amazon related is coming shortly, and that the existing Amazon Unbox service isn't going away any time soon. It might be HD, it might be streaming, it might be something else entirely. Since the YouTube app is fresh out of the gate, and was the initial introduction of H.264, I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that it's some form on higher-resolution downloads than what currently exists.

Does everyone have 9.4 at this point? My hd tivo got it a couple of weeks ago, but I don't have any sign of getting it on my S3, and that's the one I've been wanting it on...and with no priority list, I'm getting kind of antsy wondering when it's going to come!

They just released 9.4 for general download yesterday. I got it last night on my HD.

Does everyone have 9.4 at this point? My hd tivo got it a couple of weeks ago, but I don't have any sign of getting it on my S3, and that's the one I've been wanting it on...and with no priority list, I'm getting kind of antsy wondering when it's going to come!

Only one of my seven boxes has 9.4 on it and it got it over a week ago.

Edit: this was as of last night. I see three more boxes have it morning, but I haven't checked the other 3 yet.

Aaron,

You wat WAY too much TV :D

Regards,

I examined my Series3 and thought that I didn't get the update, but the connection status was "Pending Restart", so I restarted it. I switched to using my PC (for which I use the same monitor as for TiVo). After what seemed too long a time for a normal restart I switched back and TiVo was still on its "Welcome! Powering Up." screen. I waited a few seconds and the "Almost there" display came up soon followed by the "Preparing the update. This could take an hour, maybe longer". What the hell did they do that this update takes so long to install??? Oh well--it's probably worth it for a quicker way to toggle closed captions :).

EDIT: It actually took 10-15 minutes. The closed-captioning toggle feature is nice, except that it require seven button presses (INFO, DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, SELECT, INFO) :rolleyes:. Still, it's an improvement, trimming off about 3 button presses and never interrupting the video with a full screen menu. YouTube apparently isn't available until Friday (I'm not a huge fan, anyway) and I'm not sure exactly when I'll want to delete or play everything in a folder. The ability to get to the guide any time (without switching to live TV) is something that I've wanted for a long time and the advance-a-day-in-the-guide feature is cool. There's also now a "Tuning Adapter" item in the Account & System Information menu (select it and it says "No Tuning Adapter" and give an explanation of what one is). So far I don't think that they broke anything and some of the things that they added are good.

I examined my Series3 and thought that I didn't get the update, but the connection status was "Pending Restart", so I restarted it. I switched to using my PC (for which I use the same monitor as for TiVo). After what seemed too long a time for a normal restart I switched back and TiVo was still on its "Welcome! Powering Up." screen. I waited a few seconds and the "Almost there" display came up soon followed by the "Preparing the update. This could take an hour, maybe longer". What the hell did they do that this update takes so long to install??? Oh well--it's probably worth it for a quicker way to toggle closed captions :).

EDIT: It actually took 10-15 minutes. The closed-captioning toggle feature is nice, except that it require seven button presses (INFO, DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, SELECT, INFO) :rolleyes:. Still, it's an improvement, trimming off about 3 button presses and never interrupting the video with a full screen menu. YouTube apparently isn't available until Friday (I'm not a huge fan, anyway) and I'm not sure exactly when I'll want to delete or play everything in a folder. The ability to get to the guide any time (without switching to live TV) is something that I've wanted for a long time and the advance-a-day-in-the-guide feature is cool. There's also now a "Tuning Adapter" item in the Account & System Information menu (select it and it says "No Tuning Adapter" and give an explanation of what one is). So far I don't think that they broke anything and some of the things that they added are good.


The Tuning Adapter is a good thing, because thats what we need to make it work.

It seems like they've thrown the switch, I'll have to see if my TiVo has been updated. I get my updates around midnight so it usually reboots by itself.

The Tuning Adapter is a good thing, because thats what we need to make it work.

It seems like they've thrown the switch, I'll have to see if my TiVo has been updated. I get my updates around midnight so it usually reboots by itself.Mine downloaded the update at 4:30 AM and it usually reboots by itself as well. I have no idea why I got that "Pending Restart" thing. And yes, I know all about the Tuning Adapter and have been following the issue since the NCTA offered it (as a response to the CEA's complaints about having to implement OCAP in low-end products) in a filing with the FCC a year ago.

