Engadget discussion of Kidzone slowing down TiVos

[MMG]

Discussion here (http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/17/kidzone-slowing-down-your-tivo/)

Lots of comments from people with same problem...

[Y-ASK]

Yep! It's starting to really irritate me as well. The lag time is ridiculous and I agree that Tivo should have never released this update.

Y-ASK

[SystemJinx]

I have a sluggish box, but I've never setup Kidzone so it shouldn't even be active.

I hope Tivo fixes this soon. It's very annoying.

[moonscape]

I have a sluggish box, but I've never setup Kidzone so it shouldn't even be active.

I hope Tivo fixes this soon. It's very annoying.

same here. never touched or acknowledged kidzone, and have the same annoying sluggish problem.

[ZeoTiVo]

Ummm - it is not really duscussion of anything other than a note of what is happening already in this forum A crowd of folks over at TiVo's own forums are claiming that the most recent KidZone update (7.3.1) has created a number of unwanted problems:
which is a true statement but it is not known that it is kidzone itself causing the problems and they had absolutely nothing new on the actual topic.

some very irresponsible posting from engadget which keeps knocking their credibility down in my opinion.

it is known that the same slowdown issue was seen by a significant minority in 7.2.1 when TiVoToGo was introdcued and not long after 7.2.2 came out and fixed the speed problems. I expect to see the same thing in the next release from TiVo that will be out before the end of the year.

[robbins]

The slowdown, along with pricing that is way too high is the reason why I cancelled our Tivo service.

[rainwater]

it is known that the same slowdown issue was seen by a significant minority in 7.2.1 when TiVoToGo was introdcued and not long after 7.2.2 came out and fixed the speed problems. I expect to see the same thing in the next release from TiVo that will be out before the end of the year.

7.3.1 has a lot more issues than just slow down problems. They changed fundamental UI elements in this release and a lot of the changes do not even work correctly. By adding KidZone, they apparently had to or decided to rewrite a lot of the UI backend. If it wasn't designed correctly, fixing the slow down issues isn't going to be easy. So I wouldn't be so quick to say they can easily fix these slow down issues, because these changes may have been made to accomodate KidZone.

[natkins]

I'm praying that something is done sooner rather than later regarding the slowness problem. I'm really not loving my Tivo right now. I used to give it a hug every morning, but now I'm watching more regular TV (gasp!) because my little Tivo has become a big fat slug.

I can't, in good conscience, rave to my friends about how wonderful Tivo is until this issue gets resolved. :(

[Bimwad]

Actually, the original entry from PVR Wire (linked from the Engadget blurb) is better written and correctly reflects the situation.

So, now that the story has made its way to the PVR blogosphere...is it finally a "legitimate" issue now?

The absence of such coverage was used as a point to dismiss the concerns of the "small" (but vocal) group affected by the slowdown.

Let the rationalization continue.

In the meantine, forget 7.3.2, where's 7.3.1b?

[RoyK]

Ummm - it is not really duscussion of anything other than a note of what is happening already in this forum
which is a true statement but it is not known that it is kidzone itself causing the problems and they had absolutely nothing new on the actual topic.

some very irresponsible posting from engadget which keeps knocking their credibility down in my opinion.



What is new is that the issue is now being made public outside this community. AFAIC its about time. I read the article and saw nothing there that isn't quite close to what is being reported here. There is nothing irresponsible in reporting the facts.

Whether it's "kidzone itself" or not it is certainly the version release that contains kidzone that has caused these problems that have turned my units from a pleasure to use to real dogs.

[ZeoTiVo]

What is new is that the issue is now being made public outside this community. AFAIC its about time. I read the article and saw nothing there that isn't quite close to what is being reported here. There is nothing irresponsible in reporting the facts.

