I think I am going to TiVo :(

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IownFIVEechos

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#41

Post by IownFIVEechos » Thu Dec 10, 2015 9:16 pm

mdavej wrote: SD solution is looking pretty terrible so far, and I've got my own money sunk into it. It's a shame to not even consider the best WMC alternative out there. I think I need to change my name to Iused2own5echoes.
So far the fast forward buttons seem to do well in my house hold. I can see how it would be nice, but also their is a certain feeling of having commercials. It doesn't make the show feel like a movie if that makes sense. But better to have it then not I would agree. Once the SD project gets off the ground (I imagine in 2020). I too will share that username!

I did consider the Tivo when they had the fire sale, but when I heard the PQ was sub par I got nervous. Now I am too invested in Android TV to look back. I am a stickler (I have OCD) for PQ. The androidTV so far is soo Silky smooth just need a full DVR solution.

One good thing is that the Echos are discontinued their value is holding its own. I can sell them now for basically more then I bought them for! Now that is a great ROI.

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#42

Post by Ed  » Thu Dec 10, 2015 9:30 pm

IownFIVEechos wrote:I did consider the Tivo when they had the fire sale, but when I heard the PQ was sub par I got nervous.
You bought into some bull and got scared off by it. I haven't noticed any PQ or interlacing or anything issues. Same PQ as WMC and Live TV on Android TV (on my SHIELD and Nexus Players, ADT-1 had noticeable interlacing issues) for me. IMO you would still need Android TVs (or alt) with Tivo as I only recommend Tivo as a DVR, not an app box. I don't use mine as an app box, I use my Android TVs (even for live TV over Tivo just because I'm already in Android TV 9 times out of 10 - Tivo only gets used for scheduling/managing/watching recordings here).

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STC

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#43

Post by STC » Fri Dec 11, 2015 12:40 am

To be absolutely clear I can assure you my experience with Roamio cableTV PQ was sub par. I tested using multiple TVs, cables, inputs together with multiple Roamios and Minis.

Comparing an older TiVoHD side-by-side it was a night and day. The older TiVo won hands down.
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Scallica

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#44

Post by Scallica » Fri Dec 11, 2015 2:32 pm

Does anyone like the design of the Tivo Bolt? :wtf:
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mcewinter

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#45

Post by mcewinter » Fri Dec 11, 2015 3:25 pm

^ Booooooo

Ed 

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#46

Post by Ed  » Fri Dec 11, 2015 4:29 pm

Scallica wrote:Does anyone like the design of the Tivo Bolt? :what the heck:
Tivo, probably :P

It is........ something.

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#47

Post by STC » Fri Dec 11, 2015 4:42 pm

Total bananas.
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#48

Post by STC » Fri Dec 11, 2015 11:24 pm

image1.jpeg
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Crash2009

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#49

Post by Crash2009 » Sat Dec 12, 2015 5:35 pm

Scallica wrote::what the heck:
Right.....How the heck am I going to mount a cooling fan on that thing?

On second thought... I guess I could build it up level with a heat sink.

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#50

Post by STC » Sat Dec 12, 2015 9:30 pm

Crash2009 wrote:How the heck am I going to mount a cooling fan on that thing?

Problemo solved.

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#51

Post by al_wilson2 » Fri Feb 19, 2016 8:50 am

I've about had it with the Rovi guide data, and I've been with WMC since 2005. I have cable and OTA tuners. The sub-channels on my OTA continually have no data and require manual configuration to fix. The thing is, I drop cable subscription yearly and revert to OTA in an effort to force cable to lower my bill. I'm considering a switch to TiVo, but need a box that does OTA and Cable. The Bolt does both, but not simultaneously. Since I use cable, it's either WMC or TiVo for me. I don't think I want to deal with SiliconDust's solution, since it has a fee also. Some of my thoughts are below.
  • 1. Is TiVo now one fee for a whole home solution?
    2. If I have two recorders (one for OTA; one for cable), do they integrate guides at all, or just share recordings?
    3. ***Are there any WMC fans that regret their change to TiVo?***
    4. If I have one recorder, is it easy to reconfigure it for OTA when I drop cable, or vice versa? Do recordings get lost when reconfiguring it?
    5. Is there any backup solution? My WMC setup is RAID, so that I don't lose anything due to a hard drive crash. If attaching an external drive, can you only transfer recordings, or can you record straight to the external drive?
I'll also add that most of my viewing is live or recorded TV. When I cancel cable, I still have 40 OTA stations and I tend to supplement it with Netflix or Hulu. I don't catalog a lot of shows or movies, so media streaming is not an issue. Over half of my DVD collection has now been converted to Ultraviolet so that I can watch those movies on Vudu.

