Amazon

Once you sign up for these I think there are software updates that need to be installed. Force a connection to the Tivo service and then look for "Pending Restart" on your network status screen. You may need to do this more than once to get everything updated.

Did you order from the TiVo or a PC. If it was from the TiVo then you know the connection to Amazon does work. If you ordered from the PC see if you can browse Amazon from the TiVo.

How long ago did you order. The films are not immediate can take a while to start to download but you will see them in the now playing list when the download is in progress. The download needs to complete before you can watch it and the download time depends on you bandwidth.

Same problem here. I ordered it through Tivo, I got the confirmation email from Amazon that the purchase went through, and I saw the blue light on the front panel turn on. That was 2 days ago. Still nothing in the "Now Playing"...

I have successfuly downloaded other videos through Tivo Cast, but not from Amazon.

I'm also getting a crash in Internet Explorer when I visit www.amazon.com/library. It works with Firefox though.

Ivo

On my TivoHD with a wireless Sprint Mobile Broadband connection (about 80KB/s max), it took around 20 hours to download The Bionic Woman. The first time I tried it, it didn't work at all.

control-z said:

On my TivoHD with a wireless Sprint Mobile Broadband connection (about 80KB/s max), it took around 20 hours to download The Bionic Woman. The first time I tried it, it didn't work at all.

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I think Amazon is being slammed with the free NBC pilots and need to beef up their infrastructure again.

A number of people are reporting slow downloads via unbox. I downloaded 4 of them all in less than 10 hours, but it was before they were featured directly on the TiVo units.

TiVoStephen, have you got information or word from Unbox that they are experiencing high volumes? Is the traffic handled differently for PCs versus TiVos? Please advise.

My downloads start within 5 or 10 minutes whether I order from Amazon or from the TiVO.
I downloaded several of the previews each to a couple of boxes and were all completed in 30 minutes. This Fios 30mbs connection is Sweet.
Although that was actually slower than I would like. Each show was on around 1GB which is pretty small. But I guess i can't complain when I comapre it to how long downloads took on my comcast 8mbs connection

Never having done this, can I ask:
What is a typical download time? I have a cable modem that typically clocks around 5 Mbps. I assume that things are severely limited by what is happening on Amazon's side.
When the load is less heavy, what can I expect (if anything)?
Thanks,
Dan

Another data point - I was at work, and around 1pm went to Amazon to download the 4 free NBC pilots. When I got home around 4pm, they were done.

So it took less that 3 hours to download ~4 hours of programming.

I have FIOS 15Mb.

FWIW, I'm in South Dakota. I checked out Amazon's Unbox front page and noticed the pilot for "Life" was available, so I selected it for download to my TiVo just before I went out to get lunch (I work at home). I went to the kitchen, got my lunch, and came back to the office; by then the blue LED was on indicating "hi, I'm downloading now". About an hour later I went out to look again, and it'd already finished.

I don't have an exact period, but under 1 hour in the "wild (mid)West" is pretty good. I'm guessing many of the people having problems are either on providers with poor routes to Amazon's CDN edge nodes, or they're running their outbound connectivity *way* too hot (hi, Time-Warner).

What boggles my mind is the fact that Tivo doesn't permit viewing of the program before the download is complete. If they could just make it work like streaming video on the internet-playing content once there is enough of a buffer downloaded, it would make a huge difference in the end-user experience.
Alternatively, they could follow the lead of some other companies and push a stub of some of the more popular videos, and the experience would be seamless.
Dan

I wish they had HD.

PopcornGuy said:

Once you sign up for these I think there are software updates that need to be installed. Force a connection to the Tivo service and then look for "Pending Restart" on your network status screen. You may need to do this more than once to get everything updated.

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This is what I had to do yesterday.

I kept looking for "Find Programs" in the menu and it wasn't there until I did a forced connection, then a forced reboot of the Tivo itself. Took quite a while though. I left it "applying the update" overnight

aaronwt said:

I wish they had HD.

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I dunno, I thought the quality of the Journeyman pilot was surprisingly good for SD - better than a lot of DVDs I've seen, even zoomed to fit my TV.

dpfels said:

What boggles my mind is the fact that Tivo doesn't permit viewing of the program before the download is complete. If they could just make it work like streaming video on the internet-playing content once there is enough of a buffer downloaded, it would make a huge difference in the end-user experience.
Alternatively, they could follow the lead of some other companies and push a stub of some of the more popular videos, and the experience would be seamless.
Dan

Click to expand...

During the last quarterly results call, the CEO slipped that this function is coming.