# Plus or Pro?



## jbaum

I think the only difference is the storage 150 hours vs. 450 hours. Is it worth $200?


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## Philmatic

It's worth $200 if triple the storage for $200 is worth it to you.

From a pure price perspective, they are making a huge profit on the Pro over the Plus. A 3TB drive does not cost $200 after you factor in the 1TB base. It is maybe $50 of retail cost (MAYBE) and they are charging $150 on top of it in pure profit.


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## tivogurl

Philmatic said:


> A 3TB drive does not cost $200 after you factor in the 1TB base. It is maybe $50 of retail cost (MAYBE) and they are charging $150 on top of it in pure profit.


A good retail price for a 3TB bare drive is ~100, and TiVo isn't paying retail.


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## Dan203

I'm debating this myself. I don't know if I could live with 1TB or not. And I'm not sure if $200 is really worth the hassle if I decide I can't 3 months from now.


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## brianm729

It seems to me it would make more sense to add another drive later if needed. $200 seems way too high


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## tivogurl

Dan203 said:


> And I'm not sure if $200 is really worth the hassle if I decide I can't 3 months from now.


Upgrading an in-service unit is indeed much more of a hassle. Probably what TiVo is counting on given its pricing scheme.


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## Dan203

tivogurl said:


> Upgrading an in-service unit is indeed much more of a hassle. Probably what TiVo is counting on given its pricing scheme.


Exactly. Adding a eSATA is relatively easy, but it adds another point of failure and another power brick to the UPS. Upgrading the internal drive is like buying a whole new TiVo and starting over.


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## dswallow

In the end, it's a $100 difference between what you'd pay now versus what you might possibly be able to pay as a third-party drive replacement. Is your time opening up the unit, as well as dealing with another vendor, worth saving $100. What about when something needs servicing and you have to either put the original drive back in or take the replacement out to have it replaced separately from everything else? What if there is some issue down the road and you can't quite tell whose problem it is to know where to contact for repair? Too much hassle to save $100... especially when, simply from past experience we're talking about a cost I can easily amortize over at least 2 years, so we're now looking at justify trying to save $4/month, and frankly, that's just not worth the potential hassle, or even the delay in being able to get it.

Everyone will have their own threshold, of course. Just explaining why I'm not overly bothered by what appears to be a bigger than expected price disparity for what's likely the only difference in those models.


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## tivogurl

brianm729 said:


> It seems to me it would make more sense to add another drive later if needed. $200 seems way too high


The only external drive that's tivo-approved is an overpriced one. I assume that the software will reject any other kind of drive you care to attach. That's why external drives aren't such a hot deal. I hope that CableLabs is responsible for this bit of stupidity, because there's no purpose to the restriction otherwise.


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## Dan203

dswallow said:


> In the end, it's a $100 difference between what you'd pay now versus what you might possibly be able to pay as a third-party drive replacement. Is your time opening up the unit, as well as dealing with another vendor, worth saving $100. What about when something needs servicing and you have to either put the original drive back in or take the replacement out to have it replaced separately from everything else? What if there is some issue down the road and you can't quite tell whose problem it is to know where to contact for repair? Too much hassle to save $100... especially when, simply from past experience we're talking about a cost I can easily amortize over at least 2 years, so we're now looking at justify trying to save $4/month, and frankly, that's just not worth the potential hassle, or even the delay in being able to get it.
> 
> Everyone will have their own threshold, of course. Just explaining why I'm not overly bothered by what appears to be a bigger than expected price disparity for what's likely the only difference in those models.


I pretty much agree, and if I buy one I'll likely get the Pro. Now my debate is do I need one right now, or should I hold out and see if prices drop.



tivogurl said:


> The only external drive that's tivo-approved is an overpriced one. I assume that the software will reject any other kind of drive you care to attach. That's why external drives aren't such a hot deal. I hope that CableLabs is responsible for this bit of stupidity, because there's no purpose to the restriction otherwise.


With the S3 units they allowed any external drive. They restricted it with the Premiere units. I'd think if it was a CableLabs issue they would have restricted it on the S3 too. I think this was an attempt at quality control. They could qualify the drives and ensure they wold work properly without causing issues. However the partner they chose turned out to over priced and under sized. Hopefully they'll at least consider qualifying more drives by other manufacturers going forward.


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## MeInDallas

I've always wondered myself if it wasnt some sort of deal that Tivo made with Western Digital. Supply them with drives at a good discount, and they would only allow their DVR expander to be used. I know at one point some people were getting 500GB Seagate drives in the Premiere 4's, but when I got one it had a Western Digital in it which I was happy about. The has to be some sort of connection to it all. I dont know much about the Tivo software though, so maybe it has something to do with that.


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## monkeydust

I bought a Plus because I usually keep my Elite at 40% capacity and really don't watch the same shows over and over (although my 2 year old daughter does and her disney movies take up half my used space). So, once I get my Roamio, I'll have 1TB on it and 1TB on my Elite and I believe you can stream between them if we want to watch a disney movie in the other room.


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## tivogurl

Dan203 said:


> However the partner they chose turned out to over priced and under sized. Hopefully they'll at least consider qualifying more drives by other manufacturers going forward.


Thinking on it more, having only one approved external drive, which as you say is overpriced/undercapacity, protects Pro revenue. I'm not sure they have much incentive to do as you say.


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## alyssa

*****cough*****pro****cough****

I *do not* understand how folks can live in small tivos.....it really baffles me

Plus externals go bad


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## swerver

Here's another angle - having a 2TB drive in my premiere for over a year now, I can tell you that list can get mighty long. You can filter by name so you can always find stuff, but it can still get a bit messy. How will this look with 50% more shows, or even double if people figure out how to get a 4TB drive in there? Since I'm already using kmttg to offload stuff to my media server, I'm thinking I'll just go with the plus, save the $200 and I won't miss the space anyway.

What would be really nice, would be if they added an interface to organize shows into folders manually, or tag them so that they could be grouped more intelligently than just by date or by name. If they had that, then I would definitely be interested in getting an even larger drive in there. As it stands, not so sure. And even if they had this advanced grouping, then I would lean more toward putting a 4TB drive in myself, so the pro is still not that enticing.


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## Dan203

One of the reviews mentioned something about a 3 column My Shows List with better sorting. Not exactly sure what they're talking about, but it sounds like there may be some improvements coming to My Shows to deal with longer lists.


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## Jed1

tivogurl said:


> The only external drive that's tivo-approved is an overpriced one. I assume that the software will reject any other kind of drive you care to attach. That's why external drives aren't such a hot deal. I hope that CableLabs is responsible for this bit of stupidity, because there's no purpose to the restriction otherwise.


No. Cable Labs is not responsible as it is the content owners who put up all these restrictions. We are lucky they even allow us to record anything, even once. 
You have to take this out on Disney Corp, Fox News Corp, Sony Corp, Time Warner, Comcast, and CBS Corp to name the big players.
Disney, Fox News, and Sony are the worst for restrictions on what the consumer can do with content. Especially Sony as they are one of the founding partners for HDMI. Also these corporations are the big reason your cable/sat bill is so high.