Yep, I don't know what happened, my wife went to put on the evening news and a message appeared. Then it went into the TiVo cartoon for the S3 so I've got 9.4 now.

Just checked my TiVo HD. It got the update too.:)

My Series 3 got it yesterday 30th. I tired to fource connect on the Tivo HD and no joy but I noticed the next update was this morning at 4:40a 31st. Needless to say when I woke up the Tivo HD video on both tuners was frozen but I was also at "pending restart" so I did. Left the house before it had finished installing so fingers crossed my freeze problem is solved.

My Series 3 got it yesterday 30th. I tired to fource connect on the Tivo HD and no joy but I noticed the next update was this morning at 4:40a 31st. Needless to say when I woke up the Tivo HD video on both tuners was frozen but I was also at "pending restart" so I did. Left the house before it had finished installing so fingers crossed my freeze problem is solved.

I forced a connection on the 29th, after which I saw a pending restart. It was late at night and something was recording, so I put off the restart until the next morning (yesterday). Woke up to frozen tuners and unresponsive HD unit. Nothing I could do got it past the "Welcome...powering up" screen" :mad:

It's my first DVR crash ever...not liking it so much.

I forced a connection on the 29th, after which I saw a pending restart. It was late at night and something was recording, so I put off the restart until the next morning (yesterday). Woke up to frozen tuners and unresponsive HD unit. Nothing I could do got it past the "Welcome...powering up" screen" :mad:

It's my first DVR crash ever...not liking it so much.

I have seen this happen a couple times in the last few months if you pull the power for a few seconds then it should boot fine dont think it is related to 9.4 as i still am yet to get it.

Here is just a another data point for those experiencing this problem:
1. Problem is heavy tiling on only a couple of channels (3 in my case) and perfect PQ on all others.
2. TiVo recently issued software change 9.3 was supposed to fix it according to a TiVo CSR. In my case, it did not. 9.4 was no help either.
3. Other AVS Forum readers have said heavy FiOS cable attenuation will do the trick. They are right.
4. Using the S3 built-in diagnostics signal strength and SNR meters, my readings initially were 100 strength and 36 dB SNR.
5. The fix: added attenuators until the picture disappeared (-26 dB of attenuation). Then removed one 3 dB attenuator which resulted in good PQ (-23 db of attenuation, signal strength of 55-59 and SNR of 25 db).
6. All is well. Thanks AVS! :)

I have seen this happen a couple times in the last few months if you pull the power for a few seconds then it should boot fine dont think it is related to 9.4 as i still am yet to get it.

Yeah, I tried everything from a simple cold boot to kickstart 54. It just mocked me with the "Welcome..." message no matter what I did.

Well, no update as of last night, but I haven't checked it yet today, guess I'll see when I get home this evening! I'm sure I'll get it soon now, I just had it for so long on my tivohd that I wondered about the s3 because I hadn't heard anything and no one here was saying anything...

has anyone in the boston/RI area received the 9.4 update?

I have.

9.4 here on my S3 in southern NH

hrmphhh.....

I've got it on six out of seven boxes now.

I've got it on six out of seven boxes now.Why do you have seven HD TiVos? Are you running a B&B or something?

Last time I looked, my TiVo said that the YouTube feature would start on August 1st, but it's live now. It works surprisingly well. Really bad quality YouTube video, of course, but it's much smoother than I expected when blown up to fill my 46" panel.

I can only imaging how bad the Youtube stuff will look on my front projector!

I can only imaging how bad the Youtube stuff will look on my front projector!Check it out. I found a thread on it at TCF (some people have apparently had access to it since the 17th); people are pretty much all pleasantly surprised. It's definitely not high quality, but I was expecting a blurred, pixellated mess when blown up to fill a good size screen, which is what I get when I do that on my "HTPC" (a laptop running XP MCE connected to my panel via a VGA-to-DVI-I cable :)).

