# Looking at the new TiVo Premiere XL



## kirk1701 (Feb 5, 2007)

Hello everyone, been a while since I've been here but I'm thinking about calling today and ordering the new TiVo Premiere XL so I've been browsing the forum to see if there are any bugs before I do order. We'll, I'm getting mixed reviews, I see some rebooting issues and freezing so I'm wondering if this is indeed the case, to what extent is it a widely known issue on all Premiere XL's or is it something like 5% of them on the market having this issue.

Couple other things I'm looking at, sure the tivo agent will be able to answer this when I call but I'm seeing in my account I'm eligible for $100 off because I'm a current Tivo series 3 owner; my question is this a refurbished unit or brand new? Run into this before.

Thirdly, Can we transfer service from series 3 to the new XL?


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

kirk1701 said:


> thinking about calling today and ordering the new TiVo Premiere XL so I've been browsing the forum to see if there are any bugs before I do order. We'll, I'm getting mixed reviews, I see some rebooting issues and freezing so I'm wondering if this is indeed the case, to what extent is it a widely known issue on all Premiere XL's


Has nothing to do with XL vs. non-XL. XL is pretty much identical to the non-XL, you are just paying $200 more for $30 worth of more hard drive space and a backlit remote (woopie).



> or is it something like 5% of them on the market having this issue.


That is a good question. Unfortunately, it is impossible to know. If I had to GUESS based on what I see on the forums, and adjust for the likelihood that more people come to report negative than positive, I would say at least 50% of people are having issues with freezing, sticking, and/or rebooting, to various degrees.



> Couple other things I'm looking at, sure the tivo agent will be able to answer this when I call but I'm seeing in my account I'm eligible for $100 off because I'm a current Tivo series 3 owner; my question is this a refurbished unit or brand new? Run into this before.


It SHOULD be a new machine. The upgrade program is for new equipment.... it is not a trade-up or swap type program.



> Thirdly, Can we transfer service from series 3 to the new XL?


Of course you can transfer service. Unless you are asking about LIFETIME service. That won't transfer, but they will give you a steep ($200) discount in such a case (instead of the 20% off the equipment).


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## thechoop (Apr 30, 2007)

I have the premiere XL and have not noticed any issues. No freezing, no reboots, all in all it has been a goob buy. I use an antenna though.


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## kirk1701 (Feb 5, 2007)

Thanks guys, think I will be calling here shortly; I'm still reading through the FAX thread.

One more question I haven't run across yet. Tivo customer service screwed up one of my tivo accounts a while back, long story short I was given $9.95 monthlt service for the life of my tivo so that price transfers to the XL right?


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## LoREvanescence (Jun 19, 2007)

kirk1701 said:


> Thanks guys, think I will be calling here shortly; I'm still reading through the FAX thread.
> 
> One more question I haven't run across yet. Tivo customer service screwed up one of my tivo accounts a while back, long story short I was given $9.95 monthlt service for the life of my tivo so that price transfers to the XL right?


I would call TiVo and make sure just to be safe. The website might automaticly set you up with the normal rate.


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## kirk1701 (Feb 5, 2007)

LoREvanescence said:


> I would call TiVo and make sure just to be safe. The website might automaticly set you up with the normal rate.


:up:

Oh I have a list of questions to be asking 

One problem, just because they get answered don't mean they are answered right. That's how I ended up with the $9.95 a month they canceled out the wrong Tivo account on me which I had for 8 years which at the time the rate was $6.95. Once it was canceled I could not get that $6.95 back


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## kirk1701 (Feb 5, 2007)

It's on its way everyone, let you know how I like it when it arrives.

As for the transfer, they said the $9.95 might revert back to the $12.95 when the 3 year contract was up but that would be addressed when the contract is up if that happened.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

You can get lifetime when the monthly service is done for $299(Assuming they still offer it). That is what I plan to do when my two monthly units for $6.95 end in a few months.


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## clinthall (Feb 7, 2004)

It seems as if though many folks here have been reporting issues with TIVO Premiere XL. 

I am here to report that all is well with my Premiere XL. 

1. Purchase at Best Buy: I bought the unit at Best Buy almost 3 weeks ago. despite the earlier tales of woe, I knew that TIVO would be releasing a software update to take care of these issues. Also Best Buy said they had not received a SINGLE return of either the Premiere or XL units. 

2. CableCARD from Comcast Houston: On the way back home with my prize purchase, I stopped at the Comcast Store and picked up a CableCARD. I explained to her that if all worked well with it, I would then return the cable box. She then entered the cableCARD information into my account, and told me that during installation I would need to call tech support so the card could be properly provisioned. 