Here is a list of all the channels and who really owns them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ellite_television_networks_in_High_Definition


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## monkeydust

monkeydust said:


> I bought a Plus because I usually keep my Elite at 40% capacity and really don't watch the same shows over and over (although my 2 year old daughter does and her disney movies take up half my used space). So, once I get my Roamio, I'll have 1TB on it and 1TB on my Elite and I believe you can stream between them if we want to watch a disney movie in the other room.


Furthermore, if they actually have Netflix and Amazon apps working well, then it should be easy to find/play your movies from those instead of the hard drive (which often have commercials on them from the station I recorded them from).


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## series5orpremier

I know I seem to always be harping on this as my keynote issue, but to have additional memory internally is 10X more valuable than having an external drive connected by eSata. Trust me, you don't want to rely on the external drive keeping up with the life cycle of the box. When the external drive fails you'll be sitting there empty-handed wondering where your money went.


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## jfh3

Pro.

A few months from now, if the Comer tool gets updated, maybe the Plus. But for now the convenience of the extra capacity is worth the difference. The Pro should be about $100 less, but think of it as the early adopter tax.

And don't even consider adding an external drive.


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## Beryl

I added a 2TB drive to my Premiere and over a year later I am under 30% and never had a problem with it. I decided to get the regular Roamio to replace my HDLX. I'll eventually get another external drive on sale. Everyone has different needs I guess.


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## Bigg

Apple does the same thing. They make WAY more on the 64GB iPhone than the 16GB iPhone (the 16GB has a nice margin, but the 64GB's margin is FAT).

If/when I get one of these things, I'll get the bigger one. With 6 tuners, you can eat space up quick, and it would be even worse if I move to Rhode Island or Mass where FIOS is the provider...


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## mntvjunkie

I'm having a tough time with this question myself, but leaning towards a plus. Like others here, I have a Tivo HD (not premiere, hence the upgrade) that has 1TB in it now. Looking at kmttg, I am only using 50% for recordings and 50% for suggestions. And 20% of that 50% that is "mine" could easily be deleted (old seasons of shows I won't watch again until they are on Netflix or DVD without commercials).

Plus, I think of it another way. If I watch an average of 40 hours of TV per week, 150 hours would take me almost 4 weeks to get through, assuming no new content aired. And that assumes that all 40 hours is TV that has been recorded from cable, not factoring in Netflix, or Xfinity On Demand.

Like I said, still weighing the pros and cons of both, but leaning heavily towards the Plus. The only reason I'd consider a Pro is because 6 tuners can fill up a drive fast, I don't watch ANY live TV, and having old sitcoms and movies on the drive can be a great way to fall asleep in a whole home solution. I MIGHT wait until someone verifies that it can be upgraded later, but looking at prices of 3TB drives online, that is likely to save me less than $100, something I could save by just ordering online.


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## mntvjunkie

One other thing to consider is that it's a $200 price difference to help you get more out of your $100 cable package.....


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## mattack

Dan203 said:


> Exactly. Adding a eSATA is relatively easy, but it adds another point of failure and another power brick to the UPS. Upgrading the internal drive is like buying a whole new TiVo and starting over.


What the heck does that mean?

We don't know if we can even upgrade the drives in the Roamio yet (right?).. But on *EXISTING* Tivos, while completely unsupported and theoretically voids your warranty, it absolutely IS NOT "like buying a whole new TiVo and starting over", since you can transfer all of your shows/season passes to the new drive.


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## Dan203

mattack said:


> What the heck does that mean?
> 
> We don't know if we can even upgrade the drives in the Roamio yet (right?).. But on *EXISTING* Tivos, while completely unsupported and theoretically voids your warranty, it absolutely IS NOT "like buying a whole new TiVo and starting over", since you can transfer all of your shows/season passes to the new drive.


I was thinking more of buying a bigger drive from someone like Weaknees. I wasn't really thinking about doing it myself and copying everything over. I guess that's not as bad, but significantly more effort.


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## monkeydust

As I said, I have a Plus coming but now I'm kinda having second thoughts. I was planning on having a Plus, Elite and Mini running. But, now I'm wondering if I should have planned on getting another Mini and have a Pro and two Mini's because of the crappy app support of the Elite. While the Plus and Mini will primarily be for my use and that is plenty for me, it would probably be better for the wife and kid to have apps on the Tivo that work well instead of having to switch to the PS3 as they do today.

I guess on the positive side with going with my original plan, I don't have to have their horrible programming (Kardashians and other mindless junk) mixed in with mine due to the lack of custom folders or profiles.

EDIT: Two other points I thought of (a pro and con to switching to just minis/roamio). CON: There are not any good streaming options from PC to Mini right now and I use that a lot (use Stream Baby Stream which does not work at all - Flingo has very limited support). PRO: Replacing the Elite with a Mini would be one less CC to rent and one less TA to have problems with.


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## slowbiscuit

alyssa said:


> *****cough*****pro****cough****
> 
> I *do not* understand how folks can live in small tivos.....it really baffles me
> 
> Plus externals go bad


1TB is plenty of space, and a lot of people watch what they record instead of hoarding entire seasons of shows without watching. Not to mention that you can easily offload to a PC anyway. Finally, I'm sure we'll have a drive copy/expansion option for the S5s relatively soon just like we had for the S3s/S4s so it won't be a big deal to do an internal upgrade anyway.

My Elite rarely goes above 20% space used and that's with around 60 SPs, so the Plus will be perfect for an upgrade when I can get a good deal on it. Once it hits $300-325 I'll probably bite, my Elite is only a little over a year old anyway.


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## JohnnyO

monkeydust said:


> I was planning on having a Plus, Elite and Mini running. But, now I'm wondering if I should have planned on getting another Mini and have a Pro and two Mini's because of the crappy app support of the Elite.


One other item to consider is that if you end up with a single TiVo, with multiple Minis, you lose some redundancy. If your TiVo stops working, you will be unable to watch TV on all of your TiVo or Mini connected devices. This is the reason I'm going to be a Roamio/TiVoHD household, and not a Roamio/Mini household (at least for a while).

John


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## monkeydust

JohnnyO said:


> One other item to consider is that if you end up with a single TiVo, with multiple Minis, you lose some redundancy. If your TiVo stops working, you will be unable to watch TV on all of your TiVo or Mini connected devices. This is the reason I'm going to be a Roamio/TiVoHD household, and not a Roamio/Mini household (at least for a while).
> 
> John


I've had Tivos since the series 1 and I've never had a problem with any of them (tuning adapters on the otherhand....)


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## jessehere

i went with the plus and already have a wd ext drive


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## lessd

The main failure point with any TiVo is the hard drive, I want a backup so I can replace the drive myself, I got the 1Tb R-6 and I hope we will have tools to expand the drive to 2Tb as that all I would ever need (for now).


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## JohnnyO

monkeydust said:


> I've had Tivos since the series 1 and I've never had a problem with any of them (tuning adapters on the otherhand....)