Whether it's "kidzone itself" or not it is certainly the version release that contains kidzone that has caused these problems that have turned my units from a pleasure to use to real dogs.
OK the issue is being reported outside the community, but both articles are about all the posting on this forum I have not seen them come up with any more new reports of slowdowns that point to it being a more widespread problem then what we see in this forum. You guys are going circular here. We said Black is white, someone posted a story somewhere else about black being white and linked to our discussion, we link to that story as proving our point. Sorry does not work.

again the one fact they had right in either articleso there's quite a few unhappy subscribers out there getting more frustrated by the day which is accurate and the slowdown is real and needs to be fixed and soon, but this is not widespread reports of problems but just posts about the posts here.

the irresponsible part is that both posts are trying to say KidZone is what slowed things down. Yet I did not see one shred of actual evidence to directly support that. I have Kidzone on all my TiVos and have turned it on on two of them and then left it on one of them. some of my TiVos were slower at first but then all picked up speed and are back to normal.
This makes me speculate that it is some database indexing (guide data, season passes, shows in now playing, etc.. are all represented in databases on the DVR) newly introduced in the version that has gone off course and has slowed down some TiVos. 7.2.1 had the same slowdown issues. I highly doubt it is the feature itself that is causing slowdowns for some but some practice in how they introduce change to the underlying core code base that is at the root of the slowdowns that occur with each new point release. But I have nothing to actually conform that and it would be irresponsible of me to say my speculation as if it was what was happening those articles should have focused on 7.3.1 being slow on some TiVos but I guess the version number alone only makes for responsible reporting and not exciting reporting :rolleyes:

[RoyK]

OK the issue is being reported outside the community, but both articles are about all the posting on this forum I have not seen them come up with any more new reports of slowdowns that point to it being a more widespread problem then what we see in this forum.

Then you didn't read the comments posted. Most if not all of them were from people not on this forum who are experiencing the problems and not a bit happy about it.


You guys are going circular here. We said Black is white, someone posted a story somewhere else about black being white and linked to our discussion, we link to that story as proving our point. Sorry does not work.

No, what we are saying (hoping?) is that now that the problems have been made public TiVo might take them seriously instead of sluffing them off as some minor annoyance being experienced by a small percentage of the users.


the irresponsible part is that both posts are trying to say KidZone is what slowed things down. Yet I did not see one shred of actual evidence to directly support that.

Laymen can be forgiven for jumping to the conclusion that because their boxes began to exhibit rotten performance at the same time that the kidzone update was released that kidzone itself is responsible for it. We geeks can debate the technical details.

[chavez]

So, now that the story has made its way to the PVR blogosphere...is it finally a "legitimate" issue now?

The absence of such coverage was used as a point to dismiss the concerns of the "small" (but vocal) group affected by the slowdown.

right. i remember some genius writing that it wasn't a legitimate problem because the complaints were only being posted here and not on the "blogs".

[Rooster]

No Kidzone interaction here and I've got signifigant slowdown on both of my TiVos as well.

[rainwater]

Its good to hear we may only have 6 months of buggy software this year. I guess we will be good until next Summer's update. Then 6 more months of buggy software. Its like clockwork :)

[Fraser+Dief]

the irresponsible part is that both posts are trying to say KidZone is what slowed things down. Yet I did not see one shred of actual evidence to directly support that.

That's simple equivocation. The update that caused all the problems for us here had one new feature, it's raison d'etre: KidZone. It's not like there was this huge list of new features, and KidZone was simply one of many.

KidZone, and all the requisite changes that had to be implemented into the codebase to support it, is buggy as hell.

And it attacks regardless whether you turn it on. :down:

[ZeoTiVo]

That's simple equivocation. The update that caused all the problems for us here had one new feature, it's raison d'etre: KidZone. It's not like there was this huge list of new features, and KidZone was simply one of many.

KidZone, and all the requisite changes that had to be implemented into the codebase to support it, is buggy as hell.

And it attacks regardless whether you turn it on. :down:

yes, and I would rather see a focus on the fact that two feature add updates caused slowdowns on some TiVo DVRs and thus there must be something common between the two that caused it. Spotlight on the actual slowdown vs. whatever feature was in the update and thus a better push for a resolution of the actual problem. I would rather see reporting of the actual facts than attention grabbing headlines.

And yes some more people posted they had it that do not usueally post here. MAybe 8 out of 15 comments left had the slowdown(did not specifically count). Still it was not reporting on widespread slowdowns by many people, just a report on the posts here with the "KidZone" spin to the headline.

Even though it is not widespread it has been ackowledged by TiVo in this forum and a fix is on the way. TiVo could start throwing out some fast patches (actually the current 7.3.1 is a fast patch) but a string of fast patches just runs more risk of causing problems than fixing things

[RoyK]

yes, and I would rather see a focus on the fact that two feature add updates caused slowdowns on some TiVo DVRs and thus there must be something common between the two that caused it.

