TiVo Premiere: Slow HD UI Hides Speed-Freak Hardware

Launch-day reviews of the TiVo Premiere invariably highlighted the DVR's frustratingly sluggish HD UI, but it turns out that – as long as the company get their software updates right – the box itself has plenty of speed potential.  Enthusiast K. Fowler (who goes by bkdtv on the Tivo Community forums) has whipped open the Premiere and been running benchmarking tests on its core hardware; according to his technical review, it's capable of significantly faster data transfer speeds.

Fowler switched off the janky high-definition UI and used the classic interface instead, and found that data is transferring 3x to 5x as fast as on previous TiVo models.  That's going to have a significant impact on HD multi-room viewing as well as TiVoToGo, as well as when downloading VOD content from providers like Amazon.

Incidentally, switching back to the HD UI slices away around 25-percent of that speed, so TiVo obviously have plenty of work to do optimizing their software.  As well as the benchmarks Fowler has also comprehensively reviewed the whole TiVo Premiere system; you can read his piece below.

[via Zatz Not Funny]