Multiroom streaming for Virgin Media's TiVo: Missing channels, Missing TiVos

What!??! I can't stream Eastenders to my other TiVo?!?
Why not!?!?

Multiroom streaming (I'll be calling it MRS from here on) has technically been available on Virgin Media's TiVo since the 15.2 software update. However, its only recently become available for use and at the moment, the number of channels available to stream are limited to the point that none of the terrestrial channels can be streamed at present. You can thank the relevant content owners for that. Add on yet another incoming price increase (you can thank Virgin for that) and the appeal of MRS is diminished somewhat, considering the additional cost of having an extra TiVo.

Once you have your TiVos connected to your home network (either via Ethernet or Powerline adapters) you should be able to see the other TiVo at the bottom of your My Shows screen. In my cases (and others, here, here and well, me here), that really is 'should' because the appearance of the other TiVo is erratic, at best, and that's after rebooting the router, upgrading the router to the latest firmware, rebooting both TiVos, re-requesting the IP address and using Static IP addresses for both TiVos (as opposed to the reserved dyamic ones I use with the 20+ devices on my network). Even legacy TiVos owners have had this issue.

Just to add to my confusion, I could always see the other TiVo on the network via Home > Help & Settings > System Info > Multi-Room Streaming. However, it turns out that this screen merely shows the TiVos you are billed for, not the ones currently on your home network.

Want more confusion? That same screen always lists each billed TiVo has having its Video Sharing Disabled, even now MRS has been enabled on all TiVos. This is a mistake due to be fixed in a future firmware update.

This is my home network:

Both network switches have various devices connected to them. The only devices which can't see
each other then I expect them to are the 2 TiVos. Why?

I even tried swapping my 500Mb homeplugs with the older 200Mb ones I had. I had limited success, in which both TiVos could see each other and stream from each other without disappearing from the other TiVo's My Shows screen. Ah-ha I thought, was the 500Mb homeplugs at fault?

I then swapped the plugs back to the 500Mb versions and to my surprise, both TiVos could still see each other. So, not the 500Mb homeplugs then.

I eventually realised that when when I removed and then reinserted the homeplug connected to the router in the bedroom, that, somehow, enabled the TiVos to see each other. For about a hour or so. After which they disappeared from each other's My Shows screen.

The method which TiVos use to discover each other on a home network is reported to be based on the UDP network protocol, this operates on a 'best-effort, performance based, no guarantee of delivery' basis (streaming itself is based on UDP since streaming video is a time sensitive operation).

I'm guessing that when I disconnected and then reconnected the homeplug connected to the router, my router dispatched a flurry of UDP data packages which enabled the TiVos to see each other - briefly. By the next day, the TiVo were MIA again from the other TiVo's My Shows screen. I wonder if this discovery process used by one TiVo to locate another is robust enough. None of the 20+ devices on my home network have trouble seeing each other when I expect them to.

I can only stream you!

For now, I've come to a halt to get MRS working. Due to the limited channels available to stream, the only stream-able content I have are episodes of Covert Affairs. Virgin are working on adding more channels for MRS, but given the forthcoming price increase I might be dumping one of the TiVos anyway. Plus I've wasted enough time attempting to get MRS working.

At least I have Last Resort to watch......what do you mean its been cancelled???!?

UPDATE: Virgin are now saying that not all Homeplugs are compatible with MRS, and are recommending that Netgear products be used to stream content between TiVos. I'm currently using the 500Mb homeplugs from TP-LINK and they work fine with the various game consoles, media streamers, Blu-Ray players and NAS Drives on my network. They work fine with all those devices apart from the TiVos.

I'm sure the Netgear 500Mb products are fine products. They should be, they're almost double the cost.

TV Anywhere and Multi-room streaming: Now available for Virgin Media TiVo

Can we say, about time? I'll have more to say once I've had a play with these long-awaited upgrades to Virgin's TV Service powered by TiVo - until then:

http://store.virginmedia.com/digital-tv/tv-anywhere.html

http://my.virginmedia.com/discover/tv/tvanywhere/app/get-set-up.html

https://my.virginmedia.com/discover/tv/ways-to-watch/multi-room-streaming/intro.html

Planned Recordings for Virgin Media's TiVo may fail this weekend

A fault with the metadata supplied to Virgin's TiVo boxes means that TiVo customers should check their planned recordings this weekend:

Your "New Only" Series Link and WishList recordings may fail this weekend. If you have changed the default setting for any Series Links or WishLists to record "New Only", we recommend that you change it back to "New & Reruns" to avoid missing new recordings over the weekend.

If you have missed anything on channels from BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, you may be able to find your show on Catch Up.

We're working on this under the fault reference F002224369 and we'll update this announcement as soon as we have more news on this.

UPDATED: This issue was fixed by Virgin on Sunday morning:

Hi we resolved this issue this morning and as soon as your TiVo box updates it's EPG your Series Links and Wishlinks will start working as normal. So you'll be able to restore them to "New Only" status.

If it hasn't updated the EPG yet you can force it to by selecting the following option Home > Help & Settings > Settings > Network > Connect to the Virgin Media Service now.

Remember if you've missed any recordings on BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 you can still see them using Catch Up.

News on Virgin Media's content delivery plans; TiVo; Apps; TV Anywhere

Feed me with content!

