Switching Channels

[tildenw]

UPS dropped my tivo off about 30min ago, should have been here on Wednesday but that is old news.

One thing i have noticed is that switching channels is very slow. Channel surfing is a thing of the passed. Going to have to use guide of everything. Any body else have this problem.

[Krellion]

The point of the Guide is so you don't have to channel surf. :)

[tildenw]

I know, but it is still nice to be able to do.

[R. Kalia]

One thing i have noticed is that switching channels is very slow. Channel surfing is a thing of the passed.Have you used a TiVo before? If so, how much slower is it compared to an S1 or S2?

If you haven't used one before...TiVo always records the live audio/video so you can rewind/freeze/slow-mo. That's why channel changing is slow; you are not watching the live signal, but rather the recorded signal being replayed a second or two later. Other PVRs that allow you to do trick plays with live TV also have these delays.

TiVo enthusiasts will always tell you that you must stop channel surfing, i.e. change your viewing behavior to conform to the TiVo. I prefer to channel surf, so I don't view live tv through my tivo (S1), I use it only to record specific programs.

[ah30k]

Its slower than a direct S2 TiVo tune but faster than when I was using an IR blaster. My guess is that it takes about a second to show up.

Part of this is that it is digital TV which needs to get decompressed etc.

[ah30k]

... change your viewing behavior to conform to the TiVo.I prefer my property not tell me how to behave.

[R. Kalia]

Part of this is that it is digital TV which needs to get decompressed etc.But my HD cable box (Motorola 6200, non-PVR) manages to change channels with only a very brief delay; I have no problem channel surfing. So that can't be a major factor.

I've never understood why Tivos don't have "watch in real time but no buffering no trick plays" as an option, or a "watch in real time, but also buffer; trick plays after short delay" option. There were lots of discussions about this in the old S1 days, but I've forgotten what the upshot was. Probably people just said "You MUST stop channel surfing NOW".

[tildenw]

I just looked at the series2. It is the same. I have not been using it because i moved it to make room for the new one. Been watching reg. cable. Sorry. my fault.

[Bierboy]

Its slower than a direct S2 TiVo tune but faster than when I was using an IR blaster. My guess is that it takes about a second to show up.

Part of this is that it is digital TV which needs to get decompressed etc.My S3 is switching channels faster than my S2 did.

[cap]

So now that I'm not "waiting" for my S3 I got to play with it a little last night.

It changes channels quick, but the shows don't appear, just a black screen.
Granted when the picture does show it is great, vast improvement, but why does my regular coxial cable not showing up as quick as the DT unit?

Shouldn't they be doing the same thing at this point since I don't have a cable card yet? Maybe it was due to being new and indexing shows/etc.

At first I actually thought my cable was out and after hitting play it would finally start showing the picture and sound.

Did anyone else have this kind of problem?

[razor237]

mine does the same thing ... I change channel & then 10-15 sec off black sreen ... not use to that , my HD DTivo doesnt have that problem & my S2 is much faster on displaying video.


-Mike

[cap]

Well it's good to know it's not just me.

Not that I do a lot of surfing, but it is weird.

[geekmedic]

I rarely watch live TV, so channel surfing isn't a problem for me.

[Krellion]

cap and razor237: See this thread I started (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=316652) that talks about the starting playback on channel change problem.

[cap]

Thanks for the update.

Still a weird bug though.

[classicX]

But my HD cable box (Motorola 6200, non-PVR) manages to change channels with only a very brief delay; I have no problem channel surfing. So that can't be a major factor.

I've never understood why Tivos don't have "watch in real time but no buffering no trick plays" as an option, or a "watch in real time, but also buffer; trick plays after short delay" option. There were lots of discussions about this in the old S1 days, but I've forgotten what the upshot was. Probably people just said "You MUST stop channel surfing NOW".

Simple answer: Your cable box shows the live picture directly to you, as it's coming in, with no buffering. The tivo must first begin buffering the signal, then reading that buffer information to display to you. Hence the delay.

Further info: SA8300HD boxes don't switch channels like this - my SA8300HD switches channels nearly instantly. The delay comes when I hit the rewind button - THEN it "switches" to the buffer, with the screen going black for a second. If you FFWD back to "live" it switches back to the live feed, with the same behavior.

The Tivo does it from the buffer to make it much smoother pausing and rewinding from Live TV. I also think it had to do with the fact that Tivo was recording analog TV, and the "Live" feed looks noticeably better than the recorded buffer (due to compression). So, rather than have users watching a great live signal, hit "replay" and end up with a comparatively crappy picture the second go round, they just made you watch the crappy picture full time.

With the S3, a lot of the channels are digital quality, and free from that problem. They should give you a choice on the S3.

Personally, I much prefer the SA8300 behavior to the Tivo's, as I rewind live TV a lot less than I change channels. I pause it from time to time, but be extension, pausing live TV means I probably have time to wait the 1 second while it switches.

Many people prefer the smoother behavior of the Tivo. To each his own.

[classicX]

I prefer my property not tell me how to behave.

+1 ROFL

[megazone]

mine does the same thing ... I change channel & then 10-15 sec off black sreen ... not use to that That is definitely NOT what I see. I get a 1.5-2 second delay, which is what I expect. I hit ChanUp/Down, the channel banner changes instantly, 1.5-2 seconds later the video is playing - both analog and digital channels.

Since I use Native, if the resolution changed I can have a second of my TV adjusting, but that's the TV and not the TiVo.

[mikebridge]

channel changing seems faster once i got the cable cards installed, but i have not timed it, so it could just be my imagination.

