TiVo Roamio Pro: First Impressions

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by flavius

Just yesterday I finished converting everything in SageTV that I intend to keep - altogether around 200 movies and TV show episodes. That's a lot of work and and about half of it hasn't been imported yet.

iOS APP
That's all good so far, but what really excites me the most is the TiVo streaming app. It's quite nice to look at and works very reliably. I find myself using it all the time. I tried all kinds of things to confuse it and get it to crash - no success yet. I find that amazing given the complexities of wireless streaming. I guess a lot of that stability is due to my luck of having a fast and stable wireless network.

ANDROID APP
So, I installed that too, since I got my self an android phone recently, running 4.2.2 (I think).

hi - sorry, not following a couple of things: why are you converting Sage material - can it be accessed from the new Tivo's if converted? Can the Roamio play material on a home server? The Mini's as well?
And the iOS & Android apps...are these both limited to use with the Roamio as well, or can they be used to access material on any Tivo?
thanks

[flavius]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

hi - sorry, not following a couple of things: why are you converting Sage material - can it be accessed from the new Tivo's if converted? Can the Roamio play material on a home server?

I believe so. There's software for that that I have mentioned in a previous post in this thread - but I have not yet had a change to explore that. What I'm doing right now is importing my Sage shows into iTunes as my family has asked me to make them available. I will update my post above to avoid confusion.

The Mini's as well?
And the iOS & Android apps...are these both limited to use with the Roamio as well, or can they be used to access material on any Tivo?
thanks

Mini and app can be used with any of your household Roamios. When used with older TiVo models I'm not certain which are supported and how. You have to go to http://www.tivocommunity.com to find out.

[tvmaster2]

ok, thanks. checked the TiVo.com site, and yes, you need either a Roamio or .a Stream device for remote playback
and the software is downloadable from TiVo.com, NOT the iTunes Store.

[flavius]

Here's the first significant drawback - as far as I am concerned:

When attaching an external drive to a TiVo the engine starts spreading every recording over both drives, so that in the event of failure of that external drive you will lose all your recordings made after it was connected. This behavior was implemented due the cable card regulations not allowing to store a full recording to an attached device.

[SHS]

INTERFACE
I had read about TiVo's investment in a better UI experience before - and I can definitely tell you the UI on the Roamio is just as fast and snappy if not faster as on my HD300 while fetching a lot more data along the way.

Still look like the same old carpee interface to me

Let see price is steep WoW
TiVo Roamio Pro $600
Monthly 1-year commitment month-to-month there after $15 x12 $180 a year
or pay
Product Lifetime Pay once for the life of your TiVo $500 which can not be transferred to another TiVo device not even a same model replacement device.
And doesn't count and Mini Clients
To mini significant drawback with TiVo I think I stick with my SageTV Server.
Why do you think that ReplayTV failed and end up in DirecTV hands in first place and it just matter of time and even TiVo will be long gone forgotten memory to.

[davefred99]

Originally Posted by SHS

Still look like the same old carpee interface to me

Let see price is steep WoW
TiVo Roamio Pro $600
Monthly 1-year commitment month-to-month there after $15 x12 $180 a year
or pay
Product Lifetime Pay once for the life of your TiVo $500 which can not be transferred to another TiVo device not even a same model replacement device.
And doesn't count and Mini Clients
To mini significant drawback with TiVo I think I stick with my SageTV Server.
Why do you think that ReplayTV failed and end up in DirecTV hands in first place and it just matter of time and even TiVo will be long gone forgotten memory to.

I agree the Monthly fee is outrageous especially since it is a per device and not per account. The lifetime plan is designed such that as soon as you want or try something new your done.

I am not as upset about the equipment cost if it was a onetime cost and or the subscription fees for the guide data were only a few bucks a month.

[flavius]

I shouldn't do this in this thread but let me share what the financial side of things looks like for me:

Currently, I have:

- 1 Comcast DVR for backup recording of favorite shows (too many failed recordings in Sage)
- 1 cable box for HD-PVR
- 1 cable box for EyeTV HD (records premium channel shows into iTunes)
- 1 cable card in HDHR Prime
- 3 Sage TV extenders
- 1 SageTV server

I plan on replacing this with:

- 1 TiVo Roamio
- 2 TiVo Mini
- 1 cable card in the Roamio

The TiVo devices have set me back $800. I think I can recoup at least some of that by selling my three extenders, the licenses and the Prime. Monthly, I'll be paying about the same or a little less.

So, in my case this transition makes sense even financially.