3. Setup and cableCARD install: Having arrived home. I then proceeded to disconnect the cable box and connect the premiere XL using an HDMI cable into my Onkyo 608 A/V receiver, turned on the unit and followed the steps in the quick start guide. After I installed the CableCARD a screen came up and I called Comcast Tech Support, who then sent a signal to the unit, I read off some numbers on the screen and then was told to try tuning some channels. And, you guessed it, all systems were GO!!!!! After the first round of setup, the unit did download an software update which seemed to take about 30 minutes or so. this was even with the Wireless G adapter. 

4. Hours of enjoyment! I now have season passes of all of my favorite shows, and I have also enjoyed netflix streaming. 

Someone please tell Netflix to expand their streaming library!

5. Suggestions:
1. install a web browser so we can also browse for additional video content websites. also allow us to bookmark those sites and when we do a search we can also search those websites as well as the known ones such as youtube, netflix, etc. 
2. make available a wireless keyboard, which we could use in place of the remote. 
3. Allow for Premiere XL to serve as a music and video player to stream music and video from home server computers.

All in all it is a smooth ride and I am glad I came back to TIVO.


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## smbaker (May 24, 2003)

kirk1701 said:


> One problem, just because they get answered don't mean they are answered right. That's how I ended up with the $9.95 a month they canceled out the wrong Tivo account on me which I had for 8 years which at the time the rate was $6.95. Once it was canceled I could not get that $6.95 back


So... they did you a favor by charging you $3 more per month than they should have instead of $6 more per month than they should have? nice of them.

Reminds me of when my cellphone was stolen and someone used it to purchase $100 of music (a feature that I didn't even known the miserable phone had), and the cellphone company did me a favor by only making me pay for half of it.


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## kirk1701 (Feb 5, 2007)

clinthall said:


> It seems as if though many folks here have been reporting issues with TIVO Premiere XL.
> 
> I am here to report that all is well with my Premiere XL.
> 
> 1. Purchase at Best Buy: I bought the unit at Best Buy almost 3 weeks ago. despite the earlier tales of woe, I knew that TIVO would be releasing a software update to take care of these issues. Also Best Buy said they had not received a SINGLE return of either the Premiere or XL units.


Thanks for all the great info, mine should be here tomorrow so now I'm even more excited 



smbaker said:


> So... they did you a favor by charging you $3 more per month than they should have instead of $6 more per month than they should have? nice of them.
> 
> Reminds me of when my cellphone was stolen and someone used it to purchase $100 of music (a feature that I didn't even known the miserable phone had), and the cellphone company did me a favor by only making me pay for half of it.


Actually I was satisfied with the $9.95 because I was getting rid of a unit and was going to sell it on E-Bay. What ended up happening was they canceled the unit I was keeping which was the multi-service discount unit at $6.95. So it would have been going to $12.95 a month because I would no longer have the multi-service discount. They could not give me the $6.95 price back but since I was getting rid of the multi-service discount anyway I was happy with $9.95

By the way, I have like 36 hours of programming on the current series 3, the sales guy said the only way to transfer that over to the XL was to first transfer the shows to a PC/Laptop using tivo to go then transfer it to the XL because I wouldn't be able to transfer it via room to room viewing?

Any truth to that? Thats going to be transfering the data twice


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## Mike-Mike (Mar 2, 2010)

I have a TPXL and i also have had not problems with it. I am OTA only and I have 3meg DSL service. 

I love my TPXL, I love the remote, and I love the size of it. But seeing as you can transfer shows to a PC, and I will certainly buy the qwerty remote when it comes out, I think if I have all of that to do again I would just get the standard S4TP. Seeing as there is no confirmation of the THX making a difference. And transferring shows to a pc kind of negates the hard drive size issue. And like I said, my cool backlit remote will be useless to me once I get the QWERTY remote.

but yeah, like the above posters, I have had no lockups or reboots, and occasional lag, but nothing more than a few seconds.


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## cranbers (Apr 2, 2010)

Looks like a new update just posted, so when you get your new unit and you run the setup you should get a fresh start. Let's hope this new software fixes the main stability/performance issues. Granted its still not complete with all those new wonderful features we were all told about.


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## jwcooper (Dec 15, 2005)

> 5. Suggestions:
> 1. install a web browser so we can also browse for additional video content websites. also allow us to bookmark those sites and when we do a search we can also search those websites as well as the known ones such as youtube, netflix, etc.
> 2. make available a wireless keyboard, which we could use in place of the remote.
> 3. Allow for Premiere XL to serve as a music and video player to stream music and video from home server computers.
> ...


