How would you change the TiVo Premiere?
By Darren Murph 
posted April 23rd 2010 10:04PM
posted April 23rd 2010 10:04PM
posted April 23rd 2010 10:04PM
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Ok....Tivo.......I've been a big fan and user since the very first box. However, this new box almost makes me want to go to the cable companies box.....Very Frustrating!
Pros:
--Nice HD UI....thats it.
Cons:
--F#$*ing cablecard doesn't work.....cable company has been out 4 times with three different cards and 10 hours of nothing! So....I have this great looking box without the ability to get high-def channels....Great!
--Switches from HD UI to the original UI...why??
--No Pandora...like originally advertised.
--HULU??
--Tru2way??.....On-demand programing.
There needs to be an update soon.....As of now the series 3 is a better box.
@andrewburrow:
The cable cards not working are the cable cards themselves. This is one of the reasons cable cards failed, they never work. This isn't the TiVo's fault.
How to change the Premiere? Oh TiVo, you had the whole world in the palm of your hand, and managed to let a great opportunity slip away.
The first thing to do to fix or improve the Premiere is to fire the executive team, including that hack running the show, who came up with it.
Then, once we have people working at TiVo who are passionate about making great tech products (instead of getting in bed with cable providers and slinging lawsuits) we can talk specifics;
1. Three tuners.
2. Streaming. Both streaming of internet content and the ability to stream between TiVo boxes and stream feeds to my laptop, my iPad, and maybe some $99 box like the WD Live sitting on a TV in another room.
3. Complete top to bottom UI re-write.... get rid of the jerky menu transitions between SD and HD, it's laughable and looks like a half baked beta effort.
4. New, smart apps that take advantage of HD real estate for things like Netflix, etc.
5. New content partnerships, Hulu with a $10 a month subscription for lots of episodes would have been the killer feature on the TiVo. TiVo should have done this even if it meant giving away 1/2 of their future earnings.
TiVo really had the opportunity to change the way we watch TV and kill our outdated piece of crap cable boxes (not to mention getting rid of our over priced crappy cable subscriptions).
Instead TiVo took their last box, slapped a couple of buggy HD menus on it and started crowing about how they've reinvented the DVR.
Simply laughable. I can only hope that Moxi, or someone else with some tech common sense (Google, Apple?) either buys them or comes out with a better product and puts them out of their misery.
I just set mine up yesterday (waiting on the Comcast guy now for the CableCard). I know I need to run Ethernet cable to get this thing up to full speed, but I agree with others that a 802.11a/b/n card should be part of it. And if not, then we should be able to use any dongle to get it working, not their "special" version.
And that snappy QWERTY remote - I still gotta buy that too? WTF?
I sure hope this TiVo has the horsepower to keep it working well for a long time - my S2 was replaced by an S3 the day it came out; it developed a bug after a couple of years, so we upped to HD XL, somewhat disappointed that the entire UI was still old style. If this one gets dated quickly I'll be seriously disappointed, but, again, the Moto box everyone else has from Comcast is really shockingly crappy.
I don't see any functional difference between TiVo Premier and HD. I would be compelled to upgrade if it included a browser with full video coded support so I could play video directly from any web source. The qwerty keyboard remote should be standard, and WiFi should be built in. And if they are keeping the subscription service model, lifetime subscriptions should be transferable when upgrading to new models.
TiVo reminds me a lot of AOL when they were still really big, just before they let it all slip away with poor decisions.
This is going the right direction, but it will not succeed. I have been using a Tivo for many years now. But I am tired of paying about $70 a month for 1-2 hours of viewing per day. I am working hard to cut the cable - and it is looking very close to reality for me. Over the air HD, Hulu and Netflix seem to take care of everything, all for $10/mo plus any movie. So now they want $200 PLUS a monthly fee PLUS the cable fee? Vs. $10? Not a chance....I can use one of my old computers as a media center for maybe $100 of stuff.
