[brianlees]

I'm a new Tivo owner - got my TivoHD last week and FINALLY a grueling CableCard install yesterday.

I have an observation and a question. I'm an IT manager by day (been one for 10 years), so I understand a bit about computers and OSes. I'm quite shocked how slow my TivoHD is in some menus. Although I can't remember most of the spots off the top of my head, one that sticks out in my mind is adjusting the Season Pass priority order. When I back out of that screen, I get a please wait for at least a full minute, perhaps longer.

What's up with that? Has the Tivo OS always been that slow? Is the S3 this slow and will the HD get faster when they get to the same build level?

Don't get me wrong, I love my Tivo. It is fascinating to see what it will "Suggest" for me. Just find the speed issue a bad selling point at the moment. I went from a SLOW Comcast DVR (It's CRAP-TASTIC!) to a SLOW Tivo. I'm not winning any points in the WAF right now. (For those of you that don't know what WAF is, take a gander on the Google).

Thanks

Brian

 

[bkdtv]

The menus are slower than usual for the first 48-72 hours as the Tivo indexes guide information in the background.

Tivo dramatically improved menu and guide responsiveness in the v8.3.x software released back in April for the Tivo Series3.

The new $299 TivoHD ships with the older 8.1.x branch software. It doesn't yet have the 8.3.x software with these performance improvements. Hence, as of today, the TivoHD is not nearly as 'fast' as the Series3. Its menu and guide navigation is much slower. Note there are no delays with DVR functions like pause, instant replay, rewind, fast forward, and 30-sec skip.

The TivoHD is expected to get 8.3.x (or later) this fall. In addition to various optimizations, a big reason for the performance improvement in 8.3.x is the change in indexing:

With 8.1.x, the Tivo indexes the guide data for all channels offered by your cable provider (and OTA if you have that setup). It doesn't matter what channels you actually receive or what channels you've removed from the channel list, it still indexes them all. Whenever you display the guide or perform any kind of search, the Tivo searches that entire index for all results, then hides the results for the channels you have unchecked. If your cable provider has 400 channels and you only subscribe to (or care about) 100, then the Tivo is searching a lot of unnecessary data, slowing responsiveness.

With 8.3.x, the Tivo only indexes and searches the information for channels that you have actually checked in your channel list. Searches are significantly faster as a result. The same goes for the guide; rather than processing the data for every possible channel and then hiding the channels you have unchecked [whenever you display the guide], it only processes the information for the channels you've checked.

As a result, 8.3.x guide display and searches become faster with the more channels you remove.

Note the TivoHD hardware is just as fast as the Series3 and has twice the available system memory. The TivoHD has a 300MHz CPU with 256Mb DDR400 memory and a new 7200rpm SATA hard drive.

 

[mattack]

Although I can't remember most of the spots off the top of my head, one that sticks out in my mind is adjusting the Season Pass priority order. When I back out of that screen, I get a please wait for at least a full minute, perhaps longer.

Wow, ONLY a minute?

Series 1s can go 10-20 minutes sometimes with a lot of SPs..
(I have an S3 also.)

 

[bkdtv]

When arranging season passes, make sure you change the order of everything you want before you save the changes or attempt to change settings for a specific season pass. That will minimize your wait time while the Tivo processes priority changes.

1) Change non-order-related settings for a any season passes.
2) Change priority order for all season passes at once (move local network shows to top, cable shows below that, etc).
3) Save changes.