1. I honestly hope they don't add in a web browser until the very last update. That means after all the SD menus are gone, we have pandora, and updated Netflix UI (comparable to Roku, or Blu-Ray player Netflix UI's). There are way too many things that need updates before that. Also, I have yet to see a decent web browser implementation on a set-top box. The Wii almost got it, but it was too slow, and took forever to get the actual browser open from the main menu.
2. You can use wireless keyboards now. Just buy a wireless USB keyboard and you're set. The QWERTY remote will be out this fall, but it will be a huge disappointment if it doesn't use bluetooth for all of the functions (if it uses IR for anything other than controlling the TV, it will be a joke).
3. You can do this now, from what I understand. Set up a shared folder on your computer and load it up in the TiVo. I'm sure there is an even more advanced way of doing this though.


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## SugarBowl (Jan 5, 2007)

no lockups with my XL. I'm using antenna and cablecard.


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## ldobson (Jan 18, 2004)

kirk1701 said:


> :up:
> 
> Oh I have a list of questions to be asking
> 
> One problem, just because they get answered don't mean they are answered right. That's how I ended up with the $9.95 a month they canceled out the wrong Tivo account on me which I had for 8 years which at the time the rate was $6.95. Once it was canceled I could not get that $6.95 back


I retained the $6.95/mo rate by doing a replace on the Tivo Order page for an old Series 2.


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## gooseboy (May 19, 2010)

crxssi said:


> XL is pretty much identical to the non-XL, you are just paying $200 more for $30 worth of more hard drive space and a backlit remote (woopie).


Where can I upgrade my Premiere's HD for $30?


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## sdzc (Sep 4, 2005)

I think what the person meant was that the actual cost for the hard drive is $30, yet there is a $200 cost from Tivo. You can probably buy a drive that cheap (or cheaper if you buy in bulk like Tivo), but Tivo charges a premium of $200 to have that drive pre-installed.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

sdzc said:


> I think what the person meant was that the actual cost for the hard drive is $30, yet there is a $200 cost from Tivo. You can probably buy a drive that cheap (or cheaper if you buy in bulk like Tivo), but Tivo charges a premium of $200 to have that drive pre-installed.


You would be correct. That is exactly what this person (me) meant (and said too). Charging $200 more for a drive worth less than $30 more is pretty gutsy.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

$200 also gets you a THX certified device and a better remote. It isn't just for the larger hard drive. And of course they probably lose less money on the XL version too.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

aaronwt said:


> $200 also gets you a THX certified device and a better remote. It isn't just for the larger hard drive. And of course they probably lose less money on the XL version too.


The THX means nothing, it is the exact same hardware. The remote is the exact same remote, just backlit (and I don't know about you, but my fingers know my remote, and I am not in the pitch dark when using the remote)... plus you know that you will trash it and buy the QWERTY one, anyway.

So, like I said, it is $200 more for $30 more worth of drive space


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## gooseboy (May 19, 2010)

crxssi said:


> So, like I said, it is $200 more for $30 more worth of drive space


Well how else am I supposed to get hard drive space?


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

crxssi said:


> The THX means nothing, it is the exact same hardware. The remote is the exact same remote, just backlit (and I don't know about you, but my fingers know my remote, and I am not in the pitch dark when using the remote)... plus you know that you will trash it and buy the QWERTY one, anyway.
> 
> So, like I said, it is $200 more for $30 more worth of drive space


\

It is a learning remote. It is not the same as the non-backlit remote. I have both.
Although I typically use my Harmony One remotes instead of the TiVo remotes.

No one has proven or disproven whether the hardware is identical in both units. But they have certainly paid to have the XL uits THX certified which is an extra cost.

But I don't know why people think they are charging too much. This is no different than any other product that has multiple versions. Th eprice difference is never anywhere close to the actual cost difference of the items. This has always been the case and always will be. And most people are not going to open up their tiVo units to add extra space. So you either buy the XL with the larger hard drive, or buy the external hard drive. I have no desire to have an external hard drive that is married to the internal one. And I've decided that I will not be opening up my units, which is why I purchased the 3 year extended warranty on all my boxes.


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## DaveWhittle (Jul 25, 2002)

aaronwt said:


> But I don't know why people think they are charging too much. This is no different than any other product that has multiple versions. Th eprice difference is never anywhere close to the actual cost difference of the items.


I agree, but I have a theory as to why people think TiVo is charging too much - because many are tech savvy and know (or think they know) the actual cost difference between multiple versions. These people have probably built PCs, or at least swapped memory or hard drives and have explored the best bang-for-the-buck.

