# How many TiVo Minis can you connect to a Premiere 4?



## neo_sapien (Dec 14, 2009)

When the TiVo Mini first came out, you could only connect 2 of them to a TiVo Premiere 4, due to a software issue. It was said that in a future update you would be able to connect 3. Has that update been released, enabling this new functionality yet?

I have a TiVo Premiere 4, 2 TiVo Minis, and a rented cable box. I am looking forward to replacing the rented cable box with a third TiVo Mini.


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## BigJimOutlaw (Mar 21, 2004)

A few people here have already connected 3 Minis. The limit with the 4-tuner boxes is that only up to 2 Minis can watch live TV simultaneously. But you can _connect_ 3 if you want... and any 2 of them can do Live TV at the same time.

The dynamic tuner allocation software fix is expected pretty soon, however Tivo seemingly wants to make sure there are 2 tuners available to the DVR itself, so all 4-tuner boxes may still be fixed at 2 simultaneous live TV streams max.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

BigJimOutlaw said:


> A few people here have already connected 3 Minis. The limit with the 4-tuner boxes is that only up to 2 Minis can watch live TV simultaneously. But you can _connect_ 3 if you want... and any 2 of them can do Live TV at the same time.
> 
> The dynamic tuner allocation software fix is expected pretty soon, however Tivo seemingly wants to make sure there are 2 tuners available to the DVR itself, so all 4-tuner boxes may still be fixed at 2 simultaneous live TV streams max.


As a point I am now testing out a Roamio Plus with 5 Minis and was surprised that I could tune each of the 5 Minis to a different channel, when I went to the Roamio it did show that 5 tuners were in use by other TiVos, I could only get to one tuner on the Roamio itself.


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## BigJimOutlaw (Mar 21, 2004)

lessd said:


> As a point I am now testing out a Roamio Plus with 5 Minis and was surprised that I could tune each of the 5 Minis to a different channel, when I went to the Roamio it did show that 5 tuners were in use by other TiVos, I could only get to one tuner on the Roamio itself.


Ah, that's good to know.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

So if you can grab 5 of the 6 tuners from a Roamio what possible reason can they have for preventing a 2 tuner from being the host once the DTA feature hits the Premiere platform? Their original argument was that they wanted the minimum requirement of being able to record one thing while watching another on the main box. It seems they've eliminated that requirement with DTA.

I know all the marketing material has always said that the Mini would only ever work with a 4 tuner host, but I actually have a practical reason for wanting to have it hosted by a 2 tuner. We still have 30 or so analog only stations and the 2 tuner Premiere is the last TiVo to support analog channels. I would like to put a Mini in the guest room, where I don't currently have cable, but our main guests are usually my Nieces and Nephew and all the kids channels are still analog.


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## neo_sapien (Dec 14, 2009)

BigJimOutlaw said:


> A few people here have already connected 3 Minis. The limit with the 4-tuner boxes is that only up to 2 Minis can watch live TV simultaneously. But you can _connect_ 3 if you want... and any 2 of them can do Live TV at the same time.
> 
> The dynamic tuner allocation software fix is expected pretty soon, however Tivo seemingly wants to make sure there are 2 tuners available to the DVR itself, so all 4-tuner boxes may still be fixed at 2 simultaneous live TV streams max.


Ah, so there should be no problem with my proposed setup right now. Only 1 tuner would be allowed to be shared with the 3 Minis, and the Premiere 4 would reserve 3 tuners for itself. I don't use the Minis very often, so there's not much demand for tuners with them.


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## dmk1974 (Mar 7, 2002)

With the new software update, which now has dynamic tuner allocation, has anyone been able to tune 3 separate Minis when connecting to a single Premiere 4?


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

dmk1974 said:


> With the new software update, which now has dynamic tuner allocation, has anyone been able to tune 3 separate Minis when connecting to a single Premiere 4?


Yes on an XL4.


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