Questions about the Series 3 [Text View]

Justin Thyme

01-06-2006, 02:21 AM

Here are my top questions:

1) Will all of the MCE content that Gates announced that can be downloaded to an MCE also be transferable to the Tivo3? (Akimbo, ABC, MTV, StarZ)?

2)if MCE can be loaded onto any old home computer and used simply as a gateway, will HME apps be able to facilitate buying and automagically transfering such content to the Tivo? If not, will TIvo add such features to the “MCE plugin?”

3) What is the Mpeg4 decoder chip in the Tivo3? Is the Mpeg2 encoder any more powerful than that in the SA2?

4) What is the estimated transfer time for an hourlong SD show from Tivo3 to a PC using a wired 1000Mbit connection? About the same as what it would be for an SA2, or we talking several orders of magnitude difference?

5) Will the eSata connection support any external Sata, or just Tivos. For example, could I attach it to a 2TB Silicon Image SV2000 (http://www.siliconimage.com/products/product.aspx?id=47&ptid=2) or roll my own External Sata, such as using a eSata removeable drive enclosure like this one. (http://www.cooldrives.com/sata-removable-drive-enclosure-with-power-adapter.html)

6)Will all advanced functions such as TivoBack and HME work on the Series3 at launch? Will TivoToGo HD copying be disallowed in some cases- What should customers expect should be likely copy blocked for SD and HD content?

7)Does Tivo envision running OCAP apps on Tivo branded hardware in the forseable future?

TiVoPhish

01-06-2006, 02:26 AM

3) What is the Mpeg4 decoder chip in the Tivo3? Is the Mpeg2 encoder any more powerful than that in the SA2?

May I just expand on this question?

If/when mpeg-4 content is rolled out by cable companies the TiVo3 will be able to play it (I understand that), but will it be able to record it? Will software updates be able to take care of it's inability to record it?

megazone

01-06-2006, 02:48 AM

May I just expand on this question?

If/when mpeg-4 content is rolled out by cable companies the TiVo3 will be able to play it (I understand that), but will it be able to record it? Will software updates be able to take care of it's inability to record it?
Since it records digital signals as is, just writing the stream to the disc, it shouldn't care what the encoding is for recording purposes. It is just a bitstream either way.

Justin Thyme

01-06-2006, 02:50 AM

May I just expand on this question?

If/when mpeg-4 content is rolled out by cable companies the TiVo3 will be able to play it (I understand that), but will it be able to record it? Will software updates be able to take care of it's inability to record it?

What inability? How can you possibly presume to pontificate on OCAP applications and then ask such a.... Hey- the answer is no. Mpeg4 files are magic. Can't be written to a hard drive because they use Proton bits. :rolleyes:

megazone

01-06-2006, 02:58 AM

1) Will all of the MCE content that Gates announced that can be downloaded to an MCE also be transferable to the Tivo3? (Akimbo, ABC, MTV, StarZ)?
I can ask, but I doubt it. The Series3 TiVo is not a media center extender, and I doubt MS is going to allow (or even be allowed to allow) that content to be sent around willy nilly.

2)if MCE can be loaded onto any old home computer and used simply as a gateway, will HME apps be able to facilitate buying and automagically transfering such content to the Tivo? If not, will TIvo add such features to the “MCE plugin?”

The MCE plugin simply adds a 10-foot interface to TiVoToGo. Think TiVo Desktop being usable from the MCE remote, that's all it is. Nicely done, but nothing huge.

And HME is capable of anything - you can write the application to do whatever you want on the PC, only the UI is displayed on the TiVo. So you could write an HME application that uses the MCE API's to do things, sure. And any content that *could* be transferred to the TiVo could be available for TiVoToComeBack.

3) What is the Mpeg4 decoder chip in the Tivo3? Is the Mpeg2 encoder any more powerful than that in the SA2?
1. They wouldn't tell me when I asked, but I suggested it was a Broadcom chip and was told that is 'a good guess'.
2. They wouldn't tell me when I asked.

4) What is the estimated transfer time for an hourlong SD show from Tivo3 to a PC using a wired 1000Mbit connection? About the same as what it would be for an SA2, or we talking several orders of magnitude difference?
First of all, it is a 10/100baseT connection, not GigE. Just to be clear.

And it will be faster. They wouldn't say just how much faster - and frankly they probably don't know yet, since the software is pre-Alpha, but it is supposed to handle transfers of HD content acceptably (and no, I don't know just how fast), so SD content should be orders of magnitude faster than on an S2.

5) Will the eSata connection support any external Sata, or just Tivos. For example, could I attach it to a 2TB Silicon Image SV2000 (http://www.siliconimage.com/products/product.aspx?id=47&ptid=2) or roll my own External Sata, such as using a eSata removeable drive enclosure like this one. (http://www.cooldrives.com/sata-removable-drive-enclosure-with-power-adapter.html)
I answered this elsewhere. TiVo's hope is to be able to just post minimum specs and let you buy a drive that meets them. But if testing shows the need, they'll make a list of 'approved' drives. It is unlikely that users will have to by the 'TiVo' SATA drive, but it sounds like there will be one available.

6)Will all advanced functions such as TivoBack and HME work on the Series3 at launch? Will TivoToGo HD copying be disallowed in some cases- What should customers expect should be likely copy blocked for SD and HD content?

1. That's the plan.
2. TiVo intends to offer MRV and TTG on all content - but state that they're still determining what, if any, restrictions there may be on CableCARD recorded content to comply with Cable Labs.

7)Does Tivo envision running OCAP apps on Tivo branded hardware in the forseable future?

From what I've heard, no. I will ask directly to clarify, but I'm almost 100% certain the answer is no.

Justin Thyme

01-06-2006, 03:58 AM

Megazone, Thanks agaom for your great service to the community of Tivo Fans.
I can ask, but I doubt it. The Series3 TiVo is not a media center extender, and I doubt MS is going to allow (or even be allowed to allow) that content to be sent around willy nilly.Too bad. I didn't intend it to sound like a neophyte question. Of course it is not an extender. MS has a file and are bound to protect it from being copied to untrusted devices and have gone to huge lengths with vista to protect it.

But As I understood the BillG announcement, such downloads could be transfered to up to three devices. The most conservative approach is to to trust only devices supporting your own platform. However, if a certain OS (no names mentioned) that wished to establish itself at the center of the data universe in the home, then it would have to talk to other devices at some point if it were to successfully claim this mantle.
In any case, there are ways to establish and maintain networks of trust as you know, such as that formalized in DTCP-IP. There are also the old fashioned informal ones- Tivo trusted Microsoft when it sent its content to the MCE as part of its support for Windows media portables. Will MS reciprocate? If not for reasons of magnanimity, then perhaps for reasons of fear- in order to hedge his bets against common fores apple amd cablecos.

Re: Ocap on Tivo HardwareFrom what I've heard, no. I will ask directly to clarify, but I'm almost 100% certain the answer is no.That's a relief. But just to make sure I'd like to hear they aren't going wonky about possible OCAP App interactivity support with 2.0 cards.

VinceA

01-06-2006, 06:29 AM

How will the S3 fit into a house of S2's? Can an S2 grab non-HD content from an S3 and vise-versa? I'm thinking I'll pick up an S3 for next Christmas but only one to replace the S2 in my bedroom. I can't swing replacing the other two S2's immediately so I'm curious about interoperability.

Thanks MZ for the scoop.

nhaigh

01-06-2006, 06:59 AM

2. TiVo intends to offer MRV and TTG on all content - but state that they're still determining what, if any, restrictions there may be on CableCARD recorded content to comply with Cable Labs.

Can you find out if there is any chance the MRV and TTG comonents will work with a Series II TiVo?

danieljanderson

01-06-2006, 06:59 AM

Re: Ocap on Tivo HardwareThat's a relief. But just to make sure I'd like to hear they aren't going wonky about possible OCAP App interactivity support with 2.0 cards.

Why would OCAP be bad? I know very little about it.

interactiveTV

01-06-2006, 07:11 AM

My only question is when will it REALLY be released? We do have new management but Tivo's track record with delivery has been sorely lacking and even the Tivo faithful take ship dates with a dose of salt.

Which comes first? Vista or S3?

Also, can a gear head please explain how shuffling the HD on a 100BaseT network will slow things down? How many streams at once -- with the realistic overhead?

When we get a hard ship date and a price, I'll be thrilled. Surprised the drive is -- right now -- so small. Aren't the perpendicular recording drives due about now and capacities forecast to increase quite dramatically by third quarter? I gues with eSATA it doesn't matter as much but there is something to be said for reducing the number of boxes (and power bricks)...until Weaknees figures something out.

Honestly, I'd buy one without a second thought in May. By November, I think there may be other interesting choices that may make me think twice. Hard to say this far out. There could be something to a box with a Blu-Ray player (like a Vista MCE box) for me as it cuts down on the number of STBs and in-wall cabling.

The selfish, immediate gratification consumer in me wants it now. It would certainly own the market, even at a price premium, if launched sooner. IIRC, 10 million HD sets were sold in 2005. Late 2006? Not so sure. I wonder how much Comcast is sucking away development resources...

_ITV

ZeoTiVo

01-06-2006, 07:29 AM

Also, can a gear head please explain how shuffling the HD on a 100BaseT network will slow things down? How many streams at once -- with the realistic overhead?_ITV

do not understand exactly what you are tyring to ask here.

the word from the TiVo booth is mid to late 2006 with a 500 to 800$ price range
Sounds like they still have some serious work to do on the software running the box whioch would be the same expertise as needed for the Comcast work. Hopefully TiVo is looking to get their box out first since Comcast box will be a competing alternative ;)

megazone

01-06-2006, 07:34 AM

Can you find out if there is any chance the MRV and TTG comonents will work with a Series II TiVo?The intention is for it to interoperate with Series2 devices, but you will not be able to send HD content to non-Series3 boxes - they'd choke on it.

nhaigh

01-06-2006, 07:57 AM

The intention is for it to interoperate with Series2 devices, but you will not be able to send HD content to non-Series3 boxes - they'd choke on it.

Thanks. It makes sense. I think I need to hold off buying a Series 2 and get multiple Series 3's. I guess the price will determine if it is two or three of them.

interactiveTV

01-06-2006, 08:12 AM

do not understand exactly what you are tyring to ask here.

the word from the TiVo booth is mid to late 2006 with a 500 to 800$ price range
Sounds like they still have some serious work to do on the software running the box whioch would be the same expertise as needed for the Comcast work. Hopefully TiVo is looking to get their box out first since Comcast box will be a competing alternative ;) I'm not sure how the Comcast and the S3 overlap in terms of resources. I would imagine the underlying platforms are totally different with different OS and different chipsets and different features (Comcast doesn't have 6 tuners, etc)...

My q on the 100base is if I use a 100baseT switch and have, for example, four S3 boxes, can I be streaming from each to others? I've read that with overhead, I should assume 50Mbps but that could be wrong. This is not my expertise...

As for mid to late 2006...as usual...we shall see. Tivo doesn't get the benefit of the doubt from me on this.

_ITV

bkdtv

01-06-2006, 08:12 AM

This looks great, but I really hope they don't wait until this fall to get it out the door.

Please Tivo, don't wait on every last feature to ship. Just release a stable platform, even if it's lacking some planned/desired features, to get it in our hands. You have all year to add additional features.

I'm not sure how the Comcast and the S3 overlap in terms of resources. I would imagine the underlying platforms are totally different with different OS and different chipsets and different features (Comcast doesn't have 6 tuners, etc)...
I'm sure the Tivo platform on the Motorola 6412 will be great, but this still isn't available to those in Comcast markets with SA equipment, nor will it be available to cable customers without Comcast.

