New Tivo WiFi 802.11n adapter hits the FCC

[innocentfreak]

No word on what this actually means but hopefully CES might reveal a new Tivo to go along with it.

TiVo's Wireless G USB network adapter has been out and about since late 2005, so to say an 802.11n version is past due would be understating things dramatically. At long last, it seems as if high-speed network access is coming to the heralded DVR, with an AN0100 802.11n AP recently splashing down at the FCC. There's no instruction manual or indication of whether this is the device we've been waiting for in order to stream networked media to the TV through one's TiVo, but why else would the outfit bother with tossing out a new dongle with support for higher throughput? We know, we're letting ourselves get a bit too optimistic here -- but c'mon, can you really blame us?

engadgethd

[bilbo]

I already went to 802.11n (NETGEAR WNHDEB111 HD/Gaming 5GHz Wireless-N Networking Kit) for around $100 on my downstairs Series3 TivoHD and XBox 360. It's only going to cost me about $55 more to get 802.11n {NETGEAR 5 GHz Wireless-N HD Access Point/Bridge (WNHDE111)} on my upstairs Series3 TivoHD with an open ethernet port (possibly for a Blu-Ray player that will stream Netflix without crashing like my TivoHD). I use my XBox360 for Netflix streaming (and FIFA 10, of course).

[DrewTivo]

The easy answers to "why" that does not entail any Tivo box changes are:
1) People are going N, and may want N-only networks
2) Getting b/g only components may be more expensive than N chipsets.
3) You can sound like you're making things faster without actually doing so.

Given that I get 20-22 Mbps on a wired gigabit network, I'm not holding out much hope for massive speed increases.

[NotVeryWitty]

Looks to me like this is more than just a new 802.11n USB wifi adapter.

The "FCC Radio Report" on the FCC web site (https://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/oetcf/eas/...7TGN-AN0100%27 -- thanks bkdtv) clearly calls it an 802.11 AP (I assume meaning Access Point) complete with switch-selected client and bridge modes (page 7).

Furthermore, on page 15, it discusses testing it with a 10 meter "RJ-45 Line" (I assume that to mean Ethernet cable). I don't see USB mentioned anywhere.

IMO (and as others have previously stated), it's unlikely that Tivo would be building a device like this unless they had a new DVR ready to go with it that could keep up with the rates that 802.11n devices can send at. It would also only make sense if the Ethernet connection was 1 Gbps.

[JamieP]

There is an embedded pictures of the bare device, though it isn't high enough resolution for me to identify the chips.

[bkdtv]

Originally Posted by NotVeryWitty

It would also only make sense if the Ethernet connection was 1 Gbps.

I don't know about that.

SmallNetBuilder tested dozens of routers, including most of the popular 802.11n models, and none exceeded 100Mbps usable in their open air tests. Only one exceeded 81Mbps.

Originally Posted by JamieP

There is an embedded pictures of the bare device, though it isn't high enough resolution for me to identify the chips.

Looks like Atheros to me.

[fyodor]

Originally Posted by NotVeryWitty

Looks to me like this is more than just a new 802.11n USB wifi adapter.

The "FCC Radio Report" on the FCC web site (https://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/oetcf/eas/...7TGN-AN0100%27 -- thanks bkdtv) clearly calls it an 802.11 AP (I assume meaning Access Point) complete with switch-selected client and bridge modes (page 7).

Furthermore, on page 15, it discusses testing it with a 10 meter "RJ-45 Line" (I assume that to mean Ethernet cable). I don't see USB mentioned anywhere.

IMO (and as others have previously stated), it's unlikely that Tivo would be building a device like this unless they had a new DVR ready to go with it that could keep up with the rates that 802.11n devices can send at. It would also only make sense if the Ethernet connection was 1 Gbps.

I think that it has an access point mode so that you can connect two Tivos without an N AP, or use one adapter to bridge another Tivo into a wired network. I don't see how this functionality implies a new product. As for something that can "keep up with it," Tivos also have fast Ethernet ports that aren't "kept up with"

The qualitative difference between the 10 megabits/s you get from wireless G, and the 20-25 megabits/s that even today's Tivos can get from wireless N is huge - the difference between waiting 20 minutes to watch a show and being able to watch immediately without commercials. We probably just reached the point where the chipsets became cheap enough that they could sell the adapters at a profitable price point.