I started this thread, however, to share the experiences of my transition from Sage to TiVo - actually back to TiVo after running SageTV for eight years. Stay tuned.

[tmiranda]

Maybe I missed it someplace, but how do the mini's connect to the Roamio? Ethernet, coax, wireless?

[flavius]

Wireless is not supported but ethernet and MoCa - the Roamio Pro can put the MoCa network up - and that could be all you need, but I'm not certain - however, that should be easy enough to find out (edit: that's all you need).

I do have my Minis connected with dedicated wireless bridges which works very well in my case - even fast forwarding is almost as good as on the hardwired Roamio itself.

[camTexas]

I was also looking at the Roamio but seem to see different feedback out there on support for playing home media from a NAS (unRaid in my case) as well as hearing that dynamic tuning wasn't working between the Roamio and Mini's (Mini locks up one of the tuners causing conflicts). Also a sleep mode for the Mini that forces you to press the remote within 90 min to keep it playing or it will stop and go to screen saver mode). Any thoughts here?

[flavius]

I don't mind the sleep mode. I doubt that I will see a lot of it - unless I fall asleep while watching the Oscars.

It only applies to live tv (which we don't watch). But I can see why people would prefer it to be configurable.

If all tuners are busy with scheduled recordings the Mini will say so. In case a tuner is needed for a scheduled recording the Mini users will see a screen very similar to the Sage message (so I have read). I only have two Minis and six tuners now. We also have two iPads, but nobody really watches live tv in our house.

I will test this, though - having four concurrent live tv streams and see what the recording engine does.

Playback from other sources I haven't had to chance to setup yet, its's on the list.

[flavius]

A MONTH OR SO LATER
I just completed a survey that TiVo sent me. It took about 10 minutes to complete it, but I was happy to do it and curious at the same time because I had been wondering if any of the issues that are being discussed over at tivocommunity.com would be included - and there was one in the survey:

• Some users experience unwanted reboots

I haven't seen the issue but there must be enough cases to put this into the survey.

Some 800+ recordings later I'm happy to report that the system just works. Frankly, I see no reason to not take the SageTV system down earlier than planned - especially since the family has been very accepting of the new system.


TODO
Not much, frankly. I'm quite busy at work right now, so I haven't found the time to test integration of content from other sources yet, but I'm still planning to try those solutions out - all of them.


WHAT DO I MISS
Too tired for this one now.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by flavius

I don't mind the sleep mode. I doubt that I will see a lot of it - unless I fall asleep while watching the Oscars.

It only applies to live tv (which we don't watch). But I can see why people would prefer it to be configurable.

If all tuners are busy with scheduled recordings the Mini will say so. In case a tuner is needed for a scheduled recording the Mini users will see a screen very similar to the Sage message (so I have read). I only have two Minis and six tuners now. We also have two iPads, but nobody really watches live tv in our house.

I will test this, though - having four concurrent live tv streams and see what the recording engine does.

Playback from other sources I haven't had to chance to setup yet, its's on the list.

do you have the four or six tuner model? how many cable cards are inserted I to the Roamio - I was under the assumption that cable cards are two-tuners maximum.
Also, do you know anything about the Streaming TiVo box? Can you watch Tivo recordings in a Starbucks with your setup, or is this where the Stream comes into play?

[flavius]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

do you have the four or six tuner model? how many cable cards are inserted I to the Roamio - I was under the assumption that cable cards are two-tuners maximum.
Also, do you know anything about the Streaming TiVo box? Can you watch Tivo recordings in a Starbucks with your setup, or is this where the Stream comes into play?

I have a six tuner model (one cable card) - those have the streaming built in. The Tivo stream is for the four tuner roamios and older tivos. And yes, later this year tivo users are supposed to be able to use their tivo app on the go (unprotected content only).

[MattHelm]

I'm still wondering how well it plays personal videos. I don't think I can give that part up, no matter what.

I still think it's funny that a device ~5 years old (HD200) can play back stuff that band new hardware, and companies that spend $,$$$,$$$,$$$ (add as many $ as you want) can't play back (high bit rate MKVs)!!!

[valnar]

I'm watching this thread with interest but I still think my Sage setup is tops. If my locals ever got encrypted though, I'd have to investigate alternatives and I think this would be it. Unfortunately I'd have a two-box solution on every TV.

Even if I didn't own Sage I'd end up with a two box solution. Something like the Dune or PCH would replace my HD-300's.

[phelme]

I guess I'm still not clear on this, can the Roamio play back SageTV recorded material from a NAS? And will it interpret rudimentary season info in the file name like "Survivor.S0xE0x.ts"?