ZeoTiVo

01-06-2006, 08:25 AM

I'm not sure how the Comcast and the S3 overlap in terms of resources. I would imagine the underlying platforms are totally different with different OS and different chipsets and different features (Comcast doesn't have 6 tuners, etc)... the overlap on resources would simply be people with the subject matter on how the TiVo design works. eg you bring in a Java programmer to work on OCAPS port but he needs the Subject Matter Expert on what he is trying to port to work on the High and low level design with him so you still end up with a TiVo after the port.
My q on the 100base is if I use a 100baseT switch and have, for example, four S3 boxes, can I be streaming from each to others? I've read that with overhead, I should assume 50Mbps but that could be wrong. This is not my expertise..._ITV
ah you were thinking of the in house network. Using the proper equipment in house will matter - you correctly point to using a switch. If you just use a dumb hub then many more collisions and your actual bandwidth goes down. Also using a good switch vs some bargain bin half baked one. I use netgear router/switch/cable modem as I think they have the best backplane which is the part going across all the ports where you engineer in all the efficiency.

but all in all if you had four streams going at once your actual throughput is probably like 30Mbps though the switch will have a 100Mbps availability, but that is my network rule of thumb more to build up a robust enough network design.
Plus of course we have no idea what Throttle TiVo will place on the streams

Solon_Long

01-06-2006, 08:44 AM

lajohn27

01-06-2006, 09:26 AM

I'm sure the Tivo platform on the Motorola 6412 will be great, but this still isn't available to those in Comcast markets with SA equipment, nor will it be available to cable customers without Comcast.

Actually I read a press release that they were working to port the TIVO software to both platforms for Comcast.

Which makes sense because the platforms are not *that* different really underneath it all.

Heck - if PACE can build a STB that will work with either a Motorola headend or a Scientific Atlanta headend.. that should tell you that there aren't that many differences.

J

bkdtv

01-06-2006, 09:30 AM

Why in the world does it not simply have an HD capable input so that it can accept HD content from other sources than cable? If content protection is the issue then use HDCP. This is no a "standalone" tivo anymore. Why is Tivo ready to ignore a Dish/Direct market of 20 million people? Not to mention that both Sat services are getting ready to roll out the capability to send 1000 HD channels. When - if ever will cable be able to do that?.
The technology doesn't exist to do that yet in a mass-market consumer device. When a chipset manufacturer like Broadcom offers a low-cost solution with real-time H.264 encoding for high-definition, then you might see such devices, but those are probably three to five years off.

And if content is protected with HDCP, as will become more common, it can't be recorded by an external device. That isn't going to change.

nhaigh

01-06-2006, 09:31 AM

Why is Tivo ready to ignore a Dish/Direct market of 20 million people?

I'm pretty sure they are not ignoring them. I'm pretty sure that along with Comcast and a feature set that exceeds the D* and E* DVR's they hope to capture a good number of them as cable customers. They are going to capture me :)

schalliol

01-06-2006, 09:38 AM

nhaigh

01-06-2006, 09:45 AM

I sure hope that hey offer the transfer of lifetime service to the series 3 as they did when they did when S2 came out from S1s. If they offer that, I'll buy a box for sure, otherwise, I'm not so sure.

As for the sat folks (myself included), at minium this works for non HD content. I agree getting HD in there with DD audio would be a key point.

You know I'm not sure they will. I think that demand will be so high out of the gate there will be no need to try and spur it on with an offer like that.

Many people will be happy to take one in addition to their series 2 and pay $6.95 per month. I can see people keeping the lifetime S2's active just for that reason.

interactiveTV

01-06-2006, 09:49 AM

I sure hope that hey offer the transfer of lifetime service to the series 3 as they did when they did when S2 came out from S1s. If they offer that, I'll buy a box for sure, otherwise, I'm not so sure.

As for the sat folks (myself included), at minium this works for non HD content. I agree getting HD in there with DD audio would be a key point.
I'd be more interested in porting my season passes and thumbs. Seems totally silly to have to redo all of that.

That's been one issue in keeping me from upgrading one of my original S1s (which was once a 14 hour box)...

_ITV

classicsat

01-06-2006, 09:54 AM

Why in the world does it not simply have an HD capable input so that it can accept HD content from other sources than cable?

It is discussed elsewhere. It is partially due to the wishes of content owners, partially due to cost (in that the cost of HD encoders would be beyond what a consumer device would get away with).

JoeTivo25

01-06-2006, 10:08 AM

It is discussed elsewhere. It is partially due to the wishes of content owners, partially due to cost (in that the cost of HD encoders would be beyond what a consumer device would get away with).

I was previously with Directv, before Katrina blew my Dish and both tivos away. I've been trying to decide whether to re-sign up with Directv, but the only reason I had it was because of the Direct-tivo. With Directv dumping Tivo and switching to MPEG4, I have no reason to go back. If not having directv connectivity keeps the costs down, I'm all for it.

If I can get an HD Tivo, without having to slap a gi-normous 5 LNB Super Dish with 5 Coax outs on top of my roof, all the better. Till then, I'll stick with my 40 hour Series 2 Tivo and get in line for the upcoming new HD Tivo.

LONG LIVE TIVO!!!

Bierboy

01-06-2006, 10:30 AM

You know I'm not sure they will. I think that demand will be so high out of the gate there will be no need to try and spur it on with an offer like that.

Many people will be happy to take one in addition to their series 2 and pay $6.95 per month. I can see people keeping the lifetime S2's active just for that reason.Plus, as a marketing strategy, NOT allowing the transfer would prompt more folks to keep their series 2 (at $6.95/month) rather than dump it, and add the series 3 as a lifetime or $12.95/month. TiVo would stand to gain much more, and I agree that there's more than enough pent-up demand to spur sales of the series 3.
Now, where's that sign-up list :D ?

schalliol

01-06-2006, 10:59 AM

Well, many of us don't have multiple TVs we want to view on, so more than one TiVo isn't helpful.

Johnny Mnemonic

01-06-2006, 11:02 AM

I would be really interested to know if the external HD is bootable.

Put another way, I have a significant investment in my Lifetime subscription--which I understand to evaporate once the internal HD of my Tivo Series 2 dies; even if I replaced the failed drive with a COTS version, the OS and subscription info would be gone, and I'd have to re-register the box even if I could find the system to run it someplace.

I am seriously considering opening my box and backing up the internal HD just to preserve the subscription in the event of HD failure. But that seems like a real PITA.

I feel that the HD failing is the most likely cause of Tivo failure--it runs lots, it's pretty hot in an enclosed box, etc. I expect that the MTBF for the Tivo HDs is way lower than for the CPU or logic board, for instance.

So I'd really like to know: if I were to get an external HD that is offered by the Series 3--if the standard internal drive fails, would I still lose my OS and sub info?

The show data I could live without. I mean, it's just TV. But the lifetime sub info is worth $250 to me.

Thanks.

As a corollary, are they willing to give the likelihood of a transfer of Lifetime Subs to the new box when it's available? I'm considering a Myth box anyways, for Mac support, but a free transfer of Life Sub to newer hardware (thereby extending the life of the lifetime) would put that move off for a lot longer to be sure. As it is, once my HD in my Tivo dies, it gets replaced with a Myth box (or a Mac mini, ask me next week).

Gregor

01-06-2006, 11:04 AM

<snip>
Put another way, I have a significant investment in my Lifetime subscription--which I understand to evaporate once the internal HD of my Tivo Series 2 dies; even if I replaced the failed drive with a COTS version, the OS and subscription info would be gone, and I'd have to re-register the box even if I could find the system to run it someplace.

<snip>

The id information for the Series2 is carried on the motherboard, not the HD, so the HD is easily replaceable if you're familiar with PC hardware.

Take a peek over in the upgrade forum :)

jsmeeker

01-06-2006, 11:05 AM

Squeak

01-06-2006, 11:12 AM

which I understand to evaporate once the internal HD of my Tivo Series 2 dies;

Wrong. Subscription is tied to the motherboard, not the hard drive.

PeteEMT

01-06-2006, 11:13 AM

Your sub info isnt stored on the drive either way

ETA: What he said

CaptainBadAss

01-06-2006, 11:13 AM

Sorry if this has been asked, but does the cable tuner support QAM?

Thanks!
Tony

PS Me WANT!

ZeoTiVo

01-06-2006, 11:13 AM

I would be really interested to know if the external HD is bootable.

the extrenal drive is simply more storage that they coded up so the TiVo will keep running if the extranl drive is unplugged. Yo ucan not do anything else with the data on the external drive other than play it or MRV/TTG it within the Tivo it was working with.

I think it would be a significant hack to the kernel to make an external drive bootable but I imagine with time that will happen.

of course as pointed out, your reason for wanting this is moot. TiVo hard drives are upgraded swapped out etc.. daily. There is no loss of subscription info

CaptainBadAss

01-06-2006, 11:22 AM

Why in the world does it not simply have an HD capable input so that it can accept HD content from other sources than cable? If content protection is the issue then use HDCP.

My question is...Will a "standalone" TiVo ever be able to somehow interface with DirecTV?
I love my DirecTV, but shudder to think of the possibility of using their "DVR."

YUCK!

dmdeane

01-06-2006, 11:25 AM

Well, many of us don't have multiple TVs we want to view on, so more than one TiVo isn't helpful.I only have one TV, but I have multiple TiVos. Just get a splitter and run cable to each TiVo. Switch box allows you to switch between TiVos with a remote, all on the same TV. Having multiple TiVos on a single TV is VERY helpful.

Justin Thyme

01-06-2006, 11:38 AM

My q on the 100base is if I use a 100baseT switch and have, for example, four S3 boxes, can I be streaming from each to others? I've read that with overhead, I should assume 50Mbps but that could be wrong. This is not my expertise...I think you know that Tivo's don't "Stream" in the precise sense of the term but you mean- transfer at least as fast as required for real time display. I think you are assuming 10 to 12 Mbit/sec for MPEG4 commercially compressed content that can legally be described as having HD resolution (BTW- a heck of a lot of technical games can be played with that). I have used the 10Mbit number but have been lazy and not refreshed my information on this point.

I would like a lot more clarity on this as well. I know there are a lot of net experts here and my understanding is pretty fuzzy on the fundamentals.

I know you were looking at minimum demands but if it is not clear, the demands on the home network could be much higher. For all we know at this point, the transfers could go really fast- the MRV could be performed as fast as the Tivo Load, NIC, and network congestion allows- so maybe a transfer from one T3 to another would be 70Mbits- regardless if it is SD or HD. Maybe some of the Network guys will step in here and tell me why that would be a really irresponsible thing to do, and why they would put in a fixed throttled back speed limit.

It is conceivable that they would only dynamically throttle them, if they would do so at all- in other words- only pull back in the case that they are preventing other users from accessing the network.

Anyway, once we get past the question of what the actual speed demand is, let's say we are going to do at least 10Mbits to do a respectable HD. It looks like it is hard to get up to the actual bandwidth capacity of a 100Mbit home network.

I am no expert on this- only a half year ago I didn't know that HUBs were old technology and actually slow down an entire network to the rate of one of the spokes that is talking. EG- if you had a 10Mbit NIC- the whole network would throttle back to 10Mbit. Today, routers work so that each spoke can run at slower speeds while other spokes are running at top speed.

Here is my untutored picture of how it works, and I invite/ (plead with) any net head passing by to correct me. If you had a Star type arrangement to your router- the router in the "center" and each T3 on spokes of the wheel, then Tivo-A could run at 70Mbits inbound to router, and outbound at 70Mbits to Tivo-B. Meanwhile Tivo-C could be talking to Tivo-D at 70Mbits too because they are using independent spokes of the wheel. That is, 140 Mbits are being transfered on a 100Mbit network.

Now- if the "topology" is not a star but at the end of one of those spokes is a switch, then the capacity of that section of the net would be 100Mbits.

Justin Thyme

01-06-2006, 04:55 PM

On the decoder support, I know all the major chip guys (including the likely suspect Broadcom) they usually provide you code for WMV9/10, xVid, DivX5/6.

If I say saved all my stuff to Divx6 hidef, would it be a safe bet that the T3 would play and scale it properly?

Here's what Gizomodo said in their blurb:
or you can set the box to scale everything to, say, 1080i. It can also decode WMV and other advanced codecs that they didn’t want to commit to yet.

I know it is general practice to make no definitive statements, but what we are after his is an indication of a likelihood, not anything definitive that anyone would expect Tivo to be held to. Any way you can weedle an indication of an answer to the question would be helpful.

