Tivo vs WMC Discussion

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STC

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#141

Post by STC » Wed Sep 23, 2015 5:39 pm

Drive swap is very easy, plug and play. The bootloader, for want of a better word and core startup files are in rom. The disk partition and filesystem gets created at the maximum size it can and then it's made operational for you.
The hardware is easy to open, but you need a torx. Can't remember which one at present.

For me it was the same poor PQ with minis (tried 2x) and Roamio (tried 2x). 2 different TVs, one LCD one plasma, no AVR, different HDMI cables and ports, different output resolutions yadda yadda. Same problem across the board.

My old TiVo HD (2 tuner cablecard) works completely fine on both TVs at any chosen output resolution.- great PQ matching an STB (as good as it can be for cable).

I gave up...
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IownFIVEechos

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#142

Post by IownFIVEechos » Thu Oct 01, 2015 2:37 pm

Looking into the new BOLT. Wow does it have some weird things going on. The Commercial Skip is actually man made. By man made I mean TiVo employees actual have to add the positions to the program for the skipping. You can not skip before the show is over (from its original broadcast - probably east coast) for this reason. Also only available on certain stations because of this. Also how can you get the better resolution with the mini's? Guess a new one will come out soon? And the fee is bad news. So Microsoft really dropped the ball, they had the best DVR in town and could have made a Tivo type device that ruled the world. :(

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STC

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#143

Post by STC » Thu Oct 01, 2015 3:42 pm

What's with these zany box designs?!

This one looks like it was left on the stove for a while...
I might try this out in the near future and test the cable PQ. Hopefully newer minis are also going to be released.

It's only a 4x tuner model?

New equipment using cableCARD continues past 2015!
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1454

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#144

Post by 1454 » Mon Oct 12, 2015 3:55 am

IownFIVEechos wrote:Looking into the new BOLT. Wow does it have some weird things going on. The Commercial Skip is actually man made. By man made I mean TiVo employees actual have to add the positions to the program for the skipping. You can not skip before the show is over (from its original broadcast - probably east coast) for this reason. Also only available on certain stations because of this. Also how can you get the better resolution with the mini's? Guess a new one will come out soon? And the fee is bad news. So Microsoft really dropped the ball, they had the best DVR in town and could have made a Tivo type device that ruled the world. :(
That's what gets me. I bought a tivo roamio on the promo and a mini. It took me a week to figure out the switch I was using made it where I couldn't connect the mini to the roamio, and then I had issues with connecting to tivo service. I love one pass and unified search, but the on screen guide is hideous. WMC was beautiful. And all you had to do was hit up and down. Tivo adds an extra step... Why? Plus you can only see like 3 channels. Where on WMC I have 8(configured) in the onscreen guide.

If windows had just marketed it, it would have been a success. Then if they had added a unified search it would have been all anyone could ask for. I still have both running, with the tivo as my primary for now, but WMC was/is so much better and user friendly. Not to mention, it was baked in to w7. Now they are doing everything they can to get everyone to abandon it.

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#145

Post by Ed  » Mon Oct 12, 2015 4:22 am

1454 wrote:
IownFIVEechos wrote:Looking into the new BOLT. Wow does it have some weird things going on. The Commercial Skip is actually man made. By man made I mean TiVo employees actual have to add the positions to the program for the skipping. You can not skip before the show is over (from its original broadcast - probably east coast) for this reason. Also only available on certain stations because of this. Also how can you get the better resolution with the mini's? Guess a new one will come out soon? And the fee is bad news. So Microsoft really dropped the ball, they had the best DVR in town and could have made a Tivo type device that ruled the world. :(
That's what gets me. I bought a tivo roamio on the promo and a mini. It took me a week to figure out the switch I was using made it where I couldn't connect the mini to the roamio, and then I had issues with connecting to tivo service. I love one pass and unified search, but the on screen guide is hideous. WMC was beautiful. And all you had to do was hit up and down. Tivo adds an extra step... Why? Plus you can only see like 3 channels. Where on WMC I have 8(configured) in the onscreen guide.

If windows had just marketed it, it would have been a success. Then if they had added a unified search it would have been all anyone could ask for. I still have both running, with the tivo as my primary for now, but WMC was/is so much better and user friendly. Not to mention, it was baked in to w7. Now they are doing everything they can to get everyone to abandon it.
Tivo has the option to use a Classic grid EPG, here's mine (zoomed in on crappy tablet camera, sorry):

Image

Has 8 rows - update to the Minis to include channel logos in the guide has been hitting devices this week already based on user reports. Rest of your issues sound LAN specific.

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#146

Post by mdavej » Mon Oct 12, 2015 4:49 am

1454, are you talking about the mini guide on WMC that popped up when you hit up/down. I never really used it (I don't really channel surf much), so I don't miss it. Since Tivo shows the video un-obscured by the guide, there's really no point in the guide popup, which is far more feature rich on Tivo anyway (switch tuners on the fly with full buffering on all). I have one button access to the full guide or popup guide. Just have to set some defaults.