[flavius]

^My project is finally winding down, so I should have some time this weekend to get pyTivo going.

[flavius]

pyTivo FOR MAC

I pretty much followed the instructions (as much as they still apply today) from this thread:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb...28#post8960628

I expected some protracted affair after reading the thread in detail but it didn't take much time at all to get it up and running. Using the web browser you assign one or more directories where you have stuff on your computer which will then appear in your TiVo main menu, several categories are supported - I only played with movies. Hitting that directory from your TiVo interface will present a list of items (no meta data supported). You can start the transfer of the item to the TiVo and begin playback while the transfer is going on.

I tried the main iTunes format, some Sage recordings and MKV - all played back just fine.

If you feed your TiVo credentials and your media key to pyTiVo you can push recordings to your computer - only those of course that are not protected - and you need software to strip the TiVo playback protection - which is available and legal. I used the converter that comes with Toast. There are also some format restrictions that Toast applies for those conversions but I'm no certain that other available solutions have those as well. More about that when I try out the other stuff.

DO I NEED pyTiVo?

No. I have already moved everything from Sage TV that I kept into iTunes and that was that. This didn't take long and it wasn't very labor intensive. And there won't be any new recordings from other sources since I took down the SageTV server two days ago.

So to be clear: anybody who wants to go TiVo needs to be aware that *copy once* content can only be used with the device it was recorded with (TiVo) or recorded for - that's the associated streaming devices (apps and Mini) - within a local network. Content not protected that way you can download and take with you on you travels or stream (later this year) from your TiVo at home.

Notes: transfer to and from the TiVo is fast - between 80 and 90 Mb/s. The TiVo was recording and playing back multiple shows at the same time and I didn't notice any side effect from my use of pyTivo. The pyTivo web interface is very bare bones but functional. The pyTivo package is still being maintained - but there's some other stuff I will try out next.

There is of course a Windows version of pyTivo which no doubt will also be python based.

[flavius]

OTHER INTERESTING STUFF

TiVo for Plex
There appears to be a TiVo plugin for Plex that allowed streaming from a TiVo box. It's currently broken and needs a new maintainer.

cTiVo
https://code.google.com/p/ctivo/

cTiVo is a free Mac application to download shows from your TiVo (Premiere, HD, S3 or S2 devices) and convert them to many popular formats and devices. Its goal is to be extremely simple to set up and use, but very flexible.

cTiVo provides complete hands-off operation: once you choose or subscribe to your shows, everything else is automated. For example, after you've set it up, every morning, you will find all your favorite shows from your !TiVos loaded onto your iPhone or iPad. And although using cTiVo is very easy, you also have complete control over what it does.

cTiVo is inspired by the great work done on iTiVo, but written in Cocoa/Objective C for better performance and compatibility.

kmttg
http://sourceforge.net/projects/kmttg/ and http://sourceforge.net/p/kmttg/wiki/Home/

kmttg is a Java based program I wrote to facilitate TivoToGo (TTG) transfers that can download, create pyTivo metadata, decrypt, run comskip & comcut (commercial detection and removal), create closed captions files and re-encode multiple shows you select from your Tivos all automatically. The program also has the capability to transfer and process shows automatically from your Tivos based on titles and keywords you setup.
You can select one or more shows at a time and then with one click of a button the program will download all the selected items, with the options of also automatically creating a metadata file for pyTivo, decrypting .TiVo files to .mpg, running comskip (commercial detection and removal program), and automatically re-encoding to a more portable format using mencoder, ffmpeg or any other command line encoder of your choosing. The program queues up multiple jobs and displays time, size and speed statistics for ongoing jobs.
kmttg also has advanced Remote Control capabilities including option for backing up season passes to disk for series 4 units and more recently also for series 3 TiVo units. See the [remote_control] Wiki page for more details and also see screenshots below.
kmttg also has a Disk Usage analysis window with a Pie Chart breaking down disk usage by category as well as a table summarizing disk use per channel recorded as well as bit rates (a measure of quality) per channel.
Also has ability to capture Slingbox video output directly on the LAN or the WAN. See the [slingbox_capture] Wiki page for details on setting up and using that capability.
This program is known to run on most Windows flavors starting with XP, Mac OSX, Linux (various distributions) and pretty much any OS supporting Java Runtime Environment. The program relies heavily on 3rd party tools not all of which may be available for a particular OS (all available on Windows platform). It will automatically install many of the required tools for Windows and Mac platforms so you don't need to install them manually.

I'll try kmttg next.