The motivation here is that many Tivo enthusiasts are archiving content but are tempted to archive to Mpeg4. By the time T3 appears, they'd like to have a boatload of MPEG4 content that will play on the T3 when it is ready. I have already filled up 3 300GB drives with Mpeg2 content, so all I am doing now is writing stuff to Mpeg4. Not really particular which mpeg4 they indicate is most likely- I happen to be using Divx6 because it is Fast/convenient. But if it would be a safer bet to be using WMV9, then fine. I doesn't matter really if they dump the format later, at least I tried- the alternative is to just not save any any more or transcode/ resize these later.

So Divx6 "hidef" profile, or WMV9 at 720x480 VBR (4000mbit Max) ok?

jsmeeker

01-06-2006, 05:09 PM

The motivation here is that many Tivo enthusiasts are archiving content but are tempted to archive to Mpeg4. By the time T3 appears, they'd like to have a boatload of MPEG4 content that will play on the T3 when it is ready. I have already filled up 3 300GB drives with Mpeg2 content, so all I am doing now is writing stuff to Mpeg4. Not really particular which mpeg4 they indicate is most likely- I happen to be using Divx6 because it is Fast/convenient. But if it would be a safer bet to be using WMV9, then fine. I doesn't matter really if they dump the format later, at least I tried- the alternative is to just not save any any more or transcode/ resize these later.

So Divx6 "hidef" profile, or WMV9 at 720x480 VBR (4000mbit Max) ok?

Or maybe encode the video with H.264?? Will WMV9 or WMV10 do H.264? Or does it only do some proprietary MS stuff? (I dunno, as I'm not a PC guy for this sort of thing)

Dan203

01-06-2006, 05:39 PM

I think you know that Tivo's don't "Stream" in the precise sense of the term but you mean- transfer at least as fast as required for real time display. I think you are assuming 10 to 12 Mbit/sec for MPEG4 commercially compressed content that can legally be described as having HD resolution (BTW- a heck of a lot of technical games can be played with that). I have used the 10Mbit number but have been lazy and not refreshed my information on this point.

HD content is actually encoded in MPEG-2 format at roghly 17-20Mbps. In the real world you'll see performance in the 50-70Mbps range from a 10/100 network. Which means, provided it can run at full speed, an S3 should be able to transfer a HD stream to another TiVo in 1/2-1/3 realtime.

As for artifical throtteling... I don't think they'll do that unless they get a lot of complaints. 99.9% of people who buy these things probably only have a home network for internet surfing anyway, and that takes up what 1.5-3.0Mbps of banwidth. I doubt anyone would even notice the slight slow down caused by a TiVo transfer saturating their network. And if they do they could always upgrade to gigabit, then the TiVo would only be capable of saturating 1/10 of their available bandwidth.

Dan

Justin Thyme

01-06-2006, 05:49 PM

Or maybe encode the video with H.264?? Will WMV9 or WMV10 do H.264? Or does it only do some proprietary MS stuff? (I dunno, as I'm not a PC guy for this sort of thing)
As I understand it, there are a variety of weird decoder intensive options you can do with H.264, so you would have to get into some nitty gritty details on what level of support to avoid.

MZ's note regarding TGC and the TTG push interface wast that besides PSP and iPod, you could force a transcode to "WML". This is WIndows media Library- the database that most people associate with a music database- but it actually will store video and other data types- anyway, I think the safe bet is that they will use a plain jane Mpeg4 encoder but that that to try to replicate the exact profile would be hopeless since generating perfect sync, jitterless video 100% of the time is a huge challenge.

Much easier if Mega to got them to just say- "Enthusiasts shouldn't bet on this, but if they did, it would be la lower risk of failure to use Divx6 free encoder using "Home Theater" setting than going with any other encoder/ transcode tool/ profile.

jsmeeker

01-06-2006, 05:51 PM

As I understand it, there are a variety of weird decoder intensive options you can do with H.264, so you would have to get into some nitty gritty details on what level of support to avoid.

OK... But we'll see more and more of that. DirecTV will do it, then we'll see it with Blue-Ray and HD-DVD. Would not suprise me if cable co's started to use it too. And also for downloaded content. The video stuff from iTMS already uses it.

Justin Thyme

01-06-2006, 06:01 PM

HD content is actually encoded in MPEG-2 format at roghly 17-20Mbps. Wow I forgot. Jeez thanks for getting me on the right planet. I keep focusing on internet, WMV-HD DIvx-HD and DirecTv future move to Mpeg4, and forget the real world is mpeg2 HD.

So is 17-20 the typical number you would see for Cableco and DBS shows, or is that a generic number including user created (camcorder or desktop video) source files?

It's pretty clear to me folks like TVHarmony will still be doing a brisk business after PSP and iPod converstion comes out** Because Heck- I'd be running TvHarmony "Convert to AVI option" 24/7, because I am a cheapskate. I'd much rather buy my drives at Half off the lowest internet price I can find.

**(what are we calling this product anyway- TTG 2.4 or ttg Pvp (portable video player)?

Dan203

01-06-2006, 06:15 PM

The official bitrate for HDTV is 19.4Mbps. However a lot of stations reduce that slightly so that they can simulcast both the analog and digital versions of the channel. Cable companies also reduce bitrates sometimes to save badwidth. DBS I'm not so sure about, but in the context of this conversation it doesn't really matter since the new unit will only support cable and OTA.

Dan

Justin Thyme

01-06-2006, 06:16 PM

OK... But we'll see more and more of that. DirecTV will do it, then we'll see it with Blue-Ray and HD-DVD. Would not suprise me if cable co's started to use it too. And also for downloaded content. The video stuff from iTMS already uses it.Yeah Jeff- I know a lot of folks really like it and others really like WMV. All things equal, I'd choose against Microsloth's format and for open source xVid on general principle. But as for the WMV/H.264 arguements of which is better, I don't generally get along well with the folks who can see such fine differences, but really at the end of the day I could care less about format so long as FF works well on the T3, there are no sync problems, the conversion is fast, the compression is at least 50%, and my wife doesn't notice whatever artifacts there may be, I'll be perfectly happy.

jsmeeker

01-06-2006, 06:25 PM

Yeah Jeff- I know a lot of folks really like it and others really like WMV. All things equal, I'd choose against Microsloth's format and for open source xVid on general principle. But as for the WMV/H.264 arguements of which is better, I don't generally get along well with the folks who can see such fine differences, but really at the end of the day I could care less about format so long as FF works well on the T3, there are no sync problems, the conversion is fast, the compression is at least 50%, and my wife doesn't notice whatever artifacts there may be, I'll be perfectly happy.

I'm not so concerned with what looks better, as I too doubt I can tell. But I too would much prefer a codec that is actually part of the open MPEG-4 standard and one that is being adopted by many people. To me, H.264 seems to be that codec more than xVid or DivX.

I've got a question for Dan. I'm actually a bit surpirsed HD has some set bit rate. I thought HD was pretty much defined by resolution. Or are you talking about JUST OTA ATSC HiDef stuff as defined/speced today?

Hew

01-06-2006, 06:35 PM

jsmeeker

01-06-2006, 06:39 PM

One question: Is the series 3 going to replace the series 2 or will it be sold side by side?

Good question.

Dan203

01-06-2006, 06:45 PM

I've got a question for Dan. I'm actually a bit surpirsed HD has some set bit rate. I thought HD was pretty much defined by resolution. Or are you talking about JUST OTA ATSC HiDef stuff as defined/speced today?

You're right that HDTV is a resolution*, not a bitrate. I was refering to the bitrate set by the ATSC standard.

Dan

* Actually it's a couple of resolutions (i.e. 720p, 1080i & 1080p)

jsmeeker

01-06-2006, 06:51 PM

You're right that HDTV is a resolution*, not a bitrate. I was refering to the bitrate set by the ATSC standard.

Dan

* Actually it's a couple of resolutions (i.e. 720p, 1080i & 1080p)

Gotcha.. That was what I was thinking. Just wanted to be clear.

Justin Thyme

01-06-2006, 06:53 PM

I hope eBay is prepared for the influx of Series 2 TiVos that will be put up for sale when Series 3 comes out.

One question: Is the series 3 going to replace the series 2 or will it be sold side by side?Side by side. This is what is so funny about people saying Tivo is so stupid they performed the Osborne sin of announcing early and cannibalizing sales.

Tivo execs weren't born yesterday, and they designed the S2 with a VERY long useful service life. Here's why:

My crackpot insight of the day is that until we all have HDTVs in every room of the House, the Series2 is going to be the dominant second and third player in the home. Why- it is a great player of Mpeg2 content. What people will do is record content on the living room multi tuner t3, and use S2's in the other room to play stuff back. Take a look at an S2 playing content ripped from a DVD sometime- it is a LOT better video than what you are used to from a Tivo. You will think it is a new machine when you mrv video from the T3. Even when most of the on air content is HD, Tivo I'm sure will have a TivoDesktop downconverter software to deres HD Mpeg2 down to 720x480 display on your S2.

And until we have gobs of HD content, you might put an S2 on the HDTV anyway. Play an SD video on a DVD burner Tivo through component, to an upscaling HDTV and I'll bet you a donut you are not going to be able to tell the T3 from the T2. So why spend $450 extra for a T3? People will be mobbing the stores for the T2 for their second and third sets. Most of the content for these will be MRV'd from the T3.

In addition- Satellite Companies are what- 24% of the market, so that is one heck of a lot of boxes. Plus there are a lot of OTA users out there (surprizingly huge percentage- I forget the number though). Even when everything goes digital, they will not really need anything more than a converter box and an S2 if they have anything like a 35 inch or smaller set.

nhaigh

01-06-2006, 06:58 PM

Until we all have HDTVs in every room of the House, the Series2 is a great player of Mpeg2 content. Record content on the mulit tuner t3, and playback on the S2.

You see this is my problem. I've asked several times about being able to do this and the consensus is that you cannot. It seems HD Recorded on the series three won't be payable on the series two. This is why I'm not buying series two's today - I don;t want to be selling them on E-bay in six months to replace them with series three's.

I think people will hold off buying S2's becuase the S3 is comming. I certianly am, otherwise I'd buy two S2's now to keep me going.

Justin Thyme

01-06-2006, 07:16 PM

You see this is my problem. I've asked several times about being able to do this and the consensus is that you cannot. It seems HD Recorded on the series three won't be payable on the series two. This is why I'm not buying series two's today - I don;t want to be selling them on E-bay in six months to replace them with series three's.

I think people will hold off buying S2's becuase the S3 is comming. I certianly am, otherwise I'd buy two S2's now to keep me going.There is no reason to hold off.

1) The market for second hand S2's is not going away. If anything, there will be vastly more S2 sales than S3 sales for the forseeable future.

2) S2 could play a show originally recorded by an SA3 at HD resolution, and subsequently downconverted by a PC for playing on the S2. Lower res? you bet. But this is 720x480- Good as DVD. Personally I have 2 HDTVs and I don't much care about the difference between upscaled DVDs and HDTV off the satellite. So the real cost here is the Substantial time to deres an HD show to SD. Also the fact some HD content will have TTG transfer disallowed. So for the folks whose second TV is an HDTV, a whole lot of them will want a T3 there too. But if they have a lot of HDTVs in the house they probably won't scoff at spending an extra $450 or whatever for the convenience.

My conjecture (and it is only that) is you WILL be able to play an HD show, but not at HD resolution. With a good upscaling HDTV, you may not notice any more difference than what you see between an upscaled dvd and a real HDTV version of the same movie.

The theoretical downconversion would occur on the TivoServer (running Tivo Desktop). This is needed because the T2 won't play back anything larger than 720x480.

I wouldn't be at all surprized if Tivo provided this as part of TTG when T3 is released.

[Edit-corrected first sentence of point two which suggested you could record HD content on an SA2. Thanks jfh3 for pointing this out.]

PVR

01-06-2006, 07:26 PM

I wonder when they might start beta testing the Comcast Series 3 units?

SullyND

01-06-2006, 07:38 PM

I wonder when they might start beta testing the Comcast Series 3 units?

The Comcast units will not be Series 3 units. The Comcast units are Motorolas with ported TiVo software.

classicsat

01-06-2006, 07:55 PM

My question is...Will a "standalone" TiVo ever be able to somehow interface with DirecTV?
I love my DirecTV, but shudder to think of the possibility of using their "DVR."

YUCK!

Current standalones interface with DirecTV fine, albeit not for HD, and there will likely be no standalone DVRs that will record HD from an external STB.

classicsat

01-06-2006, 07:56 PM

I wonder when they might start beta testing the Comcast Series 3 units?