Otherwise forget it - which is what I am going to do.
Well Tivo did no one any favors by releasing Premier before the lag issue was solved. Its a pain to use compared to the earlier S3. I find the lack of total HD UI a pain too, as if it would be hard to code that! Overall the product seems very half baked , extremely laggy, and minus anything that screams cool glad I got it. 4 tuners, fast cached UI, A CLOCK ON THE FRONT THANK YOU! , and options to turn off the ad banner on the HD UI main page. There are so many very very simple things that Tivo didn't do, it makes me wonder who the moron was in charge of design. Why not wait until you got the code zippy fast , all HD menus? How freakin' hard is that, no ones going to die waiting for that. Don't release half baked goods and piss everyone off!
Get a clue tivo
TiVo needs to add some features that improve the core TiVo experience if they want to get existing users to upgrade. I'd love to see true multi-room integration, with a unified Now Playing List, a unified ToDo list, stream (instead of transfer) of recorded shows, and coordinated use of tuners. Basically, I want the same TiVo experience no matter which TV I'm at, rather than coordinating multiple season passes, deleting on multiple TiVos, and missing shows because one TiVo was recording and the others were doing nothing.
Also, I'd like to receive e-mail notification of conflicts and be able to resolve those issues via the web. I don't sit in front of the TV to look for conflicts and move between rooms to figure out which TiVo is free to record on a certain night.
Finally, if TiVo wants to be the media hub, they need much better support of file playback on computer. None of the TiVo Desktop / transcode mess. TiVo should acquire and integrate Popbox for native playback of any video format, including DVD and Blu-ray backups.
As a long-time TiVo user, I am disappointed in the Premiere. Here are the things I wanted (in no particular order):
* Gigabit ethernet support
* Built-in wireless support
* Physical keyboard integrated with the remote (e.g., slider faceplate to reveal the keyboard)
The UI looks pretty snazzy, but it also looks a bit disjointed in places and still suffers from performance problems.
Having had a first generation TiVo since 2000, and now having a TiVo HD with a 500GB HD installed that I've had since 2007, I'm fairly confident I know what I want. I've also got a decent Windows 7 machine with a HDHomeRun dual tuner on my network.
1. Seasons Passes should be portable. The same goes with the history of what I've given a thumbs up or down to.
2. The units should embrace the network. If I get a second unit, they should be able to share the same seasons pass and distribute the recording duties across the second unit. They should essentially be clustered, for both storage resources and tuner resources.
3. It would be nice if i could work around in the user interface while a program was running in the background, either with transparency, or picture in picture thumbnail style.
4. If I'm watching something and I notice that the tuners are in use, it would be nice if I could hit the info button and find out what is on the tuner. (If I'm watching live TV, and both tuners are recording, I can hit the info button and find out what's on the other tuner. Why not the same if I'm watching a third program.)
There are plenty of other things that I'd like improved on, but the network clustering and closed nature of the tivo is what is making me look towards windows media center going forward.
Locked up so much I had to return!
It is an commitment to own own - buy, subscribe and battle the cable co for a cable card and a day off for the install + all the costs. Tivo gave this to us with super buggy software - why do that _ it had a welcome message dates Oct 2009 _ so the had it for a while.
Two years ago it had 2 tuners __ it should have had 4 in 2010. Little effort was put into this. I was so disappointed _ I had wanted it for years and waited THIS.
I own a Series3 and the Premier doesn't fix the things I care about:
1. Stop honoring the copy-protect bit (TWC turns that on for EVERYTHING and makes TiVo-To-Go nigh useless.
2. Fix the "Daily Show" issue. I.e. let me set a "season pass" for a program that only records the show at a given time.
3. Shrink/embed the currently displayed program while I'm using the Guide or mucking about in the menus. My TWC SciAtl DVR did this and it was great.
