Comments on: Charter TiVo – Today Ft. Worth, TX, Tomorrow the World!

By: Charter Provides An Extensive Video Peak at TiVo Premiere from Charter | Gizmo Lovers Blog

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 10:55:50 +0000

[...] to be ramping up their TiVo-related efforts. They’re already providing the TiVo Premiere to customers in Fort Worth, TX, and now they’ve posted two long-form videos explaining TiVo to their customers. The first [...]

By: MegaZone

MegaZone — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 20:28:00 +0000

Cisco STA1520. And the issues are often enough to be annoying but not often enough to justify paying a monthly fee for the box. Most of what I record is cable shows and they re-air so even if it glitches I generally just record the next airing and don’t care. I always go lifetime on TiVo, and if I switched to Charter I’d have to pay them monthly for their box indefinitely. That’d end up costing me a heck of a lot more than the issue is worth to fix.

I haven’t tried restarting it regularly but I don’t think it’d matter. There is no rhyme or reason to it, no pattern of up-time related issues. It seems more likely tied to firmware updates being pushed. And some of the glitches are transient – where it misses a recording do to ‘video signal unavailable’ but records content on other side of the missing show – and even at the same time on the other tuner. I doubt a restart would do anything for those.

There have been a couple of instances where I missed something that I cared enough about, but for those I just hit Amazon or Hulu Plus. I seem to always have Amazon Instant Video credits due to purchases I make getting them as a bonus, and my fiancee subscribes to Hulu Plus so I just piggyback on her account if I need to. I’ll check legit sources first – Amazon, Hulu, network websites, etc. (We, rather she since I never subscribed, dumped Netflix when they increased pricing.) But you might be surprised at how much ends up on YouTube, if only for a limited time until it is yanked.

For all I know it could be my TiVo – I’ll see if the Elite I have to review now experiences the same issues as my S3. Some of the issues could also be with the wiring – crosstalk or interference with the SDV signalling perhaps. All I can really be certain of is that it is an SDV-related problem.

By: Fanfoot

Fanfoot — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 20:14:00 +0000

Hey Mega, what Tuning Adapter does Charter use? Seems likely to be Cisco given their preponderance in SDV accounts for some reason. I’m surprised something that causes you to lose recordings with regularity wouldn’t be the #1 thing you’d want fixed. How often do the things lock up? Have you tried just rebooting them every night at say 3am using a digital timer?

By: Fanfoot

Fanfoot — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 20:11:00 +0000

Yup. Very similar. For an SDV channel you request it, and if nobody in your area is streaming the channel at the moment, it assigns a channel first. Then it tells you the channel to tune to (freq X, channel within multiplex Y). And maybe a heartbeat saying you’re still watching or something. For VOD it doesn’t matter if anybody else is watching since each session is unique, but they assign you a channel and you tune to it. In both cases the information could CLEARLY flow over IP instead of using the SDV tuning adapter back channel. And hopefully all of these companies will see the writing on the wall and start supporting IP as a protocol for this soon.

By: Tech Wizard

Tech Wizard — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 01:19:00 +0000

Hopefully Comcast will do the same for their retail support of the Premiere platform. This would be huge news. If TiVo was savvy enough to have this in their agreements that would be great.

By: Bryan Phx

Bryan Phx — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 11:41:00 +0000

Hopefully Cox will be next to launch VOD, I still have my fingers crossed. I agree that it would also be nice to see SDV tuning requests via IP. It should not be a major leap from VOD requests to SDV requests.

By: Bryan Phx

Bryan Phx — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 11:30:00 +0000

Thanks MegaZone, Jason @a03b1d14db258e859e49e9ba04da25d5:disqus RCN also confirmed the same answers:
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r26518986-TiVo-Technical-Questions-regarding-RCN-VOD-on-a-TiVo.

By: MegaZone

MegaZone — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 10:04:00 +0000

1. I’m not sure which system(s) Charter uses, but TiVo has implemented support for both SeaChange and ARRIS VOD systems.

2. Correct.

3. Via one of the tuners. To the best of my knowledge it is just like VOD on a non-TiVo STB, delivered over a QAM channel.

4. I believe Charter is still using MPEG2 for all content, but I couldn’t say for certain. The TiVo HW can handle MPEG2, MPEG4/H.264, and WMV9/VC-1.

5. It is the same VOD content as non-TiVo STBs.

In theory a cable MSO could deliver MPEG4 to compatible STBs, TiVo and non-TiVo, and save bandwidth. The only thing keeping them tied to MPEG2 is legacy STBs which can’t handle MPEG4.

By: Bryan Phx

Bryan Phx — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 09:34:00 +0000

Technical Questions regarding MSO VOD on a TiVo…

1) Is the VOD client on the TiVo SeaChange?

2) The content request is sent over IP, correct?

3) What is the actual VOD content delivery method, via IP, or via one of the TiVo’s tuners.

4) What is the VOD stream mpeg2 or mpeg4 or something else?

5) Is the available VOD offerings the same as with a cable STB?
The cable STB is receiving an mpeg2 video feed and using a tuner for delivery. So are the MSOs encoding to some other format for the TiVo?