The Comast "TiVos" wont be Series anything. They are going to be Motorola boxes with some semblance of the TiVo software on it

classicsat

01-06-2006, 07:58 PM

Sorry if this has been asked, but does the cable tuner support QAM?

Thanks!
Tony

PS Me WANT!
Cabletuner=QAM. The cablecard just adds to that to get pay channels.

Justin Thyme

01-06-2006, 08:02 PM

The Comcast units will not be Series 3 units. The Comcast units are Motorolas with ported TiVo software.They will be DCT-6412's. If you don't care about Internet video content or the full Tivo experience, and do care a lot about PPV and VOD, then you want the Comcast unit. IMHO, you will be waiting a lot longer for the Comcast Tivos, and any nuimber of TTG features could be blocked due to Comcast opposition.

From the specs, the DCT-6412 has a lot less hardware grunt than the T3, so as far as I am concerned, at best it will be a T3-lite. But it's not a useless exercise ClassicAT. It's actually very good marketing. Good for "free" Tivo training wheels- transitioning folks to "Real" Tivo experience, somewhat unsatisfying for the true blue Tivo fan... great for Advertising audience share numbers.

ChuckyBox

01-06-2006, 08:08 PM

Justin Thyme

01-06-2006, 08:14 PM

"Unlike the latest Series II TiVos, it will not allow programs to be transferred from one TiVo to another in a home. That's due in part to technical issues, explained a TiVo representative, but mostly because of unresolved DRM issues. " Hard to say from how they related it. The Tivo rep might have been hemming and hawing about the technical and legal issues, and the reporter took that as a no.

It is a contradiciton of what Mega said- he said all TTG and HME/HMO features, so unless I or he misunderstood the question and answer, that's pretty definitive about MRV.

SullyND

01-06-2006, 08:20 PM

From the specs, the DCT-6412 has a lot less hardware grunt than the T3, so as far as I am concerned, at best it will be a T3-lite. But it's not a useless exercise ClassicAT. It's actually very good marketing. Good for "free" Tivo training wheels- transitioning folks to "Real" Tivo experience, somewhat unsatisfying for the true blue Tivo fan... great for Advertising audience share numbers.

Or as a second or third TiVo unit - a Series3 out front, and a 6412 in the bedroom...

Justin Thyme

01-06-2006, 08:32 PM

Well- I wonder if you could use a 6412 as your primary digital collector. Probably unlikely they will allow, but that involves Comcast fee structure knowlege to predict. Maybe you can answer because I don't know their fees.

Don't they have a charge by connected room? If you are MRV'ing content to the T2's, then no charge. If you have a digital unit connected to their wire- do you get they get more $$$? If so, they aren't going to like allowing MRV from a 6412 to an S2.

jfh3

01-07-2006, 12:13 AM

Why in the world does it not simply have an HD capable input so that it can accept HD content from other sources than cable? If content protection is the issue then use HDCP. This is no a "standalone" tivo anymore. Why is Tivo ready to ignore a Dish/Direct market of 20 million people? Not to mention that both Sat services are getting ready to roll out the capability to send 1000 HD channels. When - if ever will cable be able to do that? Otherwise the specs on the device are fine - except that there is no reason to include an S-video output - it's a dead technology.

No matter how many threads you ask this question on, the answer's going to be the same. :)

1) A box with native HDMI/HD input capability would be cost-prohibitive.
2) Tivo isn't ignoring the Dish/DirecTV market. Dish and DirecTV have chosen to ignore the Tivo market. Big difference.

ZeoTiVo

01-07-2006, 12:28 AM

This article (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1908898,00.asp) claims that TiVo reps are saying the the Series 3 boxes will not do MRV (i.e., TiVo-to-TiVo transfers). Can this be true?

And I have two questions for megazone (or anyone else at the show):
1) Was there a working Series 3 box hooked up to a TV doing a demo?
2) Was there just the one box, or were there more?

I asked him at tivolovers.com because Iwas interested in the speed and it was one box hooked up to a TV and one box just plugged in for power.

no TTG or MRV shown at the show. Megazone did report that TiVo reps told him the box would have full MRV and TTG and that SD video could be MRVed to a sereis 2. And really the only restricitions cable labs could od are the same retsrictions you would get from macrovision license I think. any one like DT_DC want to chime in if they know different ?

I think it is just the PCMAG writer doing his best to intepret a vaugue reply from TiVo

Justin Thyme

01-07-2006, 12:53 AM

... If you don't care about Internet video content or the full Tivo experience, and do care a lot about PPV and VOD, then you want the Comcast unit. ....
I should add here, that the SA3 or any other cablecard 1.0 compliant device will do PPV just fine. It's just that you have to call them to watch the show like on Satelllite. With a cablecard 2.0, you can press a button to say ok.

To get this marvel of interactivity :rolleyes: for VOD and interactive PPV, the CE vendor must support and entire Operating system called OCAP. No thanks, I'll make the call instead.

audiocrawford

01-07-2006, 01:47 AM

Side by side. This is what is so funny about people saying Tivo is so stupid they performed the Osborne sin of announcing early and cannibalizing sales.

Well, my Series 2 isn't very far into it's lifespan, and I'm not at all feeling buyers remorse. I too whole-heartedly agree they will live on side-by-side for quite some time. The average user has no use for 80% of the new features in the Series 3, and I'm sure it won't be nearly as user-customizable as Series 2 (just like Series 2 was to Series 1 before it).

I think it will be a long time before Series 3 outperforms Series 2 in sales, especially in big boxes like BB, etc.

AC

Bytez

01-07-2006, 02:22 AM

Does the series 3 record the raw HD stream and transferrable to PC??

Justin Thyme

01-07-2006, 02:41 AM

I don't know what you mean by raw, but it will capture an Mpeg2 file that is High definition. It will do this from Cable or over the Air (aerial) transmissions.

Many of these HD shows (certianly any channels you can also get over the air) you will be able to copy over to a PC.

Hope this helps.

Dan203

01-07-2006, 02:42 AM

Does the series 3 record the raw HD stream and transferrable to PC??

It hasn't been confirmed 100% yet, but according to Megazone, who questioned TiVo employees at the show, they are planning to allow all networking features function on HD content. Which includes HD content. The only road block they may run into is it's possible CableLabs, the people who control CableCARD, could require them to prevent transfers of programs which were originally decoded using the CableCARD. Which would be any program recorded from digital cable channels or non-public HD channels such as Discovery or ESPN. (public channels like CBS, NBC, ect... are required by the FCC to be sent unencrypted over cable and should not be subject to this limitation should it be enforced)

Dan

Justin Thyme

01-07-2006, 02:46 AM

Dan- the non OTA digital channels like discovery... is there a better term for them? DT_DC uses the term "premium channels" which in FCC lingo seems to have this meaning. However, it confuses people because they think what is being referred to is HBO and showtim (consumer's notion of "Premium" video channels).

Dan203

01-07-2006, 03:20 AM

I don't know of any better terminology for them.

Dan

TechDreamer

01-07-2006, 04:51 AM

I should add here, that the SA3 or any other cablecard 1.0 compliant device will do PPV just fine. It's just that you have to call them to watch the show like on Satelllite. With a cablecard 2.0, you can press a button to say ok.

I think you could probably order PPV from a website also. I think DirecTV offers this and maybe some Cable Companies. I think phone ordering has a fee, but the website ordering is free.

Justin Thyme

01-07-2006, 02:02 PM

I think you could probably order PPV from a website also. I think DirecTV offers this and maybe some Cable Companies. I think phone ordering has a fee, but the website ordering is free.Yeah. I don't see why CEA vendors should have to support an entire proprietary operating system (OCAP) and proprietary Network just to register a crummy OK button click for PPV or VOD.

Cablecos should be required to offer internet support for VOD and PPV via open non proprietary technology like HTTPS and XML. That way, Cablecard HDTVs, PCs, and DVRs will have full access to the cableco's network of content, which was the 1996 telecom law directed was to be open to third party devices. If the cableco is allowed to hide shows behind artificially exaggerated hardware requirements for trivial funcationality, then the FCC should come down hard on them.

Enough of the games, cablelabs.

classicsat

01-07-2006, 02:42 PM

Dan- the non OTA digital channels like discovery... is there a better term for them?

Cable seems fine to me, as an opposition to broadcast.

Justin Thyme

01-07-2006, 04:05 PM

megazone

01-08-2006, 05:28 AM

megazone

01-08-2006, 05:30 AM

Sorry if this has been asked, but does the cable tuner support QAM?They have to, that's what digital cable uses.

In other words - yes.

megazone

01-08-2006, 05:34 AM

My question is...Will a "standalone" TiVo ever be able to somehow interface with DirecTV?
I love my DirecTV, but shudder to think of the possibility of using their "DVR."Standalone TiVos have supported satellite since the early days. Connect the A/V output of the satellite receiver to the TiVo, and control it with serial or IR. Just like a cable box.

megazone

01-08-2006, 05:46 AM

This article (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1908898,00.asp) claims that TiVo reps are saying the the Series 3 boxes will not do MRV (i.e., TiVo-to-TiVo transfers). Can this be true?

And I have two questions for megazone (or anyone else at the show):
1) Was there a working Series 3 box hooked up to a TV doing a demo?
2) Was there just the one box, or were there more?
0. TiVo told me they intend to support MRV, TTG, and HME. It is possible the first release of the box may not have all the features in the software, it depends on the development timeframe and time to market. But they're planned.

1. Yes.

2. There were two on the floor - one wired up as a demo, and the other on display. The latter is the one I photographed since I could move it around, etc.

dt_dc

01-08-2006, 09:23 AM

Cablecos should be required to offer internet support for VOD and PPV via open non proprietary technology like HTTPS and XML.
(...)
Enough of the games, cablelabs.Sounds good in theory ... but ...

Anyway, yes ... you're starting to get at the heart of the cable view of two-way vs. the CEA view of two way ...

However, the "open non proprietary technology" has it's problems too ...

Justin Thyme

01-08-2006, 10:29 AM

Right. Well I am going to have a go at "The OS War" in the living room, with a focus on OCAP v. Vista v. OSX vs. open standards.

When Apple announces their bundle (last year's idea of Flat Panel + Tivo- apple is going to do an intel viiv inside a big screen), then we will know more details on if Apple went open, or did the same Fairplay lockout bit.

All these vendor lock in schemes stink. But there aren't any rules to this game [referee can only make polite suggestions], so they do it.

With a vengeance.

DocNo

01-08-2006, 03:15 PM

I am no expert on this- only a half year ago I didn't know that HUBs were old technology and actually slow down an entire network to the rate of one of the spokes that is talking. EG- if you had a 10Mbit NIC- the whole network would throttle back to 10Mbit. Today, routers work so that each spoke can run at slower speeds while other spokes are running at top speed.

Here is my untutored picture of how it works, and I invite/ (plead with) any net head passing by to correct me. If you had a Star type arrangement to your router- the router in the "center" and each T3 on spokes of the wheel, then Tivo-A could run at 70Mbits inbound to router, and outbound at 70Mbits to Tivo-B. Meanwhile Tivo-C could be talking to Tivo-D at 70Mbits too because they are using independent spokes of the wheel. That is, 140 Mbits are being transfered on a 100Mbit network.

Now- if the "topology" is not a star but at the end of one of those spokes is a switch, then the capacity of that section of the net would be 100Mbits.

Ouch - my head hurts!

Justin... you are confusing several technologies. Lets see if we can simply.

In networking, you have the network itself and then devices on the networks. In internet parlance, any device on a network (server, PC, Tivo, etc.) are called hosts.

A Local Area Network (LAN) is a piece of wire that has a common network address. In simplistic terms, if a device can talk to another device without having to cross a router, they are on the same network.

Routers are used to route traffic between networks. Generally in a home, you have only one router - the device provided to you by your ISP. Often called a cable or DSL modem. It routes traffic between your ISP's wide area network, and your local home network.

Once on your local home network, there are two devices that can enable you to have more than one device/host on your network. A hub, or a switch. A hub is just a dumb repeater. Whatever comes in on one port, gets broadcast out on all the other ports. A switch is more deterministic. If device A sends out a packet for Device B, the switch ensures that only port B gets the traffic. A device on port C or port D won't see that traffic.