Who cares whether the problems are due to a database issue, a misplaced semicolon, or some other similar detail? What caused THE problem was either TiVo's complete lack of software quality control or a conscious decision on management's part to release this version of software over Quality Control's objection. 7.3.1 turned the complete disaster of the origninal release into something at least half-way usable.

I would rather see reporting of the actual facts than attention grabbing headlines.

Headlines are designed to grab attention.

Even though it is not widespread it has been ackowledged by TiVo in this forum and a fix is on the way.

Saying it is so doesn't make it so. ALL 3 of my boxes are afflicted with the slowdowns and other UI bugs as are those of two of the three TiVo owners I know personally. This "it isn't widespread" crap is an attempt to minimalize the issue.

[rainwater]

Even though it is not widespread it has been ackowledged by TiVo in this forum and a fix is on the way.

There is a thread started in the help forum about everyday from a new user asking what is wrong with their box since the 7.3.1 upgrade. I'm sorry, but saying its not widespread is not going to make it so.

[bkdtv]

Looks like this issue is finally starting to be picked up by the press. It received coverage by some local news networks the other day.

[ZeoTiVo]

Looks like this issue is finally starting to be picked up by the press. It received coverage by some local news networks the other day.
now that is what I was referring to. any details on the coverage itself? More of the same incident here or there or some real numbers ?

[Stormspace]

As many here already know I am not a TiVo apologist (IANATA) but the slow down issues to me at least are bearable. Yes, I have noticed it takes longer to go from live tv to the TiVo central screen by hitting the tivo button. I have also noticed over the past few years that it takes longer to reorganize the season passes when you exit that screen. In my book these items are small potatos until the problem gets really bad. Getting to TiVo central seems to only take a long time if you are coming to the TiVo after it's been sitting a while unattended. Once you start using it it speeds up quite a bit.

Put me in the category of don't get it, I guess. :)

[rainwater]

Put me in the category of don't get it, I guess. :)

Does Watch Now work for you? Does exiting a program with less than 5 minutes show the delete confirmation work for you if the program was recording when you started watching it? Have you backed out of view upcoming programs and seen the wrong program? Does the recording icon disappear when a show has finished recording that you are watching? The list goes on and on. And it affects everyone, not just a few.

[Stormspace]

Does Watch Now work for you?

Yes.

Does exiting a program with less than 5 minutes show the delete confirmation work for you if the program was recording when you started watching it?

It's rare that this happens. We are usually so far behind watching that we rarely watch a show during it's regular time slot.

Have you backed out of view upcoming programs and seen the wrong program?

No.

Does the recording icon disappear when a show has finished recording that you are watching?

No, but it's been like that for a long time. The latest update had nothing to do with that for me. I recall seeing that behavior over a year ago.

These issues don't affect the speed of the unit however even though they might exist for everyone. My comment was about speed issues with the latest update.

[rainwater]

So you are saying selecting Watch Now from a program information screen actually changes to the channel the show is on? I have never once seen that work in 7.3.1.

[Georgia Guy]

All three of my Tivos now take at least 5 seconds to switch from live to now playing.

Changing a season pass takes 10 to 20 seconds.

When getting to the end of a recorded show it refuses to give me the "old delete or not" screen unless I wait 30-45 seconds. Fastest solution to delete a show after watching it, now is to go back to Tivo Central, select "now playing", select the folder, select the show, and hit the clear button. That is utterly ridiculous and very annoying.

Redraws of now playing and the guide are faster after the initial very slow access, but still are much much slower than a year ago.

After watching a mrv transferred show, rather than getting the old "delete or not" choice, we get an error message saying the transfer was interrupted and not complete.

Every single screen change that Tivo now makes is annoyingly slow. Even my wife, normally very accepting of screwed-up technology, is very irritated.

I've loved Tivo since it's inception, but have been very discouraged by it's recent steps backward.

[rainwater]

All three of my Tivos now take at least 5 seconds to switch from live to now playing.


The problem is not widespread though, so its just you and a few other people. :)

[Stormspace]

So you are saying selecting Watch Now from a program information screen actually changes to the channel the show is on? I have never once seen that work in 7.3.1.

Since that isn't a feature I use a lot I'd have to verify this, but I believe that is the case.

[rainwater]

Since that isn't a feature I use a lot I'd have to verify this, but I believe that is the case.

I have 3 DT units and it doesn't work on any of them. Also, the recording indicator bug (which is the cause of many of the deletion prompt issues) never occured until these units got 7.3.0.