EDIT: Okay--I'm revising my opinion. Some of it is horribly pixellated trash. I started by playing some of the "Favorites" (a trailer of the next Harry Potter movie and a parody of "I Kissed a Girl") and they weren't horrible. Then I searched for one of my favorites (a Sarah Silverman bit shown on Jimmy Kimmel Live called "I'm F***ing Matt Damon (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLG3S5WzHig)") and it looks really, really terrible. It's doesn't look good on the HTPC, mind you (though IMHO the clip is hilarious), but it's pretty much unwatchably bad on TiVo. It's true that I didn't find the same version (no lead-in with Sarah talking to Jimmy to introduce the clip and a little bit of them talking about it afterwards), so that might also be a factor.

(If you enjoyed the Silverman bit, you might also like this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ60vodFegY) by comic duo L. Witherspoon and Chucky. I think I first saw them perform this on Politically Incorrect; this appears to have been recorded from an episode of HBO's Sketch Pads).

I'll check as soon as I get the chance. My Series 3 updated last night.

I can only imaging how bad the Youtube stuff will look on my front projector!

It's surprisingly not bad on my 84" screen. Of course, quality varies from clip to clip.

It's interesting. Before this app was released, I barely used YouTube at all on a PC. Now, I find myself going back to it quite frequently on my TiVo.

I haven't looked for it. You Tube is for the internet on a computer. Why do we need this on TiVo?

I haven't looked for it. You Tube is for the internet on a computer. Why do we need this on TiVo?

Nope. YouTube is an easily searchable repository of videos. It shouldn't (and really doesn't) matter where you access it from.

Your argument is similar to saying "I have a phone in my house, why do I need one in my pocket?" As we progress in the digital information age, the lines between various usage patterns are becoming blurred. We're moving to the point where there simply are applications, and you can use them wherever (work, computer, car, couch, etc) and whenever you need to .

has anyone in the boston/RI area received the 9.4 update?

got it in RI last night. the youtube quality is better than i expected. would be nice to be able to access your own personal favorites.

I'm curious as to wether anyone has a series 3 with DirecTv? If so, has anyone figured out how to use both tuners on the series 3?

S3 and DTV are not campatible.

S3 and DTV are not campatible.

Yeah, and they don't work together, either. :)

Although, given the work that TiVo has done on the DVB-T tuner section, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to see TiVo try to get back into bed with DirecTV and mod the TiVoHD for satellite use. Or Dish Network, depending upon how that lawsuit gets resolved...

Nope. YouTube is an easily searchable repository of videos. It shouldn't (and really doesn't) matter where you access it from.

Your argument is similar to saying "I have a phone in my house, why do I need one in my pocket?" As we progress in the digital information age, the lines between various usage patterns are becoming blurred. We're moving to the point where there simply are applications, and you can use them wherever (work, computer, car, couch, etc) and whenever you need to .
I agree. Thanks to my Apple TV I have had Youtube on my HDTV since February and it has been very convenient. One's big screen HDTV is a much better way to display Youtube than a computer screen is. Trust us on this.

If TiVo's implementation of Youtube ends up working as smoothly on my S3 as Apple's does on my Apple TV I'll be a happy camper.

Nope. YouTube is an easily searchable repository of videos. It shouldn't (and really doesn't) matter where you access it from.

Your argument is similar to saying "I have a phone in my house, why do I need one in my pocket?" As we progress in the digital information age, the lines between various usage patterns are becoming blurred. We're moving to the point where there simply are applications, and you can use them wherever (work, computer, car, couch, etc) and whenever you need to .

I'm not arguing anything. I'm stating my point of view, which happens to be correct.:p

I don't want everything tied together. I'm getting to old for this much change.

Anyway I think TiVo should spend it's time and energy on other things. Like maybe the PIP that everyone has been asking for. Breakfast in bed. How about doing some bird cage cleaning?

You Tube I don't need, it's on the front of my google page.;)

What's PiP? I tried that back in the early 90's but rarely used it. I defintely have no need for it with a TiVo since I can just jump back and forth between tuners.

I'm not arguing anything. I'm stating my point of view, which happens to be correct.:p

Well, that's debatable. :)


I don't want everything tied together. I'm getting to old for this much change.

Luddite. :)


Anyway I think TiVo should spend it's time and energy on other things. Like maybe the PIP that everyone has been asking for. Breakfast in bed. How about doing some bird cage cleaning?

