Choppy Video?

[slipmat]

Hi all

I just got a Philips HDR612 (I think) on Friday and thanks to the tips from Shane and the nztivo.net guide I had it setup in a flash.

I have one slight problem - when I view stuff from the now playing list while recording another program the video tends to be a bit choppy every now and then. It's also a bit choppy watching live TV.

I have a 5400rpm Seagate 80G disk in at the mo but a mate has offered another 7200rpm 80G disk I would like to add in, so I am after a little advice.

Could the problems I'm experiencing be related to the speed of the disk? If I ghosted the existing image to the faster disk and used that as the master, will I see a performance increase or would it make no difference if I just added the faster disk as a secondary? I did not run a low level scan on the disk so is it likely some errors / bad sectors are causing the problem? I can't seen anything interesting in /var/log to indicate it is a bad disk.

Also I found a place in Oz selling the 9th tee CacheCard for $140AU and am thinking seriously about getting one (yes I've only had the TiVo for 3 days!) as the unit I have only has a 10mb TiVonet card. Is it worth getting the CacheCard at all? Will it help with the video problems? I also learned the max database size on a standalone S1 is 512MB so not much point in throwing more memory on the card right?

One last question - the nztivo.net instructions say to add the NZ emulator 210.48.107.133 on port 80 but I see people are talking about using port 8000 - have I got this wrong cos my guide data appears to be ok.

So many questions... sorry if it's a bit much, I'm sure some of you can help

Thanks heaps!

Matt

[NZMarke]

Hi Matt -

Can't comment on the cache card. But I too had problems with choppy video. There are other potential causes (you're not still in NTSC mode are you?) ... but my cause turned out to be a faulty disc. I replaced it with another disc and re-imaged and the problem went away.

My symptoms were that the video (and audio) would "freeze" for anything from a second to several seconds ... it got progressively worse, starting with short glitches and got gradually longer and longer.

So it's just possible that your disc could be the culprit .. in which case the new disc could be the answer to your problem.

HTH,

Mark

[NZMarke]

I should also have mentioned ... for the cost of a new disc, it might well be worth getting and putting in a larger HDD. I've now got a 200Gb disc in mine - sweeeeet! ;-)

Might be a better investment than the cache-card? I've got no cache-card in mine and it operates as sweet-as-a-nut. But I'd be interested to hear more from others about the pros-and-cons of the cache-card ...

Cheers

Mark

[slipmat]

Thanks Mark!

The first few shows I recorded while the box was in 'maintenance mode' and I understand the NTSC frame skips, but the box is definitely running in PAL mode now and I still get the skips as you describe so I'd say the HDD is a bit flakey (it's been around a bit).

I have hunted down some large and fast disks on PriceSpy which prove to be a cheaper (and probably more reliable) option than the cachecard at this stage, I also have a company account at Techpac if it is worth spending an extra $20 on a UATA/133 200GB disk with 8MB cache - does anyone have reccomendations on the brand of disk & cache size? It's been a few years since I personally bought an HDD

Thanks again for the help, you saved me $140AU and potentially my relationship

Matt

[NZMarke]

Hi Matt -

Check the doco on OzTivo, but pretty sure you need to get a SATA drive ... not sure that the old TiVo will support a UATA .. but then I'm no hardware guru.

I bought mine from one of the shops linked on PriceSpy too .. From memory it was around $160 or thereabouts for a 200Gb drive. I think I ended up getting a Western Digital. Has worked flawlessly .. and is even a little faster than the other one I think .. it's a 5200 not a 7200 speed one.

Never fear, your relationship will improve with the Tivo .. I can personally attest to that. My wife is so enamoured of it that when the disc started to die, she offered to go halves in the cost of a new one. Better still, she actually ponied up the dollars! ;-)

This from someone who's Video player used to blink 00:00 when I met her. Now she wouldn't do without the TiVo .. unmissable feature? Every time she hits an ad-break she says "Most people have to watch ads .. but WE'VE got a TiVo!". Trust me, from here on in it's all good!

Good luck,

Cheers

Mark

[Darren King]

Check the doco on OzTivo, but pretty sure you need to get a SATA drive ... not sure that the old TiVo will support a UATA .. but then I'm no hardware guru.

NO! TiVo does not support Serial-ATA (SATA) drives. TiVo *will* support UATA but the transfer speed will only ever be ATA-33 anyway due to the hardware limitations of the IDE interface.

[petestrash]

Also I found a place in Oz selling the 9th tee CacheCard for $140AU and am thinking seriously about getting one (yes I've only had the TiVo for 3 days!) as the unit I have only has a 10mb TiVonet card. Is it worth getting the CacheCard at all? Will it help with the video problems? I also learned the max database size on a standalone S1 is 512MB so not much point in throwing more memory on the card right?

I have both cachecard and turbonet tivo's, I can't see much difference in FTP speed between the cachecard and turbonet.

The only real benefit of the cachecard is when you install 512mb of memory and you have a very long now showing list it brings the list up much faster, but I don't think it's good value for money.

Peter.

[NZMarke]

NO! TiVo does not support Serial-ATA (SATA) drives. TiVo *will* support UATA but the transfer speed will only ever be ATA-33 anyway due to the hardware limitations of the IDE interface.

Ooops .. sorry. As I said I'm not (any more anyway) a hardware expert. I used to know the acronyms, but that part of my brain has atrophied! ;-)

So a standard ATA drive is the go then. My other recommendations still stand though ... I think it's worth splashing out to get a larger HDD - and I note that the feedback on the cachecard is not that enthusiastic too ..

Exits as credibility crumbles ....

Cheers

Mark

[slipmat]

Ooops .. sorry. As I said I'm not (any more anyway) a hardware expert. I used to know the acronyms, but that part of my brain has atrophied! ;-)

Too much TV perhaps?

Thanks all for the help, I've just spashed out on a 300GB Seagate (it wasn't much more expensive than the 200GB, I just hope the poor TiVo can address 300 gigs as I found little info online).

Now only one question remains - I want to reimage the new disk as I think the existing disk may have corrupted something (guide data maybe?) - it was supposedly recording Shortland St at 7:40pm even though the time was OK and the next program details were being displayed... strange. Anyway I want to start from scratch for good measure, but want to transfer one or two programs from the existing disk - I will search the forums when I get home unless anyone has some quick tips to get this done easily...? If it can be done on my PC rather than via the 10mbps TiVonet card I'm sure it will be much faster

Cheers

Matt

[Darren King]

Thanks all for the help, I've just spashed out on a 300GB Seagate (it wasn't much more expensive than the 200GB, I just hope the poor TiVo can address 300 gigs as I found little info online).

300GB is small compared to what a TiVo can handle. All the info you needed online about this is here: http://minnie.tuhs.org/twiki/bin/vie..._Disk_capacity

Anyway I want to start from scratch for good measure, but want to transfer one or two programs from the existing disk - I will search the forums when I get home unless anyone has some quick tips to get this done easily...? If it can be done on my PC rather than via the 10mbps TiVonet card I'm sure it will be much faster

Not easy to do and for the sake of a couple of programs probably not worth it, but limited info which may or may not be of help is here: http://minnie.tuhs.org/twiki/bin/vie...kToAnotherDisk