TiVo Mini With IR Remote (Old Version)

I have been a TiVo customer for a long time. I had the early versions of the TiVo that would sample analog cable; I had Tivo receivers designed for directTV; I had TiVo HD receivers. I also own Apple TVs, a Kindle Fire TV and a Chromecast. This is all just mentioned to establish my credentials as a TV geek.

We have five locations with TVs in our house (don’t judge me).

I find TiVo to be an expensive solution, especially when coupled with cable card charges from Verizon FIOS. So, when I learned about the possibility of going from five cable cards down to one cable card in the house by installing one TiVo Roamio and four TiVo Minis, I was interested. Very interested. The minis are much less expensive and currently being sold with “lifetime service.”

In my house I have gigabit ethernet in the walls, making it ideally suited for the TiVo mini solution. No messing around with MoCA.

Overall, the solution works well. There are certain benefits and drawbacks to using a single Roamio and a bunch of Minis versus buying Roamio devices for every location. Tivo users tend to be a discerning bunch and we care about the tradeoffs, so let’s go through it item by item.

Benefits of using the TiVo Minis + a TiVo Roamio (versus a bunch of Roamios)
———————————-
• Minis draw less power
• Minis avoid cable card costs
• Minis allow you to justify your investment in ethernet in your house (this is an irrational benefit, but it’s there for me. I love to see my network used)
• Minis give you a unified experience across the house. Only one set of season passes to manage and the content streams on any Mini much more responsively than transferring a show from one “full” tivo to another – if copyright even allows the transfer.

Drawbacks of using TiVo Minis + a Roamio (versus just a bunch of Roamios)
————————————————-
• The mini only shows live TV for 90 minutes unattended. After that, it asks “are you still there?” This makes it unsuitable for unattended viewing, and it makes it less useful if you like to go to sleep with the TV on and have it stay on. If you use Sennheiser RS 120 wireless headphones, which turn off when the audio cuts out, and you sleep with them on your head, they will got to static in 90 minutes. A Roamio will happily drive external audio indefinitely.
• The mini can’t drive headphones or external audio without the $20 connection kit.
• The mini can’t drive component video without the $20 connection kit (but you have HDMI at this point).
• The mini lacks the optical audio out, so no attaching to your home theatre system
• The mini does not show live TV in the upper right corner when on the main TiVo screen, as a Roamio will. However, the mini does show live TV in the corner when you are in the channel guide.
• The mini can’t go back in time on live TV that started before you entered the room. For example, on a regular TiVo, if you happen to like the channel that is playing when you turn the TV on, you can go back in time because the Tivo buffers (records) the live TV just for grins in case you want to go back. The mini does not allocate the tuner on the Roamio until you choose “live TV” and times out after 90 minutes, so you get no buffer to review.
• The mini lacks the RF remote of the Roamio. RF remotes work behind cabinets without extra wiring. The mini come with an IR remote.
• The remote on the Roamio is just nicer, and has a “guide” button in the center.
• Each Roamio adds tuners to your house and increases the number of shows that can recorded simultaneously. Note that hardly matters because a six tuner Roamio is more than enough for us, especially since the Minis are timing out and dropping the tuner after 90 minutes.
• Changing channels sequentially is slower (but we rarely do this)

Streaming over-the-top content
—
Our family does a lot of on-demand streaming of content these days. Netflix, AppleTV and Amazon Prime instant are the services we use most often.

Netflix works well on the Mini. It’s not as quick to enter Netflix as on the Apple TV, but the interface is responsive enough and looks pretty good. It’s far better than the old Tivo HD or Tivo Premiere. It’s good enough for me that I won’t switch to the Apple TV for netflix.

Amazon Prime also works well. Again, good enough that I won’t switch to the Fire TV. That said, the Fire TV is the best Amazon streaming solution that I know of.

The Tivo lacks HBO Go. This is a big omission in my opinion. I watch more HBO than any other network and do switch to the Apple TV to get to my HBO Go. Amazon also has some HBO content on Prime, but it’s a small subset.

Setup
—
I can’t write much about setup that has not been written before. Suffice it to say that if you love TiVo, you can get through the setup process. TiVo’s phone support is excellent and responsive. The only limitation is that they are not open 24×7.

The three biggest problems with the setup for me were:
• You need to carefully sequence the activation of the mini and the connection of the Roamio with the TiVo service so that both devices recognize that they can pair.
• The TiVo mini needs to take an update as soon as you boot it the first time and it takes about 15 minutes in all.
• The TiVo boots slowly. Too slowly in my opinion.

Overall, I still get the feeling that eventually I won’t own a Tivo because all content will be over the top and Tivo is not the best streaming box (Roku or Apple TV are better). So I feel like I am supporting a good friend in Tivo.

I also worked in building 9 at Silicon Graphics in the 90s. It was in that building that the Orlando Project with Time Warner was developed. That project, which created a $2000 setup box to stream movies over ATM networks in Orlando, FL was a failure. But Jim Barton knew that it was just too early, not impossible, and Tivo was founded subsequently. So Tivo will always hold a soft spot in my heart.