OK, that's nice, but why does it matter? Well, ethernet is CSMA/CD - Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Detection ( http://www.erg.abdn.ac.uk/users/gorry/course/lan-pages/csma-cd.html). Basically, in ethernet, the "wire" is a shared medium. Think of it as a long hallway. Each device would be a door on that long hall way. If I want to talk to you, I lean out of my door, yell your name, you listen and then I talk to you. Works fine as long as it's just you and me talking, but more than one person trying to talk at once garbles everything up - in ethernet terms, a collision.

Carrier sense - me leaning out the door to see if anyone is already talking
Multiple access - all the devices sharing the same hallway
Collision Detection - me talking, detecting someone else talking over me and backing off

Collisions are really bad - because everyone on the network will stop what they are doing, back off a random amount of time before trying to talk again. These random amounts of time are much larger than normal communications times, so collisions really slow down a networks effective throughput. that's why hubs stink - every one (all devices on the network) are in the same collision domain.

So, now we come to switches. Typically, there is one device per port on a switch so there is no possibility for collisions since there is no way for more than one device to be talking on that piece of wire. Instead of a long hallway, think more along the lines of the telephone network.

So, switches can speed thing up two ways - one by preventing collisions due to their very nature, and two by restricting traffic between devices to just their wires. That way if Device A and B are talking, they don't take any bandwidth away from devices C and D that are talking.

And that's also where Bus and Star come into play - a network setup with a hub is a bus - all the devices are peers. A network setup with a switch is a star network - the switch is the center of the star.

As for speed - with ethernet it's 10Mbit, 100Mbit, or 1000Mbit (gige). There is some 10000Mbit out there (10gige) but it's pretty rare. That's maximum effective throughput, BTW - rarely realized due to collisions and overhead (packet headers, padding, etc.)

So, each device will talk at the maxim effective rate of the network it is connected to. The only way to get around that is either via flow control tricks (i.e. telling the device the network is busy just to get the device to stop talking so the bandwidth on the network can be used by other devices) or by using Quality of Service (QOS). Tivo doesn't support QOS, so that's out, and flow control tricks really aren't needed on a home network.

Anyway, hopefully that helped make it as clear as mud :) If not, you can try this (http://compnetworking.about.com/od/ethernet/l/aa102900a.htm) writeup. Feel free to ask any further questions if things are still muddy ;)

classicsat

01-08-2006, 09:26 PM

No, I meant- within a digitial cable lineup, a quick consumer recoginzable way to refer to the digital cable channels that can be encrypted and flagged (aka "premium channels") vs. the ones (OTA or broadcast) where encryption and flags are prohibited by FCC regulation.

As in non-bradcast? That would be defined as "Cable". You could narrow that down to "Pay Cable", or "Controlled Cable"

Justin Thyme

01-08-2006, 09:50 PM

DrNo- I hope I'm not that far off in the weeds. The picture I was attempting to convey is the following.

The switch in what consumers call routers (which is actually a router and a smart hub) isolates segments.

What I was saying was that segments ("spokes") TivoA-> Router, and Router ->TivoB could be running at 70Mbits, and segments TivoC-> Router and Router->TivoD could be running at 70Mbits. Because they were isolated segments, and there were no collisions, 140Mbits/sec of data would be flowing on a 100Mbit LAN.

Seems like I got this right in your discussion of switch capability, ending with:
That way if Device A and B are talking, they don't take any bandwidth away from devices C and D that are talking.

So my statement about the data rates of those segments through the "router" was correct, right?

Justin Thyme

01-08-2006, 10:13 PM

As in non-bradcast? That would be defined as "Cable". You could narrow that down to "Pay Cable", or "Controlled Cable"

You are not following my question.
1) On a Pay cable system, I have the local OTA stations listed. This is Set 1 of channels.
2) all other channels not in Set 1 are called what? The term used in FCC documents is "Premium Channels". Are you aware of an alternate term less liable to cause confusion to readers of this forum?

krypdo

01-09-2006, 12:48 AM

Tivo execs weren't born yesterday, and they designed the S2 with a VERY long useful service life. Here's why:

My crackpot insight of the day is that until we all have HDTVs in every room of the House, the Series2 is going to be the dominant second and third player in the home. Why- it is a great player of Mpeg2 content. What people will do is record content on the living room multi tuner t3, and use S2's in the other room to play stuff back. Take a look at an S2 playing content ripped from a DVD sometime- it is a LOT better video than what you are used to from a Tivo. You will think it is a new machine when you mrv video from the T3. Even when most of the on air content is HD, Tivo I'm sure will have a TivoDesktop downconverter software to deres HD Mpeg2 down to 720x480 display on your S2.

And until we have gobs of HD content, you might put an S2 on the HDTV anyway. Play an SD video on a DVD burner Tivo through component, to an upscaling HDTV and I'll bet you a donut you are not going to be able to tell the T3 from the T2. So why spend $450 extra for a T3? People will be mobbing the stores for the T2 for their second and third sets. Most of the content for these will be MRV'd from the T3.

My situation exactly. Almost exactly. I'm actually holding off upgrading my main living room rear projection to HDTV until the S3 comes out. Been tempted a few times to just use Comcast's DVR but I know anything less than a TiVo UI won't survive "the wife's test". HDTV is meaningless without TiVo in my house.

However, MRV between S3 and S2 is critical, even if it means only SD contents. Got kids who want to have every show accessable at every TV in the house.

I actually have no question. Just want it to work as described.

DocNo

01-09-2006, 08:43 AM

So my statement about the data rates of those segments through the "router" was correct, right?

In the scenario you outlined, and assuming the switch is an efficient one and has the internal bandwidth to handle it, then yes - you can get greater than 100Mb throughput.

Again, there are all kinds of things that conspire to keep you from seeing anywhere near that real throughput, but you are essentially on the right track :)

Justin Thyme

01-09-2006, 10:24 AM

My q on the 100base is if I use a 100baseT switch and have, for example, four S3 boxes, can I be streaming from each to others? I've read that with overhead, I should assume 50Mbps but that could be wrong. This is not my expertise... So ITV- it looks like the concensus answer has been formed. For typical home set ups where the lines for the home all go into a modern router, then you should assume that T3 to T3 communication will go at near the maximum real life limits of 100BaseT lines- which Dan mentioned as being max 70Mbits/sec. You could have any number of pairs of T3's talking to each other, and they would still be talking at 70Mbits/sec.

This condition does not apply when you have one T3 interacting with two Tivos, or when the topology of the network is different- like you have a double star where there is a shared backbone that must carry mixed traffic.

Okay?

nhaigh

01-09-2006, 10:28 AM

DocNo

01-09-2006, 11:04 AM

Sorry is this is repeating the question. Does this mean that the T3 must be hard wired, i.e. no wireless networks or powerline adaptors becuase the required throughput will be to high?

Your always going to get better performance with a wired solution vs. a wireless solution.

While I'm currently using wireless now, and pretty happy with it, I will definitely be running cat5 throughout the house - and heck, I may even pull some fiber (probably plastic, no need for glass) from the basement to the attic while I'm at it just in case I want to play with something beyond 100Mb in the future.

segaily

01-09-2006, 11:32 AM

Just as a comment most ethernet now supports what is called full duplex ethernet meaning no more collisions. This allows you to get full bandwidth 100Mbits/sec going in both directions at the same time on a full duplex fast ethernet port. You do still have some overhead from packet headers etc, so you are not moving 100Mbits/sec of data, but you are moving 100Mbits/sec.

A max size ethernet packet is 1518 bytes. You probably have about 32 bytes of header and a 4 byte checksum. Not every packet is max size, but when you are doing a large file copy hopefully most of your packets are near max size. Hopefully we will be able to copy shows at about 95Mbits/sec from one s3 to another.

As far as the wireless network goes. They are still giving us usb ports so I expect they will still support it. With a good wireless network you will get about half the speed you would on a wired network. It will not be as good but hopefully that will be good enough.

nhaigh

01-09-2006, 11:52 AM

Hopefully we will be able to copy shows at about 95Mbits/sec from one s3 to another.

But how many Mbits/sec need to be transfered to be able to watch an HD program using MRV in real time i.e. so that it transfers at least as fast as it plays back?

Justin Thyme

01-09-2006, 12:18 PM

As far as the wireless network goes. They are still giving us usb ports so I expect they will still support it. With a good wireless network you will get about half the speed you would on a wired network. It will not be as good but hopefully that will be good enough.I think Tivo is very big on wireless but think you are right- they will focus on peripherals, not integrated in the box solutions.

But I suppose wireless integrated is still concievable, though Megazone's CES2006 box photos give no indication and I wouldn't bet on it for this time around. Still, they could have stuck a Yagi antenna in the front panel, but a natural thing to expect would be a connector on the rear for an external.
http://www.megazone.org.nyud.net:8090/Photos/CES2006/TiVo/SMALL/Series3-back-closeup-2.JPG
Tivo has been heavily into Broadcom chips, and Broadcom is pushing the envelope with pre-N chips since 2003. N theoretically goes up to what- 500mbits but people only seem to believe 100Mbits, with greater range and use of 5ghz spectrum. My understanding is that the cablecard 1.0 spec has support for doing a cablemodem- so a cablecard box could be constructed to compete with triple play devices from the carrier.

The idea here is that the Tivo 3.x architecture might at some time make Tivo the gateway to the internet for many homes. Cable in, Wireless-N out to VOIP phones etc. But that would mean they would be integrating a lot of network technology in the box, and I am a little skeptical they want to bite all this off, or place any bets on where that market is going. But you see why Cisco is interested- and bought Kiss, Sci-Atl and NetLink who make a dvr and an various STBs.

Justin Thyme

01-09-2006, 12:28 PM

But how many Mbits/sec need to be transfered to be able to watch an HD program using MRV in real time i.e. so that it transfers at least as fast as it plays back?Dan covered this question. (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=3652886&&#post3652886) 17-20Mbits. Although Dan is not ALWAYS right, he nearly always is when he makes a definitive statement of fact, and I have battle scars to prove it. You can take Dan's numbers to the bank.
HD content is actually encoded in MPEG-2 format at roghly 17-20Mbps. In the real world you'll see performance in the 50-70Mbps range from a 10/100 network. Which means, provided it can run at full speed, an S3 should be able to transfer a HD stream to another TiVo in 1/2-1/3 realtime.

nhaigh

01-09-2006, 12:58 PM

Dan covered this question. (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=3652886&&#post3652886) 17-20Mbits. Although Dan is not ALWAYS right, he nearly always is when he makes a definitive statement of fact, and I have battle scars to prove it. You can take Dan's numbers to the bank.

Thanks. I did read Dan's post back then but didn't assimilate the information. I think I'm going to run some cat 5 around the house anyway seeing as this will be the third device in the Den that "requires" a network and none of them are PC's :)

Dan203

01-09-2006, 05:27 PM

Dan covered this question. (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=3652886&&#post3652886) 17-20Mbits. Although Dan is not ALWAYS right, he nearly always is when he makes a definitive statement of fact, and I have battle scars to prove it. You can take Dan's numbers to the bank.

I usually do some fact checking on Google before I post definitive numbers like that, so it's more of a case of thoroughness then being right or wrong. :)

Dan

Dan203

01-09-2006, 05:32 PM

But I suppose wireless integrated is still concievable, though Megazone's CES2006 box photos give no indication and I wouldn't bet on it for this time around. Still, they could have stuck a Yagi antenna in the front panel, but a natural thing to expect would be a connector on the rear for an external.

Why would they do that when they can leave it out and sell you a USB wireless adapter for an extra $50? :)

Dan

megazone

01-11-2006, 02:35 AM

Why would they do that when they can leave it out and sell you a USB wireless adapter for an extra $50? :)
That makes it sound sinister. You could also say - why include it and raise the price of every unit? ;-)

Wired Ethernet components are very inexpensive now, but WiFi components still cost enough to impact product pricing. Also, wired technology is fairly stable and slow changing, while WiFi is still changing rapidly. 11g is it today, but 11n will be coming before long. Anything they build into the unit will be obsolete before too long. Making new adapters is easier.