VideoNet has an video interview online with Ian Mecklenburgh, Virgin Media's Director of Consumer Platforms (Digital Entertainment) regarding some of Virgin current and future plans to deliver content to your TiVo, PC and Tablet, including deeper integration of TiVo apps into the user interface where relevant for the channel, having to implant Content Delivery Networks deeper into Virgin's network to meet the increasing customer demand to deliver VOD and Over-the-Top content, differences between VOD delivered by the legacy service and the 10Mb dedicated broadband connection, the development of Virgin TV Anywhere and a lot more.

Fall Update for TiVo Premiere unleashed; Coming soon for Virgin Media's TiVo?

Over in the States, TiVo have released 20.2.2 of the firmware for the TiVo Premiere, Premiere XL, Premiere 4, and Premiere XL4/Elite. As previously reported, the latest firmware finally sees the conversion of several standard definition screens within the user interface to HD.

It also sees the arrival of several other improvements, including better reporting of recording conflicts and background re-indexing of planned recordings when the priority of Series Links and recordable Wishlists are changed.

There's no word of when this version of the firmware will show up on Virgin Media's TiVo, and what changes will be made in the process (besides repainting the colours in Virgin Red), but I'd say its pretty likely that the new firmware will show up for Virgin Media's TiVo at some point, since the code base for Virgin's TiVo and the TiVo Premiere is shared.

Read all about it at the TiVo Blog, and view some early feedback on the latest firmware release at the TiVo Community Forums.

HD user-interface to be completed for TiVo Premiere; Virgin Media's TiVo to follow?

One of the weak points about Virgin's TiVo (and indeed, the original TiVo Premiere which Virgin's TiVo is based on), is that several of the user interface screens are displayed in a much lower resolution, which for 2012, doesn't look great:

Yuck!

As I said in my review:

While they're good enough to be functional, they don't look great compared to the lovely HD screens such as the Home and My Shows screens. A pity, because some of those low-res screens would be more usable if they could contain more information.

Much better! This will be the TiVo Premiere's version of what's known as the
'Manage My Series Links' screen on Virgin TiVo.

After a long, 2 year wait, it looks like TiVo are close to converting those screens (Planned Recordings and Series Links) into the HD we know and love. This thread at the TiVo Community Forums reveals that the fall software update for the TiVO Premiere is due to be released soon in the States, and TiVo's Margret Schmidt (Vice President of Design & Engineering at TiVo) has uploaded screenshots of the new HD screens:

This looks better too - and it looks like you can view recording conflicts for each show
in what us Brits call the 'Planned Recordings' screen.

Of course, you can expect these screens to be altered for Virgin's TiVo, and recoloured to the Virgin Red we all know and love for a future software update. When that will happen is anyone's guess.

Virgin Media Q3 2012 Results; 30% of customer base TiVoed; TiVo moving into the Cloud?; Sky Basics on TV Anywhere

The TiVo invasion of Virgin's TV Customer base continues

Virgin Media's Q3 earning results for 2012 revealed that 1.1 million TiVos are now sitting pretty within the Digital Cable Network. 202,000 TiVos were unleashed in Q3, meaning that 30% of Virgin's TV customer base has now been TiVoed.

As for the forthcoming (and much delayed but coming soon in a matter of weeks honest really) iPad app TV Anywhere, Virgin CEO Neil Berkett confirmed (during the conference call - full transcript at Seeking Alpha) that Sky Basic channels will be available for streaming to your PC/Mac, with the possibility of Sky Premium channels to follow:

It will launch with all of our – we have the PC and Mac rights for broadly all of our content. We don’t have quite that number of rights for the tablet. So, there will be some restricted rights. But it will include all of Sky basics initially. And we’re in conversation with Sky in respect to premiums and we’ll continue those conversations over the next six months as we look to renew our premium contract with them.

As for the future development roadmap for Virgin TiVo, its looks like its heading in the Cloud:

We have a roadmap and are in conjunction with TiVo. We represent a significant proportion of TiVo gross adds, well over half, and as such, we’re in constant conversation with them in respect to what the roadmap looks like. The roadmap does look like moving initially the UI to the cloud. The user interface to the cloud and then as we move into the world of DOCSIS 3.1 and further on, we’ll see – we’ll be moving the whole set-top box to the cloud in respect to storage and that will evolve, I’m quite comfortable that the pace in which we’re looking at that is consistent with our peers, if not ahead. Again, it’s why we chose the partner we chose.

The future home for your TiVo recordings?

This would be a huge upgrade for Virgin and TiVo. For instance, the age-old Virgin TV issue of an non-Dynamic EPG would be solved with a cloud-based EPG, which could be updated near-instantly when required remotely. User interface updates (and who knows, maybe even a complete HD interface!) would be far easier to implement.

Hopefully, Virgin and TiVo are thinking beyond a Cloud-based EPG - for instance, your Series Links and Wishlists could be saved into the Cloud, ready to reinstall on a replacement TiVo in case the old one develops a fault.

As for storage, that hints of a Cloud/Networked based PVR system, where every programme on every channel (or the vast majority of them) would be recorded at the national/local headend, ready for you to playback. If we briefly walk around the potential minefield called 'content rights', then one possible advantage of such a system would be infinite recording capacity, which would either replace or supplement the hard drive capacity within your existing TiVo.

Other advantages could include the ability to stream your recordings to any compatible device (without additional transcoding hardware such as the TiVo Stream), and other fancy tricks like the 'live restart' feature currently in use on BBC iPlayer. There's been talk of Apple jumping onto the Cloud-PVR bandwagon and several European Pay-TV platforms have already made that jump. Looks like Virgin Media are looking to join them with TiVo's help.