That is impressive. I'd had hard drive failures (usually around the 4 to 5 year old mark) on all of my TiVos, going back to the DirecTivos. I currently have two TiVoHD units that had upgraded 1 TB drives installed the week I received them in March of 2008. One drive died about a year ago. The other died about a month ago. When they died, I was able to swap the basement TiVo with the living room TiVo (main TiVo) giving me until the weekend to acquire a drive and do the drive copy again.

Maybe I just need to upgrade TiVo's more often. 

Thankfully, I don't have to deal with tuning adapters in my area.


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## aaronwt

JohnnyO said:


> That is impressive. I'd had hard drive failures (usually around the 4 to 5 year old mark) on all of my TiVos, going back to the DirecTivos. I currently have two TiVoHD units that had upgraded 1 TB drives installed the week I received them in March of 2008. One drive died about a year ago. The other died about a month ago. When they died, I was able to swap the basement TiVo with the living room TiVo (main TiVo) giving me until the weekend to acquire a drive and do the drive copy again.
> 
> Maybe I just need to upgrade TiVo's more often.
> 
> Thankfully, I don't have to deal with tuning adapters in my area.


Even still so far I've yet to see a hard drive failure with a TiVo. My six DirecTV Tivos I bought in 2001 and 2003 are still being used by some friends I gave them to. They had Weaknees upgraded hard drives and have been running pretty much since they were upgraded.
Plus my GF has two of my old S3, OLED Tivos with Hitachi 1TB drives. Those have been runnning for over six years with those hard drives with no problems.

Although i don't know if the current hard drives are as resilient as those drives from years ago. But only time will tell.

Who knows? Maybe it's time I have a hard drive issue with a TiVo? I'll probably get my Roamio Pro and it will be DOA.
Although that would be preferable to the drive dying a few days after being put into service.


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## Big Boy Laroux

I'm debating this same thing... is it worth the extra $200 to have it now, or pay ~$100 in the future when (if) the drive is upgradeable? I can't imagine i'd ever need more than 2 TB...


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## NYHeel

I have two Premieres each upgraded with 2TB drives. One is at 92% and the other at around 75% though I think I might have some duplicate stuff on each Tivo. I like to record full seasons of shows and then wait until the end to decide if I want to watch them. I also have big TV eyes, meaning I like to record a lot of stuff knowing I probably won't be able to get to them. Plus my kids have a lot of their stuff on there. I have them set their stuff to keep at most 5 but their junk adds up.

I'd actually like to buy the plus and upgrade the drive to 4TB but I think 3TB would be ok. I would hate to lose space on the upgrade (going from 4TB to 3TB) but I definitely can't do 1TB. While DSwallow's point is valid, I hate the idea of significantly overpaying for something. 

Oh well, I'll probably wait a little longer and see what happens with the upgrades. I really don't find it much of a hassle to do the upgrade (at least it wasn't on the TivoHD and Premieres that I previously did).


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## aaronwt

Big Boy Laroux said:


> I'm debating this same thing... is it worth the extra $200 to have it now, or pay ~$100 in the future when (if) the drive is upgradeable? I can't imagine i'd ever need more than 2 TB...


I've pretty much decided to go with the Pro. I used to always upgrade the hard drives in my TiVos. But the Elites were the first model that I did not upgrade. My plan will be not to upgrade the Roamio hard drive. But if an upgrade process is released quickly, before I get my Roamio Pro, Then I will probably pick up the Plus and upgrade it to a 3TB drive(since I have a spare 3TB Seagate) and then later a 4TB drive.


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## Big Boy Laroux

aaronwt said:


> I've pretty much decided to go with the Pro. I used to always upgrade the hard drives in my TiVos. But the Elites were the first model that I did not upgrade. My plan will be not to upgrade the Roamio hard drive. But if an upgrade process is released quickly, before I get my Roamio Pro, Then I will probably pick up the Plus and upgrade it to a 3TB drive(since I have a spare 3TB Seagate) and then later a 4TB drive.


Yeah I upgraded the drive in both my TiVo HDs (but have not owned a premiere to be familiar with that process). It was easy enough, but it may be worth it not to have to even have to worry about it at all.


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## bradleys

If the tools are updated to work on the Roamio line - I will probably take the 2TB drive out of my Premier and reformat it to work on the new unit.

I have the origional Premier drive sitting around just waiting to go back in. 

The wife will just require me to archive a few of the shows currently sitting on the Premier -but it wiping it won't be that big of a deal for me.

I am patiently waiting to see someone try to expand the Roamio drive with the existing tools. (My bet is that it will need to be updated to work)


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## Davisadm

monkeydust said:


> ...horrible programming (Kardashians and...


Completely agree!


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## waterchange

JohnnyO said:


> That is impressive. I'd had hard drive failures (usually around the 4 to 5 year old mark) on all of my TiVos, going back to the DirecTivos. I currently have two TiVoHD units that had upgraded 1 TB drives installed the week I received them in March of 2008. One drive died about a year ago. The other died about a month ago. When they died, I was able to swap the basement TiVo with the living room TiVo (main TiVo) giving me until the weekend to acquire a drive and do the drive copy again.
> 
> Maybe I just need to upgrade TiVo's more often.
> 
> Thankfully, I don't have to deal with tuning adapters in my area.


Regarding your to TivoHDs, it appears the drive failures were for the drives that you installed. Not saying Tivo oem drives don't fail but it's hard to complain about Tivo hardware failure when the failure was with your own equipment and not Tivo's.


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## nitsuj

monkeydust said:


> I've had Tivos since the series 1 and I've never had a problem with any of them (tuning adapters on the otherhand....)


I've had problems with my TivoHD and my premiere. The premiere HD died, as did the HD.


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## ScaryMike

alyssa said:


> *****cough*****pro****cough****
> 
> I *do not* understand how folks can live in small tivos.....it really baffles me
> 
> Plus externals go bad


My xl4 has never been higher than 20% full. That makes me pretty comfortable with getting the plus.


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## Dan203

Between me and my family members (all supported by me) I've only seen 2 internal and 1 external drive fail. The two internals were back in the S2 days. The external was on my wife's S3 and it failed slowly enough that we were able to transfer most of her recordings to mine before it died and needed to be replaced.


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## Fist of Death

Premier XL4 is 57% full, Premier XL is 61% full. When you combine both and eliminate duplicates, I'll be about 50% full on my new Roamio Pro. And, if it ever gets really full, I can always add an external drive at some point. I also got the extended warranty because I've had a hard drive failure on one of my old Series 2 TiVo's a few years back, and I don't want to take a chance.


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## alyssa

ScaryMike said:


> My xl4 has never been higher than 20% full. That makes me pretty comfortable with getting the plus.



then a plus make sense for you

I've got and XL premium with a external for 4TB total & run at abt 90-95% full. I do let shows stack up & watch them over the summer, plus I tend to record movies I think my 13 year old would like, in addition my husband watches sports.

i can't transfer non-major network shows off my tivo due to TW's policy. plus neither my husband or son will put up with getting stuff off my computer which isn't on 24/7.

i also usually record most every new drama premiere to see if i like it or not. Sometimes it takes me a while to get to watching them.