Agreed. TiVo's given us some nice goodies to play with in this release, some that have been looooong asked for by the angry hordes. A GUI refresh would be welcome (make more effective use of all that extra resolution HDTV provides), for instance.

Wait a minute.... You don't want new features, but you do want new features. You're just sitting on the fence, complaining that TiVo's not working on the goodies that YOU want to see. I get it now... :)

What's PiP? I tried that back in the early 90's but rarely used it. I defintely have no need for it with a TiVo since I can just jump back and forth between tuners.

Really, neat trick, but I've never had much use for it myself.

Really, neat trick, but I've never had much use for it myself.

Same here, except I find it quite handy during football season. Makes it a snap to flip between two games.

Same here, except I find it quite handy during football season. Makes it a snap to flip between two games.

Yes, actually I have used it on a Dish DVR when a NASCAR race was on the same time as an NFL game. What was nice about the Dish DVR is that you could size the box and move it around the screen to position it so it didn't obstruct the main image. I guess it can be useful but I would hate to see development of other features take a back seat to PiP.

I got no use for PIP--I used Passport Echo for over 2 years and more-or-less never used the available PIP feature. I have to believe that if there was a huge demand for it TiVo would have added it long ago.

Yeah, and they don't work together, either. :)



Damn iPhone didn't catch that one! :eek:

Is there any support for "switched digital video" yet or an ETA?

Is there any support for "switched digital video" yet or an ETA?

There's a menu for it, so I'd have to believe that some level of support is in there. I'd wager that the 9.4 release is the one that they sent to CableLabs for testing with the Cisco and Motorola tuning adapter/resolver boxes. If that's true, then the 9.4 release should have full support for those devices.

I'm curious as to wether anyone has a series 3 with DirecTv? DirecTV refuses to open their network up to the general consumer electronics industry.

Well, that's debatable. :)

No, I won't debate that. I'm firm on my stance.




Luddite. :)

Look Paul, I speak English. Luddite sounds like some kind of compound or some form of plastic. Like Lucite.


I'll look it up later.:)




Agreed. TiVo's given us some nice goodies to play with in this release, some that have been looooong asked for by the angry hordes. A GUI refresh would be welcome (make more effective use of all that extra resolution HDTV provides), for instance.


Now you're cooking! That's exactly the type of stuff they need!

Look Paul, I speak English. Luddite sounds like some kind of compound or some form of plastic. Like Lucite. I'll look it up later.:)"The Luddites were a social movement of British textile artisans in the early nineteenth century who protested – often by destroying mechanized looms – against the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution, which they felt threatened their livelihood."

I use the word generally to describe someone who expresses resistance to change.

Is it possible that pixelization on recorded shows using Tivo HD is from going out of the Tivo to my Onkyo 705 AVR, then into my TV all with HDMI cables?

Or is it a problem with the Tivo HD. I have read a few posts where some other people experience this problem.

I never had this problem with Verizon's DVR box, but it was also before I had HD. Although the recording we tried to watch, was an SD program.

I am still in my cancellation period, and I also found out that the "new" unit I bought from Sears was indeed a used unit from March.

Thanks for you help

bytor99999

I have had some nasty pixelization, at times, which was clearly somewhere inside the TiVo (because at the time I had an HD DVR from the cable company as well, which worked fine -- I even switched the connections around to make sure that it wasn't just that the TiVo was on the "weaker" connection).

I've recently removed my eSATA drive in an attempt to reduce pixelization with my TiVo even further, but the first thing I recorded had some nasty pixelization. It sucks, but not enough to make me throw my TiVo away and go back to the cable company DVR.

Hey, anybody who is around, quick question:

Is there a graceful way to shut down the Series 3? I have to move one of them, and it's been so long since I powered it down, I don't remember if I just unplug it or do something else...

progprog, cool alias.

bicker1 - Yeah it was your posts that I was reading and they do suck. I am thinking about returning it also. However, after reading a little bit more and calling Verizon, I think I will try buying an attenuator first and try that out. The thing that I like about Tivo that other DVRs won't allow you to do, is to transfer my shows onto my iPhone very easily. With my cable companies DVR, they turn off all connectivity and ports.

I will post later after trying out the attenuator.

