But most of it is probably DB stuff, but, ... As far as I can see, it's just slow.


Mine isn't slow at all... but since I don't have cable, and can receive only five channels, that might explain a lot.

tanstaafl.

Yeah, I do that already.

So are you saying your Series 2 HD tivo doesn't paint its channel guide screens really slow?

When I say slow, I mean that when I page through the channel guide, a given page will take anywhere from 2 seconds to 20 seconds to render. While I agree that 2 seconds might not be considered slow, I think a 2d flat screen render of some text and a grid shoud be instantaneous and that even 2 seconds is unacceptable.

(By contrast my Samsung HD receiver would render every page of its channel guide instantaneously, and it displayed exactly the same information and the same channel set.)

The only problem I have with my Tivo is the changing of channels, takes for ever. Since I have comcast and thier cable box requires me to use the IR extenders instead of a serial cable. its such a pain to hit the channel up and wait for like 5-10 seconds .

I don't know which guide is which, but the one I use is the one where I can see a grid of what's on all at once, instead of seeing a list of the programs on only one channel at a time.

The reason I prefer the grid is because it's easier to read, easier to see what's on "right now" for large groups of channels, and requires less brain work to make a decision about what to watch.

I agree that the other list guide is much faster, and I definitely use that when I'm trying to find a specific program to record.

I'm probably wrong, but I believe the guide you are using is the DirecTV guide, and I thought the difference was that that guide has its information downloaded from the satellite every time you move within it. If that's the case, then it wouldn't necessarily be a hardware issue with the Tivo, just an issue that they don't give you the choice of using both styles with the Tivo information.

The problem is that I like both guides equally, but they do seem to function better depending on the situation. I tend to watch the same channels all the time, so with the Tivo guide open I can simply go to each channel and see what will be on for nearly the rest of the day in one glance. However, with the grid-style DirecTV guide, I can look at all the networks or all the HBOs at once and see what's on all of them in the next couple hours. I think I prefer the Tivo guide because I rarely find myself in the second situation, and if I do, I can just click through them.

The guide data is downloaded from satelite during the course of the day and is stored in a database on the hard drive. Whenever you move through the guide in any view mode, it has to query the database for a selected range of content so it can display it. What I dont know if how far ahead they extend the query and how well the cache individual queries, if at all. There is a lot more data to be displayed and a more complicated query used, when using the DirecTV-style guide (the one I prefer as well).

Any time you're looking at TV listings data, regardless of display mode (Guide, Search, etc...) it's looking into the same listings database and just using different queries to bring up the matches. Anyone remember the database question post I made many many months ago with the lame "recipe book" example? Well it was for TV data usage.

Using a cachecard on Series1 machines improves all DB access times, so you get (MUCH) faster guide usage, much faster browsing of saved searches, now playing, season passes, etc..

Bruno