I had my WMC guide set to 11 lines x 3 hrs, but I now like Tivo's default view better than the grid since it gives me info I can actually absorb in a glance. Then I up/down arrow for more detail. Nicely done by Tivo, IMO.

Looking forward to the channel logos coming soon. I miss those, but I don't miss all the work I had to do to keep mine up to date. I probably made 50 custom logos when I had WMC between all the missing local sub channels and the logo changes over the past few years.

Best of all, in the few months since I've had Tivo, I haven't had any missed recordings, missing guide data, missing thumbnails, missing categories, missing Netflix, PC reboots, tuner reboots, manual updates, extender re-pairing, or any of the other nonsense I had to deal with frequently on a PC. And DVR management over the web actually works.

1454

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#147

Post by 1454 » Mon Oct 12, 2015 11:01 am

Ed  wrote:
1454 wrote:
IownFIVEechos wrote:Looking into the new BOLT. Wow does it have some weird things going on. The Commercial Skip is actually man made. By man made I mean TiVo employees actual have to add the positions to the program for the skipping. You can not skip before the show is over (from its original broadcast - probably east coast) for this reason. Also only available on certain stations because of this. Also how can you get the better resolution with the mini's? Guess a new one will come out soon? And the fee is bad news. So Microsoft really dropped the ball, they had the best DVR in town and could have made a Tivo type device that ruled the world. :(
That's what gets me. I bought a tivo roamio on the promo and a mini. It took me a week to figure out the switch I was using made it where I couldn't connect the mini to the roamio, and then I had issues with connecting to tivo service. I love one pass and unified search, but the on screen guide is hideous. WMC was beautiful. And all you had to do was hit up and down. Tivo adds an extra step... Why? Plus you can only see like 3 channels. Where on WMC I have 8(configured) in the onscreen guide.

If windows had just marketed it, it would have been a success. Then if they had added a unified search it would have been all anyone could ask for. I still have both running, with the tivo as my primary for now, but WMC was/is so much better and user friendly. Not to mention, it was baked in to w7. Now they are doing everything they can to get everyone to abandon it.
Tivo has the option to use a Classic grid EPG, here's mine (zoomed in on crappy tablet camera, sorry):

Image

Has 8 rows - update to the Minis to include channel logos in the guide has been hitting devices this week already based on user reports. Rest of your issues sound LAN specific.
Hi ed,

I was talking about the popup guide while watching TV. I have used the regular guide too, just not often.

1454

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#148

Post by 1454 » Mon Oct 12, 2015 11:11 am

mdavej wrote:1454, are you talking about the mini guide on WMC that popped up when you hit up/down. I never really used it (I don't really channel surf much), so I don't miss it. Since Tivo shows the video un-obscured by the guide, there's really no point in the guide popup, which is far more feature rich on Tivo anyway (switch tuners on the fly with full buffering on all). I have one button access to the full guide or popup guide. Just have to set some defaults.

I had my WMC guide set to 11 lines x 3 hrs, but I now like Tivo's default view better than the grid since it gives me info I can actually absorb in a glance. Then I up/down arrow for more detail. Nicely done by Tivo, IMO.

Looking forward to the channel logos coming soon. I miss those, but I don't miss all the work I had to do to keep mine up to date. I probably made 50 custom logos when I had WMC between all the missing local sub channels and the logo changes over the past few years.

Best of all, in the few months since I've had Tivo, I haven't had any missed recordings, missing guide data, missing thumbnails, missing categories, missing Netflix, PC reboots, tuner reboots, manual updates, extender re-pairing, or any of the other nonsense I had to deal with frequently on a PC. And DVR management over the web actually works.
Yes, that is what I was talking about. Also, to see what's on that channel as far as football goes you have to then hit select again. I really don't watch much actual TV, just live college football. She uses it to watch regular tv.

I guess I never had the issues you had with extenders. I have never re-paired my Xbox. I also had both my tivo and wmc miss recordings starting last Sunday, so I assume it was a twc update that caused it. The mini is very finicky to the type of switch it is on, something I never had an issue with using wmc. I'm sending back 100 dollars worth of dlink and tp link switches right now to Amazon because they wouldn't work with the mini/roamio. I'm not saying it's a bad device, I just feel a little better engineering could have gone into a device that they want you to pay a monthly fee for. (I did buy the lifetime sub, though) but to each their own.

mdavej

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#149

Post by mdavej » Mon Oct 12, 2015 3:44 pm

1454 wrote:Yes, that is what I was talking about. Also, to see what's on that channel as far as football goes you have to then hit select again. I really don't watch much actual TV, just live college football. She uses it to watch regular tv..
Then you should really love your 4 (or 6) live buffers now. That's something I really missed going from DirecTV to WMC. I'm glad to have it back. So now just get a game going on each tuner, then one press of LiveTV cycles among them. You can pause each as you go so you don't miss anything, or just record them all and chase playback. Once you get used to it, the Tivo way seems much more efficient and logical, to me anyway.

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