[astrohip]

I'm doing some wiring in my house, and am wondering if I should use this opportunity to run some CAT-5 for the TiVos. I have an S2 and an S3, and plan to buy a 2nd S3/HD when MRV is activated for the HD units. My TiVos are already on a wireless network, but I am curious if MRV is faster over cable. If so, I will run the ethernet cables now, to be ready for "any day now" MRV.

I am running new cabling for my cable signal; I have the older RG-59 (?) cable, and am upgrading to RG-6 or 4 or whatever is best for HD signals. I am also installing an antenna on our roof, and am running cabling for that also, to all of our TVs. I intend to use the ability of an S3 to simultaneously use a cable signal and an OTA signal. Plus I'm curious to see the difference between the uncompressed OTA HD of a major network versus the compressed signal of ComCast.

 

[pkscout]

Theoretically the transfer over the wired network will be faster. Whether or not that is true in practice depends a bit on your wireless setup. If you are running an 802.11g network with only 802.11g devices then you'll probably see a slight speed decrease, but my bet is the USB bus will become the bottleneck before you could max out a 100mb ethernet network.

If you have an 802.11b network or any 802.11b devices on your network then the wireless speed will drop significantly and the wired network will definitely be faster.

 

[Gunnyman]

When I had my units Hardwired, I didn't really see much of a speed advantage over wireless G.
There's apparently a lot of overhead with MRV.
I can move a 1 hr show from tivo to tivo in just over/under 10 minutes depending on signal strength

 

[aadam101]

I have one wired and one wireless. I can't notice any difference.

 

[d_anders]

If you can manage hardwired connections with video applications, do it.

I see a lot of difference on my wireless g network. It could be that my router is pretty far from the living room too.

I'm using a combo of wireless and home powerline HD on my network. All my TiVo's and also the router and connected to the powerline HD network, and then my laptops/mobile devices use wireless.

I've run different tests once it was setup and I saw a huge difference with MRV, and especially with TiVo2Go to the PC.

Whenever I want to use TiVo2Go with one of the laptops, I have a one remaining powerline HD unit just to hardwire to the network...and I get well over a 50% increase in speed.

Even though the bottleneck is still the TiVo's ability to send out the data, hardwiring works best for me.

For you, I would recommend doing a test. You can always return the unused adapters. While messy for an hour or so, run the cable down through the hallways, etc., to the living room and other rooms and hookup the TiVo's to the network and run the test, then try it only with wireless to see the comparison.

 

[mick66]

I saw no noticeable difference when I switched from tivo wireless G adapters to wired connections. A 30 minute show recorded at basic quality takes about twelve minutes to transfer.

 

[captain_video]

Back when I had my S2 DTivos configured for MRV the transfers were pretty fast for Tivo to Tivo transfers over my wired network. I seem to recall it taking about 15-20 minutes to transfer a 1-hour program on the average. I've never bothered with wireless because of the multitude of reports on how slow it is vs. wired. Of course, that was back before Tivos were compatible with the "g" wireless systems. Transfers from my S3 Tivo are about three times faster than they were from my S2's so I'd definitely stick with a hardwired system if you have S3's in the mix.

 

[jfh3]

First, run CAT-6, not CAT-5.

Second, if you are using Tivo wireless G adapters, you'll find the MRV speeds about the same.

But, in the long run, I'd rather have my boxes hardwired than not.

 

[captain_video]

It shouldn't matter whether you have CAT-5 vs. CAT-6 wiring unless you intend to go with a wider bandwidth system down the road (i.e., gigabit) for the rest of your home network. As far as Tivo transfers are concerned, CAT-6 won't provide any better throughput than CAT-5. You're always going to be limited by the ability of the Tivo to transfer at whatever rate it's going to send data.

 

[jfh3]

It shouldn't matter whether you have CAT-5 vs. CAT-6 wiring unless you intend to go with a wider bandwidth system down the road (i.e., gigabit) for the rest of your home network.

Sorry I didn't expand - that's exactly why I would run cat-6.

If you are going to through the work to run new cable, why not be as future-ready as possible?

 

[Soapm]

Sorry I didn't expand - that's exactly why I would run cat-6.

If you are going to through the work to run new cable, why not be as future-ready as possible?

Plus, who knows, it may add to the resale value of the home.

 

[ah30k]

I can move a 1 hr show from tivo to tivo in just over/under 10 minutes depending on signal strength

What quality setting?

 

[ForrestB]

There's not much difference in MRV speed between wired and 802.11g wireless on Zippered DirecTivo's. A 1 hour show transfers in about 12 minutes over wired and about 15 minutes over wireless.

 

[rainwater]

There's not much difference in MRV speed between wired and 802.11g wireless on Zippered DirecTivo's. A 1 hour show transfers in about 12 minutes over wired and about 15 minutes over wireless.

You will get about the same speed with the TiVo branded adapters if they have good signal strength. The non-TiVo branded adapters will definitely be slower than wired.

 

[dcahoe]

There's not much difference in MRV speed between wired and 802.11g wireless on Zippered DirecTivo's. A 1 hour show transfers in about 12 minutes over wired and about 15 minutes over wireless.

That's 20% faster!

 

[MediaLivingRoom]

They should have a Gigabit Ethernet, Apple PC's had them for over 4 years.

 

[kb7sei]

They should have a Gigabit Ethernet, Apple PC's had them for over 4 years.

GigE wouldn't make any difference on an MRV transfer. They can't max out a 100Mbps line. Heck, USB2 can't even transfer at gigabit speeds, so how would you hook a TiVo to GigE anyway?

I do have a GigE segment on my network, but I only have 3 devices that can signal that fast. Everything else is 100M. Oh, and Cat6 is not required. I do GigE over Cat5 just fine. If you can get Cat6 for a decent price, go for it, it's only going to be that much better, but Cat5/5E will work if that's what you have.

As for wireless, I get faster transfers over wired 100M than I did with wireless bridges involved. Not a ton, but it's worth it to me. Of course, my new home has lots of wire in the walls, so it's easy to use wired connections. The difference isn't enough that I would rip up walls to install wiring. If you are already installing wires, you may as well include some ethernet and coax though, fixing the walls is the expensive part.

 

[tenthplanet]

Hardwired will be less subject to interference than wireless. Greater piece of mind. Yes mine are hardwired; it just works and I don't have to think about it

 

[Narf54321]

You mentioned having an S3 unit, with another possible S3-based unit in the near future.

If/When Tivo-2-Go/Multi-Room-Viewing ever shows up on the S3 I can guarantee you that the wired ethernet connection will be much faster. At least twice as fast (likely more) than the S2 units (with USB network dongles) unless TiVo somehow artificially stymies the S3 MRV. That speed will be necessary if TTG/MRV allows the transfer of HiDef content (read: Very Large Files) between units.

My own empirical data for this thread, with the 802.11G at ~60% signal strength.
S2 with TiVo Wireless-G USB adapter: 104MB downloaded in 82 seconds (1.27 MB/s)
S3 with built-in wired ethernet: 120MB downloaded in 34 seconds (3.5 MB/s)

An unknown factor is if the Tivo Wireless-G adapter performs differently on a Series-3 USB port (but I expect not).

 

[ZombiE]

Transfers from my S3 Tivo are about three times faster than they were from my S2's so I'd definitely stick with a hardwired system if you have S3's in the mix.

Could you please expand on this? What are you transfering from an S3 Tivo?
Is MRV enabled for S3? Or is Tivo to go enabled on an S3?

Z