I'd love if a new Tivo came out, and I'm not saying that we won't see one, but this adapter doesn't really tell us anything.

[spocko]

Fascinating info here! Agree with bkdtv, the main chip appears to be Atheros. This is very different than the existing 802.11g adapter. I concur that it seems to be a wireless bridge that would connect to the Tivo via ethernet. This eliminates the USB-related limitations of the current 802.11g adapter, but leaves open the question of how it will be powered.

Why would they design their own instead of using something more off the shelf? One reason might be ease of use. They can't expect the avg user to understand how to configure a typical bridge. Using their own design, they could manage the config from the Tivo and integrate that into the Tivo UI.

[NotVeryWitty]

Originally Posted by bkdtv

I don't know about that.

SmallNetBuilder tested dozens of routers, including most of the popular 802.11n models, and none exceeded 100Mbps usable in their open air tests. Only one exceeded 81Mbps.

That chart will look very different in a year or two. IMO, it would be extremely short-sighted for Tivo to cripple this with a 100 Mbps interface.

[fyodor]

Originally Posted by NotVeryWitty

That chart will look very different in a year or two. IMO, it would be extremely short-sighted for Tivo to cripple this with a 100 Mbps interface.

Why? What applications will notice the difference between 75 megabits/s and 120 megabits/s? The content's not going to be getting any larger anytime soon. For that matter, I'd be really surprised if the next generation Tivos had the hardware capabilities to handle 100+ megabits/s transfers.

[NotVeryWitty]

Originally Posted by spocko

Fascinating info here! Agree with bkdtv, the main chip appears to be Atheros. This is very different than the existing 802.11g adapter. I concur that it seems to be a wireless bridge that would connect to the Tivo via ethernet. This eliminates the USB-related limitations of the current 802.11g adapter, but leaves open the question of how it will be powered.

I think I remember seeing some mention of it being "mains-powered" in the FCC Radio Report.

Connecting via ethernet has an advantage in that it could work with existing S2 and S3 Tivos without any software changes.

Why would they design their own instead of using something more off the shelf? One reason might be ease of use. They can't expect the avg user to understand how to configure a typical bridge. Using their own design, they could manage the config from the Tivo and integrate that into the Tivo UI.

I was wondering the same thing...

[NotVeryWitty]

Originally Posted by fyodor

Why? What applications will notice the difference between 75 megabits/s and 120 megabits/s? The content's not going to be getting any larger anytime soon. For that matter, I'd be really surprised if the next generation Tivos had the hardware capabilities to handle 100+ megabits/s transfers.

In a few years, all of your home entertainment devices will be broadband-connected. Put a gigabit ethernet switch in front of this Tivo device, and they can all use it. If you limit it to 100 Mbps, you've added a huge bottleneck.

[lrhorer]

Originally Posted by fyodor

Why? What applications will notice the difference between 75 megabits/s and 120 megabits/s? The content's not going to be getting any larger anytime soon. For that matter, I'd be really surprised if the next generation Tivos had the hardware capabilities to handle 100+ megabits/s transfers.

I would not be surprised if they don't, but I would not be surprised if they do, either. All I can say is, if they don't, given the extremely underwhelming list of requested features otherwise, TiVo can count me out on purchasing a "Series IV".

[lrhorer]

Originally Posted by NotVeryWitty

In a few years, all of your home entertainment devices will be broadband-connected. Put a gigabit ethernet switch in front of this Tivo device, and they can all use it. If you limit it to 100 Mbps, you've added a huge bottleneck.

Not really. It's a rather small bottleneck, if you ask me. Having a 100Mbps port haging off a Gig switch doesn't impact the rest of the traffic on the switch. That said, I really would like better network performance from the TiVo, but I would readily accept 70 - 80 Mbps. That would easily allow me to stream at least two high bandwidth streams in better than real-time. Doing so would require more CPU horsepower, however, or else streamlined coding. Jaime has gotten more than 100 Mbps from the existing TiVos, but not with MRV, TTG, or TTCB, I don't think.

[lrhorer]

Originally Posted by NotVeryWitty

That chart will look very different in a year or two. IMO, it would be extremely short-sighted for Tivo to cripple this with a 100 Mbps interface.