Thanks everyone

bytor99999

Hey, anybody who is around, quick question:

Is there a graceful way to shut down the Series 3? I have to move one of them, and it's been so long since I powered it down, I don't remember if I just unplug it or do something else...

Don't you click on that little icon with that green arrow, that has a popup that says "Safely Remove Hardware"? Oh wait, sorry, that is only on Windows.

Recently I just hit my power strips power off and it shut down my Tivo, and later when I turned it back on it was fine. I am sure you can just unplug it and it will be fine.

bytor99999

Regarding shutting down the DVR, there isn't any way to do it. I typically put it in standby, but that doesn't do anything (useful). Just unplug it before moving.

Regarding the attenuator, it's not a panacea. In some cases, it just makes things worse. Good luck with your efforts though.

Regarding shutting down the DVR, there isn't any way to do it. I typically put it in standby, but that doesn't do anything (useful). Just unplug it before moving.



Kind of what I thought, but wanted to be sure so I didn't mess it up. Thanks for the reply.

progprog, cool alias.

bicker1 - Yeah it was your posts that I was reading and they do suck. I am thinking about returning it also. However, after reading a little bit more and calling Verizon, I think I will try buying an attenuator first and try that out. The thing that I like about Tivo that other DVRs won't allow you to do, is to transfer my shows onto my iPhone very easily. With my cable companies DVR, they turn off all connectivity and ports.

I will post later after trying out the attenuator.

Thanks everyone

bytor99999

I have no problems with peixelation and my TiVo. Never have.

Not to say that Bicker1 is wrong, because I do believe he has a problem with his. But the majority of TiVo owners do not have this problem.

Cable DVR's suck. Specially the SA 8300. They didn't record properly, and you talk about bad HD! I had no idea how good HD really looked until I got my TiVo S3.

There's a menu for it, so I'd have to believe that some level of support is in there. I'd wager that the 9.4 release is the one that they sent to CableLabs for testing with the Cisco and Motorola tuning adapter/resolver boxes. If that's true, then the 9.4 release should have full support for those devices.


The Tuning resolvers are fully certified. Cisco and Motorola will make them for Cableco's that use SDV. They should come out maybe in September but it might take longer. The cablecos won't charge for this device.

Several folks, including the person who asked the question, experience pixelization tied directly to the TiVo. There is no way to know whether a majority of TiVo owners do (and most don't say anything because it isn't a big enough deal) or don't.

Only one MSO has said that they will not charge for the tuning adapter.

I have no problems with peixelation and my TiVo. Never have.

Not to say that Bicker1 is wrong, because I do believe he has a problem with his. But the majority of TiVo owners do not have this problem.

Cable DVR's suck. Specially the SA 8300. They didn't record properly, and you talk about bad HD! I had no idea how good HD really looked until I got my TiVo S3.

Yeah, this issue is a known issue with Tivo and Verizon. They have lots of papers on it, and each like to blame each other, but basically they both say that the Verizon signal is too strong for the Tivo. The two different reps from each company both said to get an attenuator. I ordered one online, although it might not be enough, it was only one 10db, and based on another post I recently saw, I might need a number of them and figure out the best combination.

I agree that Cable DVR's suck, especially how closed they are to allowing you to connect to you network and USB ports.

bytor99999

Yeah, this issue is a known issue with Tivo and Verizon. They have lots of papers on it, and each like to blame each other, but basically they both say that the Verizon signal is too strong for the Tivo. The two different reps from each company both said to get an attenuator. I ordered one online, although it might not be enough, it was only one 10db, and based on another post I recently saw, I might need a number of them and figure out the best combination.

I agree that Cable DVR's suck, especially how closed they are to allowing you to connect to you network and USB ports.

bytor99999

No pixealtion with my 4 HDTiVos on Verizon FIOS. The tech put an 8-way splitter in so the signal wouldn't be too hot.
Now I did have pixelation problems with the TiVoHD with Comcast last Summer and had to put an attenuator on the Comcast line.
But when I came back to Comcast this year and hooked up another TiVoHD to Comcast it didn't have any problems so it didn't need an attenuator.

OK, I just made my second call to the TiVo Executive Office for an explanation on why cable cards for digital channels are restricted. The first person I spoke to said I am the first person she ever talked to about this and would get back to me. That was at 9:00 am est. So, I call back because I'm persistant. I speak to another person and I ask her the same question. I explain that I understand why certain channels are restricted, I just don't understand why all channels are restricted.

