Desktop to TiVO transfer - Wireless or Wired?

[femakid]

I would like to use my TiVO to transfer movies from my desktop PC. Currently I do this over a Wireless connection.

Would I notice a performance benefit if I ran a Cat5 cable to my TiVO box, and used a USB - Cat5 adapter, thus providing a wired connection?

[CuriousMark]

I would like to use my TiVO to transfer movies from my desktop PC. Currently I do this over a Wireless connection.
Would I notice a performance benefit if I ran a Cat5 cable to my TiVO box, and used a USB - Cat5 adapter, thus providing a wired connection?
What wireless adapter is on the TiVo now?

[dirtypacman]

I always prefer wired. Just more reliable overall imo.

[ivyvine]

Well, like the person above stated, Wired is always more reliable because your connection won't get dropped like it can with WiFi (my laptop's wifi connection goes through phases of minor dropped connections and some days where it just doesn't have any real connectivity at all -connects and says "limited or no connectivity"- so I stopped using it as my main Tivo transfer computer).

Plus, Ethernet (LAN) is usually at a 100 mbps rate and wireless is either at most 11 mbps (for b) or 54 mbps (for g)... You could get slightly higher transfers with either pre-n routers/cards or sometimes wireless range boosters etc, but you will most likely still run into some interference from other wifi or 2.4GHz signals around, and the speed can always rise and fall (back and forth between 24 and 54mbps for example) so wireless is IMO mainly just for the portability factor, and I would stick with ethernet over wifi for almost anything.

[classicsat]

Those numbers are thoretical limit with ideal hardware behind it. The TiVo ain't ideal hardware.

FWIW I get around 600-900 KB/S (at least before the 7.3 debacle) with a Netgear FA120 on a 240 DVR, 6-10 MB/S (FTP) to my Xbox.

[ivyvine]

I am also assuming that the overall speed would have to do with your network setup, if your router divides bandwidth evenly to all connected items/ports or goes by what the program/user needs, what your actual internet connection (top) speed/rates are, and just how busy the network is.

But yes, those speeds I had listed were just the basic top cut-off speeds that normally get listed when you are buying a router/adapter and looking at the tech specs. There is nothing that says you will have those rates, and there is always a good chance at having much lower rates. Your Internet Service Provider usually doesn't even list specific rates, other than it will be no more than ? or somewhere between ?-? numbers... And these also can change daily or how far away you are from the DSL "homebase" (the further away you are, the slower the DSL speeds, and as this goes through the phone lines, it can be hard to tell where on this "line" from the homebase outwards you are). Broadband Cable subscribers don't have to worry about this as it passes through the digital cable wires (nice and quick).

But downloading anything can be different at any point, sometimes my transfers and even cut and paste transfers of tivo items to another hard drive, might take just under real time (50-55 minutes for a 60 minute show) or it may take 1 hour and 45 minutes, while it can be a few minutes to 30 for a c&p move. My roommate downloads things that sometimes take a minute or 2 per MB, while I have downloaded large zip files of games off of FilePlanet and elsewhere: 275 MB in 30 min, 850 MB file one time in 1 hour and 20 minutes or so while also downloading other 200-400 MB files at the same time (and then when I signed up and had access to FilePlanet's fast servers I was getting some 300 MB or more files in about 12 minutes)...


My tivo transfers can sometimes show as an estimate that it will take 3 hours and 15 minutes to finish transfering the current program which is an hour long (about 1.1 GB say) at the current transfer rate and it will have already transfered 22% of it by that point...

So yes, the transfers can be extremely crazy. Which is why you should stick to the Ethernet adapter/cables, as dealing with all of that with WiFi can be a complete headache.

[holligl]

I always prefer wired. Just more reliable overall imo.
I just hooked up a USB200M Wired and was disappointed with the transfer speed. Achieving about 16M/min. Taking about 1 1/2 hrs for a one hour show. What do you get with your USB200M's?

[femakid]

I ended up buying a TiVO adapter off eBay for $10 cheaper than the TiVO store. Considering it's the only adapter that will support WPA it's worth it for me. Now I can move my router to G only and finally get off the easily hackable WEP security.

[ah30k]

I just hooked up a USB200M Wired and was disappointed with the transfer speed. Achieving about 16M/min. Taking about 1 1/2 hrs for a one hour show. What do you get with your USB200M's?Are you using "Best" quality? I had many posts here trying to figure out why my USB200M transfers were less than realtime only to find out that everyone who was telling me that they were getting better than realtime were really using lower quality recordings.

edit: whoops lets be clear on this, MRV or TTG? Looks like you are talking about TTG which we would expect to be slower because of the transcoding that occurs on the TiVo prior to sending to the laptop.

[enthalpy]

You are always going through the Tivo USB port, whether it's wired or wireless. That's the bottleneck here. USB version 1.1 maxes out at 12 mbps (1.5 megaBytes/sec). Even if you hook up a 100 mbps wired Ethernet connection, the USB port is stuck at the same max value.

I just bought and installed the Tivo 802.11G wireless adapter. I don't see a difference compared to the old D-Link 802.11b adapter I was using. Maybe it's a bit faster, I have not timed it, but it still feels slow.

Allen