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## djacobson

Is anyone else concerned with missing OTA on the Plus and Pro? Do most get the OTA channels with their digital cable channels anyways? I'm kind of puzzled why TiVo chose to exclude OTA tuning from the Plus and Pro... ???


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## NYHeel

alyssa said:


> then a plus make sense for you
> 
> I've got and XL premium with a external for 4TB total & run at abt 90-95% full. I do let shows stack up & watch them over the summer, plus I tend to record movies I think my 13 year old would like, in addition my husband watches sports.
> 
> i can't transfer non-major network shows off my tivo due to TW's policy. plus neither my husband or son will put up with getting stuff off my computer which isn't on 24/7.
> 
> i also usually record most every new drama premiere to see if i like it or not. Sometimes it takes me a while to get to watching them.


That's pretty much how my family works.


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## BigJimOutlaw

djacobson said:


> Is anyone else concerned with missing OTA on the Plus and Pro? Do most get the OTA channels with their digital cable channels anyways? I'm kind of puzzled why TiVo chose to exclude OTA tuning from the Plus and Pro... ???


Overall it's a balance of cost/utility. But yeah, most OTA channels come with the cable packages too. The cableco's are actually mandated to carry many/most of them.

OTA tuners haven't seen the same kind of advancements QAM tuners have (there's no money in OTA), so from Tivo's perspective adding 6 OTA tuners adds a not-insignificant complexity and cost to the product for a market that isn't very big (those that need 6 ota tuners)... So it's a balance. But it's great that there's finally a 4-tuner OTA model at least though.


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## Beryl

djacobson said:


> Is anyone else concerned with missing OTA on the Plus and Pro? Do most get the OTA channels with their digital cable channels anyways? I'm kind of puzzled why TiVo chose to exclude OTA tuning from the Plus and Pro... ???


That is the main reason I opted for the basic Roamio even though I currently subscribe to cable. (I wish it could also be used with satellite but I'm treating a TiVo like I do most cellphones -- GSM or CDMA).


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## djacobson

BigJimOutlaw said:


> Overall it's a balance of cost/utility. But yeah, most OTA channels come with the cable packages too. The cableco's are actually mandated to carry many/most of them.
> 
> OTA tuners haven't seen the same kind of advancements QAM tuners have (there's no money in OTA), so from Tivo's perspective adding 6 OTA tuners adds a not-insignificant complexity and cost to the product for a market that isn't very big (those that need 6 ota tuners)... So it's a balance. But it's great that there's finally a 4-tuner OTA model at least though.


Thanks. That makes sense. I was weighing the value of OTA versus built-in Stream (Base versus Plus or Pro).


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## BigJimOutlaw

djacobson said:


> Thanks. That makes sense. I was weighing the value of OTA versus built-in Stream (Base versus Plus or Pro).


The one caveat about the Roamio (if you weren't aware) is that the base model makes you choose between OTA or cable. It doesn't let you do both simultaneously.

But if that doesn't bother you, you can get a Tivo Stream for free if you order the base model and use 'GROUPER' as a coupon code.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=507635


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## CMed1

The coupon code GROUPER seems to no longer be valid.


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## JohnnyO

waterchange said:


> Regarding your to TivoHDs, it appears the drive failures were for the drives that you installed. Not saying Tivo oem drives don't fail but it's hard to complain about Tivo hardware failure when the failure was with your own equipment and not Tivo's.


Very valid point.


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## djacobson

BigJimOutlaw said:


> The one caveat about the Roamio (if you weren't aware) is that the base model makes you choose between OTA or cable. It doesn't let you do both simultaneously.


Hmm. So long OTA. I'll go with the Pro, and keep my Premiere as an OTA DVR at our vaca place with no cable. It was kind of cool how the older TiVos seamlessly mixed OTA channels in the guide and to-do, but, as you said, OTA isn't really needed where you have cable. OTA was sorta nice, sometimes, because (in my case, I speculate) it seemed TW compressed the bejeezus out of some of the required-to-carry channels; could have sworn I saw better quality on some OTA channels for live ncaa fb games, etc. ...but, I digress.


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## astrohip

djacobson said:


> It was kind of cool how the older TiVos seamlessly mixed OTA channels in the guide and to-do, but, as you said, OTA isn't really needed where you have cable.


I'm going to keep my two S3s running, as backup DVRs for when cable goes out. Not often, but we do get that occasional hurricane or storm. With OTA reception so strong in Houston (think FLAT, baby!), I get a beautiful signal. So I'll leave them running recording the four OTA nets, and get a new PRO for the six tuners. I also have an Elite I'll keep running.


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## jbaum

Great feedback. I'm going with the Pro.

Agree with the feedback that the original TiVo HD haven't died, only issues i've had were S3 power supplies(2x).


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## sbq

tivogurl said:


> A good retail price for a 3TB bare drive is ~100, and TiVo isn't paying retail.


yeah, but are they using a standard SATA drive, or a drive made specifically for video streaming?


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## vurbano

I've always used the WD AV-GP, EVDS type drives or whatever WD calls them now.


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## Dan203

I broke down and ordered a Pro from Weaknees. No tax, free shipping and $40 coupon sealed it.

I went back and forth considering the Basic and Plus, but in the end I went for convenience. 3TB should hold me over pretty much forever and with 6 tuners I don't think I'll ever have a conflict again.

I should be able to sell my lifetime Elite and standalone Stream to cover the hardware cost, so it's really only going to cost me the service fee.


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## Millionaire2K

I say get the Pro. 

But that's coming from a guy that owns a 128gb iPad, 64gb iPhone and a 756gb ssd rMacbook pro.

I like the freedom of extra space.

PS. - I bought the Pro.


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## jmpage2

I have a 2TB Premiere now, and we rarely have more than 60-80 hours of recorded shows on it. Everything else is suggestions. We don't "archive" shows on the TiVo indefinitely... for us it's watch and delete.

As a result, I ordered the Plus. If, down the line I feel that I need more space, I have no qualms whatsoever about cracking it open and putting a bigger drive in it.

If I had a house of teenagers, all recording crap non stop, I might look at it a bit differently... as it is, hard to justify an extra $200 for space I more than likely will never utilize.


----------



## Bigg

alyssa said:


> then a plus make sense for you
> 
> I've got and XL premium with a external for 4TB total & run at abt 90-95% full. I do let shows stack up & watch them over the summer, plus I tend to record movies I think my 13 year old would like, in addition my husband watches sports.
> 
> i can't transfer non-major network shows off my tivo due to TW's policy. plus neither my husband or son will put up with getting stuff off my computer which isn't on 24/7.
> 
> i also usually record most every new drama premiere to see if i like it or not. Sometimes it takes me a while to get to watching them.


I'd go nuts if my roommates got that irresponsible. I'm going to do a mass clean-out in September. We're at 36% on an XL4 right now, and just looking at it, it's almost all junk. I'm just too lazy to delete anything for now. I've found that if there's more than 15-20% on an XL4, it's too easy to forget about stuff, and too hard to find stuff to watch. But I got it just in case I didn't feel like cleaning it out for a while, or for stuff like the Olympics where I'll probably record my way from ~15% to mostly full and then end up skimming/deleting most of it.