She says "so you want to know why you can't record movies on your TiVo and move it to another TiVo." I said no, and gave her an example of how come I can record "The Closure" on TNT analog and copy it freely but I'm restricted on the HD version.

She said she will get back to me. And so I shall wait and see.

But here's what I don't get. The number is 1-203-351-2221. Am I the only one calling? These people are acting like they never heard of this. She said she will contact my local President and find out. Heck I've written Steve Fry about this 3 times and never got a response.

Don't you guys care? Has anyone else tried?

One time we had a power outage in our neighborhood. Lasted a day and a half. I finally call the electric company and guess what? I'm the first to report it. 2 hours later power is back on.

We can't get it fixed if we don't try to do something.

OK, I just made my second call to the TiVo Executive Office for an explanation on why cable cards for digital channels are restricted. The first person I spoke to said I am the first person she ever talked to about this and would get back to me. That was at 9:00 am est. So, I call back because I'm persistant. I speak to another person and I ask her the same question. I explain that I understand why certain channels are restricted, I just don't understand why all channels are restricted.

She says "so you want to know why you can't record movies on your TiVo and move it to another TiVo." I said no, and gave her an example of how come I can record "The Closure" on TNT analog and copy it freely but I'm restricted on the HD version.

She said she will get back to me. And so I shall wait and see.

But here's what I don't get. The number is 1-203-351-2221. Am I the only one calling? These people are acting like they never heard of this. She said she will contact my local President and find out. Heck I've written Steve Fry about this 3 times and never got a response.

Don't you guys care? Has anyone else tried?

One time we had a power outage in our neighborhood. Lasted a day and a half. I finally call the electric company and guess what? I'm the first to report it. 2 hours later power is back on.

We can't get it fixed if we don't try to do something.

You called TiVo?? or your Cable company? The answer from TiVo is easy... because the cable company has flagged the content as hex '02' 'copy one generation only'.

You called TiVo?? or your Cable company? The answer from TiVo is easy... because the cable company has flagged the content as hex '02' 'copy one generation only'.

I know that! I want to know why.

It doesn't make sense. If you can record an analog version of a show why not the HD version? Further, copy protection from something like re runs on AWA (wrestling) on ESPN Classic? That's when I first noticed it.

And it wasn't always like that. There was a time when these stations were copy freely.

scsiraid, you have had TiVo in the old days when it use to record digital channels. You mean to say that years ago you couldn't use MRV on these channels? This just happened when they started with cable cards. And the problem as I see it is that each company can decide what they want to mark copy once.

So unless they do it for their "convenience" they are not being customer friendly to TiVo users. They can put that on all the ppv, premium channels that I understand.

In Ohio we use to be able to watch STO which carries the Indians on both digital, analog, and HD. Now we only have analog and HD. So what's the point if you can record freely an analog show that you can't record the shame show on the digital channel?

I know that! I want to know why.

It doesn't make sense. If you can record an analog version of a show why not the HD version? Further, copy protection from something like re runs on AWA (wrestling) on ESPN Classic? That's when I first noticed it.

And it wasn't always like that. There was a time when these stations were copy freely.

scsiraid, you have had TiVo in the old days when it use to record digital channels. You mean to say that years ago you couldn't use MRV on these channels? This just happened when they started with cable cards. And the problem as I see it is that each company can decide what they want to mark copy once.

So unless they do it for their "convenience" they are not being customer friendly to TiVo users. They can put that on all the ppv, premium channels that I understand.

In Ohio we use to be able to watch STO which carries the Indians on both digital, analog, and HD. Now we only have analog and HD. So what's the point if you can record freely an analog show that you can't record the shame show on the digital channel?

So you called the cable company... right? They are they ones that hold the key to solving the issue. TiVo is just complying with the rules.

By the 'old days' I assume you mean a Series 2 with an external STB.... In that case, you arent recording a 'digital signal'... you are recording an analog signal from the STB which the TiVo is converting to digital for storage on the HDD. The STB did all the conversions from QAM digital to analog and the S2 didnt care if the source channel was analog or digital or whatever (Sat?) since all it saw was analog. The S2 didnt care where the signal came from... it was basically a VCR. With S3 and THD, they are recording the actual digital stream from the cableco and must honor and obey the CCI flags.

