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smackfu
Jun 7, 2004

I've had a Tivo forever, and I sure do like my Series 2 DT. But all the web stuff is so slow and kind of half-assed. Like there is lots of lag, and the backgrounds look like crap. Does it work better on the HD models?

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smackfu
Jun 7, 2004

chemosh6969 posted:

What kind of web stuff?
The Amazon stuff, the new VOD stuff, all the web services from Yahoo.

Even some of the "built-in" stuff like the swivel search is laggy. It seems like maybe they are using an interpreted language or something for the newer screens and the CPU just can't keep up.

smackfu
Jun 7, 2004

I cracked and bought a Tivo HD. $200 is apparently cheap enough for me, especially since you can now add storage to these things.

Sad thing is that it's only hooked up to an antenna at the moment. Woo broadcast! Still debating whether it's worth it to get Comcast.

How do people have their mode set? I have it set to Native at the moment, which shows everything in whatever it is and the menus in 720p. But I get an annoying black screen and "No Signal" for a sec when it switches. The other option would be 1080i Forced but it seems a shame to convert 720p. Thoughts?

(I wish it was like XBMC, which just does 1080p Forced.)

smackfu fucked around with this message at 21:35 on Jul 10, 2009

smackfu
Jun 7, 2004

I just signed up for Comcast and got them to setup the Cablecard for my Tivo. It works great actually, although the installer gave me two S-Cards from 2006 that the guy found in a box in the warehouse. WTF? He said they were out of M-Cards but I think he just didn't know where to look since who keeps stock from 2006 around?

It beats the hell out of the Comcast DVR I have sitting next to it. Why would they make HD DVR that shows the channel grid in SD resolution? That just makes no sense. (Pretty dumb, but Comcast DVR was included on this package and it's useful as a 3rd tuner.)

smackfu
Jun 7, 2004

complex posted:

If Comcast is like Cablevision they will charge you the same amount for an S Card as they do for an M Card.

So, that Comcast installer is making you pay twice as much as you should be for Cablecards.
I haven't gotten my first bill yet so they may do that, although I'm pretty sure the first card is included.

smackfu
Jun 7, 2004

It turns out Comcast decided to charge me for 2 additional outlets for the two cable-cards in my Tivo, at a price of $7 per month each. Not looking forward to arguing with them over that.

smackfu
Jun 7, 2004

Has anybody found a site with the WD 1 TB drive extender in stock? Other than Tivo, who wants $199, which is a bit pricier than Amazon's $129.

smackfu
Jun 7, 2004

No, not that urgent. I really just wish Amazon had them in stock.

Does anyone else feel like Tivo has just been coasting for the last few years? The interface bits that everyone loves goes all the way back to the Series 1, and the new bits that they've added over time have been real hackjobs. It seems like they decided to make everything web-based because it was easier or something and the performance is awful. Plus it's random resolutions on the Tivo HD: some is awful-looking SD, but then YouTube is 480p or something. When they started, it felt like they analyzed every scenario and designed the interface to make it as easy as possible. Now it feels like they do the bare minimum and are all about adding new features and ads.

smackfu
Jun 7, 2004

bull3964 posted:

That's not how Tivo works. It takes the MPEG2 transport stream and writes it directly to the hard drive. It doesn't do any encoding of HD material. The only encoding it does is SD analog stuff.
Yeah, the funny bit is that back when Tivo came out back in 2000, the SD encoding was the hard part, and they used a special encoding chip to do it in realtime. I don't think even a desktop CPU could handle it back then.

Dr. Gaius Baltar posted:

Today, my bill became available on comcast.com, and just as I feared, Comcast had found a way to screw it up, but this was by far the most creative Comcast billing screwup I've experienced.
This is how my Comcast bill comes through, for one Tivo HD at one outlet. It's kind of unusual because I can't remove the DVR from my bundle without losing the bundle, even though I'm not using it, so that uses up the first included outlet. And I guess the S-cards make it two outlets instead of one, but I would have to pay for a tech to fix that (and it's 50/50 they would screw up my service in the process. These Comcast techs seriously hate CableCard.)

smackfu
Jun 7, 2004

It is remarkable how terrible the Comcast DVRs are. Is this because of patents? Because the features that are missing just seem so simple to implement. (Besides the whole SD interface on a HD box crap.)

smackfu
Jun 7, 2004

The Tivo Premier is $299 if you don't want a contract? What the heck are they putting in that box?

I see they now have a $0 + $20 / month contract plan, but still. A DVR really shouldn't be that complicated nowadays, especially compared to the original Tivos.

smackfu
Jun 7, 2004

After being Tivo-less for a while, I think we are going to give it another try. Our current DirectTV is expensive and only SD and local channels are super flakey. I'm sure we could pay them more to make it better, but we realized we don't watch many cable channels anyways, and we are out of contract now. Our current condo actually gets great OTA reception, so we are planning to use the Tivo for OTA only... a bit of overkill, but not too expensive really.

I'm just shocked that Tivo Premiere still doesn't have built-in wireless. That's pretty sad for 2013. And I'm not paying $60 for a wireless adapter, for something that could cost Tivo a couple of bucks to build in. I guess I'll dig up my old router from the closet. 500 GB hard drives also seems to be cheaping out, and that's the brand new Premiere. I guess some things don't change much in Tivo land.

smackfu
Jun 7, 2004

I was going to ask how Tivo justifies including wireless for free in the new Tivo mini for $100.

But that box doesn't even support wireless at all. WTF. Again, it's 2013, not 2003.

I shouldn't really be surprised at Tivo making stupid hardware moves at this point.

smackfu
Jun 7, 2004

qirex posted:

Between the tuner requirement, no wireless and a service fee I'm not sure why they bothered.

From my digging, it seems like this thing was made for DirecTV, as their competitor to Dish's Hopper/Joey system, and then it was turned into a retail product. Since it's really intended to use coax via MoCA for the networking, it just sends the raw TV data stream around, which is too much data for most wireless networks to handle.

It matches up pretty perfectly to the Joey, actually: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2403071,00.asp

The service fee seems like the big misstep though. It's only subsidized by $50 when they sell it for $99, and it's not clear what that $6 a month is even getting you.

smackfu fucked around with this message at 14:36 on Mar 26, 2013

smackfu
Jun 7, 2004

kitten smoothie posted:

No, I'm dense, and that did not even occur to me. This is a little nuts, they're going for $450 or more.
Well, if you bought that new, it would be $150 + $500, right?

smackfu
Jun 7, 2004

Brock Landers posted:

While I agree with the sentiment, the simple fact is that wireless just doesn't have the bandwidth to support more than one stable stream if both tivos are wireless.

Well, not a raw stream, but you can certainly stream 720p MP4 video over wireless. I do it from iTunes to my Apple TV everyday. Yes, you would probably need a dedicated video encoder chip, but that's nothing new for Tivo.

smackfu
Jun 7, 2004

We recently got a Tivo, and it is connected to a receiver then to a TV. We've had a few times recently where the TV is off, receiver is left on accidentally, and about 30 minutes after we go to bed, it starts blaring live TV.

Any ways to fix this? Ideally, it would just not ever switch back to live TV.

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smackfu
Jun 7, 2004

It's just shocking that they won't spend the measly amount of money to update the screens. It's like a skeleton crew over there.

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