Second theory: maybe they are used to paying a few more cents for twice the size of soft-drink at the movies? 

With that said, IMO the XL is worth an extra $100 to $129. When I was buying mine, I decided there just wasn't an extra $200 in value in the XL, so I went with the non-XL.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

aaronwt said:


> It is a learning remote. It is not the same as the non-backlit remote. I have both.
> Although I typically use my Harmony One remotes instead of the TiVo remotes.


And according to TiVo's own site, the glo remote is worth exactly $20 more than the non-glo remote. And like I said before, most of us will replace it with the QWERTY remote later this year.



> No one has proven or disproven whether the hardware is identical in both units. But they have certainly paid to have the XL uits THX certified which is an extra cost.


It is a marketing gimmick.



> But I don't know why people think they are charging too much. This is no different than any other product that has multiple versions.


Because hard drives are not a mystery, they are a commodity item and people know the $30 difference. The XL doesn't have any extra engineering, software, special power supply, cabling, or anything else to support the larger drive. It is just a $30 larger drive. I didn't say it isn't "fair", it just is not a reasonable value to me.

But, I will revise my statement: The $200 extra you pay for an XL is for $30 more hard drive space and a $20 fancier remote = $50. Charging 200% more than that would be my threshold ($100). 400% doesn't cut it.


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## Mike-Mike (Mar 2, 2010)

where are you getting your remote prices? I looked at this page:

http://www.tivo.com/products/tivo-accessories/tivo-remote/index.html

the glo remote is $49.99, and the standard is $29.99, but that's not for the S4 style remote, I don't even see that one for sale


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

Does it matter? At $499, the XL is overpriced. $399 would be reasonable, but not a $200 markup over the base model for what you get.


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## mvnuenen (Jun 1, 2007)

aaronwt said:


> $200 also gets you a THX certified device and a better remote. It isn't just for the larger hard drive.


AND you get a faceplate that shows "XL". I like showing off mine is XL...


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## cranbers (Apr 2, 2010)

Yeah, XL is one of those I have lots of cash to blow kind of things. You could get the expander and a harmony remote that does a whole lot more for about the same total price. Once its an easy to do type of thing, I plan on putting a 2 terabyte hard drive in like I did with the series 3.

Does thx actually have a special chip in there to get that or is it just tested and given a certification?


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

Mike-Mike said:


> where are you getting your remote prices? I looked at this page:
> 
> http://www.tivo.com/products/tivo-accessories/tivo-remote/index.html
> 
> the glo remote is $49.99, and the standard is $29.99, but that's not for the S4 style remote, I don't even see that one for sale


Oops, either I misread the prices, or they changed. Thanks for the correction. I will fix post.


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## CraigHB (Dec 24, 2003)

So I'm thinking about replacing my trusty old Series 3 TiVo with a Premier XL. One advantage right off that I can see is that it uses one M-Card instead of two of the older style cards. Disk space is not going to be an advantage because I put a big drive in my S3. What else will the TPXL do better than my S3 or do that my S3 doesn't? 

Does Charter On-Demand work with the TPXL, or is that something that's never going to happen.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

CraigHB said:


> So I'm thinking about replacing my trusty old Series 3 TiVo with a Premier XL. One advantage right off that I can see is that it uses one M-Card instead of two of the older style cards.


A single M-Card is not an advantage of the TPXL. It is an an advantage of the THD, the THDXL, the TP, AND the TPXL.



> Does Charter On-Demand work with the TPXL, or is that something that's never going to happen.


No. Almost no cable company's VOD works with TiVo and never will (I have only heard of one, and that was because they were reselling the TiVo themselves as their cable-company DVR.


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## kirk1701 (Feb 5, 2007)

Hey guys,
Sorry I didn't get back but I gave it a month to see what or if I had any known issues and so far...aside from the ocasional reboot (3 times total) I'm loving the new unit. :up:

I di have a related question but going to start a new thread on


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## MeStinkBAD (Jul 16, 2003)

crxssi said:


> But, I will revise my statement: The $200 extra you pay for an XL is for $30 more hard drive space and a $20 fancier remote = $50. Charging 200% more than that would be my threshold ($100). 400% doesn't cut it.


Umm... you get 400% more recording time with the XL. Where are you coming up with these magic numbers anyhow? $30 more expensive HDD? More expensive then what? You think something is supposed to equal the sum of it's parts? What about the $400 for lifetime activation? There are no parts. But a lifetime could be any amount of time.

You can't put a price on personal time. It's not for sale. Just try and offer someone $200 to trade their XL for the standard. Not many would take it.


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