IMHO, the cableco's are being butts by copy protecting content that doesnt need protecting.

hookbill, FCC regs allow them to mark anything on cable with "Copy One Generation" other than stuff in the core basic tier (the 20 or so channels you get for the lowest price, which you have to subscribe to to get anything and which must include all rebroadcasts of local transmissions). They could mark the extended-basic analog channels with the equivalent analog encoding (which TiVo would detect and treat the same), but typically they don't both. Most providers have digital simulcasts of the analog channels which typically are also protected, as allowed by the FCC--even the simulcast of the OTA rebroadcasts can be and often are protected, since the original signal in analog form is also present on the wire, unprotected. When I first got my TiVo on Cox San Diego they were programming CableCARDs for the digital simulcasts, which was uncool, since it put restrictions on SD OTA stuff, but they stopped, and let TiVo tune the analog.

This has been discussed endlessly on TCF (where, as I know, you're not welcome :rolleyes:). Someone said that he persistently complained to Comcast (and his local franchising agency) about it so much that he finally got to a high level manager who changed their national policy such that they don't apply digital copy protection codes to anything unless explicitly requested by the content provider. If it bothers you enough, maybe you can get your cable provider to adopt a similar policy.

And when setting the CCI flag by the cable company isn't unintentional, it often is directed by the content owner (ordering the cable company to protect their content when transmitted digitally). HBO does this. Why? Because they want their content protected, and there's a good way to do so, digitally.

This has been discussed endlessly on TCF (where, as I know, you're not welcome :rolleyes:). Someone said that he persistently complained to Comcast (and his local franchising agency) about it so much that he finally got to a high level manager who changed their national policy such that they don't apply digital copy protection codes to anything unless explicitly requested by the content provider. If it bothers you enough, maybe you can get your cable provider to adopt a similar policy.

And that's what I want to do. I want to bitcha and complain about it to Time Warner.

scsiraid, the number I gave is to the number to the Exectuive Office of Time Warner Cable. It's not the local area. It's the big cheese himself So I'm not complaining about TiVo.

And bicker1, yes I fully understand the deal and their rights. I know they can decide to copy protect just about anything they please. But that doesn't mean I have to take it.

What I'm saying here is that if you're a Time Warner customer you should be calling this number and letting them know that we want this changed. Despite what others say I believe that Time Warner and other cable companies truly want to do the right thing by their customers but sometimes they don't understand what it is.

Now as I said before, PPV, Premium, Special Events - I have no problem with that. But many of these channels are showing content that nobody even cares about. Theres no money to be made from a AWA wrestling show on ESPN, and if there is it sure doesn't make much.

And my other gripe is if it can be recorded freely on analog cable, then it should also be on HD.

And when setting the CCI flag by the cable company isn't unintentional, it often is directed by the content owner (ordering the cable company to protect their content when transmitted digitally). HBO does this. Why? Because they want their content protected, and there's a good way to do so, digitally.

Yes, absolutely that I understand. But let's take HDnet and HDnet Movies. Mark Cuban has come out and said he does not want cable companies to block the content, but they still do.

I think that they just decided to set the CCI flag on digital at 0x02 because it was the "easy" way to do it and the executives really don't have an idea of what affect it has on TiVo owners. That's why I think people who are TW subs should call the number and complain. Like that one person did maybe we can get change.

And bicker1, yes I fully understand the deal and their rights. I know they can decide to copy protect just about anything they please. But that doesn't mean I have to take it.You mean you don't have to take it quietly. You do, technically have to "take it" or "leave it". I'm sure you know that money talks.

And my other gripe is if it can be recorded freely on analog cable, then it should also be on HD.No, that makes no sense. Just because something isn't practical using old technology doesn't mean they should do it using new technology.

Yes, absolutely that I understand. But let's take HDnet and HDnet Movies. Mark Cuban has come out and said he does not want cable companies to block the content, but they still do.I'm sure cable companies want Mark Cuban to charge less, but does he listen to them? :)

You mean you don't have to take it quietly. You do, technically have to "take it" or "leave it". I'm sure you know that money talks.