I'm not holding my breath. Wireless will never be able to really compete with wired networking on a level playing field - at leat not for many years to come. Inherent reliability aside, the fact is a wireless solution is always going to employ sharted bandwidth. Even if the throughput number ever come close to the 800 Mbps I often enjoy on transfers between my servers - a really big if, the fact is that 800 mbps will be shared among all the devices in the LAN segment. My main wired switch can deliver a total throughput up to 24,000 Mbps, hypothetically, and 4000 - 5000 Mbps total is not unusual.

[Phantom Gremlin]

Originally Posted by bkdtv

SmallNetBuilder tested dozens of routers, including most of the popular 802.11n models, and none exceeded 100Mbps usable in their open air tests. Only one exceeded 81Mbps.

I have measured approx 130 Mb/s sustained throughput between an iMac using wired Ethernet, through an Airport Extreme Base Station and to a Macbook, running 802.11n at 5 GHz. The wireless points were about 8 ft away, the raw connection rate was 270 Mb/s. The same setup running 802.11g at 2.4 GHz did approx 25 Mb/s sustained throughput.

I agree that a 100 Mb/s Ethernet limitation is OK for most real-life scenarios, but it's not OK in terms of user perceptions.

[RonDawg]

Originally Posted by DrewTivo

Given that I get 20-22 Mbps on a wired gigabit network, I'm not holding out much hope for massive speed increases.

Is this on an original Series 3 (model 648)?

My TiVoHD is only transferring from my PC at slightly less than 15 Mb/sec, and to the PC at ~ 11.5 Mb/sec, over Cat 5 via a Wireless G Router (currently a 2Wire supplied by U-verse, but I got similar results with my old Netgear ADSL modem/wireless router combo).

[bkdtv]

Originally Posted by NotVeryWitty

In a few years, all of your home entertainment devices will be broadband-connected. Put a gigabit ethernet switch in front of this Tivo device, and they can all use it. If you limit it to 100 Mbps, you've added a huge bottleneck.

I think it's important to remember that a 100Mbps ethernet connection only limits throughput for one specific TiVo, not the whole network. If you have three of these 802.11n adapters, you could have three different TiVos simultaneously transferring across the network at 40-60Mbps.

Broadcom's next-generation BCM7420 should allow a dual-tuner DVR to stream four HD recordings simultaneously throughout the home, i.e. 4x20=80Mbps. Fast ethernet on each device is still more than sufficient for that.

Originally Posted by RonDawg

Is this on an original Series 3 (model 648)?

My TiVoHD is only transferring from my PC at slightly less than 15 Mb/sec, and to the PC at ~ 11.5 Mb/sec, over Cat 5 via a Wireless G Router (currently a 2Wire supplied by U-verse, but I got similar results with my old Netgear ADSL modem/wireless router combo).

My TivoHDs routinely hit 20-24Mbps with MRV on a wired network.

If the TivoHDs are tuned to channels I don't receive, the network diagnostics screen reports 29-30Mbps for MRV. If the tuners on each are set to SD channels, they hit 24-26Mbps. The TiVo Series3 does 35-45Mbps under the same conditions. Edit: revised.

[RonDawg]

Originally Posted by bkdtv

My TivoHDs routinely hit 20-24Mbps with MRV on a wired network.

If the TivoHDs are tuned to SD channels, they hit 26-28Mbps. The TiVo Series3 does 35-45Mbps under the same conditions.

So where do you think the bottleneck is in my case? Cable, router?

[bkdtv]

Originally Posted by RonDawg

So where do you think the bottleneck is in my case? Cable, router?

Your router and the TiVo network adapter probably share the blame. I've never seen more than 17Mbps with the TiVo network adapter. Some WiFi routers won't do more than 17-18Mbps even at close range, and ranged performance varies widely by router.

Note your PC transfers are normal and those would not improve.

[RonDawg]

Originally Posted by bkdtv

Your router and the TiVo network adapter probably share the blame. I've never seen more than 17Mbps with the TiVo network adapter. Some WiFi routers won't do more than 17-18Mbps even at close range, and ranged performance varies widely by router.

Note your PC transfers are normal and those would not improve.

Now I'm curious how you're getting speeds in the mid 20's on the TiVoHD, as I am also using a wired connection to the router and from the PC to the router.

Or are you talking about two TiVoHD's networked directly to each other via a crossover cable?

[bkdtv]

Originally Posted by RonDawg

Now I'm curious how you're getting speeds in the mid 20's on the TiVoHD, as I am also using a wired connection to the router and from the PC to the router.