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#52

Post by Scallica » Fri Feb 19, 2016 12:27 pm

al_wilson2 wrote:I've about had it with the Rovi guide data, and I've been with WMC since 2005.
Before abandoning ship, give EPG123 a try.

http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... f=9&t=9702
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bob_p

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#53

Post by bob_p » Fri Feb 19, 2016 1:22 pm

The annual subscription fee is $150 for each Bolt (or Roamio) that you have, and they include the first year's subscription in the device purchase. If you need "extenders", each Mini costs $150, and there is no annual subscription fee for them.

Since we will need more than 4 tuners to cover recording and live TV, we would either need to get two Bolts or go with the older Roamio Pro (which lacks some of the new Bolt features) - or wait until a new Pro comes out that has all of the new features (including 4K streaming).

While the Rovi guide has problems, it seems to be good enough that we can (almost always) get our programs recorded. I do have to check periodically to verify a program isn't being missed or extra recordings aren't being scheduled - but that doesn't take too long to do (about once a week).

EPG123 could be an interesting option - especially if/when Microsoft kills their program guide service (and we have no idea when that's going to happen).

TiVo will probably never give you the flexibility of WMC. Going to TiVo will be a compromise - you'll get a platform that has support (unlike WMC) and has some nice features not present in WMC (streaming services, Comcast's On Demand, ...) - and will likely have to give up some things to get those capabilities (like RAID for your programs, automatic commercial skipping, ...).

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#54

Post by mdavej » Fri Feb 19, 2016 3:25 pm

bob_p wrote:The annual subscription fee is $150 for each Bolt (or Roamio) that you have, and they include the first year's subscription in the device purchase. If you need "extenders", each Mini costs $150, and there is no annual subscription fee for them.
Not necessarily. Just like with PC based systems, great deals can still be found. My Roamio including lifetime was only $299, and my Minis were only $69. Hardware cost was a wash after I sold all my WMC based hardware (several Echoes, a few tuners and PC parts).

Tivo has more advantages over WMC than the other way around, IMO. I have 4 live buffers that I can record from the beginning, global streaming/TV search, functioning Netflix and other streaming services, excellent comm skip with no effort on my part, logos with no effort and zero maintenance/troubleshooting time (I had to reboot my Ceton based system monthly and constantly fix the guide data). Raid means nothing to me as I couldn't care less if my drive went belly up tomorrow. Most everything I have is no big loss or easily replaceable. I mainly just time shift, watch, delete. Things I really want to keep are stored elsewhere anyway.

EPG123 looks promising, but Rovi is still a mess (from what I gather). I'm glad to be rid of it.

As for the OPs questions,

1. Is TiVo now one fee for a whole home solution? Bob answered, but to summarize, sort of. You can do Lifetime (All-In) with no recurring fees, $150/yr or $15/mo. 1st year is free. But on a new unit, All-In is insanely expensive ($600) right now. I can't imagine anyone opting for that. For your purposes, look for a couple of OTA units with lifetime included (many were recently bought on Amazon to flip), and add a cable card bracket for cable. You should be able to find them for under $400 each. I just bought a couple more myself as spares.

2. If I have two recorders (one for OTA; one for cable), do they integrate guides at all, or just share recordings? I don't fully understand the question. They must have distinct guides since the channels would all be different. If you're concerned about online management, you pick a recorder to manage, each with its respective guide.

3. ***Are there any WMC fans that regret their change to TiVo?*** My only regret is that I didn't switch sooner. Check out the Tivocommunity forums for more opinions. Many ex-WMC users have posted there with a wide range of experiences.

4. If I have one recorder, is it easy to reconfigure it for OTA when I drop cable, or vice versa? Do recordings get lost when reconfiguring it? Very easy. Just pick a different lineup. Nothing is lost. I've done it several times for other family members.

5. Is there any backup solution? My WMC setup is RAID, so that I don't lose anything due to a hard drive crash. If attaching an external drive, can you only transfer recordings, or can you record straight to the external drive?Use pyTivo or kmttg or Tivo desktop to back up any and everything you like, any time to any place you like. Reuse your raid in your PC if you wish. I mainly use pyTivo to access all my old WMC recordings on Tivo. Only thing I can't watch are my old copy-once recordings (no surprise there), so have to keep WMC around for that. I've never attached an external drive, so I can't advise there. I've only used network shares.

