Incoming TiVo Update Squashes A Bazillion Bugs

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TiVo has once again launched a priority software update page, as they prepare to deploy version 20.5.9 to retail Roamio and Premiere DVRs, along with the TiVo Mini extender. There’s nothing really flashy here, as this is effectively TiVo’s Snow Leopard build — a substantial update of unsexy but critical bug fixes. Having said that, with no fanfare, TiVo blessed these very same boxes with HBO GO last week … plus SkipMode commercial avoidance will hit all TiVo Roamio models 3/10. So while TiVo the company does a piss poor job in talking up their accomplishments, they are indeed taking good care of customers. And, if you’d like to be first in line for some stability improvements, get your TiVo Service Number entered here.

49 thoughts on “Incoming TiVo Update Squashes A Bazillion Bugs”

  1. I assume Bolt will also get this update, give forum chatter regarding a release candidate that’s floating around out there. Sadly, none of that chatter indicates out-of-home streaming has been enabled yet. In regards to the updated Hulu app for Roamio and Premiere, well hopefully we’ll see it sometime soon – perhaps there’s a 20.5.9 dependency.

  2. “plus SkipMode commercial avoidance will hit all TiVo Roamio models by 2/24”

    Holy shit that is cool. Thanks for the heads up.

  3. Yes, very cool and very generous of them to backport a key Bolt selling point. However, it does sound like they have work to do on their end, in terms of improvement tagging consistency and such.

  5. The last two releases from TiVo have been the buggiest code I have ever used in my 15 years with them. HDMI handshake problems, Netflix reboots, pixelation etc. Major regressions from good code.

    This priority list scares me, but then again it can’t possibly get worse right?

  6. Thanks for this post, I hope they will address the performance of the Youtube app since they update with the HBO app. My Roamio seems to be suffering on video playback.

    Does this mean skip should show up outside the stated “TiVo Roamio® (Greater Chicago and San Francisco Bay Area only)” I would have thought they would have rolled out a few cities at a time.

  7. Yes, all Roamios irrespective of region. Most Roamio Pro units received it this week, the rest of us should get it in the upcoming week.

  8. Are you sure that SkipMode is going to hit everywhere by 2/24? That tweet seems to be specific to the person who was asking about Philadelphia. We know this has been very city specific so far.

  10. Good news! I hope one of the bazillion bug fixes allows me to finally delete that undeletable empty recording that has been there nearly a year now.

  13. Are you sure that SkipMode is going to hit everywhere by 2/24?
    Yes. There are reports of Roamio owners all over the country whose units have already been SkipModified. I’m still waiting but fully expect it between now and Wed.

    As for 20.5.9, yes, a good bug-squashing is welcome. I actually expected such an update to come along with, or just before, all the new goodies like SkipMode and HBO GO. I haven’t really experienced anything unusual lately but apparently a lot of folks have. And I really do hope that 20.5.9 bring us Roamio/Premiere folks the new HTML5 Hulu app! I’ve gotten hooked on 11.22.63 and teasers for The Path look pretty great. It’s annoying switching over to the ol’ Apple TV just for that app.

    Dave, any reason to believe that TiVo’s OnePass feature may soon support Showtime streaming, seeing as how it can be added to one’s Amazon Prime and Hulu subscriptions? Actually, for all I know, maybe it already does so on the Bolt, which has the new Showtime-capable Hulu app — although I doubt it.

  14. Rob, sure I can give them credit for a timely email blast to TiVo customers (which I linked in the article). However, with years of declining retail subscribers, they should alert the press – I imagine they have a PR firm on contract, with substantial Rolodexes, and press releases cost all of $500. If a PR is too formal, they could send to many or select outlets via email as an alert. There are multiple stories to tell here – I’d probably focus on TiVo still being the most effective solution for merging linear content television and streaming services, and they’ve expanded that capabilities with new partners (WWE, HBO GO), reinvigorated relationships (Hulu) all indexed by OnePass and Search. It dovetails nicely with the FCC’s #UnlockTheBox vote, which they could riff on as the shining example, market leader in this space. That’s how you keep the press talking about your product after the initial reviews and launch coverage is done. Fortunately, sounds like the upcoming voice capabilities will get the marketing muscle they deserve. But it’ll be interesting to see what we can divine of holiday retail sales come the March 1 quarterly call.

  15. Does this update fix the TiVo dolby digital (PCM vs BitStram) bug for XboxOne pass through? They had tweeted me that they were working on fixing it and it is a TiVo bug not a MSFT bug.

  16. Evan, beyond knowing there’s significant bug squashing going on, I don’t have a comprehensive listing. Hopefully Margret chimes in on the forum soon with release notes.

  17. I’d probably focus on TiVo still being the most effective solution for merging linear content television and streaming services

    This. This is TiVo’s only real headline advantage over a growing field of choices for consumers. Sure, there are specific advantages TiVo has in terms of recording options versus this or that DVR and that are arguments to be made about long-term savings versus renting a DVR from the cable company. But TiVo pretty much owns the space when it comes to intelligently integrating cable or OTA TV with the most popular streaming sources. No one else is really doing it — yet, anyway. This has got to be TiVo’s lead marketing message if they’re going to continue trying to compete in the retail space. If they don’t become known for that advantage, they’ll just continue to be thought of as “that old DVR company — are they still around?”