4. SPEED UP the UI. Make things pop-up instantly. re-sequence the To-Do list in the background....
5. Support external keyboards. Bluetooth would be best, but USB would be OK.
6. Bring back the OLED screen to display what shows are currently recording (I like this on the Series3 and it also gives me a nice clock).
7. Add an externally accessible slot to put an additional SATA drive (I have a WD MyDVR Expander and it annoys me that I have to have an extra box on the entertainment center).
I just don't see any compelling reason to upgrade to the Premier.
@Aphoid
The TiVo Premiere does work with a USB keyboard; however, the spacebar doesn't work. Very helpful for setting up season passes.
I had to switch from a Series 2 DT, because Comcast suddenly decided to move everything to digital, and I wouldn't be able to tune anything higher than channel 20.
Cant agree more with the bulk of the comment. I bought this unit on spec when it was announced. I wish I would have waited, this is the identical feature set of the HD tivo. Even the Premieres menus were available in the HD as "Tivo Search Beta". The Premiere is a glorified beta test unit, I have had about 2-3 lockups a week, and this includes after the most recent software update (14.1c). I hope this improves, but for now I cannot find a reason to upgrade. 3 tuners would have been a decent improvement. Heck, anything would have been an improvement, any time you go more than 2 menus deep you are pulled out of the HD interface into the old premiere series 2/3 interface. The Season Pass manager is hard to manage and hasnt changed in 10 years. When you actually try to record a 3rd show, when there are 2 scheduled, you still get a confusing menu about how accepting will cancel one of the shows (of which you cannot choose).
I currrently own a tivo hd, and while I find the system overall great, I do have some things preventing me fom getting the new tivo. Windows 7 comes with an amazing media center experience, and nettops are grossly faster than this box for possibbly less money. Sure, i''d likely have to restart the system periodically but honestly, it lets me run windows media center, which rules. The only downside is the ridiculous cost of tuners which I believe may be borderline illegal.
1) Interface needs to be fast. Fast enough that when you push a button the remote and look up you are on the next screen.
2) Interface needs to be fast. Fast enough that when you push a button the remote and look up you are on the next screen.
3) Interface needs to be fast. Fast enough that when you push a button the remote and look up you are on the next screen.
4) Interface needs to be fast. Fast enough that when you push a button the remote and look up you are on the next screen.
TiVo - Starting to get the hint about speed in the interface? I do NOT CARE about flashy interfaces with they are slow. Fast is EVERYTHING.
5) Cable Video On Demand. My wife bitches and moans about the lack off this ALL THE TIME. It's getting REALLY OLD listening to her bitch about this.
6) Minimum of 4 tuners. This isn't 1995. It's 2010. Come on now. Get with it.
7) Multi-TiVo aware - If you have two or more TiVos they should be aware of each other. How aware? If you have scheduled to record a show on one TiVo, ALL OTHER TiVos should be aware of this and not physically record a second copy on the other unit. What it should do is note that it is recording on the other unit and note that in the listing. Then, on the other unit, it should be marked there that the person on unit 2 wants to watch it also and that it won't be deleted until it is watched or "released" from the second unit. The second unit being the one it wasn't actually downloaded to. The show should then be streamed to the unit that it wasn't recorded on. It should NOT be transferred. Just streamed. It should be up to the person who lives at the residence to make sure their network is up to the task of streaming from one box to the other.
Note: This should work regardless of models of TiVo units. Brand new ones and ones that are 10 years old and in between should have OS updates that make them aware of each other and act together. If the program in is high def, there should be a way to stream a lower def version of it to the older box. It JUST SHOULD BE.
8) Fix scheduling conflicts. By this I mean that if something conflicts you should be able to see what is being recorded on ALL tuners and you should be able to choose which one you want to cancel.
Now this goes to the multi-TiVo aware thing. If there is a conflict and there is another TiVo in the house. You should be asked if you want to add the new TiVo request to the other TiVo and it should just take care of it. Please get out of the 1990s. This is 2010. I'm tired of repeating this.
