TiVo : Sky Q and VM answer ?

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by passingbat

Isn't one of the cited advantages of cloud recording, cheaper boxes? I.e. less hardware required, the obvious one being no need for hard drives.

And the processor in the current Tivo is still five years old. It's acceptable, but really should be updated so that it is more speedy.

So if VM do move to the cloud for recording, I would expect an updated box which will be less expensive for VM to buy.

Is it too soon for VM to move to the cloud? Would a change such as that be better in a couple of years time? I'm honestly not sure. But if cloud storage is only a couple of years away, what should VM do about the current box? Struggle on with it and patch it up a bit, or provide a new faster box?

If only we all knew what Spiderplant knows

Cloud recording may not be as cheap as you'd think.

Where a programme is available via the VM on demand service (which would be pretty much everything on most of the major channels apart from films), they can just send that programme to the user's box from the on-demand system. This would cost VM very little as they already have the infrastructure and rights in place to do it. The real cost for these programmes is adapting the software.

Where a programme is not available (i.e. it's a film, or it's on a channel with no on demand option), or the user wants to record in HD and the on demand version is only available in SD, the user is going to need space on a server somewhere. VM can minimise the space requirements for a programme by only storing the data in one file then giving any user that "records" that programme a link to that file. For example, say one of the channels shows "Men In Black". Thousands of people will want to watch this, so if VM stored a complete copy of the film for each viewer, they would need a *lot* of storage (potentially hundreds of Terabytes).

So, to reduce this, they would start storing the data when the first user hits record. Every user who "records" this showing of MIB would then get this file when they watch the recording. This file would only take a few gigabytes of storage.

Why would this cost a lot? Simply because VM would need the infrastructure in place to do it. They would need more servers in the various head ends and may need to build up a new content delivery system. They still have the cost of adapting the STB software to deal with this.

I suspect at least some of the Tivo's speed problems come from the use of Flash in it's interface, so, as long as Tivo and VM are willing to devote the manpower to minimising Flash use, we would get some speed increase.

[Ignitionnet]

Keep cutting that cord like the wind, people. OTT seems to be where it's at now. Even Sky make tacit admission to this with the presentation and conception of Q - very OTT-like.

[steveh]

Originally Posted by Stuart

I suspect at least some of the Tivo's speed problems come from the use of Flash in it's interface, so, as long as Tivo and VM are willing to devote the manpower to minimising Flash use, we would get some speed increase.

It doesn't properly have Flash since the 'plum' release when they dumped Adobe Air. While TiVo still uses the OpenFL Flash engine in the UI, all the Flash ActionScript was translated automatically into the Haxe language and compiled, so that now starts up quickly and runs fast.

The reason it is slower than it should be on the hardware it has is because the TiVo engineers hadn't finished optimising performance for the new architecture when Virgin got its last build in May 2015 and there hasn't been one since.

Maybe VM decided to cut back on how frequently they do releases of the TiVo software as part of their cost cutting and lack of interest in TV. Maybe there were complicated configuration management issues that made it difficult to bring in recent changes to the core TiVo software onto VM's version. Maybe it was something else...