  18. Just throwing it out there that Skip Mode is working on my early access Roamio, and working on my three Minis as well.

    NYC / NJ Metro area here, but the impression I get this is not region locked at all.

  19. I received Skip Mode on Wednesday on my Roamio basic (Charter Gwinnett Co GA). My friend got it the same day on his Roamio Pro (Comcast Fulton Co GA)

  20. “But TiVo pretty much owns the space when it comes to intelligently integrating cable or OTA TV with the most popular streaming sources. No one else is really doing it — yet, anyway.”

    It’s weirdly even more than that. You can’t even get a pure OTT streamer box that gives you a unified list of stuff to watch across services like TiVo provides with OnePass…

  23. Premiere COU is over 7 years old (2009) so we should just be happy in runs at all. I found this interesting about TiVo’s choice of CPU and Flash back in the day that’s different than what I’d always heard (TiVo – the person – is so stupid to choose Flash and an under powered CPU that isn’t even supported)

    “Broadcom announced Flash Lite support for its new and upcoming chips in
    January 2009, but it took the
    better part of the year for that support to mature to a production state.     When TiVo was satisfied that
    Broadcom’s Flash implementation would meet its needs, the company selected the highest-
    performance DVR chip available (BCM7413) to form the core of its new Series4 hardware platform.

    The BCM7413 represents an across-the-board upgrade; it upgrades every major subsystem, including
    the CPU, memory controller, 2D/3D graphics, decoders, and disk controller. The most notable feature of
    the new chip is a dual-core, 400MHz MIPS32/16e CPU. That isn’t much by PC standards, but is
    substantial improvement over the single-core, 300MHz MIPS CPUs found in most DVRs.

    It is worth noting that unlike PCs, the chips in all modern DVRs feature dedicated hardware video
    decoders for MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC, and VC-1, with a media switch to decouple decode and playback
    operations from the CPU. As a result, the CPU is left free to handle the embedded operating system
    (usually Linux), the DVR software and interface, and any associated features such as multi-room viewing

    Like other recent 65nm Broadcom SoCs, the BCM7413 features an improved 2D graphics core – known
    as the Memory-to-Memory Compositor, or M2MC. This part of the chip is responsible for compositing
    regions of the on-screen display and scaling them to the output resolution. Coupled with the faster CPU,
    this new graphics core makes it possible to support more compelling interface designs on set-tops”

  24. Since then, Flash has been replaced by Haxe for better performance – although Premiere apps were (are) still too sluggish. Folks with a 4-tuner Premiere can use them headless to feed the next generation Mini for a snappier experience. I did that for awhile before going Roamio. Bolt takes it to another level, but there are certain compromises you must make for TiVo’s newest hardware, as we’ve discussed elsewhere.

  25. “Does this update fix the TiVo dolby digital (PCM vs BitStram) bug for XboxOne pass through? They had tweeted me that they were working on fixing it and it is a TiVo bug not a MSFT bug.”

    Evan, that bug was fixed by an XBO update. I got it on 2/19, and upon switching back to Dolby Digital audio afterward, all my rew/ff problems were gone.

  26. I hope they fix show downloads.. It has basically been unusable for me.. Constant 0x10003 and 0x10005 errors downloading… And then I have to wait many minutes to try again… If I manage a complete download, it will then have glitches and sometimes even hit a spot where it just gets an error and quits playing.. Can never get further in that episode..
    I DO like SkipMode and QuickMode (though QuickMode should optionally be 1.5 or 2x)

  27. Be nice if Spotify worked without having to click on the remote to go to the next song and then have the Tivo do a reboot.

    Bonanza

  28. Would also be nice to see Pandora start up on Roamio Pro without hanging most of the times requiring reboot to resolve.

  29. Personally I have my fingers crossed that it fixes the lag that started to show up around November.
    I get the blue circle when I click on a folder that might have two shows in it that are stored locally an all other scenarios that involve my now playing list.

    Very frustrating since the originally the HAXE update made it so fast it was really great.

  30. @Dave @Tim @Chucky – Nailed it – there just isn’t other options out there that integrate OTA/DVR/and streaming services in one box. Channel Master DVR+ is the only other option – and they can’t exactly be counted on to be around for the long term.

  31. Two things that I dont think people are understanding…

    – Priority list for updates… been around forever, really isnt a big deal. Dont understand why there appears to be some resentment towards it.

    – Skip mode update… Lets remember there is two steps to this process. Step 1 is that your roamio downloads the new firmware to enable skip mode. Step 2 is that your new skip mode enabled Roamio records a program that TiVo tags with the skip mode time data. This update will get all of the roamio units through step 1 but that does not mean TiVo will be curating programming in your market.

  32. “@Dave @Tim @Chucky – Nailed it – there just isn’t other options out there that integrate OTA/DVR/and streaming services in one box.”