[ZeoTiVo]

The problem is not widespread though, so its just you and a few other people. :)
well now bugs are being added into the mix along with slow speed. No question 7.3 was the buggiest release put out and 7.3.1 fixed the big ones but left many UI annoying bugs behind, and of course the bugs are on every TiVo. The recently Deleted folder is far more likely to have intoduced these bugs and the slowdown of Now playing then anything else.

the slow speed was the topic here though. My TiVos take 2 secs to go from live TV to now playing and longer if the TiVo has been sitting long enough that the menu cache has been dumped from memory. And Season passes take maybe 10 or 15 seconds to reorganize. This is where the speed has been for me.

factors such as size of hard drive and thus size of season passes and now playing list and how many channels in the guide data enter in to the equation. main reason I have only supersized my DT box and left the others as they came stock. I imagine that Kid Zone adds some overhead to some of the menus as well but I would think it to be a low percentage overhead and part of the fix to come will be to tweak recently Deleted and KidZone for performance

[rainwater]

the slow speed was the topic here though.

You can't separate the two. The user experience with 7.3.1 has been horrible. Whether its the slow down or the bugs, it doesn't matter. Making customers unhappy about their product on a regular 6 month interval until they make a patch fix is unacceptable. This is 2 years in a row TiVo has released buggy software. If users are going to come to expect this every 6 months, then TiVo isn't going to be retaining the percentage of users they want to.

[rodneys]

My Humax 800 has been kind of slow since I got it over a year ago. It has recently gotten very slow and I had no idea why. At least I see that other people are having the same problem. It is slow to respond to button presses, both the Tivo button and others. It is very sluggish scrolling throught the Now Playing list. I'm not sure if this is related to what other people here are seeing or not.

On the other hand, the new S3 unit I just got is blazingly fast. It reminds me of my series 1 unit, only better. I REALLY hope they don't update the software in the S3 any time soon to cause problems. I noticed that the S3 has the old delete program behavior, that is, every time I delete a program it asks whether or not to delete it. I would much rather have the old behavior than slow things down with a software update.

[ZeoTiVo]

You can't separate the two.
I did not seperate the two. The OP did when he started the thread. Surely a thread can discuss one aspect of the other.

[rainwater]

I did not seperate the two. The OP did when he started the thread. Surely a thread can discuss one aspect of the other.

The engadget article itself refers to more than just slowness. I don't see why its forbidden to discuss all of the issues with 7.3.1. Or should be just ignore parts of them so they go away?

[ZeoTiVo]

I noticed that the S3 has the old delete program behavior, that is, every time I delete a program it asks whether or not to delete it. I would much rather have the old behavior than slow things down with a software update.
there will be an update for the S3 coming and it sounds like the S2 update will sync with it. Most likely both updates are slated for the end of the year.

S3 update will benefit from what they have learned from the 7.3/7.3.1 releases and both models will hopefully have clean interfaces again that run at a good speed.

the blazingly fast on the S3 is kind of like a new PC with fresh windows install and not much else on it. - we have all most likely seen how windows bogs down as you start to install other software and add a bunch of your own data files to it. The S2 is kinda like a windows 98 - that got Windows 98 SE upgrade then ME :eek: the 98Se again and now XP service pack 2 and we await the patches to speed up things again. This kind of hassle in software development is a fairly widespread problem among all kinds of companies. TiVo just happens to be the only Consumer Appliance and as such stands out when Sh|t happens. :(

I know the responsibility lays with TiVo at the end of the day but if I did have a slow TiVo I would MRV/TTG the shows off it. Get an InstantCake CD and put a fresh image on the TiVo. Make sure it updated to 7.3.1 again - check its speed and then add back the shows and season passes again, but it would have to be really dog slow to make me do all that work ;)

[ZeoTiVo]

The engadget article itself refers to more than just slowness. I don't see why its forbidden to discuss all of the issues with 7.3.1. Or should be just ignore parts of them so they go away?

again this thread is on the slowdown issue as started by the OP - plenty of threads on the bugs as well. But it is not my thread and I am just responding to the slow down issue here. You wnat to take the thread off topic - have fun with that.

[RoyK]

again this thread is on the slowdown issue as started by the OP - plenty of threads on the bugs as well. But it is not my thread and I am just responding to the slow down issue here. You wnat to take the thread off topic - have fun with that.

