Tivo to PC vs Tivo to Tivo Transfer Speed

[pzoba]

I have a question... I have two 240 Series Tivo's hard wired with USB 2.0 Adapters. When I first started doing Tivo to Tivo transfers it would consume my network and make my wife's wireless B laptop unuseable. I upgraded my 10 mbps hub to 100 mbps (with higher throughput too) and that changed everything. Tivo to Tivo transfers occur faster than viewing time (our default is High).

Now that I am running Desktop 2.2, I can store movies on my computer hard drive and have that drive appear in Now Playing. This is great as I will occassionally search for 2004 or 2005 movies on HBO and record them all and then transfer them to my hard drive to watch later.

Here's the rub... Even though I can do Tivo to Tivo transfers faster than real time, the transfer from Tivo to PC is much slower than real time. Plus it seems to really slow down my PC while it is accepting the transfer. This seems strange since I have a newer vintage (8-10 months old) Dell Desktop with a 3 Gig Pentium 4 and S-ATA hard drive that is CAt-5 hardwired to the same 100 mbps hub. Shouldn't this PC be able to accept the data faster than a Series 2 Tivo?

Is the Dell constrained by some bottleneck in bus speed or something? Is there something else I should be looking for?

[jamdod]

TiVo to PC transfers will always be slower. The TiVos store the video file differently then a PC so when you transfer to a PC there must be a conversion.

I don't know why your PC would slow down. Unless your have only one drive and it's fragmented.

[petew]

How much RAM do you have? Low memory is the most common reason for an otherwise fast PC to slow down.

[ZeoTiVo]

yep I put in a drive that is only for the TiVo files. It is also a good idea to have your windows install in its own partition on the drive so if you have to reinstall it can be wiped clean and start fresh. Put your swap file on a different partition or better yet a different hard drive also helps in those low memory, use the swap file situations.

[Daurkin]

Originally Posted by pzoba

I have a question... I have two 240 Series Tivo's hard wired with USB 2.0 Adapters.

When you say Hard wired, are you talking about a modification to the tivo device with soldering and software hacking? I would love to make it USB 2.0 but only if it's PnP or easy.

[petew]

Originally Posted by Daurkin

When you say Hard wired, are you talking about a modification to the tivo device with soldering and software hacking? I would love to make it USB 2.0 but only if it's PnP or easy.

All Series 2 boxes except the 140 units have USB 2.0 ports and support network adapters (see www.tivo.com/adapters ) I take pzoba's comment to mean he has 2 240's connected using 100BaseT ethernet as opposed to 802.11 wireless.

[pzoba]

Correct, I meant WIRED vs wireless when I said hardwired... sorry for the confusion.

OK, I have been planning to buy a big SATA drive for the Dell machine. I've seen ads lately for a 400Gig SATA for $189 locally. That should give me some overhead space!

I expect there is some fragmenting going on because my 70 gig drive has been close to full (4 gig remaining) on occasion with .tivo files. When I go and get the hard drive, I will also add some RAM. Thanks for the help... - z

[will792]

Can DRM processing explain the difference in speed? A Tivo-Tivo transfer does not do any while Tivo-PC adds DirectShow DRM.

It is my guess only.

[leegordon]

Originally Posted by pzoba

Even though I can do Tivo to Tivo transfers faster than real time, the transfer from Tivo to PC is much slower than real time. Plus it seems to really slow down my PC while it is accepting the transfer.

When you say "much slower," what kind of transfer times are you talking about? I don't currently have a wireless network but I am thinking of installing one primarily for the purpose of transferring programs from TiVo to my PC (Dell Dimension 9100 with 2.8 Gig Pentium 4 and 1 Gig of RAM running XP Media Edition SP2). I currently use an S-Video cable and a Dazzle DVC-90 which transfers programs in real time. How long does it typically take you to transfer a one hour program from the TiVo to the PC via your network?

Thanks.

[joe123j]

Originally Posted by jamdod

TiVo to PC transfers will always be slower. The TiVos store the video file differently then a PC so when you transfer to a PC there must be a conversion..

Yes. My understanding (correct me if I am wrong) is that the recorded video on your TiVo has to be encrypted in order to send it to your PC. The encryption is what makes the transfer soooooo pathetically SLOW.

I played with TiVoToGo transfering a high quality image from TiVo to my PC while TiVo was recording another show and the transfer speed was extremly slow.

[jamdod]

Originally Posted by joe123j

Yes. My understanding (correct me if I am wrong) is that the recorded video on your TiVo has to be encrypted in order to send it to your PC. The encryption is what makes the transfer soooooo pathetically SLOW.

I played with TiVoToGo transfering a high quality image from TiVo to my PC while TiVo was recording another show and the transfer speed was extremly slow.

I believe you are mistaken. As far as I know the TiVO encrypts the video when it records it. When you transfer it TiVO just adds the MAK so it can be decrypted on the PC.

The real problem is that video files are made up of streams. At least a video stream, and if the video has sound an audio stream. You could also have subpicture streams i.e. subtitles.
The TiVo records the video and audio in separate streams (think two files). When it is time to play the video the TiVO loads and plays both streams.
When you transfer to another TiVO both streams are sent and stored on the other TiVo as two streams (you can send two files at once over a network).

When you send to a PC you want one file, so the TiVO must MUX (combine the two streams into one file) the video and audio together into a container file format (the .tivo files are containers. they contain the two streams). It's this muxxing process that slows things down.

At least that's how I believe it works.