While others will see this as a dumb reason the lack of the Live Guide is why I am not using Hydra at this very moment. I can deal with bugs and quirks(Hydra issues topic) but I just can't sacrifice a feature that kept me using Tivo for all these years over just jumping to whatever DVR Comcast has had through the years as my main go to box. The fancy new appearance in Hydra is nice and all but at the end of the day I use my Tivo to find and record things to watch and the Live Guide works better for me in doing just that. I will gladly stay with the current UI over any new fancy update to keep it that way.
While others will see this as a dumb reason the lack of the Live Guide is why I am not using Hydra at this very moment. I can deal with bugs and quirks(Hydra issues topic) but I just can't sacrifice a feature that kept me using Tivo for all these years over just jumping to whatever DVR Comcast has had through the years as my main go to box. The fancy new appearance in Hydra is nice and all but at the end of the day I use my Tivo to find and record things to watch and the Live Guide works better for me in doing just that. I will gladly stay with the current UI over any new fancy update to keep it that way.
You know, I decided to make the leap to Hydra thinking I could deal without a Live Guide and its brutal, you made a wise call.
Notice that I see 8 movies all at once, and a single "Page Down" command shows me the next 8 programs. So about 16 programs in 1 click.
The grid guide for this would only be showing 1 movie, and half of another. You'd have to right-click 16 times to see as many. There's no way seeing 1 and a half movies at a time is more efficient than a whole page or 8 at once. I'd be clicking forever to go through all the guide data.
I'm with you 100%, it's why I felt like my hands were tied using Hydra to browse channels and decided to roll back. Hopefully they will add this at some point in the future.
The deal for me usually goes something like this:
"There's this show on Fox I wanted to watch and I forget what it's called, but I'll remember when I see it."
So you can pull up Fox and then just scroll down quickly through days of show info until you find it. If you don't know the name of the show you are looking for, this was the easiest way to browse a station's worth of upcoming shows.
Same for discovering movies, you could scroll through days worth of movies showing on Starz and set a bunch of them to record. It would take forever to do that in the grid guide.
The deal for me usually goes something like this:
"There's this show on Fox I wanted to watch and I forget what it's called, but I'll remember when I see it."
So you can pull up Fox and then just scroll down quickly through days of show info until you find it. If you don't know the name of the show you are looking for, this was the easiest way to browse a station's worth of upcoming shows.
Same for discovering movies, you could scroll through days worth of movies showing on Starz and set a bunch of them to record. It would take forever to do that in the grid guide.
Movies was the big one for me. Just calling up HBO, MAX, Starz, HDNet Movies, Epix, etc. and scrolling through the next 14 days of what was available on each premium channel was very easy with Live Guide. I'll just do it through the app now I guess.
From what few demos I’ve seen here or on Youtube, Hydra looks just like the crappy Cox Contour / Comcast xfiniti dvr’s, which I find are really unintuitive, take way to long to maneuver, and waste perfectly good, visual real estate. Filling the space with big, bright shiny boxes is great if you’re looking for that kind of thing, but I’m not looking to get turned-on by a TV guide system. I’m looking for shows, rec times, alternate dates, info on actors, CC and 5.1 info.
If the two column view and live guide are gone, it may finally be time to say “goodbye” to Tivo.
Do they realize the layout was primarily the reason A LOT of us bought Tivo’s in the first place?
Any crappy dvr can record TV. Only the Tivo allowed us to do it differently, quickly, easily. Baffled.
As long as Hydra isn’t ‘forced’ on us, then fine.
I don't understand why some folks are so invested in insulting those of us who prefer Live Guide. What's the biggie? To continue having the choice, IMO, is a good thing. It was already there. Why take it away?
I wouldn't think negatively of anybody who likes the other one best. But to remove one choice is just a drag for those who prefer that choice. If they were taking away the other choice, the people who prefer that choice would not be pleased either. It's just a matter of being able to see things from the POV of others. No harm, no foul.
I don't understand why some folks are so invested in insulting those of us who prefer Live Guide. What's the biggie? To continue having the choice, IMO, is a good thing. It was already there. Why take it away?
They didn't take it away, they'd have to program it into Hydra. If they ran out of time and/or they knew not many people used it, then the grid guide would take top priority.
Tivo needs Hydra stable for the holiday shopping season, they're hopefully putting resources into fixing bugs than adding a live guide. Maybe after things calm down they'll add the live guide to Hydra.
The ironic part is that Hydra is supposed to replace some of the functionality of both the grid and live guides. That should mean we wouldn't be using the guide very much anyway, which in turn should mean there shouldn't be a need to support two different versions of it.
The live guide is easily one of the Best Innovations TiVo Introduced, And definitely is easier on the eyes. Come On TiVo Lets bring the Live Guide Back!!!!
Changed my vote. Although I have tried it, I don't use the Live Guide but obviously many TiVo users have been using Live Guide for a long time. It should be an option for those who prefer it.
Me either! Tried using Hydra on my Bolt and my wife's Bolt, but after three weeks of use, we both decided that we would be much happier with the old interface and Live Guide and switched back and are very happy with our decision.
I remember in the Hydra demo video, Margret said that they included the grid guide in Hydra because the MSOs asked them to. It would be nice if they would also include the live guide in Hydra because their retail customers asked them to.