Or are you talking about two TiVoHD's networked directly to each other via a crossover cable?

I may have overstated a little in the earlier post (since revised).

My TiVos are networked with NIM100 MoCA adapters, i.e. 100Mbps ethernet. I don't see mid 20s unless the tuners on both units are set to SD channels, which doesn't happen often. But I often see 20-22Mbps when I check the Network diagnostics screen, and can't recall the last time I saw anything under 16Mbps.

[fyodor]

Originally Posted by RonDawg

Now I'm curious how you're getting speeds in the mid 20's on the TiVoHD, as I am also using a wired connection to the router and from the PC to the router.

Or are you talking about two TiVoHD's networked directly to each other via a crossover cable?

I think that you two may be talking past each other. As I understand it, RonDawg is only doing PC-Tivo and Tivo-PC transfers, which, as you noted, top off around 10-12 megabits/s regardless of connection.

RonDawg, when he talks about MRV, he's discussing Tivo-Tivo transfers, which can be much faster.

Of all the performance increases I'd like to see, faster Tivo-PC-Tivo transfers are of most interest to me. If we could have 20-25 megabits/s PC-Tivo transfers, people could develop working software clients. Similarly, if the PC-Tivo transfer speeds were improved, I could just archive my shows on my PC without having to worry about transcoding.

[bkdtv]

If you want to do a quick PC test to observe what outgoing MRV transfer rate your TiVo is capable of on your network, login to your TiVo at https://<tivo ip address> with "tivo" as the login and your MAK as the password.

Copy the url for a recording and paste it into the address bar. Replace &Format=video/x-tivo-mpeg in the URL with &Format=video%2Fx-tivo-raw-tts. That's the same format used with MRV. Hit enter to start the download and observe the throughput in your web browser.

My TivoHD is currently tuned to two HD channels and it is reporting 2.9 MB/s (23Mbps) with that test.

[RonDawg]

Originally Posted by fyodor

I think that you two may be talking past each other. As I understand it, RonDawg is only doing PC-Tivo and Tivo-PC transfers, which, as you noted, top off around 10-12 megabits/s regardless of connection.

RonDawg, when he talks about MRV, he's discussing Tivo-Tivo transfers, which can be much faster.

Thanks. I do have a second TiVo but it's on wireless, so I doubt I would get anywhere near those speeds even on a TiVo to TiVo transfer.

[txporter]

Originally Posted by fyodor

Of all the performance increases I'd like to see, faster Tivo-PC-Tivo transfers are of most interest to me. If we could have 20-25 megabits/s PC-Tivo transfers, people could develop working software clients. Similarly, if the PC-Tivo transfer speeds were improved, I could just archive my shows on my PC without having to worry about transcoding.

You can get 20+ Mbps transfers from PC to Tivo if you push h.264 content. My latest round of pushed mp4 were clocked at a little over 25 Mbps on a wired network.

[NotVeryWitty]

Originally Posted by lrhorer

Having a 100Mbps port haging off a Gig switch doesn't impact the rest of the traffic on the switch.

It does if it's the uplink port that's 100 Mbps.

Let's say you have three home entertainment boxes, each with 100 Mbps ethernet ports connected to your switch, and the upstream port of the switch connects to the new Tivo 802.11n adapter. If the Tivo adapter is only 100 Mbps, you limit the aggregate throughput to 100 Mbps. If the Tivo adapter has a GigE port, then you can get up to 300 Mbps aggregate throughput (obviously assuming each device can actually go at 100 Mbps and the router can handle 300 Mbps).

It may be hard for people to imagine needing to go faster than 100 Mbps, but IMO it will be happening soon in the USA. NTT in Japan is already supplying home gateway routers to their customers that can handle bidirectional gigabit traffic (see http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Hitach...25650.html?x=0).

[fyodor]

Originally Posted by txporter

You can get 20+ Mbps transfers from PC to Tivo if you push h.264 content. My latest round of pushed mp4 were clocked at a little over 25 Mbps on a wired network.

Since he didn't mention otherwise, I assumed that he was doing pulls, which top off around the speeds he was talking about because the Tivo treats it as a "recording" and thus must do various container wrapping/security mojo on it.

I agree with you that the performance is better when pushing h.264, but mine still tops off around 18-19 megabits/s. My MP4 content is all in the 6 megabits/s range, so it's not an issue.