It also makes a performance difference. Putting my adapter up on the corner of the entertainment center cause a big jump in connection quality compared to having it down by the TiVo.

interactiveTV

01-11-2006, 11:47 AM

So ITV- it looks like the concensus answer has been formed. For typical home set ups where the lines for the home all go into a modern router, then you should assume that T3 to T3 communication will go at near the maximum real life limits of 100BaseT lines- which Dan mentioned as being max 70Mbits/sec. You could have any number of pairs of T3's talking to each other, and they would still be talking at 70Mbits/sec.

This condition does not apply when you have one T3 interacting with two Tivos, or when the topology of the network is different- like you have a double star where there is a shared backbone that must carry mixed traffic.

Okay? I guess we're also assuming the Tivo won't be a bandwidth constraint as in S2. The encrypted stream should be written to disk and thus, I guess, there is less for the Tivo CPU to do when sending across the network, yes?

Or does the 100baseT adapter in the S3-- assuming we know who makes it -- handle some of the communication tasks and thus free up CPU cycles (which, as I understand it, is what the Tivo branded USB adapter does in a minor way)?

Perhaps I should put all Tivos on their own switch apart from the rest of the network?

_ITV

Justin Thyme

01-11-2006, 12:29 PM

If you have a star type wired system, I don't see that you would have to isolate the Tivos in some way. Simply because they send fewer packets on the 100Mbit/sec conveyor doesn't mean the conveyer belt is going slower, or that congestion on their belt has any effect on anyone elses belt. And if you are imagining something like a "FedEx sorting room" problem at the switch congestion at the switch, most of that sort of thing doesn't happen because of the smarts in the switch that do things like effectively wire two conveyors together when they are sending traffic (no "collissions- no further management needed).

That is a metaphoric representation of why I don't think you will have a problem even though the T3's might pump data out at slower rates.

The way you are thinking about the internals of the T3 is mistaken, but your feeling that there will be network constraints there is true. Dan pointed out that because it is 100BaseT then the connection out from the T3 has an actual max aroung 70Mbits. So whatever they do inside the box, they are stuck with that because they didn't do 1000BaseT. So you aren't going to initiate a transfer and Boom- it's there on your local T3. Maybe you can jump ahead quickly to points by precaching, so maybe having the Boom transfer gives you nothing.

The problem with the way you are thinking about it is that realtime embedded systems designed for particular tasks are not so centralized as general purpose CPUs. If the CPU can stay out of something, it will. Things are very much going on in parallel. The CPU is not involved with Mpeg2 encoding in an S2 for example. The CPU is pretty much twiddling its thumbs while the encoder shovels bits onto the hard drive. The CPU just steps in to initiate the transfers, configure them, and fire them off. I don't know the particulars, but it is wrong to assume the CPU being the crucial bottleneck. In a properly balanced and most efficient system (both from production cost and from user percieved performance)- the perfect system is where all components are right up very close to being overwhelmed by the task. The complication of this effort is why new custom engineering designs for realtime systems take so long. It is truly and art form that has to be understood to be appreciated.

The guys that do such real time systems are amazing.

Dan203

01-11-2006, 01:55 PM

The CPU doesn't have much to do with MRV transfers, but it plays a big part in TTG transfers. You see when a program is stored on a TiVo is it stored as seperate audio and video streams. When it is transfered via MRV those streams are simply transfered as seperate streams to the destination TiVo. However when it's transfered via TTG the system must multiplex the streams into a single file. This process can be pretty processor intensive and is the reason why TTG transfers are so much slower then MRV transfers on a S2 unit.

My hope is that the new S3 unit has a CPU which is capable of multiplexing the audio video streams at a rate which keeps pace with the full throughput of the Ethernet port. That way the CPU will no longer be the bottle neck and TTG transfers will happen as fast as the network will allow.

Another bottle neck in the system, with regard to transfering HD streams, is the hard drive. Just for standard operation the hard drive has to be capable of recording two HD streams while simultaneously playing back a 3rd. That's a lot of bandwidth. Throw in a transfer to the unit and another one from the unit and you're probably going to get pretty close to maximum throughput of the hard drive.

Dan

ZeoTiVo

01-11-2006, 02:27 PM

Just for standard operation the hard drive has to be capable of recording two HD streams while simultaneously playing back a 3rd. Dan

that is about the most beautiful thing I have seen stated in this forum for a while. "Just for standard operation" Wonder if I can ask my doctor to make me hibernate for 6 months :)

Justin Thyme

01-11-2006, 02:42 PM

Throw in a transfer to the unit and another one from the unit and you're probably going to get pretty close to maximum throughput of the hard drive. No reason they couldn't use two standard IDE drive(s). One data bus for each drive.

The CPU doesn't have much to do with MRV transfers, but it plays a big part in TTG transfers. Right. Sometimes it is in way over its head, othertimes it is idling. ITV was attempting to extrapolate from the encoding task, thinking that since the input in the S3 was digital, the "CPU" would no longer have to do encoding and so there would be a benefit from being "freed up". But in fact it never was burdenned by encoding. Still the overall picture that there would be performance bottlenecks is correct. We just have no way of making much more than external guesses what they would be.

nhaigh

01-11-2006, 02:43 PM

Dan203

01-11-2006, 02:56 PM

It has been said here that an S2 won't be able to MRV a program in HD on the S3. If thye are both MPEG2 data why can't the S2 MRV the HD file? I did think this was down to the resolution being different but then I though a regular S2 can MRV a program recorded on the TiVo DVD Recorders and they are diferent resolution as well. Why can it do one and not the other - isn't it simply a case of degree?

It's due to both resolution and bitrate. A S2 can output a maximum resolution of 720x480. A 720p HDTV signal is 1280x720. Also the maximum bitrate of DVD material, which the S2 can output, is 9Mbps. HDTV has an average bitrate of 17-20Mbps. Unfortunately both the resolution cap and bitrate cap are dictated by hardware limitations, so there is nothing that can be done to make a S2 TiVo play back HDTV content even downsampled to SD resolution.

Dan

dr_mal

01-11-2006, 02:58 PM

A 720p HDTV signal is 1920x720.
Actually, it's 1280x720. 1080i HDTV signals are 1920x1080.

Dan203

01-11-2006, 03:02 PM

No reason they couldn't use two standard IDE drive(s). One data bus for each drive.

That would require a complete redesign of the system so that it was smart enough to record each of the streams to a different drive. Plus what would happen if your TiVo got to the point where it only had enough space on each drive to record 1 hour of HD and you wanted to record a 2 hour HD movie? Would it simply say that it couldn't be done because there is not enough room?

Raid 0 might help, but it's always best to minimize the points of failure and having two hard drives doesn't fit well into that strategy.

Right. Sometimes it is in way over its head, othertimes it is idling. ITV was attempting to extrapolate from the encoding task, thinking that since the input in the S3 was digital, the "CPU" would no longer have to do encoding and so there would be a benefit from being "freed up". But in fact it never was burdenned by encoding. Still the overall picture that there would be performance bottlenecks is correct. We just have no way of making much more than external guesses what they would be.

I missed that. You are correct the CPU has almost nothing to do with recording a program. (there is some minor buffer management code that is always running)

Dan

Dan203

01-11-2006, 03:02 PM

Actually, it's 1280x720. 1080i HDTV signals are 1920x1080.

Oops! :o

Dan

Justin Thyme

01-11-2006, 03:03 PM

Case of degree. The max resolution of the S2 is around 720x480. Also the inbound data rate to an S2 would not be up to the task of HDTv's 20Mbits/second.

Outside of what Mega related in his trip report and TivoPony related, the behavior with S2 is all crackpot speculation, with myself being one of the worst offenders. You probably recall the speculation that you could MRV through the server to downres the file. Well, alternately, the T3 could perform a hardware downres conversion of the HD Mpeg. Nicer that way because the S2 gets it in real time, and gets it at a data rate that it can handle. Then there is the "Do it in a USB peripheral to extend the life of the S2 architecture" trick.

But these scenarios are all shear fantasy at this point. A lot of fun, until TivoPony butts in and makes a definitive announcement about some mind blowing feature and proves us all wrong.

interactiveTV

01-11-2006, 03:08 PM

Right. Sometimes it is in way over its head, othertimes it is idling. ITV was attempting to extrapolate from the encoding task, thinking that since the input in the S3 was digital, the "CPU" would no longer have to do encoding and so there would be a benefit from being "freed up". But in fact it never was burdenned by encoding. Still the overall picture that there would be performance bottlenecks is correct. We just have no way of making much more than external guesses what they would be.
Actually, I was thinking of the TTG multiplexing as the hardware codec should handle the encoding. My confusion. My assumption was that that multiplexing would no longer be needed.

Am I right to assume the communication tasks are not a burdon to the CPU but are handled in the 100baseT adapter?

802.11n ... hmmmm

_ITV

nhaigh

01-11-2006, 03:14 PM

It's due to both resolution and bitrate. A S2 can output a maximum resolution of 720x480. A 720p HDTV signal is 1280x720. Also the maximum bitrate of DVD material, which the S2 can output, is 9Mbps. HDTV has an average bitrate of 17-20Mbps. Unfortunately both the resolution cap and bitrate cap are dictated by hardware limitations, so there is nothing that can be done to make a S2 TiVo play back HDTV content even downsampled to SD resolution.

Dan

Case of degree. The max resolution of the S2 is around 720x480. Also the inbound data rate to an S2 would not be up to the task of HDTv's 20Mbits/second.

Outside of what Mega related in his trip report and TivoPony related, the behavior with S2 is all crackpot speculation, with myself being one of the worst offenders. You probably recall the speculation that you could MRV through the server to downres the file. Well, alternately, the T3 could perform a hardware downres conversion of the HD Mpeg. Nicer that way because the S2 gets it in real time, and gets it at a data rate that it can handle. Then there is the "Do it in a USB peripheral to extend the life of the S2 architecture" trick.

But these scenarios are all shear fantasy at this point. A lot of fun, until TivoPony butts in and makes a definitive announcement about some mind blowing feature and proves us all wrong.

So what you are saying is that natively it won't work but if TiVo really wanted to make it compatable in some way there there are ways it could be done. We just really need to wait and see if TiVo are going to be prepared to give us the tools.

Justin Thyme

01-11-2006, 03:25 PM

That would require a complete redesign of the system so that it was smart enough to record each of the streams to a different drive. I thought we were talking about theoretical S3 system. How do we know how the system was designed? I understand that highly parallel systems introduce complexity. Cripesake- the bugga's got 6 tuners in it.[edit- actually only 2, according to TivoPony in the CES video] Anyhow parallel buses is a way to go, and HD storage balancing is not rocket science.

With that said, I am think I am wrong because they said 250GB hard drive singular, and IDE. Now, if they said 280GB of storage, I would have some room to make a case. If they are 100Mbit transfer rate, the bandwidth is there, but there is going to be a whole lot of head banging going on with the high stress scenario mentioned.

Justin Thyme

01-11-2006, 03:30 PM

We just really need to wait and see if TiVo are going to be prepared to give us the tools. Gee. I didn't even notice that Dan already answered you. Sorry for butting in. Anyhow, if you are talking about MRV, then yeah, that's the picture and we are dependent on Tivo to develop it. If you simply want to watch an HD show on an S2 Tivo or for that matter on a DVD, then there will be tons of different ways for folks to do it- similar to the sorts of things you can do with TTG video on a PC. For that you wouldn't be dependent on Tivo at all, but such transfers would take on the order of hours to convert. Think lots and lots of hours for a typical HD movie, on a typical home PC.

Dan203

01-11-2006, 03:31 PM

So what you are saying is that natively it won't work but if TiVo really wanted to make it compatable in some way there there are ways it could be done. We just really need to wait and see if TiVo are going to be prepared to give us the tools.

There is a very minute possibility that TiVo could some how use the advanced hardware in the S3 unit to downres HD content before sending it over to a S2 unit, but it's highly unlikely. They can't just use the MPEG encoder chip to do this, since it could possibly be in use recording an actual analog cable channel. Which means they would have to do the downres in the CPU. In order to do that in real time it would require a CPU equivalent to a 2GHz Pentium 4. It's highly unlikely the S3 will have that kind of power since for all other purposes it's completely unnecessary.

I'm not a betting man, but I'd be willing to bet that once this is released you will NOT be able to transfer HD content to a S2 unit.