The nice part about the big ones is that it takes a while to get up in %. The bad part is that you end up with a lot of stuff you forget about when the drive is that capacious, and you can abuse the concept of a DVR.


----------



## Dan203

My 2TB Elite is sitting at 56% right now. I could probably get it down below 50% if I wanted but if I were to then trade that in for a 1TB Plus I'd be running at near capacity and having to worry about space management all the time. If they offered a 2TB option I would have got that, since it's unlikely I'll ever use all 3TB, but with the only choice being 1TB or 3TB I decided to error on the side of caution and just go for the Pro.


----------



## GoHokies!

Since it now appears that you can just drop in a blank hard drive and it Just Works, looks like the Plus got a lot more popular.

Hopefully it'll check out and be working properly.



amseven11 said:


> Done. Confirmed: the OS is on the motherboard. No need for tools just change out the hard drive. Hope this helps everyone!


----------



## jmpage2

Wow!


----------



## GoHokies!

He still hasn't gotten through to a system information screen to make sure that the Tivo actually recognizes the space, and filled the drive with recordings to make sure that it actually works, but it's a heck of a good start!


----------



## jmpage2

The most likely reason that they would have done this is to reduce their serviceability costs. Now, places like Best Buy won't have to RMA the whole box under warranty, they can just pop a new drive in and good to go.


----------



## Dan203

More likely for their MSO partners. Being able to pop in a new drive and redeploy a box makes the TiVo a lot more attractive to MSOs.


----------



## mattack

Dan203 said:


> I was thinking more of buying a bigger drive from someone like Weaknees. I wasn't really thinking about doing it myself and copying everything over. I guess that's not as bad, but significantly more effort.


It's not really much effort at all, since in both cases you have to open the Tivo (I guess Weaknees can install it too, but that obviously means shipping your Tivo there too).

Especially with jmfs, it's really easy. (Again, we have no idea if these tools will work on Roamio -- I suspect NOT, at least not for > 2 gig drives.. probably not at all.)


----------



## mattack

djacobson said:


> Is anyone else concerned with missing OTA on the Plus and Pro? Do most get the OTA channels with their digital cable channels anyways? I'm kind of puzzled why TiVo chose to exclude OTA tuning from the Plus and Pro... ???


Do I *wish* it also had OTA? Yes, but I've already got a Premiere 4 that's digital cable only... so I'm not concerned at all.

I'd probably pay more for a 6 tuner that was also capable of doing OTA, but the 6 tuners are more interesting than the 4 tuners one with OTA. (Though I admit I'm mostly fine with the 4 tuners I already have, I'd rather essentially merge my 2 Tivos into 1 Tivo with 6 tuners.)

In fact, I'm more disappointed that the new low end Roamio can do cable _OR_ OTA, not both. (Yes, I understand the reason is because it only has one coax input.)


----------



## innocentfreak

mattack said:


> It's not really much effort at all, since in both cases you have to open the Tivo (I guess Weaknees can install it too, but that obviously means shipping your Tivo there too).
> 
> Especially with jmfs, it's really easy. (Again, we have no idea if these tools will work on Roamio -- I suspect NOT, at least not for > 2 gig drives.. probably not at all.)


No need for jmfs. You just drop it in and TiVo builds the drive.


----------



## jfh3

Dan203 said:


> 3TB should hold me over pretty much forever and with 6 tuners I don't think I'll ever have a conflict again.


Uh huh. That's what folks said about the 4 tuner boxes with 2TBs. 

Hard drive space and tuner capacity is like your salary - no matter what it is, you always want 25% more ...


----------



## mattack

innocentfreak said:


> No need for jmfs. You just drop it in and TiVo builds the drive.


That DOES NOT COPY ALL OF YOUR EXISTING SHOWS.

Plus, has anyone *confirmed* this "Tivo builds the drive" thing? I have heard people theorizing it, but haven't seen anybody confirm it.

...and if someone has confirmed it, have you tried putting a 3 TB or 4 TB drive in the low end Roamio?


----------



## innocentfreak

mattack said:


> That DOES NOT COPY ALL OF YOUR EXISTING SHOWS.
> 
> Plus, has anyone *confirmed* this "Tivo builds the drive" thing? I have heard people theorizing it, but haven't seen anybody confirm it.
> 
> ...and if someone has confirmed it, have you tried putting a 3 TB or 4 TB drive in the low end Roamio?


Yes it has been confirmed in the other thread. They used 2TB drives in the Roamio.

We don't know with this new setup if copying existing shows will work now.


----------



## Bigg

You could copy them to a PC or another TiVo and back again. Except for HBO or anything on TW...


----------



## Dan203

jfh3 said:


> Uh huh. That's what folks said about the 4 tuner boxes with 2TBs.


I have had my 2TB close to full, but I don't think I've ever had a conflict with 4 tuners. I think maybe once on it wouldn't let me add padding to a show, but that was it. But now I can pad everything and never worry about it again.


----------



## bobfrank

GoHokies! said:


> Since it now appears that you can just drop in a blank hard drive and it Just Works, looks like the Plus got a lot more popular.


Anyone wanting to maximize the hard disk space might want to wait before deciding on the Plus or the Pro. The HDXL could be upgraded to a larger hard disk than the HD.

Does anyone know if that's true between the Plus and the Pro?

Bob


----------



## jfh3

bobfrank said:


> Anyone wanting to maximize the hard disk space might want to wait before deciding on the Plus or the Pro. The HDXL could be upgraded to a larger hard disk than the HD.
> 
> Does anyone know if that's true between the Plus and the Pro?


Yes.


----------



## jmpage2

jfh3 said:


> Yes.


That makes no sense. They appear identical other than included hard disk.


----------



## bareyb

GoHokies! said:


> Since it now appears that you can just drop in a blank hard drive and it Just Works, looks like the Plus got a lot more popular.
> 
> Hopefully it'll check out and be working properly.


Wow. Is that for real? That would be such great peace of mind... If you drop in a new drive do you lose your Lifetime sub?


----------



## jmpage2

bareyb said:


> Wow. Is that for real? That would be such great peace of mind... If you drop in a new drive do you lose your Lifetime sub?


TiVo has never invalidated a subscription due to a drive upgrade... Doubt they would start now.


----------



## donnoh

I ordered a pro and this is coming from guy that has upgraded every Tivo hard drive on every Tivo I've ever owned. The $50-$60 premium for a 3 TB vs a 1 TB when you add in the cost of a drive was a no brainer for me. Yeah I don't have a left over drive, but I have no use for a 1 TB drive.


----------



## bareyb

jmpage2 said:


> TiVo has never invalidated a subscription due to a drive upgrade... *Doubt* they would start now.


I "doubt it" too. I'm just wondering if anyone knows for sure. The difference as I see it, is, WE upgraded the drive and copied over all the information with our own software. Who's to say TiVo wouldn't be able to tell that you swapped in a new drive and void your lifetime sub?