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#55

Post by STC » Fri Feb 19, 2016 4:16 pm

A newer model 'pro' TiVo is due this year apparently. Keep an eye out.
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#56

Post by al_wilson2 » Sat Feb 20, 2016 12:42 am

I'm in no rush, so perhaps I'll wait for a newer pro model. I also could care less if my recordings are lost due to a hard drive crash. It's the setup that I care about. On TiVo, if the hard drive crashes, are all series settings lost? On WMC, if one of my RAID hard drives crashed, my "setup" was still maintained. Are series settings also maintained if changing provider from OTA to Cable?

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#57

Post by dkrom » Sat Feb 20, 2016 5:31 am

Having an XP Media Center for 10 years and now a Win7 setup for over 6 months I figure I've saved almost $2000 in not having to pay for any subscription fees (based on the TiVo $15 per month). Of course I'm not working in the purchase price of the computer, but the computer isn't JUST for media center - it's for all my computing needs, unlike a TiVo, so I wouldn't add that as a hardware cost - I would still have purchased a computer. Yes, purchasing 2 extenders for $30 each was a cost, along with my 3 XP extenders that cost $30 each, but then again all of that added together is what ONE TiVo mini costs. If Media Center is working for you, why not wait? In my 10 years of XP I only had problems at daylight savings time and at the end when the ROVI switchover stopped my machine from getting a guide. Since I've had the Win7 setup I did have to run the ObjectRecovery task once because the ROVI data wasn't appearing for my sub channels on OTA and random channels do appear every so often, but I really don't think those are deal-breakers for me to stop using Media Center. I'd say bank your savings until Media Center is finally gone and buy whatever brand new DVR system is out at that time. It might be a TiVo, or maybe some brand new system that blows everything else out of the water. If you get 5 more years out of your setup, you're saving $900 - probably enough to buy whatever it is that will replace Media Center.

Just my 2 cents...

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#58

Post by bob_p » Sat Feb 20, 2016 1:03 pm

Comcast's increased cablecard fees (at least in our area) to almost $100 per card per year (after taxes). Our WMC has 2 cablecard tuners (providing access to 7 channels at one time), so the cablecard fees are costing us $200 per year.

If TiVo produces a Bolt-like Pro with 6 tuners, that uses a single cablecard, the annual subscription fee and cablecard fee (for one cablecard) will only be an additional $50 per year. And, if for that $50 we actually have someone on the other end providing support, plus the integration with Comcast's On Demand and streaming services, it's worth the extra $50 per year...

And, if we consider the electricity cost - that $50 might be saved if the TiVo DVR uses less power than a general purpose WMC PC (which is very likely).

The biggest feature we would likely lose in going from WMC to TiVo is how commercial skipping is done. With WMC, we have comskip scanning for commercials and the commercial skipping add-in will try to automatically skip over the commercials - and if there's a problem, we can override the skipping and watch anything that was mistakenly marked as a commercial. With TiVo, the commercial skipping is semi-automatic, requiring a button press to initiate the commercial skipping, and that only works for the prime time series on the top networks.

TiVo doesn't officially support their desktop app any more, so moving files to a PC now requires using a 3rd party app (like the ones mentioned above).

As of now, we will be staying on WMC, continuing to monitor SD's progress with their DVR project (though it appears they will fall short of anything close enough to WMC for us to seriously consider), and consider a switch to TiVo when they have a 6 tuner DVR with the features of the Bolt.

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#59

Post by mdavej » Sat Feb 20, 2016 4:17 pm

To answer the earlier question about recording schedule, it's stored online or you can backup and restore it yourself. I think it can tolerate a lineup change, but I'm not certain.

Those $30 extenders are not comparable to a Mini. They have no Moca, RF, WOL or streaming services. I'd happily pay $69 for a Mini.

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#60

Post by dkrom » Sun Feb 21, 2016 1:02 am

$30 extenders (used dma2200's) work perfectly - no need for Moca, wireless HD video works flawlessly two rooms away on my extender. I keep the computer on 24/7 so no need for WOL. Streaming would be nice, but I have an AppleTV so no big deal, just switch an input and I have everything ready to go and I can screen-cast.

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