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View Full Version : Computer issue and foreign terms in connecting

orthodoc
12-09-2008, 05:13 PM
1. First, TiVo is two things: it's a DVR and it's a computer. So why is it so damned slow? My PC is very fast, but my TiVo is incredibly slow at just about everything.

2. What are the terms used in the "connecting" section in French and German versions of Tivo?
TolloNodre
12-09-2008, 05:20 PM
1) My TiVo isn't slow.

2) They use French and German terms.
wmcbrine
12-09-2008, 06:08 PM
The CPU in the TiVo runs at, IIRC, about 200 MHz. Your PC is probably more than ten times as fast, for tasks that aren't hardware-accelerated in the TiVo (like MPEG encoding and decoding).

Then there's the software. Over the years, we've seen big slowdowns and speedups due to software changes.
scandia101
12-09-2008, 06:21 PM
There are no German versions - It's not available in Germany. I'm not even sure they have a version in French for the Canadian subscribers but it's definitely also not available in France.
ciper
12-09-2008, 06:22 PM
The CPU in the TiVo runs at, IIRC, about 200 MHz. Your PC is probably more than ten times as fast,
Not only that but the hard drive has to potentially contend with two HD streams being written to it, one being played from it and the database operations all at the same time! I'd say its quite impressive all things considered.
TolloNodre
12-09-2008, 09:16 PM
Not only that but the hard drive has to potentially contend with two HD streams being written to it, one being played from it and the database operations all at the same time! I'd say its quite impressive all things considered.

If you read some of the developer comments over at the MythTV board, he says the of reading HD streams on and off the hard drive isn't really a problem. But CPU processing power is, with the encoders and everything.

Of course the architecture of a PC is very different than TiVo. TiVo has completely separate chips to do encoding (as I understand it) wheras a PC just has one chip to do it all (except maybe a GPU for display).
ciper
12-09-2008, 09:33 PM
If you read some of the developer comments over at the MythTV board, he says the of reading HD streams on and off the hard drive isn't really a problem. But CPU processing power is, with the encoders and everything.

Of course the architecture of a PC is very different than TiVo. TiVo has completely separate chips to do encoding (as I understand it) wheras a PC just has one chip to do it all (except maybe a GPU for display).

Well I'd guess that each HD stream is about 2.5MBps, times three (two writing one reading) thats 7.5MBps of continuous random reads/writes and we havn't even included the database operations. The Tivo doesn't stripe data if you have two hard drives so that adds up to some serious seeking.

The S3/THD works just like the old satellite Tivos, any digital stream is written directly to the drive with little change. Only the SD analog streams are converted so CPU and encoder throughput is not a problem. The encoder in any Tivo cannot do 720p/1080i!

On a related note, I have a PCI MPEG decoder in a drawer somewhere. It's only a "recent" development that the task is handled by the CPU/GPU.