It was my impression that "lifetime" meant the lifetime of the TiVo Hard Drive or any other hardware and if any of them failed you were out of luck and lost the lifetime sub. Is that not true? Does Tivo knowingly let people swap out their Hard Drives if they fail and then allow them keep their Lifetime Subs?


----------



## jmpage2

bareyb said:


> I "doubt it" too. I'm just wondering if anyone knows for sure. The difference as I see it, is, WE upgraded the drive and copied over all the information with our own software. Who's to say TiVo wouldn't be able to tell that you swapped in a new drive and void your lifetime sub?
> 
> It was my impression that "lifetime" meant the lifetime of the TiVo Hard Drive or any other hardware and if any of them failed you were out of luck and lost the lifetime sub. Is that not true? Does Tivo knowingly let people swap out their Hard Drives if they fail and then allow them keep their Lifetime Subs?


Only someone from TiVo could answer that and I doubt they will. They know the recording capacity of your TiVo so yes they know if you "cheated". It is highly unlikely they care. Weaknees seemingly has a good relationship with TiVo and they are still offering drive upgrades and selling lifetime so that should tell you something.


----------



## jfh3

jmpage2 said:


> That makes no sense. They appear identical other than included hard disk.


Sorry, misread your original statement.


----------



## astrohip

bareyb said:


> It was my impression that "lifetime" meant the lifetime of the TiVo Hard Drive or any other hardware and if any of them failed you were out of luck and lost the lifetime sub. Is that not true? Does Tivo knowingly let people swap out their Hard Drives if they fail and then allow them keep their Lifetime Subs?


Absolutely yes. Lifetime is not tied to the hard drive.


----------



## Dan203

Lifetime is tied to a cyrpto chip on the motherboard. So as long as the motherboard does not fail you can replace the drive and the power supply and you will retain your lifetime. But if the mobo goes you're SOL.


----------



## bareyb

astrohip said:


> Absolutely yes. Lifetime is not tied to the hard drive.





Dan203 said:


> Lifetime is tied to a cyrpto chip on the motherboard. So as long as the motherboard does not fail you can replace the drive and the power supply and you will retain your lifetime. But if the mobo goes you're SOL.


Beautiful! That's exactly what I needed. Would you still have to have Comcast re-pair the Cable Cards after a swap or does it retain all that info too?

Side Question: My only concern with going to a one box solution is that if I ever did lose that HDD and replaced it, I'd have to reinstall all my SP's manually or when they become available, and I have over 100 of them... There's still no way to backup SP's without removing the Hard Drive right?


----------



## SullyND

KMTTG can backup and restore season passes from Premiere units (and presumably Roamios)


----------



## bfollowell

jbaum said:


> I think the only difference is the storage 150 hours vs. 450 hours. Is it worth $200?


Heck no it isn't worth it. At least not to me. From what I've read, there is absolutely no difference between the Plus and the Pro other than one says Plus and one says Pro and one has a 1TB drive and the other has a 3TB drive. $200 is a lot to pay for 2TB. I can buy 2TB drives all day long for about $100. Add to that fact that 450 hours is a ridiculously large amount of stuff to have stored away. I guess if you have a bunch of kids and try to record/keep a lot of stuff for them, that too could impact it. In my house it's just my wife and I and she doesn't watch a lot so it's mainly me recording. If my kids still lived with us or were really young I could see wanting a lot more space.

I guess it all depends on how you use your Tivo. How much you record and how long you keep it. Even if I wanted that much space I'd buy a Plus and add my own 2TB drive to it and pocket $100. That's just me though.

Bottom line, you're the only one that can answer that question and it all depends on how you use your Tivo and how much.

Good luck with your decision. I really don't think you can go wrong with either one. I can't wait to get my new Roamio Plus in a few months.

- Byron Followell


----------



## jmpage2

bareyb said:


> Beautiful! That's exactly what I needed. Would you still have to have Comcast re-pair the Cable Cards after a swap or does it retain all that info too?
> 
> Side Question: My only concern with going to a one box solution is that if I ever did lose that HDD and replaced it, I'd have to reinstall all my SP's manually or when they become available, and I have over 100 of them... There's still no way to backup SP's without removing the Hard Drive right?


Cable card pairing is associated with the motherboard codes on the TiVo and the cablecard info. I'm not sure if you would need to re-pair it after a drive swap, but I doubt it.


----------



## bareyb

SullyND said:


> KMTTG can backup and restore season passes from Premiere units (and presumably Roamios)


I'm using PyTiVo but haven't ventured into that realm yet. I'll have to look into that. I'd love to be able to backup my SP's. :up:


----------



## bareyb

jmpage2 said:


> Cable card pairing is associated with the motherboard codes on the TiVo and the cablecard info. I'm not sure if you would need to re-pair it after a drive swap, but I doubt it.


Used to be if you used the available software to "clone" your existing Hard Drive there would be no need to re-pair the CC's. If you bought a drive formatted by Weaknees or someone like that, then you had to re-pair them. So hopefully whatever is embedded on the MOBO will restore ALL the data needed. I hope so... It's the "getting it to work with Comcast's Cablecards" that is the true PITA. Comcast has _still_ never been able to get it right for me without much escalation and many, many, hours of time on the phone...


----------



## jmpage2

bareyb said:


> Used to be if you used the available software to "clone" your existing Hard Drive there would be no need to re-pair the CC's. If you bought a drive formatted by Weaknees or someone like that, then you had to re-pair them. So hopefully whatever is embedded on the MOBO will restore ALL the data needed. I hope so... It's the "getting it to work with Comcast's Cablecards" that is the true PITA. Comcast has _still_ never been able to get it right for me without much escalation and many, many, hours of time on the phone...


That would only work if configuration data was stored in flash, and got re-applied to a new hard drive when it is replaced.

That seems extremely unlikely to me.


----------



## dswallow

jbaum said:


> I think the only difference is the storage 150 hours vs. 450 hours. Is it worth $200?


If you need more than 150 hours, it's falls into the "worth it" category. You'll pay around $140 right now for a 3TB drive. You'll have to open your unit and swap drives. And sure, that's usually straightforward, but not everyone is comfortable doing that. And while it usually goes OK, anything can happen. What if you drop the drive onto the motherboard while putting it in place, or your hand slips while attaching a cable and you tug too hard on some wire? You're the one assuming responsibility for any damages, and that's a risk that has a cost to it. Should any problem occur later that requires you get warranty service, you'll have to put the original drive back in before shipping it back. Is all that worth $60 to avoid any potential hassle in the future? It's a thin margin, for sure.

Generally I'd say that if your intent is to immediately upgrade before using it much at all, buy the Pro and avoid it all. If your intent is simply to upgrade later if/when you need to, then buy the Plus. The only place it really makes sense is to upgrade the drive on the Basic unit since it has a feature the Plus and Pro don't have... OTA, and maybe to a lesser extent someone who is fine with no MoCA, no Stream built-in, only 4 tuners, and going for Cable there's value to upgrading the drive on it as an alternative the the $400 difference with the Pro model.

Each person will need to evaluate it all based on their own expectations and desires, skill level, and acceptable risks.


