[Sleet]

Hey all. I just got a TiVo for my wife for her birthay and have been lurking on the message boards here. She has not opened her gift yet even though I keep prodding her to do so.

I just wanted to clear one thing up regarding the 100Mbps wired throughput. It looks to me that bits and bytes may have gotten mixed up. The 100Mbps theoretical max transfer rate of the wired Ethernet is 100 megabits, not 100 megabytes per second. The translates to 12.5 megabytes per second. So even with the transfer rate of 12MB/s of USB 1.1 and the fact that 100Mbps Ethernet rarely, if ever, actually transfers at 100Mbps I doubt that USB 1.1 would be a bottleneck.

Of course it is nice to know that USB 2.0 is implemented for whatever features they may add in the future. Perhaps we will see gigabit Ethernet support soon.

Sleet

 

[AnteL0pe]

802.11b = 11MB

802.11g = 54MB

Wired = 100MB <---- My personal choice!

You do the math!

I laughed when I first heard series 2 TiVo's were going to work with wireless B and now wireless G.

Not everyone wants to, or even can, run cable all over their house/apartment. I live in an apartment with 85% solid concrete walls, and running cable all over the baseboards doesnt sound fun to me. Not to mention that my wife wouldnt let me Beyond that, Im able to get about 700K/sec on transfers between my TiVo and the computers in my place, and they all sit on an 802.11g network. Granted, when I plug a machine into the same switch the TiVo is on I can get close to 1MB/sec, but the transfer times are acceptable to me either way.

 

[minorthr]

I have a netgear usb 2.0 wired adapter on my Humax t800 my Tivo 2 go transfer rate tops out around 450kbs. Which I think is way to slow. For USB 1 wired I guess that would be about right but not USB 2. I remember reading from TivoBill that even though 2.0 was enabled you weren't going to notice a difference at this time. I can not find the post again though.

 

[vinniet]

Hello all ... I have read thru this post and I have a question that I have not seen answered. I am upgrading form a Tivo Series 1 to TWO Tivo Series 2. I would like to multi-room viewing BUT do not want to transfer the program, just stream it. This would leave the program on box a and watch it on box b. Now Tivo support says I can either transfer it or watch it.

If this is true, if I stream it, how does that work out with 8011.b network? Is there a lag time before you can start to watch a program as it buffers?

Thanks!

 

[vjp]

The relatively few early TiVo Series2 models beginning with 1 (eg (140)) have USB 1.1 hardware and nothing can change that to USB 2.0. The vast majority of TiVo Series2 models, whose numbers begin with 2 or 5 (240, 540, ...), have USB 2.0 hardware which is finally taken advantage of in 7.1 for the first time.

Wow, all this time I've been wondering why I've gotten such crappy d/l speeds from my 240-series TiVo, and after reading your post I went and checked my USB adapter - it's a Linksys USB100TX, capable of 100mbps on the ethernet side BUT ONLY USB 1.1 COMPATIBLE ON THE USB SIDE!!!! AAAAAAAAAARGH!!!!

So even though my network is fully 100mbps, the stupid adapter is bottlenecking xfers to 4mbps!

Oh well, live and learn.

 

[twalker294]

I use a Linksys Wireless G 2.4Ghz Broadband Router with "G" wireless connectivity to a Laptop and "wired" desktop with no problems. Both Tivo Series2 connect perfectly and can view each others "Now Playing List". The issue is one of transfering 'high quality" recorded programs between the units. A one hour high quality program takes at least 3hrs, if not 5-6 hrs. Unacceptable speeds.

There is nothing wrong with my network.

I have a Series 2 80 hour and a Humax Tivo with DVD burner on my home wireless network. I have a Linksys WRT54G wireless router and USB wireless-B adapters on both Tivos. I record everything at medium quality and a 1-hour show takes about an hour to transfer from one Tivo to the other. That proves that the hardware can do it. Don't be so sure there is nothing wrong with your network.