The OP points to an Engadget article.

The third sentence of the article reads

"A crowd of folks over at TiVo's own forums are claiming that the most recent KidZone update (7.3.1) has created a number of unwanted problems: "delays during channel changing, slow banner changes, slow response to remote control commands, slow menus, lost cable signals, slow deleting of items, occasional lock-ups, and forced reboots with no alleviation of symptoms post reboot."

Seems to me that covers just a tad more than slowness....

[rodneys]

there will be an update for the S3 coming and it sounds like the S2 update will sync with it. Most likely both updates are slated for the end of the year.

S3 update will benefit from what they have learned from the 7.3/7.3.1 releases and both models will hopefully have clean interfaces again that run at a good speed.

...

I know the responsibility lays with TiVo at the end of the day but if I did have a slow TiVo I would MRV/TTG the shows off it. Get an InstantCake CD and put a fresh image on the TiVo. Make sure it updated to 7.3.1 again - check its speed and then add back the shows and season passes again, but it would have to be really dog slow to make me do all that work ;)

I REALLY hope they do a LOT of work on the software before releasing an update for the S3. My S2 Humax DRT800 has become almost unusable it is so slow to respond to button presses. The S3 is a pleasure to use. I really don't want to feel that I've wasted my $800 because the decide to slow down my S3 with "feature enhancements". I would rather never get another feature upgrade and keep this performance.

As for backing up and restoring the DRT800 - well, it is a consideration. I am hoping to give that unit to someone else. In the meantime, I still have a few programs saved there that would be nice to watch first. I'm not sure it is worth the effort. However, it might be worthwhile to burn DVDs and then reinitialize the system before giving it away. I would hate the new owner to be stuck with the current performance. If I get ambitious, I might do that. I upgraded my original S1 on my own, so I'm not squeamish about opening up the unit myself. I just have to set aside a day to have enough time to do that.

[Stu_Bee]

S3 update will benefit from what they have learned from the 7.3/7.3.1 releases and both models will hopefully have clean interfaces again that run at a good speed.

the blazingly fast on the S3 is kind of like a new PC with fresh windows install and not much else on it. - we have all most likely seen how windows bogs down as you start to install other software and add a bunch of your own data files to it.
....
if I did have a slow TiVo I would MRV/TTG the shows off it. Get an InstantCake CD and put a fresh image on the TiVo. Make sure it updated to 7.3.1 again - check its speed and then add back the shows and season passes again, but it would have to be really dog slow to make me do all that work ;)

Have you heard that the reimaging actually solves the slowness issue...or are you just trying to keep people busy?

A point being forgetting is that Tivo released a version that adversly affects certain models to a greater degree than others. Some have said this is due to the lesser hardware specs in these models, and the new Tivo version utilizes a larger memory footprint that requires more caching on these models.

Will Tivo start having to have different versions for different Tivo hardware platforms? (ie. Kind of a minimum requirements for each version). This will leave Tivo in a tricky spot of either stopping development of features for all Series 2's, or only updating certain models.

Hopefully Tivo Inc has learned from this, and come out with stricter model HW standards for any Series3 manufacturers to follow (if they decide to allow others to build them).

[Dan203]

Who cares whether the problems are due to a database issue, a misplaced semicolon, or some other similar detail? What caused THE problem was either TiVo's complete lack of software quality control or a conscious decision on management's part to release this version of software over Quality Control's objection. 7.3.1 turned the complete disaster of the origninal release into something at least half-way usable.

I think what happened was TiVo was under some sort of deadline to deliever KidZone, either from a partner like Comcast or from their own press release which promised KidZone by a specific time frame. When that deadline came due they were forced to release it as-is in the form of 7.3. They quickly turned around and released a band-aid fix to get rid of many of the most anoying bugs (i.e. 7.3.1_, but it's still not as polished as we would all like. Hopefully the winter release will get us back to where we want to be.

Dan

[RoyK]

I know the responsibility lays with TiVo at the end of the day but if I did have a slow TiVo I would MRV/TTG the shows off it. Get an InstantCake CD and put a fresh image on the TiVo. Make sure it updated to 7.3.1 again - check its speed and then add back the shows and season passes again, but it would have to be really dog slow to make me do all that work ;)

Just the sort of thing the average user would do. But then I have to admit it sounds much last drastic than some of the things my wife has been threatening to do to it....