----------



## lessd

jmpage2 said:


> Cable card pairing is associated with the motherboard codes on the TiVo and the cablecard info. I'm not sure if you would need to re-pair it after a drive swap, but I doubt it.


In Comcast land you have re-pair the card after changing out the hard drive unless you do a bit to bit copy, each C&D all will change the data on the cable card even if you use the same drive so a re-pair is needed.


----------



## bareyb

lessd said:


> In Comcast land you have re-pair the card after changing out the hard drive unless you do a bit to bit copy, each C&D all will change the data on the cable card even if you use the same drive so a re-pair is needed.


Ugh. I was afraid of that. So while it's nice to have it reinstall the base software, without the SP's it's still almost as big of a nightmare because you have to call Comcast to get the Cablecards re-paired... I've never had it happen without a lot of hitches. Comcast should be shot for how poorly they support Cablecards for TiVo. :down:


----------



## jfh3

bareyb said:


> Ugh. I was afraid of that. So while it's nice to have it reinstall the base software, without the SP's it's still almost as big of a nightmare because you have to call Comcast to get the Cablecards re-paired... I've never had it happen without a lot of hitches. Comcast should be shot for how poorly they support Cablecards for TiVo. :down:


Comcast is quite good with CableCARD support/activation/re-pairing if you call their CableCARD support number. Not so much if you call the regular support number.

Two years ago, I would have agreed with you. Now, to update anything with a card takes less than 10 minutes.


----------



## bobfrank

bobfrank said:


> Anyone wanting to maximize the hard disk space might want to wait before deciding on the Plus or the Pro. The HDXL could be upgraded to a larger hard disk than the HD.
> 
> Does anyone know if that's true between the Plus and the Pro?





jfh3 said:


> Yes.


What are the different limits?

If the biggest hard drive I can use in the Plus is 3tb and I can use a 4tb disk in the Pro then I go with the Pro. If the max on both is 3tb, then I might go with the Plus.

Thanks,
Bob


----------



## jmpage2

bobfrank said:


> What are the different limits?
> 
> If the biggest hard drive I can use in the Plus is 3tb and I can use a 4tb disk in the Pro then I go with the Pro. If the max on both is 3tb, then I might go with the Plus.
> 
> Thanks,
> Bob


There is nothing to indicate that there are different limits not sure why he posted that. Plus and pro appear to be identical.


----------



## bareyb

jfh3 said:


> Comcast is quite good with CableCARD support/activation/re-pairing if you call their CableCARD support number. Not so much if you call the regular support number.
> 
> *Two years ago, I would have agreed with you. Now, to update anything with a card takes less than 10 minutes.*


That number can't help you if Comcast can't help them. I activated an Elite about a year ago and it took all day to get it working even with the number you posted. It was Comcast's fault 100%. The "Local head end" didn't copy the numbers right or some crap. It's been that way with 5 TiVos. So... I'll believe a ten minute install, when it happens to me. So far, it hasn't come close.


----------



## Dan203

dswallow said:


> If you need more than 150 hours, it's falls into the "worth it" category. You'll pay around $140 right now for a 3TB drive. You'll have to open your unit and swap drives. And sure, that's usually straightforward, but not everyone is comfortable doing that. And while it usually goes OK, anything can happen. What if you drop the drive onto the motherboard while putting it in place, or your hand slips while attaching a cable and you tug too hard on some wire? You're the one assuming responsibility for any damages, and that's a risk that has a cost to it. Should any problem occur later that requires you get warranty service, you'll have to put the original drive back in before shipping it back. Is all that worth $60 to avoid any potential hassle in the future? It's a thin margin, for sure.
> 
> Generally I'd say that if your intent is to immediately upgrade before using it much at all, buy the Pro and avoid it all. If your intent is simply to upgrade later if/when you need to, then buy the Plus. The only place it really makes sense is to upgrade the drive on the Basic unit since it has a feature the Plus and Pro don't have... OTA, and maybe to a lesser extent someone who is fine with no MoCA, no Stream built-in, only 4 tuners, and going for Cable there's value to upgrading the drive on it as an alternative the the $400 difference with the Pro model.
> 
> Each person will need to evaluate it all based on their own expectations and desires, skill level, and acceptable risks.


I agree 100% with this. :up: And that's why I ultimately chose the Pro.


----------



## Dan203

bareyb said:


> That number can't help you if Comcast can't help them. I activated an Elite about a year ago and it took all day to get it working even with the number you posted. It was Comcast's fault 100%. The "Local head end" didn't copy the numbers right or some crap. It's been that way with 5 TiVos. So... I'll believe a ten minute install, when it happens to me. So far, it hasn't come close.


I've installed a lot of CableCARDS over the years. It's always hit and miss. My last experience was installing an HD for my Sister. They couldn't get the card to pair so she couldn't get the premium channels. I called like 4 times, even found instructions online and explained to one tech exactly what to do. Finally they said they had to send a tech. The tech showed up, called someone on his radio, asked for someone that "knew CableCARDs" and within 2 minutes they got it working.

They really need to train the phone techs better to deal with these cards.


----------



## filovirus

bareyb said:


> Ugh. I was afraid of that. So while it's nice to have it reinstall the base software, without the SP's it's still almost as big of a nightmare because you have to call Comcast to get the Cablecards re-paired... I've never had it happen without a lot of hitches. Comcast should be shot for how poorly they support Cablecards for TiVo. :down:


It sucks you have had a hard time with Comcast and cablecard. My experience was very good on three separate occasions.

Last year I bought a Premiere in April and August. I self installed cable cards in both using the cablecard support number. A real person answered. She was a thickly accented woman who was helpful and activated both in about 5-10 minutes. No problems.

Thursday I swapped out a premiere for a Roamio Pro. I had the exact same experience. Quickly answered by a thickly accented latina. I told her what I wanted to do. She asked for the various numbers on the cable card screen. After, she asked if I was transferring service to an Elite and I told her it was a new Tivo Roamio. She transferred the Premiere to Roamio in about 5-10 minutes. No truck rolls, no problems.


----------



## bobfrank

jmpage2 said:


> There is nothing to indicate that there are different limits not sure why he posted that. Plus and pro appear to be identical.


The HD and HDXL also appeared to be identical, but there was a difference in the amount of disk space the Tivo would recognize.

I guess we won't know for sure until someone drops a 4 gig disk into a Plus and into a Pro.

Bob


----------



## gamo62

bobfrank said:


> The HD and HDXL also appeared to be identical, but there was a difference in the amount of disk space the Tivo would recognize.
> 
> I guess we won't know for sure until someone drops a 4 gig disk into a Plus and into a Pro.
> 
> Bob


So far, it doesn't appear that a 4tb drive is doable, according to Weaknees.


----------



## Bigg

Dan203 said:


> Lifetime is tied to a cyrpto chip on the motherboard. So as long as the motherboard does not fail you can replace the drive and the power supply and you will retain your lifetime. But if the mobo goes you're SOL.


If you sent it to TiVo for repair, wouldn't they transfer the Lifetime to the new Motherboard?


