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Question about Remote Scheduling notification (delayed?).
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Posted by: morac

I've been playing with remote scheduling and while it's working great, I noticed the notification system seems a bit delayed.

I'll ask the question here, but you can read my test below for more detail.

It appears that the TiVo downloads the request, but doesn't inform the server of the result until the next time it connects as I don't get emails until around 15 minutes after the schedule shows up on my TiVo.

Is this correct?

Also I had a message that didn't seem to trigger the new message indicator in the info screen. See test 1, step 4.

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I just tried two schedulings and here is the result of both. Times are in EDT timezone.

Test 1:

1. I scheduled a recording for 10 PM. I chose this time because I knew it conflicted. I did this at around 9:05 PM. I received an email notification almost immediately after I clicked the record button.

2. Around 9:12 PM, my TiVo connected to the server (according to my router). The scheduled recording wasn't downloaded. I figured maybe it hadn't been queued yet, so I waited.

3. Around 9:27 PM, TiVo connected again, this time I could see from my router that it grabbed the schedule (it connects to port 8080 when it downloads a schedule).

4. I went to my TiVo and hit the "info" button to bring up info on the current live show. I noticed that the message notification thing was dim and that it said there were no new message. I went into the To Do recording history and sure enough it was listed as not recording do to a conflict. I went back to the main menu and still no "new message" indicator. I went into the messages and the message was there. Strange that it never showed there was a new message.

5. Around 9:45 PM (about 15 minutes after TiVo got the request), I received an email that the show wasn't scheduled.

Test 2:

1. Around 9:33 PM I scheduled another show that would conflict.

2. TiVo connected at around 9:43 and downloaded the request. This time instead of hitting the info button I clicked the TiVo button to go into the menu. The new message indicator was there, so either last time was a fluke or it doesn't like me hitting the info button first.

3. I received the email of the result at 10:00 pm. Again about 15 minutes later.

Posted by: gizmoitus

The problem with mail is that's highly dependent on your own ISP's mail handling. The bigger the ISP the more likely you will see a delay. If it's something like hotmail or aol, who knows what gyrations mail goes through there, but I've seen substantial delays.

I run my own domain and mailserver, and when i get a chance I'll test this a bit more. I was a bit surprised to see in my first tests that the time between the first email acknowledging my request, and the email stating that the request had been incorporated by my Tivo was around 30 minutes. I haven't really tried to look at the polling interval, but this suggests to me, that the Tivo only polls (assuming the always-on internet connection) at a certain interval. It would be nice if they just published what that interval was.

Posted by: morac

It's been stated (and I've observed) that the polling takes place approximately every 15 minutes.

Your observations seem to confirm my hypothesis that the confirmation email is sent out after the TiVo connects again after it receives the request. In your case, you must have scheduled right after a connection attempt so 15 minutes later TiVo got the request (and scheduled the recording) and then 15 minutes after that (30 minutes total) the TiVo connected again which triggered the email.

Actually the more I think about this, this must be the way the email confirmations work since it takes TiVo a minute or two to process the schedule request so the results wouldn't be available until the next connect.

I suppose the software could have been designed to contact immediately upon completing the scheduling processing, but it was probably deemed an extra 15 minutes wasn't too terrible especially since the web server warns you when scheduling shows within the next hour.

Also I agree with your statement that email delivery time is dependent many factors including the sending and receiving mail servers. That's why I made it a point to point out that the first email sent was received immediately after I clicked the record button. This occured in both tests, so it appears the mail servers are not causing the delay.

BTW, in case your interested, I had the email sent to a Yahoo mail account which has a very good track record of getting receiving mail quickly.