    That’s entirely true. And it’s a big deal.

    But I was trying to make a slightly different point:

    TiVo, since OnePass rolled out, is the only box to give you a unified list of stuff to watch across services. Even if you take the OTA/Cable part of TiVo out of the equation, you can’t buy a pure streamer box that’ll give you a single queue of stuff to watch.

    It’s my favorite thing about my TiVo these days, and I can’t put my finger on why they don’t think it’s a strong marketing message. (I do have some half-baked theories on why Alviso might think that beyond simple incompetence, but I don’t really have faith in any of them.)

  33. “Bryan
    February 23, 2016 at 8:51 am
    @Dave @Tim @Chucky – Nailed it – there just isn’t other options out there that integrate OTA/DVR/and streaming services in one box. Channel Master DVR+ is the only other option – and they can’t exactly be counted on to be around for the long term.”

    Well, there’s Tablo, Simple.TV and my favorite, Playstation Vue (if you’re in one of their cities). They both can give you all that in one box, but as Chucky said, …“TiVo, since OnePass rolled out, is the only box to give you a unified list of stuff to watch across services….”, which is true. If my FireTV included the info in the Vue app in it’s main search, we would be there with that device as well.

  34. “If my FireTV included the info in the Vue app in it’s main search, we would be there with that device as well.”

    I don’t have a FireTV, so no personal experience.

    But are you saying that FireTV will present you with a single unified queue across services? I’m not talking about unified search, which a lot of streamer boxes will do. I’m just talking about a list of stuff you want to watch in the future…

  36. Yes @Chucky, you’re right. I am talking about unified Search, not a unified queue of shows on the top of the GUI, etc.

  37. Roku seems to be fumbling its way toward a unified queue with their “My Feed” feature but it’s not exactly it. And while Roku does offer universal search, Netflix doesn’t participate, which makes Roku’s universal searches, well, not so universal.

    While I’ve been a big fan of TiVo’s OnePass, and it was a factor in my decision to purchase a TiVo last year, I do have to say that it’s not as great in practice as in theory because TiVo is so dang slow to update their OnePass database. If you want to watch the latest episode of a series in, say Hulu or HBO GO, as soon as it’s available, or start binging on a new season of Bloodline the day it hits Netflix, well you’re going to need to launch the correct app first and then find your desired content. That new content isn’t going to be reflected in OnePass until generally at least 48 hours after it debuts.

  38. Looks like TiVo wasn’t able to hit the 2/24 SkipMode rollout deadline but they still intend to get it done this week.

  39. Yeah, I haven’t gotten it yet. How did you hear about the missed deadline and the update that they are still intending to do it?

  44. Has anyone been getting v20.5.9? I’ve done like 5 manual connections today, and no “Pending Restart”…

  45. Dave, so you post those lovely v2.5.9 release notes, but I can’t get the update yet. And I want it for the Hulu client.

    So, what’s up? To find out, do I need to crawl through the forums like a schnook?

  46. Updated Hulu app hasn’t been published yet… They’re probably waiting until 20.5.9 is full deployed before flipping the switch. I’m not sure what version I’m on. Did you do the priority list?

  47. Forgot to do the priority list this time. (I assume you need to do it for each update, that it’s not something that persists.)

    But if they haven’t flipped the switch on the Hulu update, I’m in zero rush anyway…

    It’s not even the PQ & sound I most want from the Hulu app, though they’ll be nice. I’m primarily just hoping for a better UI/UX.

    (And FWIW, got a important update on the elusive WP bug, should you care. It’s desktop only. I can see your last comment via RSS, and due to my weird RSS reader, I need to jump thru 7 hoops to actually read the comment. But I was interested, so I did so. However, until I post this comment, your last comment won’t show up in any desktop browser, old or modern w JS. And I strongly believe it’ll never show up until a new comment is posted. But, if I go to an iOS device, the comment shows up just fine. So if you’re normally looking at the site on mobile, you’ll never notice it…)

  48. This update 20.5.9 has really ruined my Roamio. Up until now I have able to transfer Tivo programs to my computer to watch at other times but now only the sound is transferred and no picture. I called and spoke to Josh who spent a lot of time searching for an answer but I was told he could no nothing about it. I was passed on to supervisor Shanon told simply said they could do nothing about it and could not return to the former version 20.5.6 which worked to transfer programs to computers. Stay away from 20.5.9 that does not work with Tivo desktop and they don’t care.

  49. Paul, TiVo desktop software has been a PITA since its deployment. You’ll have a far better experience with KTTMG

  50. I just bought the Roamio OTA, been trying to set this thing up tonight going through the initial setup. It said it had an important update to do. Does this usually take hours? I have a 6MB internet line and I cant imagine that it is that large. It passed preparing, and connecting stages and just sits spinning on getting info (downloading…) Please wait.

    reading the rest of this thread, I have been waiting for Xbox One OTA/DVR streaming to become available in the US as it is supposed to allow room to room OTA recording to stream as well, but $79 sounded like a good deal. If I get to ever use it.

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