9) I would probably have to sit down with someone (with authority to make changes) from TiVo to go through all the options here. But every time it makes sense to be able to jump from one menu to another, you should be able to.
Like what? Like when you are creating a new search you should be able to reference Season Pass.
10) I'm really thinking that TiVo should completely get out of hardware and go software only. You should be able to download the TiVo program and just pay the monthly fee which includes everything you get now including free OS updates.
This would probably have to wait for whatever replaces cable cards.
11) You should be able to stream, just like video from the internet, any program on TiVos to any computer on the local network. Meaning you should be able to watch programs on a computer just as easily as watching it on your TV. And you should have the option of it being in full window mode or in a window so you can text and do other programs while watching a program.
This basically gets back to option 10) but opening it up for watching on any computer connect through wires or wirelessly (10n) on your local network.
12) Make the internet including Amazon and any other source of programming be just another channel with no preference or lack of preference compared to network tv channels and cable. They should all just be considered the same thing.
So if you search for "Ground Hog Day" you should see a listing of everything you could get Ground Hog Day from including all network and cable channels plus Netflix and Amazon and YouTube or where ever.
13) This kind of goes back to 10) also. TiVo should not be dictating hard drive space. You should be able to upgrade/expand to as much disk space as you want without TiVo interfering.
If TiVo is going to stay in the hardware space. They should focus non upgradable things like CPUs and tuners and cable card slots and THX/Dolby and video graphics power which people would not be able to upgrade easily.
Actually I think users should be able to upgrade video cards inside of TiVos. TiVo should tell us what the minimum specs are and what things are required for any upgraded video. Such as hardware MPEG 2 coders/decoders.
Users should be able to upgrade RAM and hard drive space without any interference and without TiVo messing with that hard drive space without permission from users.
14) Lest TiVo get confused, or forget. The Iinterface needs to be fast. Fast enough that when you push a button the remote and look up you are on the next screen.
15) Lest TiVo get confused, or forget. The Iinterface needs to be fast. Fast enough that when you push a button the remote and look up you are on the next screen.
16) Lest TiVo get confused, or forget. The Iinterface needs to be fast. Fast enough that when you push a button the remote and look up you are on the next screen.
17) Lest TiVo get confused, or forget. The Iinterface needs to be fast. Fast enough that when you push a button the remote and look up you are on the next screen.
I bought the Tivo Premiere XL and received it the day it came out. I've been a TiVo user since the original Series 1. I was so disappointed with the new Tivo Premiere XL that I returned it after 2 weeks. During that time, the system froze 3 times and required rebooting each time. The UI is very sluggish. I was hoping the new processor would speed up the UI, but the new UI is even slower than the old one. It was so frustrating, I just could not use it.
I also could not stand that many of the menus were still the old SD stretched menus. For anyone concerned with aesthetics ( and I would think most TiVo users are ), the constant switching between HD and SD menus was disconcerting. The whole machine was truly half baked. It was a very poor architectural decision to implement the UI in Flash, because we know Flash is a CPU hog, and the TiVo has only a 400MhZ processor, slower than my iPhone. C'mon Tivo!
I also could not stand that TiVo decided to take up 25% of the screen at the top with ads. I'm paying $12/month for service.. I should not have to give up my new HD screen real estate for ads.
I have switched backed to my TiVo HD (Series 3) and plan to stay there unless I try out a Moxi.
On the positive side, I do like the new integrated TiVo search.
1) Design it to drive "extenders".
2) Release such an extender that has no storage or tuners.
3) Release a version that does component capture & h264 compression.
4) Equip HD Tivos with tuners with no less than 1TB.
5) Put drives on hot swap rails.
6) Allow more than one drive.
7) Put core "OS" root partition on some other "disk".
8) Allow easy replacement/upgrade of recording disks.