Dan

Dan203

01-11-2006, 03:34 PM

I thought we were talking about theoretical S3 system. How do we know how the system was designed? I understand that highly parallel systems introduce complexity. Cripesake- the bugga's got 6 tuners in it. Anyhow parallel buses is a way to go, and HD storage balancing is not rocket science.

Just because the hardware is new does not mean the software is. TiVo has had the backbone for dualtuner HD recording built into their software arcitecture since the HD DirecTiVo came out a couple years ago. It's safe to assume they will reuse as much of that code as possible for this new system.

Dan

Dan203

01-11-2006, 03:38 PM

Am I right to assume the communication tasks are not a burdon to the CPU but are handled in the 100baseT adapter?

It's possible the CPU could be responsible for Ethernet operations, but even if it is the burdon would be small. Although it's more likely the Broadcom chipset they're using has dedicated Ethernet support which is probably why they're including it in the first place.

Dan

Justin Thyme

01-11-2006, 03:46 PM

I wouldn't bet on seeing downresing as feature bundled in a box, either. I just mention it as a technical possibility. Because downresing/ transcoding is a VERY popular application though- less for this, than for generating portable video, I'd not be surprized if you saw a Downresing peripheral. Transcoding has some interesting optimizations you can do in parrallel if you have dedicated hardware.

But in this case we are talking mpeg2 to Mpeg2. I don't know how they assemble the 8x8 DCT blocks, but if it is anything like JPEG, you could simply drop every other DCT and you'd have a downres'd picture without even having to transfor the DCT block into an actual 8x8 bitmap.

Maybe I'm full of crud about that, but I am sure that a cheap external box could be built. Maybe people would like that as a docking station for a portable video device, but it could be unipurpose- it could also offload the Muxing process so TTG would go faster, and it could handle HDTV downresing.

Justin Thyme

01-11-2006, 03:47 PM

Just because the hardware is new does not mean the software is. TiVo has had the backbone for dualtuner HD recording built into their software arcitecture since the HD DirecTiVo came out a couple years ago. It's safe to assume they will reuse as much of that code as possible for this new system.

Dan
Excellent point.

nhaigh

01-11-2006, 04:11 PM

Justin and Dan. Thanks for these answers and I apologize if the questions seem a bit dumb. Needless to say I have one more. If the S3 cannot "downrez" then how does it generate the SD output needed for non-HD television sets, i.e. the non-HDMI outputs? Is there anyway that mechanism could be employed?

Justin Thyme

01-11-2006, 04:33 PM

This is done by the decoder when doing D to A conversion into a particular analog format- PAL, NTSC, RGB. It is not an expensive, computationally intensive task and is a typical part of decoders these days.

So I know what you are thinking- why not just route that output signal right back into one of the Mpeg2 encoders set up for recording the analog Cable NTSC?

Well, it would be wierd, but they could do downresing and transcoding Mpeg4 to mpeg2 that way. Pretty ugly hack, but sitting here from the comfortable distance of an armchair, it looks technically possible.

But they aren't. TivoPony mentioned this in the video interview mentioned elsewhere today.
"...No, there's no downconverting built into the box. There is the ability to uhh have an SD output, so if you wanna drive an a uh standard def television well you certainly could"

Dan203

01-11-2006, 06:21 PM

That's not an option because...

a) The analog encoders need to be ready to encode a live singnal at all times. (what if someone upstairs starts a transcoded transfer, and someone down stairs decides to flip both tuners to analog channels? Would the transfer just stall?)

b) The video decoder chip will be needed to play back video on the main machine. (would you really want to tie up your S3 TiVo until this transfer completed? In realtime?)

If you really want to play HD video from a S3 on an alternate TV you're much better off using a video distribution system. Or provided TTG works on HD you could always transfer it to a PC, transcode it there, then transfer it to the S2 using the ComeBack feature. A little involved, but an option.

Dan

Justin Thyme

01-11-2006, 06:31 PM

TivoPony said they weren't doing it in the video. I updated my previous note as you enterred your post. Sorry.

So if the S3 isn't doing the simpler maninpulation like downresing, I don't know why they would do a harder one like transcode.

Justin Thyme

01-11-2006, 06:57 PM

My use of "6 tuners" to support the idea that the design was complex was based on a false understanding of Megazone's 6 tuner statement. From the same video, Here is what TivoPony said in response to the 6 tuner Megazone statement:
"Yeah- I read about 6 tuners from Megazone online. Technically, I suppose he's correct. It has the ability to handle a lot of different types of inputs. So because it is dual tuner you can record 2 atsc signals, you can record two cable signals, you can record even standard def signals if you have basic cable or just regular antennae. ... You can mix and match. So by 6 tuners I think he was referring to.. you have the ability to store either 2 atsc, 2 digital cable, or 2 standard def programs, and you can mix and match."

zleep

01-11-2006, 07:33 PM

...
You see when a program is stored on a TiVo is it stored as seperate audio and video streams. When it is transfered via MRV those streams are simply transfered as seperate streams to the destination TiVo. However when it's transfered via TTG the system must multiplex the streams into a single file.
...Alright, you hit one of my pet peeves: This "fact" is often stated, but it's false. Where did this false information come from?

Tystreams are stored on S1 and S2 units with audio and video interleaved within the same file. This is fact and has been established a long time ago by the many people who reverse engineered the tivo file formats. See this (http://dvd-create.sourceforge.net/tystudio/tystream.shtml) reference for example.

I am not disputing that TTG transfers burn up a lot of the limited tivo CPU, just your description of what the CPU is being used for.

Dan203

01-11-2006, 08:00 PM

Hmmm... I had read that "fact" about the seperate audio and video streams a long time ago when people where just starting to crack into MFS. I knew that the extraction hacks resulted in "Ty Streams" but I assumed those were multipled together by the TyStudio software since I had never seen this "fact" disputed until now.

However after reading that page it does not appear that the streams are stored as MPEG program streams. So some sort of conversion/multiplexing has to occure for TTG since .tivo files are essentially encrypted MPEG program streams with a little bit of meta data tacked on.

Dan

juanian

01-12-2006, 01:35 AM

(. . . popping out of lurking mode just to add my two cents, and hopefully learn something in the process . . .)

I have not clearly seen this noted before, so I am going to make an assumption here (and if my assumptions are wrong, please let me know).

How is the encryption handled for TTG vs MRV? I am assuming the following:
For TTG, a program is decrypted from the machine-specific encryption, and encrypted to the MAK before being sent out of the TiVo.
For MRV, I assume a program is decrypted from the machine-specific encryption on the sending TiVo, but is any encryption used before it is sent to the other TiVo, or, is the show sent "unencrypted" between the TiVos?

So, which transfer really requires less CPU time per TiVo -- TTG or MRV? It would appear that TTG might, but ???. My own timing tests can't be considered conclusive, because one of my TiVOs is an old USB 1.1 model 140-, and I can't use TTG (yet on my Mac), but I do use Galleon, and my ToGo and MRV timings are pretty close (roughly 20 minutes to xfer an hour of Basic with one wireless bridge hop).

And on a separate issue, I would think that muxing an audio and video stream together would require a minimal amount of CPU time, as long as no transcoding was being performed. Usually this process requires more I/O processing than CPU processing, right?

Personally, I'm probably about a year off from setting up my HDTV system, so I'm just keeping an eye out and still learning what is what, and trying to decide what TiVo I'll be getting in the future.

(. . . returning to lurking in the background . . .)

megazone

01-12-2006, 01:43 AM

MRV requires less work, it is noticably faster than TiVoToGo.

I'm not sure any re-encryption is done on MRV at all. For MRV to work the units have to share their keys. I think MRV is basically a straight data transfer of the encrypted files. TTG requires muxing the data into a standard MPEG-2 stream and encrypting it.

juanian

01-12-2006, 01:56 AM

ZeoTiVo

01-12-2006, 08:13 AM

That makes it sound sinister. You could also say - why include it and raise the price of every unit? ;-)

especially for us that have an all wired network :cool:

ZeoTiVo

01-12-2006, 10:20 AM

Each program file on a Series 2 is encrypted with a hardware-specific key which prevents a file from being transfered from one TiVo to another (and still be usable). So for MRV, one TiVo must do this de-encryption, and one TiVo must do the re-encryption with the hardware-specific key of the destination TiVo (unless the handling of MRV has changed from the pre-MAK days).

TiVo files are encrypted as they are recorded, this is known as part of hacking is to turn that encryption step off.
since all series 2 and I assume series 3 would do encryption and thus decryption the same, all they need is the correct key to read a file.
For MRV you have the TiVos on the same account and then say they can share with each other. Thus either a handshake is done with keys passed and then you see the TiVo on the other TiVo or else I suspect it is all tied to the MAK you get for TTG and most just never knew of the commonality until TTG exposed it

dt_dc

01-12-2006, 10:56 AM

For MRV you have the TiVos on the same account and then say they can share with each other. Thus either a handshake is done with keys passed and then you see the TiVo on the other TiVo or else I suspect it is all tied to the MAK you get for TTG and most just never knew of the commonality until TTG exposed itThis was not how Tivo described their system to the FCC.

Tivo said that content is encrypted with a device-specific key. When Tivo A sends content to Tivo B ...

Tivo A and Tivo B negotiate a key. Tivo A decrypts the content on its hard drive ... then encrypts it and sends it to Tivo B using the negotiated key. Tivo B then decrypts the content, encrypts it using it's device specific key, and stores it on its hard drive.

Again ... I don't specifically know how their system works. This is just based on their description.

ZeoTiVo

01-12-2006, 12:08 PM

zleep

01-12-2006, 12:32 PM

This was not how Tivo described their system to the FCC.

Tivo said that content is encrypted with a device-specific key. When Tivo A sends content to Tivo B ...

Tivo A and Tivo B negotiate a key. Tivo A decrypts the content on its hard drive ... then encrypts it and sends it to Tivo B using the negotiated key. Tivo B then decrypts the content, encrypts it using it's device specific key, and stores it on its hard drive.

Again ... I don't specifically know how their system works. This is just based on their description.Are we talking about this (http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/retrieve.cgi?native_or_pdf=pdf&id_document=6516082665) document? If so, see the section titled "4. Sending Digital Media Content" on page 27. It seems that only the relatively small "clip keys" need to be re-encrypted for the transfer. The clips themselves are not decrypted/re-encrypted. This can be verified by examining the files on disk on each side of the transfer. The tystreams themselves are identical; only the metadata changes.

There is what seems to be a typo in step 2. "the sender re-encrypts the clips with the temporary key". I believe this should say "the sender re-encrypts the clip keys with the temporary key". If you read through the whole document, that's the only interpretation that makes sense, and it matches physical evidence (that is, looking at the bits on disk, which do not change when a tystream is transferred through MRV.)

This is all for MRV. TTG uses a different algorithm.

dt_dc

01-12-2006, 12:43 PM

Are we talking about this (http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/retrieve.cgi?native_or_pdf=pdf&id_document=6516082665) document? If so, see the section titled "4. Sending Digital Media Content" on page 27. It seems that only the relatively small "clip keys" need to be re-encrypted for the transfer. The clips themselves are not decrypted/re-encrypted. This can be verified by examining the files on disk on each side of the transfer. The tystreams themselves are identical; only the metadata changes.Yes and yes ... good point. All the content isn't unencrypted -> reencrypted -> unencrypted -> reencrypted ... only the clip keys.

That would jive better with the rest of the document.

danjw1

01-12-2006, 03:50 PM

You're right that HDTV is a resolution*, not a bitrate. I was refering to the bitrate set by the ATSC standard.

Dan

* Actually it's a couple of resolutions (i.e. 720p, 1080i & 1080p)

Well enless there was an adendum to the ATSC standard since it was originally past (I haven't followed it in a while) 1080p isn't supported by the ATSC standard. Also, the bit rates you posted seem a bit high. I know that several years ago (2001 or 2002) that they were all broadcasting pretty much just 1080i and taking about 16 or 17 Mbits to do so. I also know that they had believed they would get that up to about 14-15 Mbits for 1080i by now. Back then I was working with a company that had a deal with Hearst to make use of the extra bandwidth. In the end we ran out of money before we got our probduct to market. But, I'm pretty sure that these numbers are correct.

