FF thru commercials thwarted?

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.video.ptv.tivo (More info?)

Jeff Rife <wevsr@nabs.net> wrote:
> That's because hitting FF 3 times makes the TiVo fast forward much faster
> (60x real time is the listed speed, although I haven't timed it myself).

It's not that fast. That would FF through a one hour program in one
minute.

http/www.tivo.com/1.6.1.asp
"The TiVo remote control has three-speeds of fast forward and rewind that
enable you to easily skim through any part of a recorded program at 3,18,
or 60x normal speeds, including commercials. You can speed through 1 hour
of programming in about 1 minute. "

Damn. I hate it when that happens. ;-)

That's 1/2 second per commercial... Maybe DTivo is different.
If anything, I'd say the top speed on DTivo is 18x. That would be about
right by my memory.

> As long as you hit "Play" 1.5 seconds or more after you first see the show,
> you won't see any commercials.

It's pretty simple for me to hit play so that I catch a few seconds of the
last commercial. Sometimes I miss and hit it too late, but I don't ever
seem to go two minutes into the show, If I go a little into the show, I hit
the back-8 once or twice. I can do that consistently.

Occasionally, it seems that it jumps back too far.


I almost cancelled this post, because I don't agree with what is so widely
known that I must be wrong. But I don't agree. I'll have to check for
myself, on my own Tivo, and ignore all of the postings I've seen on the
web, on the vague thought that DTivo is different.

--
---
Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA USA 38.8,-122.5

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.video.ptv.tivo (More info?)

(dold@XReXXFFXth.usenet.us.com) wrote in alt.video.ptv.tivo:
> That's 1/2 second per commercial... Maybe DTivo is different.
> If anything, I'd say the top speed on DTivo is 18x. That would be about
> right by my memory.

I just timed fast-forwarding through a 60-minute show on my HDVR2 and it
took 66 seconds, which is close enough for government work.

Just for grins, I also timed fast-forwarding an HD recording on my HR10-250
and it took 34 seconds for a 30-minute show.

--
Jeff Rife |
| http/www.nabs.net/Cartoons/Dilbert/LostPassword.gif

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.video.ptv.tivo (More info?)

Jeff Rife <wevsr@nabs.net> wrote:
> (dold@XReXXFFXth.usenet.us.com) wrote in alt.video.ptv.tivo:
>> That's 1/2 second per commercial... Maybe DTivo is different.
>> If anything, I'd say the top speed on DTivo is 18x. That would be about
>> right by my memory.

> I just timed fast-forwarding through a 60-minute show on my HDVR2 and it
> took 66 seconds, which is close enough for government work.

Oh well... Now I have to rethink all of the life experiences that I've
encountered in the last eighteen months since I got the DTivo. ;-)

I have some "wishlists" set up for various topics and people. If I see
something strange in my "now playing" list, I presume it has something to
do with one of those wishlists. I FFF through the program, and it seems
like it takes more that 1/60th to get through the program.

So the corrective backspace is pretty well tuned, since it seems to work
most of the time, for me. I presume that I "learned" the proper timing.

If I fail, and get the "thwarted commercial skip" that started this topic,
maybe I am really hitting the button entirely at random... a false twitch,
where I just happen to see a snippet of the program after I started my
twitch. Sometimes I know I misfired, hitting the button when I didn't mean
to. If it just happens to show a frame of the show, I think it is not a
misfired twitch on my part, but a thwarting attempt.

--
---
Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA USA 38.8,-122.5

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.video.ptv.tivo (More info?)

In article <MPG.1c90305957b35da2989bf7@news.nabs.net>,
Jeff Rife <wevsr@nabs.net> writes:
>
> (dold@XReXXFFXth.usenet.us.com) wrote in alt.video.ptv.tivo:
>> That's 1/2 second per commercial... Maybe DTivo is different.
>> If anything, I'd say the top speed on DTivo is 18x. That would be about
>> right by my memory.
>
> I just timed fast-forwarding through a 60-minute show on my HDVR2 and it
> took 66 seconds, which is close enough for government work.

FWIW, I just timed three 1-hour shows on my Sony SAT-T60. They all took
between 55 and 58 seconds at FFF. I timed the first one twice and got 55
seconds both times. Because that three-second difference is well outside
my normal measuring error with a stopwatch, I suspect that the DirecTiVo
FFF time is at least partly dependent on show content (perhaps the precise
compression ratio delivered by DirecTV). OTOH, perhaps there was enough
slop in my hitting the FF button three times, or in the TiVo responding,
to throw off the result.

In any event, the claimed 60x speed of FFF seems pretty accurate.

--
Rod Smith, rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
http/www.rodsbooks.com
Author of books on Linux, FreeBSD, and networking

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.video.ptv.tivo (More info?)

"Rod Smith" <rodsmith@nessus.rodsbooks.com> wrote in message
news:ashif2-0f4.ln1@speaker.rodsbooks.com...
> In article <MPG.1c90305957b35da2989bf7@news.nabs.net>,
> Jeff Rife <wevsr@nabs.net> writes:
>>
>> (dold@XReXXFFXth.usenet.us.com) wrote in alt.video.ptv.tivo:
>>> That's 1/2 second per commercial... Maybe DTivo is different.
>>> If anything, I'd say the top speed on DTivo is 18x. That would be about
>>> right by my memory.
>>
>> I just timed fast-forwarding through a 60-minute show on my HDVR2 and it
>> took 66 seconds, which is close enough for government work.
>
> FWIW, I just timed three 1-hour shows on my Sony SAT-T60. They all took
> between 55 and 58 seconds at FFF. I timed the first one twice and got 55
> seconds both times. Because that three-second difference is well outside
> my normal measuring error with a stopwatch, I suspect that the DirecTiVo
> FFF time is at least partly dependent on show content (perhaps the precise
> compression ratio delivered by DirecTV). OTOH, perhaps there was enough
> slop in my hitting the FF button three times, or in the TiVo responding,
> to throw off the result.
>
> In any event, the claimed 60x speed of FFF seems pretty accurate.
>
> --
> Rod Smith, rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
> http/www.rodsbooks.com
> Author of books on Linux, FreeBSD, and networking

Something you may wish to consider: I believe that TiVo is just the
software running on DVR/Set-top/etc equipment (system). Any software that
controls timing such as FF can be greatly influenced by the equipment it is
running on. Processor model, version, speed, memory, etc can all have an
effect. I would imagine that the systems (boxes) use different embedded
processors depending on the manufacturer and when the box was developed and
manufactured. Also, when the TiVo software is regression tested on a new
box, I would imagine getting FF exactly correct is a very low priority. The
software is so complex and there are so many functions to test, it seems to
me it would be highly unlikely that the FF would work exactly the same on
all the different boxes.

Just an opinion and something for you to think about.
Bill

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.video.ptv.tivo (More info?)

Bill & Debbie wrote:

> software running on DVR/Set-top/etc equipment (system). Any software that
> controls timing such as FF can be greatly influenced by the equipment it is
> running on. Processor model, version, speed, memory, etc can all have an
> effect.

That would be the case if timing was done completely in software, as
in "1 second delay = 450,000 times through a busy-loop".

When TiVo operates at 2x speed, it is exactly 2x; dropping every
other frame plays video at two times normal speed regardless of
CPU speed.

If, for instance, the MPEG stream was encoded with 10 frames per group,
then skipping 6 groups = 60 frames. Again, processor speed is not
a factor.

-Joe