I've been using Tivo live guide since series 2 and without it in Hydra it's the only thing holding me back from upgrading. I tried using grid guide on my Roamio pro for a couple days to see if the wife and I could get use to it and personally we much rather have Live guide.
Really odd they didn't include it and until they do I'm sticking with gen3.
I don't believe the story that live guide was removed because more people preferred grid guide. Live guide is Tivo. The Rovi Tivo is all about the mso and this new Hydra is for them.
This is windows 8 re-do. Take away useful features (Tiles instead of lists, looks familiar in Hydra) and take more steps to get thing done. Hydra is a resource hog.
Here are three guide examples. All showing the same channel at the same time.
Gen3 Live Guide
Hydra Grid Guide
TiVo App Guide
The Live guide is shows the current program and explores the details of the selected channel.
Personally, I prefer the live guide. for this reason and because it is easier on the eyes.
- Rich
Without the Live Guide, my current TiVo models will be my last models. Sad because I was thinking of upgrading to a Bolt Vox to enjoy 4K on my TiVo. I bought TiVo originally for the DVR functionality many years ago. The Live Guide was simply icing on the cake. Never liked the grid guide- it wasn't as useful to me as the Live Guide. If I wanted a DVR with a grid guide, I can get that from Comcast's STBs.
If Comcast would get it's Trillion Dollar head out of it's A$$ and make all tuners buffer, maybe it might be a viable alternative for some. My friend has an X1 and it sucks compared to Gen3. Gen4 on the other hand is more like the X1. Not For Me! Yet...
This is the problem with the whole Hydra UI in my opinion. It's all form over function. It looks nice, but it's much harder to use. I understand the desire to create something that looks nicer and more modern, but if it's more difficult to use then what's the point? Just so you can have some fancy screen shots to show investors?
Ted.... I really hope one of the things you plan to address is the inconsistency in the UI. One of the things that bugs me most about Hydra is the inconsistent use of horizontal vs vertical scrolling. In my opinion horizontal show ALWAYS be used to change/filter a list and vertical should ALWAYS be used to select an option from that list. In some places you have actual options on horizontal lists and it just ruins the usability.
I completely agree. While others are making UI's that require fewer discrete buttons, Hydra requires more buttons. The back buttons now a must use when right arrow was sufficient.
UI are supposed to be intelligent but Hydra wants to treat a single show as a folder even though all existing TiVo users know the difference.
The TiVo mini Vox completely forgets which TV it was connected to and goes back to the default. It also does not remember the channel last watched and tunes channel 2.
Modern UI's are context sensitive. It would be OK if it were consistent but my Shows is a mess, wastes screen space, requires extreme dexterity to go up, over, down, select, .... to get to another TiVo.
I don't mind that it needs work but the answer to substantive critique cannot be "It's a modern UI". No, it is a new and somewhat functionally deficient UI. So, why not fix it?
What I find interesting is that the screenshots for the new ios app shows it has the Live Guide in the app. Let's hope this is an unannounced surprise with the update to our boxes.
And while we're at it, in the Grid Guide you scroll DOWN to advance to higher number channels. But some brainiac decided that in the mini guide you should scroll UP for higher numbers. I started going the wrong way almost every time I used it.
I didn't realize how much I relied on the live guide functionality until I flipped my Roamio to the grid version as a test.
Most of my recordings are on sports networks and movie channels. Without the live guide it's much more time consuming to navigate a week or two ahead to see what games or films are coming up.
Really want to jump into Hydra, but like others on this thread, will be holding off until the live guide (or similar functionality) is added or at least announced as in development.
What's Live Guide? Is that the one where you get a list of channels on the left, and when you select one, it shows you all its shows on the right? If so, that's what I use. I'd hate to lose it.
What's Live Guide? Is that the one where you get a list of channels on the left, and when you select one, it shows you all its shows on the right? If so, that's what I use. I'd hate to lose it.
I just find the old guide much easier to navigate and most agree with me, why get rid of it for no reason?
and if you use the transfer function daily like me, removing this feature is ridiculous
I disagree with your "most agree with me" statement.
TiVo knows exactly how many use the grid and how many use the live guide. The members of TCF are not the majority of TiVo users and the majority probably never switch from the default grid guide.
And they didn't get rid of it. They looked at existing usage data and decided to not put resources behind rewriting the live guide for gen4.
Arguing about the Live vs Grid guide is like arguing over chocolate versus vanilla ice cream - some people like one, other the opposite. Personally I always hated the Live Guide, but my daughter loved it when she lived at home. If the Live Guide is important to you, definitely DO NOT upgrade to Hydra.
Also, EVERYONE should remember that they signed up for Hydra on a page that said at the very top "EARLY ACCESS" - this is the very first iteration. A patch for the v66 errors is coming soon, and there will be frequent updates. If you don't want to live through the growing pains, stay on the Classic UI for now. You can always upgrade later.
Well said. I have, and I will. [Roamio Pro, no Mini]
I'm very happy with 20.7.4's speedy, predictable performance and PQ (even with the buffer glitch). And I appreciate having the compact all-tuner list for switching channels and the minimal number of clicks to do anything. And the clock ... The Clock!
For me the UI is merely a delivery system that functions well and suits my needs.
Happy as a clam right now, but I'm sure I will upgrade at some future time as I did going from Win 7 to Win 10.
"Live Free, Live Strong, Live Guide"
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