Todd

 

[vinniet]

twalker294 ... Can I ask you a question ( I asked it above). Is there two way to transfer a shows between two Tivo units, one is to copy it and the other is to stream it??

That is what Tivo said but I can not find proof of it.

Thanks!

 

[twalker294]

twalker294 ... Can I ask you a question ( I asked it above). Is there two way to transfer a shows between two Tivo units, one is to copy it and the other is to stream it??

That is what Tivo said but I can not find proof of it.

Thanks!

No, there's only one way and that is to copy it. However you can watch it as it's copying from one to the other. Usually I start the transfer then about 20 minutes later I start watching it. That gives me enough padding that I can skip commercials and I am finished watching it just shortly after it finishes transferring. I've never had any complaints about the speed of transfer between my two Tivos. If you can't wait 20 minutes to start watching a show then you are a little too high strung ;-)

Todd

 

[ZeoTiVo]

I use a wired network so have not directly experienced/worked with wireless but just a couple of things here.

First - as said above - all 240 and 540 TiVos have USB 2.0 hardware. Even if you have versio 4x of TiVo and USB 1.1 drivers - you can plug in a USB 2 specced adapter. WIth version 7x TiVo now uses USB 2 drivers adn wired people get a big boost in performance.

second when doing Multi Room Viewing between two TiVos , it is indeed a copy and the show will stay on the original TiVo in whatever Keep Until state it was in.
What I think the CSR was trying to say. Whne you pick a show from another TiVo. You will get the please wait bitmap show up, the two TiVos will do their initial things to talk to each other and setup the copy, then the copy will start adn you will see a screen that says Watch on this TV now or Keep on browsing the other TiVo. So to "stream" you say watch on this TiVo now and just like anything being recorded on a TiVo you can watch it while the rest of the show is copied. If you catch up top the end of the recording/copying then you get the nessage saying to please wait.
If you say continue to borwse the other TiVo then the "copy" takes place in the background. You cna pick more shows and they will queue up behind the first one. Only one show at a time is copied.
In the TiVo you are at you will see the show being recorded and the red ball for a recording taking place. If the TiVo is actually recording a show from the tuner then you will see two red balls for the recording and the copying taking place.
of course the more a TiVo is doing the longer the copy can take since it has a lower priority than recording from tuner or displaying a show.

---------------
as for the network speeds. Mnay people with older access points/routers report significantly better transfer times by going out and getting a fairly new access point/router that seem much better designed to handle B and G traffic adn even the TiVo type of traffic in general. I have seen reports of this with even wired routers. IT may well be worth the time and effort to get one, if it makes no difference then return it.

also of course moving the antennas around can sometimes find a much better sweet spot that lowers interference and things go a lot quicker then as well. In fact I suspect the newer hardware working better may be linked to better handling of interference from things like cordless phones etc..
remember , you may see even 90% signal strength but that will not give any indication of interference happening. With a TiVo interference really slows it down as it MUST resend the packets garbled up and MUST resend them right away as even though it is a copy process , it needs to treat it more like a stream as you nay be watching it. Interference will slow MRV and TTG way down.

 

[vinniet]

I wish people would of also posted what wireless/wired network adapter they were using. I see alots of posts about people having problems with certain network adapters.

My question is, what 8011.g 54 has the least problems.

Thanks!

 

[rem]

So even with the transfer rate of 12MB/s of USB 1.1 and the fact that 100Mbps Ethernet rarely, if ever, actually transfers at 100Mbps I doubt that USB 1.1 would be a bottleneck.

Sleet

just to clarify somethings up.

usb1.1 speed is actually 12 megabits/sec, NOT 12 megaBYTES/sec. this translates to 1.5 megabytes/sec.

usb2.0 is capable of 480 megabits = 60 megabytes/sec.

