Possible reason for "Slow" Search by title...

SethCrews · 10-25-2006, 02:06 PM

I had my Tivo for a few days before I got the cable cards, and the response on Search by title / day / time was as fast as I remembered in the Series 2 box.

When I installed the 2 cable cards, the search screen got noticeably slower...

My thought is... if it is keeping two sets of guide data in two tables, querying and joining the data between the two to come up with a single list then it would certainly slow things down.

Since cable cards will always contain the same program data, I would think this would be unnecessary.

Just a theory, but it seemed to be linked in some way to the Cable Cards.

(The other thought is that I added about 150 more channels but those were there on the Series 2 and it wasn't this slow...)

Thoughts?

Maeglin · 10-25-2006, 02:21 PM

AFAIK, the cards only have the channel lineup mappings, not program guide data. If you were dealing with two copies of that, wouldn't each item have double the number of upcoming showings? I'm thinking it's more the increased number of channels.

If the search with fewer channels is as fast as the S2 with more channels, that should tell you something right there. Perhaps the S3 is doing more in that department, or there was a speed fix in the S2 that happened after the code was branched off for the S3? I do know that, with the 8.0.1b update, the guide display on live TV was noticeably faster... maybe they're still tweaking things for efficiency.

Stormspace · 10-25-2006, 02:31 PM

Adding that many entries into your database may also cause it to run slowly at first as it indexes the new channels. Didn't earlier TiVo's have the same issues with guide data taking up to 24 hours to populate? I know that with the S2DT I had recently the guide data was largely incomplete during the first 24-48 period it was plugged in.

Maeglin · 10-25-2006, 02:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stormspace

Adding that many entries into your database may also cause it to run slowly at first as it indexes the new channels. Didn't earlier TiVo's have the same issues with guide data taking up to 24 hours to populate? I know that with the S2DT I had recently the guide data was largely incomplete during the first 24-48 period it was plugged in.

Yes, but if the slowness continues past that point? The guide was slow for the first day or so after running Guided Setup again after the cards were installed here, but then it sped back up again (though being a tiny bit slower than before due to more channels being involved). Search by title slowed down and didn't ever speed back up (at least that's my experience), unless it slowed down even more while the new channels were indexed.

Of course it seems that, while the guide could be indexed based on channel, search by title couldn't work that way. If it's a brute force search through the program titles in the guide data and not using an index at all, that would explain a lot.

AbMagFab · 10-25-2006, 03:47 PM

Actually, mine has been significantly faster since I installed the CC's. It was insanely slow with just OTA, but with the CC's, it's now more than acceptable. Still slow, but not unreasonable.

SethCrews · 10-25-2006, 08:56 PM

It's been about 10 days since I first started the TiVo up, and indexing has completed. Searching for programs is still as slow as it was before indexing.

That said, every other screen I've been to has responded more quickly than the series 2 with the exception of the program search screens.

I guess my thought was more in how channel guide data was stored in the Tivo Database. I'm sure Maeglin is correct that only channel mappings are retrieved from the cable cards, but if each cable card had a table of program guide data in the database, and if the TiVo had to merge the two tables into one listing (removing duplicates), that would take more time than if there was only one copy of the Guide data, and it just displayed it.

Basically i'm suggesting dual tuners (and therefore dual program data) could be the problem.

Are there any known "slower responses" on Dual Tuner S2 boxes?

Just tossing ideas out.

AbMagFab · 10-25-2006, 09:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SethCrews

It's been about 10 days since I first started the TiVo up, and indexing has completed. Searching for programs is still as slow as it was before indexing.

That said, every other screen I've been to has responded more quickly than the series 2 with the exception of the program search screens.

I guess my thought was more in how channel guide data was stored in the Tivo Database. I'm sure Maeglin is correct that only channel mappings are retrieved from the cable cards, but if each cable card had a table of program guide data in the database, and if the TiVo had to merge the two tables into one listing (removing duplicates), that would take more time than if there was only one copy of the Guide data, and it just displayed it.

Basically i'm suggesting dual tuners (and therefore dual program data) could be the problem.

Are there any known "slower responses" on Dual Tuner S2 boxes?

Just tossing ideas out.

They've had dual tuners since 3.x. I doubt that has anything to do with it.

And the DT SA boxes are very fast at searching.

miller890 · 12-07-2006, 09:08 AM

I have the same problem were the cable analog setup was working great, day one. Once TWC installed the CC's and I went through the setup to select the full digital line up, anything to do with the guide is slow. The search is incredibly slow, it takes a few minutes to return the hits and as you select each letter there is a long pause. The refresh rate on the page up/down is really bad. I am wondering if something is wrong with my S3; I can only compare this to an old S2 #140 and a new S2DT, both of which are faster, the S2DT being the fastest. It doesn't seem to be related to uptime or indexing.