Dan

dr_mal

01-12-2006, 05:01 PM

Well enless there was an adendum to the ATSC standard since it was originally past (I haven't followed it in a while) 1080p isn't supported by the ATSC standard. Also, the bit rates you posted seem a bit high. I know that several years ago (2001 or 2002) that they were all broadcasting pretty much just 1080i and taking about 16 or 17 Mbits to do so. I also know that they had believed they would get that up to about 14-15 Mbits for 1080i by now. Back then I was working with a company that had a deal with Hearst to make use of the extra bandwidth. In the end we ran out of money before we got our probduct to market. But, I'm pretty sure that these numbers are correct.

Dan
The bandwidth allocated to OTA broadcasters allows for 19.2Mbps.

And you're right - 1080p is all about the marketing (right now). ATSC only supports up to 1080i and there's no source of 1080p content yet for all those fancy 1080p TVs being sold. Do BluRay and/or HD-DVD even support 1080p?

HDTiVo

01-12-2006, 10:23 PM

I am surprised that no one has said SATA, no way; we want USB! And we want assurance we are not locked into purchasing drives from TiVo.

Why?

ChuckyBox

01-13-2006, 12:31 AM

I am surprised that no one has said SATA, no way; we want USB! And we want assurance we are not locked into purchasing drives from TiVo.

The only thing that disappointed me about the external drive was that in the video interview Pony said it was a Western Digital drive. My experience with those has been terrible.

Dan203

01-13-2006, 02:20 AM

I am surprised that no one has said SATA, no way; we want USB! And we want assurance we are not locked into purchasing drives from TiVo.

Why?

I understand not wanting to be locked into buying a TiVo branded drive, and I believe the hackers will figure a way around that if TiVo doesn't, but why would you want USB over eSATA? eSATA is like having an internal hard drive on the outside of the machine. It runs at the exact same speed as an internal SATA drive, which means there is zero performance difference between the external drive and the internal one. USB hard drives on the other hand are basically a kludge that run no where near the speed of a real internal hard drive. eSATA is the future for external hard drives. TiVo is just planning ahead a little better then usual. :)

Dan

Justin Thyme

01-13-2006, 02:46 AM

The only thing that disappointed me about the external drive was that in the video interview Pony said it was a Western Digital drive. My experience with those has been terrible.
TivoPony didn't want to comment on whether you could "bless" a third party drive. He did say that you can't just use a plain drive because it needs the Tivo File system on it (MFS). If you've done a hard drive upgrade, you know that's not a big deal. However it could be a little more involved.

I share Dan's optimism that some uhhh... creative folks in the community with intense curiousities will be able to figure out the problem.

And it won't just be for gearheads to do. I would be really really surprized if it weren't possible for folks at Weaknees or PTVupgrade to provide Seagate based drives. I am sure that Tivo would like to line up a major manufacturer to provide branded drives. And that's goodness for lots of folks. Personally- I hope to figure out to roll my own drives.

Looks like there are a few enclosures available for making your own sata external. and some modules support up to five internal drives (which are presented to the Tivo as one physical drive). (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=3673693&&#post3673693)

interactiveTV

01-13-2006, 10:27 AM

Do BluRay and/or HD-DVD even support 1080p? A few of the announced drives at CES do output at 1080p.

http://reviews.cnet.com/Pioneer_BDP_HD1_Blu_ray_Disc_DVD_Player/4514-6463_7-31637888.html?part=cnet&subj=Pioneer+BDP-HD1+Blu-ray+Disc+DVD+Player

The format war should ensure consumer confusion, slow take rates, and high prices. Hopefully, the Playstation 3 will end all that.

_ITV

P.S. ignore the use of the term "upconversion" since 1080p shouldn't be "upconverted" on these outputs. It makes little sense to me either but reporters are sometimes confused (or I am -- whichever)

ChuckyBox

01-13-2006, 12:08 PM

TivoPony didn't want to comment on whether you could "bless" a third party drive. He did say that you can't just use a plain drive because it needs the Tivo File system on it (MFS). If you've done a hard drive upgrade, you know that's not a big deal. However it could be a little more involved.

My guess is that TiVo will only support the official TiVo-branded drives (for the obvious reason that supporting any third-party drive would require significantly more resources for customer support). But, like the current aftermarket, you'll probably be able to easily buy other drives that work just fine. Just don't call TiVo with your problems.

dr_mal

01-13-2006, 03:50 PM

A few of the announced drives at CES do output at 1080p.

http://reviews.cnet.com/Pioneer_BDP_HD1_Blu_ray_Disc_DVD_Player/4514-6463_7-31637888.html?part=cnet&subj=Pioneer+BDP-HD1+Blu-ray+Disc+DVD+Player

The format war should ensure consumer confusion, slow take rates, and high prices. Hopefully, the Playstation 3 will end all that.

_ITV

P.S. ignore the use of the term "upconversion" since 1080p shouldn't be "upconverted" on these outputs. It makes little sense to me either but reporters are sometimes confused (or I am -- whichever)
See, my thinking was any players that output 1080p from BluRay or HDDVD would be upconverting the 1080i content on the media to 1080p for TVs that support it.

I was wondering if the BluRay or HD-DVD specification supports 1080p for the content on the discs. I suppose I could try to look it up, but that would require actual effort instead of idle speculation :)

Dan203

01-13-2006, 05:13 PM

Based on a quick scan of Google it appears that HD-DVD is limited to 1080i while BluRay allows 1080p.

Dan

megazone

01-13-2006, 08:24 PM

Well enless there was an adendum to the ATSC standard since it was originally past (I haven't followed it in a while) 1080p isn't supported by the ATSC standard.1080p is in there, but limited to 24fps or 30fps.

megazone

01-13-2006, 08:25 PM

Do BluRay and/or HD-DVD even support 1080p?Blu-ray does, HD-DVD doesn't.

dr_mal

01-14-2006, 12:06 AM

1080p is in there, but limited to 24fps or 30fps.
According to this site (http://www.hdtvprimer.com/ISSUES/what_is_ATSC.html), though, the 1080p signal is transmitted to the display as 1080i, rendering 1080p for OTA TV pointless.

Thanks for the BluRay vs HD DVD info. Too bad Sony tainted their reputation with the whole XCP thing. Now that I know what Sony thinks of their customers, I'll be sticking with whatever format they aren't behind.

megazone

01-14-2006, 02:21 AM

Walter Lambert

01-14-2006, 11:25 AM

I apologize for this off-topic question. My son lives in Dallas, TX and has just purchased an HD set and installed Comcast cable. Alas, in Dallas, because of their a/b cable system, Comcast is not able to use the dual turner Motorola 6412. He is very dissatisfied with the Motorola single tuner 6208. Will the proposed Tivo 3 series box be a solution? Any other solutions?

classicsat

01-14-2006, 07:29 PM

megazone

01-19-2006, 12:25 AM

Yeah, I don't think the Series3 will handle the very obsolete A/B systems, unless it can be fed as a single line to the unit and they'd need to be supporting CableCARD too.

classicsat

01-19-2006, 11:42 AM

Yeah, I don't think the Series3 will handle the very obsolete A/B systems, unless it can be fed as a single line to the unit and they'd need to be supporting CableCARD too.

My perception (likely true, as that is how I would design it), is to have two tuner chains, each with analog tuner/encoder, and a digital ATSC/QAM/CC tuner, and a matrix switch, to direct either input to either tuner chain, with the ATSC/Cable labels being somewhat arbitrary, ergo, in theory, one could use A/B cable on such a unit.

MichaelK

01-19-2006, 12:33 PM

dr_mal

01-19-2006, 01:19 PM

HD-DVD is going to get stomped in the market by Blu-ray, so there won't be much choice. It would be shocking for HD-DVD to last when facing the broad backing of BD. And Blu-ray is really a consortium effort that Sony happens to be part of. Sony was involved in the development of CD and DVD, you aren't avoiding those, are you?
Sorry - somehow missed your response when you originally posted it.

No, I don't avoid CD and DVD. But the same group that "owns" the DVD format is pushing the HD-DVD format, yes? Perhaps I need to do some more current research, but my understanding of BluRay was Sony breaking with the consortium of hardware/software companies that was working on HD-DVD to come up with their own "better" format. I'm just leery of what Sony thinks is "better" given their recent actions.

As long as Microsoft is pushing HD-DVD, I think it'll have sufficient shelf life. And first to market will be huge for HD-DVD.

[edit]
After reading Wikipedia's entries for BluRay (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BluRay) and HD-DVD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_DVD), it's even more apparent that I have no need for BluRay:
In addition, Blu-ray players are only allowed to output the full resolution video signal through encrypted interfaces. This means that early HDTVs sold without an HDCP-enabled interface (HDMI or HDCP-enabled DVI) will not be able to display high definition video from a Blu-ray disc.
So I'm unable to use BluRay anyway.

HDTiVo

01-19-2006, 01:59 PM

I declared HD-DVD dead about two months ago. I predict MSFT will not use HD-DVD for its xbox, and will eventually support Blu-Ray.

megazone

01-19-2006, 02:23 PM

No, I don't avoid CD and DVD. But the same group that "owns" the DVD format is pushing the HD-DVD format, yes?Not quite. HD-DVD was developed by Toshiba and NEC as the primary backers. They took it to the DVD Forum who voted it as their official next generation standard.

But the DVD Forum is just another industry consortium, they don't have any official weight or anything.

Blu-ray was developed primarily by Sony, along with Pioneer, TDK, Samsung, LG, Matsu****a, and others. Blu-ray is official controlled by the Blu-ray Disc Association, which is basically just like the DVD Forum - an industry group to control licensing and promote the format.

Perhaps I need to do some more current research, but my understanding of BluRay was Sony breaking with the consortium of hardware/software companies that was working on HD-DVD to come up with their own "better" format. I'm just leery of what Sony thinks is "better" given their recent actions.No - HD-DVD and Blu-ray were developed in basically the same way, outside of the DVD Forum. Only after HD-DVD was developed (and it wasn't called HD-DVD at first - AOD (Advanced Optical Disc) IIRC) did Toshiba propose it to the DVD Forum. The BD backers decided not to use the DVD Forum and formed the BDA instead.

As long as Microsoft is pushing HD-DVD, I think it'll have sufficient shelf life. And first to market will be huge for HD-DVD.They'll be first to market by a month. Toshiba is saying March for the first HD-DVD deck, Blu-ray decks will be out in April. And neither format is expected to have many sales at first due to cost, lack of titles, etc.

Blu-ray has vastly more support from the electronics industry - Sony, Pioneer, LG Electronics, Samsung, Matsu****a (Panasonic), Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Philips, Sharp, and more for players and PC drives. HD-DVD has Toshiba, Sanyo, and RCA for players, and NEC for drives.

BD has the support of Dell, HP, and Apple. HD-DVD recently had HP say they may also do HD-DVD, that's it.

BD has 7 of 8 major studios backing it, HD-DVD has 3 of 8 - with Paramount and Warner sitting on the fence and saying they'll do both, and Universal being the sole HD-DVD-only player right now, and they're expected to cave. And since Sony owns Sony Pictures, MGM, Columbia-TriStar - you know they aren't doing HD-DVD. Fox has also said they will NOT do HD-DVD.

BD is also technologically superior. BD does 1080p, HD-DVD stops at 1080i. BD has a guarunteed transfer rate of 54Mbps for BD Video, HD-DVD is 36Mbps. BD has a higher capacity, and more room to grow - 100GB discs are already being demonstrated, HD-DVD is pushing the limits already.

And BD's big trump card is, of course, the PlayStation3 - which will support BD Video out-of-the-box, dropping Blu-ray into millions of homes.

MS has said they'll release an external HD-DVD add-on for the XBox 360 later this year - but add-ons to video consoles have *never* sold well.

So I'm unable to use BluRay anyway.Then you'll also be unable to use HD-DVD. It has *exactly* the same HDCP HDMI limitations as Blu-ray. Both formats use AACS - copy protection is basically identical between them. BD adds BD+ and the ROM Mark, but that's not something the end user sees in normal use. For copy protection they both use AACS and have basically identical implementations.

But I wouldn't put a lot of faith in the Wikipedia entry - the BD decks I've seen at CES have component video out.