# Amazon Fire vs Tivo mini



## kisby (Mar 31, 2002)

Can anyone compare and contrast these devices, please?


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

As of right now a Fire TV can not actually access a TiVo. However they said they would be releasing an app for the Fire TV this week.

I have personally side loaded the Android app onto a Fire TV so I have some frame of reference to how it'll probably work. The biggest disadvantages to using a Fire TV is the lag when trick playing the video. Every time you skip or replay it takes a second to start playing the video again. I also had some sync issues. There are also some aspects of the TiVo you can't manage like Wish Lists and manual recordings. 

With the Mini the experience is essentially the same as using the TiVo directly.


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## TiVoMargret (Feb 3, 2008)

The TiVo app for Amazon Fire TV is now available: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0160MG4WY


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Dan203 said:


> As of right now a Fire TV can not actually access a TiVo. However they said they would be releasing an app for the Fire TV this week.
> 
> I have personally side loaded the Android app onto a Fire TV so I have some frame of reference to how it'll probably work. The biggest disadvantages to using a Fire TV is the lag when trick playing the video. Every time you skip or replay it takes a second to start playing the video again. I also had some sync issues. There are also some aspects of the TiVo you can't manage like Wish Lists and manual recordings.
> 
> With the Mini the experience is essentially the same as using the TiVo directly.


I haven't tried it with my FireTV, but it's working fine on this FireTV Stick. It seems similar to when I use the TiVo app with my phone/tablet with Android.


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## tarheelblue32 (Jan 13, 2014)

I'm a little surprised that TiVo isn't charging anything for this app, since it essentially replaces a Mini. Though I see it says that this is a "beta", so maybe once the final version of the app is released it will cost something.


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## TazExprez (May 31, 2014)

tarheelblue32 said:


> I'm a little surprised that TiVo isn't charging anything for this app, since it essentially replaces a Mini. Though I see it says that this is a "beta", so maybe once the final version of the app is released it will cost something.


Under product descriptions on the first line it states: "TiVo customers with a TiVo BOLT, TiVo Roamio Plus/Pro, or TiVo Stream can stream their favorite recorded shows through this new FREE TiVo App for Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick." TiVo puts emphasis on the word "FREE" by putting it in capital letters. It seems like this app may remain free.


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## Jrr6415sun (Mar 31, 2006)

tarheelblue32 said:


> I'm a little surprised that TiVo isn't charging anything for this app, since it essentially replaces a Mini. Though I see it says that this is a "beta", so maybe once the final version of the app is released it will cost something.


I think Tivo's main income is from subscription fees, not one time mini purchases, so anything that makes people more likely to purchase a tivo and pay subscription fees makes sense to be free. Tivo needs more subscribers and giving more of an incentive to leave cable DVRs and making it less of a sunk cost to try out tivo is a good way to do it.

Although if they ever start charging service fees for mini's then i'm sure the app won't be free anymore.


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## tarheelblue32 (Jan 13, 2014)

Jrr6415sun said:


> I think Tivo's main income is from subscription fees, not one time mini purchases, so anything that makes people more likely to purchase a tivo and pay subscription fees makes sense to be free. Tivo needs more subscribers and giving more of an incentive to leave cable DVRs and making it less of a sunk cost to try out tivo is a good way to do it.
> 
> Although if they ever start charging service fees for mini's then i'm sure the app won't be free anymore.


Technically, there is a service fee for the Minis, it's just included in the purchase price. Nevertheless, TiVo needs every little bit of revenue it can get. I think charging something for this app would have made a lot of sense.


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

tarheelblue32 said:


> Technically, there is a service fee for the Minis, it's just included in the purchase price. Nevertheless, TiVo needs every little bit of revenue it can get. I think charging something for this app would have made a lot of sense.


Quiet you! 

Here were my impressions that I posted on another thread. Any ideas? It only shows 2 out of 7 dots of signal strength and it actually sitting right under my AC66U wifi router



HarperVision said:


> I just downloaded it onto my FireTV Stick and while the app and navigation and design seems nice, the streaming quality is still absolutely horrendous compared to slingbox. I have 12Mbps upload where the Roamio plus is and 200Mbps down here and it looks worse than a YouTube video from 10+ years ago! :down:


EDIT: I just tried my FireTV Slingbox app connected to the Slingbox that's directly connected to the same Roamio plus and the streaming quality difference is beyond night and day!!! Stream looks like old 1997 PC video and Slingbox almost looks full HD. This rules out ethernet link quality, WTF?!?!


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## wizwor (Dec 18, 2013)

I don't have cable, so bear with me. My mother has comcast and four televisions. Three of the televisions have the SD converters. The fourth is an HD box, but it is not a DVR.

Were she to put a Roamio Plus on the main set, would she be able to use this app on the others? Concurrently? What kind of quality can be expected (vs the SD adapters)?


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## georgeorwell86 (Sep 15, 2015)

I only got to mess around with it a little bit this morning. I've been using the Tivo app sideloaded on the FireTV....and so far I'm noticing a decline in PQ on this official beta release. If this turns out to be the case after more testing...I'll definitely go back to the sideloaded version.


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

I found it about the same as side loading. The navigation benefits are so much better, I'm keeping it. As a beta, I would hope th pq will improve with time.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

tarheelblue32 said:


> I'm a little surprised that TiVo isn't charging anything for this app, since it essentially replaces a Mini. Though I see it says that this is a "beta", so maybe once the final version of the app is released it will cost something.