 

[rem]

one more thing i would like to add to this topic.

i don't understand why tivo doesn't just put in an ethernet port to begin with. then we wouldn't have to deal with the issue of compatible adapters.

there's also the disclosure somewhere that even though there are two usb ports, only one can be used. what's that about? why even put in a second one, then?

 

[HDTiVo]

one more thing i would like to add to this topic.

i don't understand why tivo doesn't just put in an ethernet port to begin with. then we wouldn't have to deal with the issue of compatible adapters.

there's also the disclosure somewhere that even though there are two usb ports, only one can be used. what's that about? why even put in a second one, then?

Probably the earliest indication that things were going to go haywire over at TiVo. Lack of ethernet and usb 1.1 (not 2.0) with no explanation for second port.

 

[Justin Thyme]

Probably the earliest indication that things were going to go haywire over at TiVo. Lack of ethernet and usb 1.1 (not 2.0) with no explanation for second port.

Not sure why that is evidence of "going haywire". Why didn't the ][e come out with an integrated floppy? Should the first mac have ever been produced with just 128K? Virtually overnight there was a cottage industry created of people who would sell you a widget to upgrade your memory.

Was that evidence of Apple going haywire?

Deciding to be agressive in keeping chip costs down means you have Tivo's available for $70.

I think it is a fair criticism to wonder at lack of support for expansion memory. It is also baffling to me what the hardware decisions were that may have led to the abysmal network throughput. Did they test it and not detect the problem? Wasn't the problem theoreticaly anticipatable anyway? How can the performance possibly be this bad? I suspect there may be a good reason that it was unavoidable, but that one is astonishing to me.

But as far as not integrating ethernet support on the board- that kind of tradeoff is made among CE designers every day.

 

[HDTiVo]

It is only the first sign in retrospect. At the time it was a bit of oddness that aroused suspicion.

 

[CrispyCritter]

It is only the first sign in retrospect. At the time it was a bit of oddness that aroused suspicion.

Suspicion? I don't recall that at all. I remember people getting excited about connecting their camera and other things (speculation about keyboards and joysticks) to the TiVo. Yes, there have always been people who've wanted to network their TiVo's, but that wasn't the direction TiVo was headed in way back then (4+ years ago; the Series2 is old!!!).

I agree in retrospect an ethernet port would have worked out better for them. But USB was considered a reasonable way for TiVo to go at the time.

 

[HDTiVo]

Suspicion? I don't recall that at all. I remember people getting excited about connecting their camera and other things (speculation about keyboards and joysticks) to the TiVo.

Those people were so busy being wrong, they didn't have time to notice.

 

[rem]

knowing what they do now, why can't they just add an ethernet port to new tivos rolling off the assembly line at the moment? it'll still be series 2. just a series 2 with a "revision 1" at the end.

 

[HDTiVo]

knowing what they do now, why can't they just add an ethernet port to new tivos rolling off the assembly line at the moment? it'll still be series 2. just a series 2 with a "revision 1" at the end.

The TiVo seems constrained in the rate at which it is capable of transmiting data via the USB port, which may be due to other components (CPU, Hard Drive.) If so, there might not be any difference if ethernet were directly used.

 

[CrispyCritter]

knowing what they do now, why can't they just add an ethernet port to new tivos rolling off the assembly line at the moment? it'll still be series 2. just a series 2 with a "revision 1" at the end.

It would be a very major change, both at the hardware and the software level. The motherboard would have to be redesigned (it's a custom motherboard). At the software level, remember that TiVo is running normal Linux, but has very important real-time constraints on it. It absolutely has to be able to handle the incoming signal it's recording, and the signal it's outputting to the TV. Nothing else it does can be allowed to interfere with those two functions. So putting in a new ethernet port means revisiting the timings of all of their present algorithms to make sure that the new ethernet CPU/disk load won't interfere with the core functions while all the other activities are also running. Very difficult, and probably for not that much gain in speed. As HDTiVo says, the CPU is already the bottleneck for many activities.