Well this is interesting!

5441 Views 29 Replies 14 Participants Last post by Brangdon, Dec 24, 2011

cwaring

Discussion Starter · May 30, 2011

My internet just went off for a short while and it took my Tivo's network connection with it.

It was only off for around 5 mins but it did allow me to discover something interesting that I did not realise; which would also explain why the Tivo is so slow to update some pages like "My Shows".

I had assumed that all the graphics, etc., were stored locally, but they're not

The details and pic that appear on the right when you highlight a programme would not display whilst the network connection was not available. Even more suprising was that, with no network connection, you cannot use the 'OK' button to bring up the full 'programme details' page!

Or is this old news to most people and I'm just being my usual slow self?

1 - 20 of 30 Posts

BigH

· #2 · May 30, 2011

My internet was down most of saturday and spotted this.

it had all my shows listed but no episode details/etc.

i thought it a bit odd

mikerr

· #3 · May 30, 2011

You could actually play back those recordings by pressing play on the remote instead of ok.

It really should be caching more of those images and info on the HDD, I really think network or server congestion is the cause of the sometimes slow menus - and inconsistent speed.

cwaring

Discussion Starter · #4 · May 30, 2011

mikerr said:
You could actually play back those recordings by pressing play on the remote instead of ok.

Yes, I know. I always do that

Playback wasn't the issue.

It really should be caching more of those images and info on the HDD, I really think network or server congestion is the cause of the sometimes slow menus - and inconsistent speed.

Agreed.

VirginMediaPhil

· #5 · May 31, 2011

But then there would probably be a backlash from people if VM took say 100GB or so to store information of your disk, and everyone who had said why TiVo/VM was better because they didn't do this would look like a hypocrite.

Ernie_C

· #6 · May 31, 2011

I guess that this means performance can be improved when/if they increase the BB speed to 20Mb on TiVo.

browellm

· #7 · May 31, 2011

Ernie_C said:
I guess that this means performance can be improved when/if they increase the BB speed to 20Mb on TiVo.

I doubt it. It will be more to do with latency and server load than throughput. 10MB should be ample for the job.

TCM2007

· #8 · May 31, 2011

VirginMediaPhil said:
But then there would probably be a backlash from people if VM took say 100GB or so to store information of your disk, and everyone who had said why TiVo/VM was better because they didn't do this would look like a hypocrite.

100Gb? That would be a lot of text and thumbnails!

cwaring

Discussion Starter · #9 · May 31, 2011

TCM2007 said:
100Gb? That would be a lot of text and thumbnails!

Indeed. I was thinking more around 100MB. And I certainly wouldn't complain about it. As I said in my original post, I assumed that was how they did it.

mikerr

· #10 · May 31, 2011

TCM2007 said:
100Gb? That would be a lot of text and thumbnails!

100GB could be the entire database of pictures !

Obviously too much, but it appears they're not even caching anything, which is why UI speed may be dictated by network/server load.
This also explains the variable interface speed many are seeing.

VirginMediaPhil

· #11 · May 31, 2011

Oops, I meant like 10GB, nevermind - even that's too much.

cwaring

Discussion Starter · #12 · May 31, 2011

Hehe! The perils of an extra zero

big_dirk

· #13 · Jun 4, 2011

Crikey Carl, good spot there. I can hardly believe it!? That's really, really poor ideas/code to not cache as much as possible!

cwaring

Discussion Starter · #14 · Jun 4, 2011

I was only messing around; seeing what could and could not be done with no internet connection.

But I could not agree more. I mean, I don't know much about programming but I would assume something like that would be a pretty standard thing to do so I am at a loss to explain why they don't.

alextegg

· #15 · Jun 4, 2011

Absolutely. If, as it appears, the speed or presence/lack of the internet connection affects the performance or basic functionality of the VM TiVo it should be very near the top of the list of things to be fixed !

alextegg

· #16 · Jun 5, 2011

Rather ironically my internet went off this afternoon for a few hours for the first time in years, and TiVo was noticeably slower without it. Presumably there's a timeout for anything that is tries to retrieve and can't.

Not the best design of software

ericd121

· #17 · Jun 6, 2011

I must admit, I am somewhat shocked by this discovery.

I would imagine that, even from a pure programming view, it would take less code to reference a resource locally, rather than from the network.

And from a customer satisfaction POV, the customer might be less upset about their internet going down if they can say, "Ah well, I'll play with the Tivo for a while."

ColinYounger

· #18 · Jun 6, 2011

I think it's been done this way purely to protect assets. There's no way your TiVo is going to work if it's taken "off grid".

alextegg

· #19 · Jun 6, 2011

Well, given the picture comes down the cable that's certainly true

But I for one can't see how it makes sense that it doesn't cache non-programme content (images etc) locally to improve performance.

ColinYounger

· #20 · Jun 7, 2011

Because they never saw a performance problem? They've got bandwidth to spare, probably servers to spare as well. They just add more of one or the other and the problem goes away. I don't think it's even occurred to them that they would "need" local caching.

1 - 20 of 30 Posts

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