OK, First I'd like to start out saying I've had a TiVo since the 1st day they came out. I'm a huge fan and write in all the time with ideas. I have a few suggestions below. Some of these maybe repeaters but I'd like to list everything I have. 1) UI everywhere 2) 3 Tuners at the least but 4 should be a no brainer, 3) A delete ALL button for your "recently deleted" box instead of going one by one. 4) Password protection. Meaning we can create a folder to put shows in and password protect it 5) share suggestions w/other TivO users or even shows. Meaning if I have a friend that I think would like a show I should be able to MSG him thru tivo and suggest to DL it. Or even give him the option to DL it from my Tivo if I have it already saved. I can check mark the items a "friend" can see on my box. 6) Fast UI it seems slow. This is a old fallacy,,giving up speed for graphics. It's a shame but even Tivo feel for it. Sure it looks pretty but lordy is it slow. 7) when I delete a show it should go back to my list of saved shows (like every other Tivo I had) this new Tivo goes back to the description of the show with nothing in it. I have to click back one more time to go back to my list of shows.
8) It should have come with the upgraded remote. It's a sad day when Tivo get that cheap. Tivo needs to remember, most people buying this new and improved model are upgrading. a little thing like the remote would have been a nice add. 9) On demand to work with Verizon and/or Comcast 10) programmable skip button, yes it skips every 30 seconds, that's great for 1 commercial. When have you ever watched a show that had one commercial. They should let us choose what it should be. Or 3 min would be nice if we hold it down, not jump to the end. When do I ever need to get to the end fast? These are at the top of my head. Give me time, I'll think of more...Or Tivo can just hire me. I know what ppl want. 8-)~
My primary issue with the Premiere is that it is priced as a premium product, but yet the hardware does not seem premium.
My Suggestions would be:
1) 3+ tuners
2) Built in 802.11n (I'm hardwired, but I cant' believe that in 2010 wireless wasn't included)
3) Unified Guide, recording options: Multiple Tivos on a network should share their to-do lists and be able to send a record command to another tivo if the current tivo has a conflict.
4) Streaming: Implement an CableLabs approved method of streaming that gets around the CCI bit.
5) Remote management: implement the ability to manage recordings on other tivos.
6) Full unification of Online/Recorded Content: I know its been unified in the search, but I want it unified in the "My Shows"/NP list. For example, I've never watched the show "Breaking Bad". I'd like to go to my TiVo, search for the show and tell my Tivo to add it to my "My Shows"/NP list. Then when I go to My Shows, a folder will appear for Breaking Bad. Going to that folder will allow me to start watching the show from Any episode that has aired. It would show netflix/amazon/etc. for older content, and it would start recording new episode via cable. The Tivo could then track what season/episode I am on and display my viewing options for the next episode automatically.
This could also include an option to flag certain recordings as deletable once they become available via online sources.
In my opinion, the only thing that needed to be changed was the marketing. It was way too over the top for the product they delivered. This is a nice step from the Series3 or TivoHD models (except the lack of the OLED display) but hardly a game changer. I think they should have kept that marketing hype in check until a Tivo4 came out, with upstream support (in whatever way it eventually happens) and then turned loose the big marketing hype.
1) At least one more tuner
2) Multiroom streaming (not copy, to avoid no copy flags)
3) Solution to cable VOD (tru-twoway or otherwise)
4) _Real_ convergence with internet with a HULU-like service
Honorable mention: Widgets. Get that stuff on the "and more" menu smoothly integrated with widgets
I would but full HDUI, but that appears to be coming. The new UI was still in the oven, unfortunately. They haven't even decided which portions of the UI to cache (or not).
My wish list for Tivo.
1. Support for all sources of TV. Cable companies are hated more and more and we are finally seeing more competition for TV service in the US. If Tivo really wanted to it could work out deals for it's boxes to work with Cable, Broadcast, Satellite, Fiber, and even AT&T Uverse.
2. Real 2 way support through Tru2Way and such.
3. Three (3) or better yet four (4) HD capable tuners.