No, that makes no sense. Just because something isn't practical using old technology doesn't mean they should do it using new technology.

Fact is, if they could have done it with analog signals, they probably would have tried.

It's my understanding that that flag is set at the content provider's discretion, in some cases though, cable companies have gone ahead and set it themselves for what ever reason. It's those cases where one should lobby the cableco to to remove the flag, and in fact, talking to the content provider themselves might even work - tell CBS you can't watch their programs because your cableco is blocking the ability to record them for example.

I don't mean to crap on the thread here but I have a question about a Series 3 using a M-card or S-card.

I had people tell me that a series 3 TiVo will work as a duel tuner using 1 M-card. Is this true or would you need 2 M-cards?

Also whats the diff from M to S?

I'm sure cable companies want Mark Cuban to charge less, but does he listen to them? :)

Zing!

Frankly, I'm surprised Cuban hasn't lowered his price way down given how marginalized his channels have become. I would think those channels are facing extinction he if doesn't make them cheaper to carry.

I don't mean to crap on the thread here but I have a question about a Series 3 using a M-card or S-card.

I had people tell me that a series 3 TiVo will work as a duel tuner using 1 M-card. Is this true or would you need 2 M-cards?

Also whats the diff from M to S?

An S3 needs two M cards. A TiVo HD can work with 1 M card. I have heard many people say they have not had success with the S3 and M cards, but they are suppose to work. The difference is the M card can handle more then one stream, S cards can only handle one.

Fact is, if they could have done it with analog signals, they probably would have tried.Without a doubt.

It's my understanding that that flag is set at the content provider's discretion, in some cases though, cable companies have gone ahead and set it themselves for what ever reason. My understanding of the law is that either the content provider can direct the video distributor to apply the flag, or the video distributor can apply the flag at their own discretion. I suppose the content provider can prohibit application of the flag by the video distributor, if they put it in the carriage contract that way.

tell CBS you can't watch their programs because your cableco is blocking the ability to record them for example.While calling CBS may help, the reality is that, again based on my understanding of the law, the video distributor is simply not allowed to apply the flag to local broadcast television.

Fact is, if they could have done it with analog signals, they probably would have tried.

It's my understanding that that flag is set at the content provider's discretion, in some cases though, cable companies have gone ahead and set it themselves for what ever reason. It's those cases where one should lobby the cableco to to remove the flag, and in fact, talking to the content provider themselves might even work - tell CBS you can't watch their programs because your cableco is blocking the ability to record them for example.

The problem with that is that they are not preventing the recording of the channel. As a matter of fact, CBS HD is copy free so that's not a problem.

The provider makes the decision. They are the ones who put up the flag. They are the ones who can make the change.

It simply does not make sense to block all digital content.

Maybe the SDV adapters could come out in September to November. However, this could take until 2009.

Maybe the SDV adapters could come out in September to November. However, this could take until 2009.

Where did this come from?:confused:

Without a doubt.

My understanding of the law is that either the content provider can direct the video distributor to apply the flag, or the video distributor can apply the flag at their own discretion. I suppose the content provider can prohibit application of the flag by the video distributor, if they put it in the carriage contract that way.

While calling CBS may help, the reality is that, again based on my understanding of the law, the video distributor is simply not allowed to apply the flag to local broadcast television.

That's my understanding on it as well.

I used CBS because there have been times where the cableco has thrown the flag and a call to the station succeeded it getting it removed.

I guess the point is, you don't really know who made the decision to apply the flag, only anecdotal evidence for the same channel on the same cableco in another part of the country has shown that the flag should not be applied.

As far as I can tell, Comcast here in the SF bay area is doing it all correctly, but as I noted, in some parts of the country the cableco is a bit heavy-handed with it.

I don't recall, but is hookbill talking about a specific channel? A call to the channel/content provider themselves might result in getting better info than through the cable company.

The provider makes the decision. They are the ones who put up the flag. They are the ones who can make the change.

It simply does not make sense to block all digital content.

When you say "provider", do you mean the cable company, or the content provider themselves(ie CBS, HBO, etc)?

Is there a specific channel you're having issues with?