It definitely does not replace a Mini. It's basically streaming like to a tablet or phone. Which looks fine on a smaller screen device but not as good on a much larger screen. I tried it on a 47" LCD TV. The output from my FireTV was 720P. There was certainly no comparison between that output and what comes from my Mini. The Mini easily looked much better.


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

aaronwt said:


> It definitely does not replace a Mini. It's basically streaming like to a tablet or phone. Which looks fine on a smaller screen device but not as good on a much larger screen. I tried it on a 47" LCD TV. The output from my FireTV was 720P. There was certainly no comparison between that output and what comes from my Mini. The Mini easily looked much better.


In my case there's not even a comparison to my highly compressed SD "digital" channels from my local cable co. Faces make it look like it was recorded using a camera with Vaseline smeared all over the lens!


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

HarperVision - You're using it OOH right? Have you tried it in home to see if the picture quality improves at all? TiVo's proxy could be the reason for the poor quality OOH rather then the app itself.


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

I don't have a stream at home right now. I sold my Plus to go OTA with a refurb base Roamio and added a DirecTV Genie Lite DVR in the theater/man cave and a DirecTiVo THR-22 on an ATSC modulator broadcasting on CH9 to all my other TiVos around the house for sports and the small amount of cable type shows we watch.

Even so, if their proxy is THAT bad, it still makes it suck because isn't that mainly the whole point of having an app on a FireTV Stick, to use it while OOH? Plus, I think Sling is also using a proxy through their servers now, which is how they're inserting the ads.

Sling is light years ahead of TiVo........just sayin'. I do wish it was the other way around, or at worst, equal.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

I wasn't trying to say it was an excuse, I was just wondering if the quality was more acceptable inside the home. 

I think a lot of people might actually consider using a Fire TV stick with this app instead of a Mini for getting TiVo to a room which may not be used very frequently.


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## jonw747 (Aug 2, 2015)

Dan203 said:


> I wasn't trying to say it was an excuse, I was just wondering if the quality was more acceptable inside the home.
> 
> I think a lot of people might actually consider using a Fire TV stick with this app instead of a Mini for getting TiVo to a room which may not be used very frequently.


The video quality is fine in home and in my experience with the Android App out of home with a high-speed and low-latency connection.

It's not as good as a Mini by any means, but I think a Stick will do fine in a location which doesn't merit the expense of installing a Mini (yet receives decent WiFi).


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

I just tried it out on my Stick. It worked fine. Quality was ok. I didn't see a lot of motion artifacts or other compression issues, but it did look low resolution. Like a DVD upscaled to 1080p.


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

Dan203 said:


> I just tried it out on my Stick. It worked fine. Quality was ok. I didn't see a lot of motion artifacts or other compression issues, but it did look low resolution. *Like a DVD upscaled to 108p.*


108p! Dang that IS low resolution!


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Doh!

I wonder if the low resolution is a hardware limitation of the encoding chip in the Stream? Or if it's just a software limitation that can be fixed?

Also when I ran the streaming setup I only saw my two Roamio Pro's listed, not the Bolt. I wonder if this app is Bolt compatible?


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## PSU_Sudzi (Jun 4, 2015)

One big difference is you cannot watch live TV on the Fire while you can on a mini. Deal breaker for some.


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## tarheelblue32 (Jan 13, 2014)

PSU_Sudzi said:


> One big difference is you cannot watch live TV on the Fire while you can on a mini. Deal breaker for some.


True, but you can always start a recording on whatever live TV channel you want to watch and then begin the recording. But yeah, it's not going to replace a Mini in most cases.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Dan203 said:


> Doh!
> 
> I wonder if the low resolution is a hardware limitation of the encoding chip in the Stream? Or if it's just a software limitation that can be fixed?
> 
> Also when I ran the streaming setup I only saw my two Roamio Pro's listed, not the Bolt. I wonder if this app is Bolt compatible?


I used it to stream content off my Bolt. It behaved very similar to my Android phone and Tablets.

From what I've seen so far, to stream off the Bolt it uses it's internal stream capabilities. Which unfortunately are still limited to one stream. Then if I stream from a ROamio Basic or Pro, then it uses the streaming capabilities of my Roamio Pro.


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

Can you skip commercials easily with the fire TV app?


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

It appears to skip 30 seconds when you hit the >> button.


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## wyzard (Jan 17, 2003)

On the Fire TV app, if I choose a show will it automatically begin to record it and let me watch it, or does the recording have to be selected on the Bolt?


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

wyzard said:


> On the Fire TV app, if I choose a show will it automatically begin to record it and let me watch it, or does the recording have to be selected on the Bolt?


I don't see a way to schedule a show to record. I can select the TiVo and view the My Shows list. But those are the only options I see right now.


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

wyzard said:


> On the Fire TV app, if I choose a show will it automatically begin to record it and let me watch it, or does the recording have to be selected on the Bolt?





aaronwt said:


> I don't see a way to schedule a show to record. I can select the TiVo and view the My Shows list. But those are the only options I see right now.


You would have to start the recording on the TiVo itself or via an app or PC, then it'll show in the my shows folder as aaronwt says. Then at that point you can start playback on your FTV.


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