[wackymann]

I hooked my new S3 up to analog cable last night (cable cards coming on Tuesday). Analog channel surfing is definitely NOT an option on my box. It takes a full 5 seconds for it to bring up video after a channel change.

OTOH my cable system has ADS, so once I get my cable cards, I won't have to use analog signals any more. I'm hoping the digital channel changing will be much faster. If not, I will stick to watching live TV on my Motorola box. I hate waiting for anything, and I'm always loking for ways to speed things up. My Motorola 3412 takes < 2 seconds to change channels - still longer than I'd like, but a LOT more reasonable than 5. Of course the 3412 is all digital, so I'm comparing apples to oranges at this point.

[TiVotion]

Since I have been a TiVo user, I've accepted the fact that channel changing - that is, the time between changing the channel on the remote and seeing live TV, is going to be a bit slower as TiVo clears the buffer for the next channel. Yes, it's slower, as Mega said, I concur that we're talking a second or 2. Not a dealbreaker for me.

Got used to it with the S2. S3 seems a tad slower than that, but I chalk it up to cablecards. Maybe I'm wrong.

In any even, the very habit of TiVo changed my entire perspective on watching television. I got out of the channel surfing habit without even trying. It came naturally. I no longer feel "tied to the clock" - I don't have to park my butt in front of the TV to catch My Name is Earl on Thursday night. Maybe I get around to pulling up my "Now Playing" menu on Friday, or Saturday, or later. Doesn't matter, because I know that "Earl" is there waiting for me.

I RARELY can even stomach live TV now AT ALL. I can't even watch football games "live" anymore. I have to have enough of the game buffered that I can fast forward through the huddles and halftime - reducing a 3 hour game to 1.5 hours.

Now that's sweet.

[snathanb]

Yeah.... my family is TIVO nubes and my kids keep trying to fast foward on live TV.

[wackymann]

I've had Comcast DVR for quite a while now, and I'm still 50/50 on Live vs Recorded TV watching. There is just too much out there to always know in advance what I will/won't want to see. For me, I still appreciate being able to flip channels once in a while. Granted the guide is more efficient, especially when you have hundreds of channels to browse, but since I got HD, I tend to simply browse the HD channels, and there are few enough of those to make surfing feasible once again.

Maybe Tivo users have learned to hate live TV a bit quicker because of the slow channel changes. We'll see how I react in the long run. I'm guessing I may use the Motorola Box for Live TV, and switch over to the Tivo for everything else. Has anybody done accurate timing on flipping digital channels with the S3? If so, I'd like to hear your numbers. I'm hoping it is less than 2 seconds... then I would almost surely dump my Motorola.

[artw]

I just got my S3 up and running and I am experiencing the same problem. When changing channels the banner comes up right away, but the picture does not show for about 5 seconds. This is way too long. I just switched over from a Motorola 64xx and it didn't have this speed problem. I've owned a DirecTivo in the past and it wasn't this bad.

[bkdtv]

I just got my S3 up and running and I am experiencing the same problem. When changing channels the banner comes up right away, but the picture does not show for about 5 seconds. This is way too long.Motorola boxes have fixed output enabled by default, and didn't offer a native output option for HD. I assume you all have the Series3 set to fixed output, as native input will introduce delays as your television does resolution switching between HD and SD channels.

I think these issues -- black screen delay when switching channels -- may have something to do with Tivo's implementation of HDCP. Do you all have the same "black screen" issue when the Series3 is set to fixed with component output?

[artw]

I had it set to native when I was experiencing 5 second changes. I was hoping to use the scaler in my TV (Fujitsu plasma) instead of the Tivo box. I don't think it is a TV sync issue because I can see the Tivo banner during the channel transitions.

When I switch it to 720p and 1080i fixed, it takes around 3 seconds. Some channels take longer. I'm not really sure if it is faster or not with fixed, will need to experiment some more.

Overall, the channel switching experience just feels too slow to me. Maybe after I rid my brain of the Moto 64xx and get used to Tivo again that feeling will disappear...

[Necro]

Same problem here. I have an S1 running analog that switches immediately. The S3 takes about 3-4 seconds between channels no matter what setting or cable I use.

Even the analog channels take 3 seconds to tune. It will be frustrating to get used to... And hopefully the wife won't gripe too much (after all, I did spend $1000 on this thing).

My biggest gripes so far: slow channel tuning and that dreaded cable card slot. I tried ejecting one and well, it didn't eject. So I just let it be...

[ytseschew]

I'm having the same problem of slow channel changing (not due to my TV). I had started a topic about it here: http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=318683

I found that changing 60 channels (waiting until the picture appeared on each) took 110 seconds on my S2 and 190 seconds on my S3. That's a huge difference and I always felt the S2 was too slow to begin with. I'm sorry to hear that many people are having the same problem. I would rather that the S3 not clear the old buffer if that would save some time changing channels (in fact I'd rather that it didn't clear it at all for those times when someone sits on the remote and changes the channel and wipes out my buffer).

I also have a problem where rewinding (one click) has very jerky motion. It rewinds for a second, pauses, rewinds for another second, pauses, etc.. Is anyone else having that problem?

Steve

[56oval]

I just moved from a S2 to the S3 and same problem. Changing stations on analog cable is painfully slow. The S2 was MUCH MUCH faster. I can't channel surf anymore since this thing is so slow.... ARGH.

Oddly enough changing stations from HD OTA to HD OTA is just fine. Go figure. They btter fix the slow cable tuning issue fast!