----------



## Dan203

They don't actually do that. They simply send you a refurb unit and transfer the lifetime service to the new unit. However they only offer that option if the TiVo is less then 3 years old, and if it's beyond a year it costs $199 for the "repair".


----------



## Bigg

Dan203 said:


> They don't actually do that. They simply send you a refurb unit and transfer the lifetime service to the new unit. However they only offer that option if the TiVo is less then 3 years old, and if it's beyond a year it costs $199 for the "repair".


Oh ok, makes sense I guess. That's a lot cheaper than losing a lifetime unit.


----------



## tom22

Does every hour of HD TV by definition take the same amount of memory? 

Maybe it shows my ignorance but I feel like some audio tracks of the same duration take the different amounts of memory ?

Also, I've noticed YouTube videos have two or more settings of "HD" ... is there much a possiblity that the average hour of HD becomes more memory intensive over the years or is is a standard that just can't change?

Do older programs filmed in regular resolution take up HD levels of space if they're shown on an HD channel?

I've been living with 45 hours on my series 3 but it does make me monitor what gets recorded in HD and angry at times when the Tivo Suggestions chooses to record a few 3 hour movies or ball games in HD and wipes out all my other Tivo Suggestion choices.

With Roamio everything must be HD .... as well over 1/2 of my Tivo suggestions are not yet HD but the ratio is switching very quickly now.

As the move from regular to HD is already a 5 fold increase it would make sense that if I want the same amount of stored programing I would eventually need 5 times what I preffered before. As I'm feeling a little "Tivo Suggestions Deprived" now.. and they get wiped out entirely on during football season (or during the olympics etc).

Even though I've lived with 45, it seems like 2.25 is the old 45 and 3 would let me start recording movies which I've never done much of in the past(3 max) for fear of running short of time..even in standard resolution. With all the tuners.. recording 5 or 6 movies off of HBO and deleting the ones I start and don't like is a real option.


----------



## Dan203

tom22 said:


> Does every hour of HD TV by definition take the same amount of memory?


No. The bitrates used by different channels varies wildly. The HD hours TiVo says is a rough estimate at best.



tom22 said:


> With Roamio everything must be HD


That's not true. With Roamio everything must be digital but it does NOT have to be HD. If your cable company does not have analog, or if it simulcasts, then you're already recording digital so switching to the Roamio will be no different.


----------



## tom22

dswallow said:


> If you need more than 150 hours, it's falls into the "worth it" category. You'll pay around $140 right now for a 3TB drive. You'll have to open your unit and swap drives. And sure, that's usually straightforward, but not everyone is comfortable doing that. And while it usually goes OK, anything can happen. What if you drop the drive onto the motherboard while putting it in place, or your hand slips while attaching a cable and you tug too hard on some wire? You're the one assuming responsibility f........
> 
> Each person will need to evaluate it all based on their own expectations and desires, skill level, and acceptable risks.


This is vital... it might be easy for me to slip into the "penny saved penny earned mode" that is my norm....its not like we can all work extra hours at the job to suddenly have more disposable income... the limits are often on customers desire to pay me....

Still, if there is a strong chance of being without a TV for days or spending hours upon hours on hold waiting ,, crossing your fingers that you'll get the actually the tech at the call station that is actually knowledgeable etc... the pain of that experience very well might be worth pushing that disposable income budget away from cappuccinos or a trip to a restaurant in terms of comfort.

I might even find it more convenient to replace a faucet than make an appointment and wait around for a plumber (let alone pay him). However, all those little screws and plastic stuff that can snap if pulled a direction you didn't know you shouldn't..... not worth $60 in likely aggravation, let alone worst case of breaking it and needing to buy it again.

It doesn't sound THAT easy for people who aren't in the habbit of replacing cards on their computers etc their-selves.


----------



## tom22

Dan203 said:


> No. The bitrates used by different channels varies wildly. The HD hours TiVo says is a rough estimate at best.
> 
> That's not true. With Roamio everything must be digital but it does NOT have to be HD. If your cable company does not have analog, or if it simulcasts, then you're already recording digital so switching to the Roamio will be no different.


Thanks.. those are important.

on the first.... it seems only logical that over time, resolution and hence memory demand is going to grow a fair bit . Over 5 years it might not be suprising to see your average HD movie take 30% more memory per hour.. huh? I'll almost certainly keep the unit 5 years or over given my past replacement cycle

on the second... that was something I was worrying unnecesarily about I guess ... not that there are many, but there are still some shows on cable channels that don't have duplicate hd channels...
I had a false/unjustified worry about losing them if I upgraded to plus or pro.


----------



## Dan203

tom22 said:


> on the first.... it seems only logical that over time, resolution and hence memory demand is going to grow a fair bit . Over 5 years it might not be suprising to see your average HD movie take 30% more memory per hour.. huh? I'll almost certainly keep the unit 5 years or over given my past replacement cycle


Actually no. HD has a maximum for resolution of 1920x1080, which is already being used by most channels. So it's not possible for resolution to increase over time. If anything the size of recordings will go down in 5 years as more cable companies transition to H.264 encoding which can use lower bitrates to achieve the same visual quality. (an H.264 HD video is 30-40% smaller then an MPEG-2 HD video of equivalent quality)

Eventually we will transition to 4K resolution, which is 4x the resolution of current HD, but that's more then 5 years out. Plus when that happens they'll be using H.265 which is even better at compressing video and can get a 4K video down to about the same size as a 1080i MPEG-2 video.


----------



## tom22

Thanks for the info about the 1920x1080 current cap and H.264 . I looked them up and learned a bit from the read. I guess how complicated a picture is interms of blocks of color has some impact but that would be more a matter of artistic choices in film production I guess .... discussion moving bit out of thread. 

How big video files will be is pertinent but complex discussions of why probably belong elsewhere .. so I'll resist my temptation to ask more.

I do have a related question though....

I saw that there were HZ standards in the us and europe .. that refers to frame rate I take it. I guess that 60 comes out to roughly 60 frames per second...

When I replay tivo in super slow motion I don't think that the controls are nearly that sensitive (and, that really isn't a criticism.. I don't expect the investment it would take to allow that for recreational viewers..... but , 

do you have any idea what the actual frame per second rate is when I use the "frame" advance feature on my tivo box. 

Has that control gotten any finer since the series 3 ? (again not an expectation but just wanted to confirm at least that it didn't go the other direction)


----------



## aaronwt

Those 4K sets looked amazing.

While I was waiting for the Magnolia sales person to come back with my Roamio Pro I ordered I took a look at an 84" 4K set, smaller 4K set and an OLED TV. All three looked amazing, but the 84" 4K set was really breath taking.


----------



## Dan203

tom22 said:


> Thanks for the info about the 1920x1080 current cap and H.264 . I looked them up and learned a bit from the read. I guess how complicated a picture is interms of blocks of color has some impact but that would be more a matter of artistic choices in film production I guess .... discussion moving bit out of thread.
> 
> How big video files will be is pertinent but complex discussions of why probably belong elsewhere .. so I'll resist my temptation to ask more.
> 
> I do have a related question though....
> 
> I saw that there were HZ standards in the us and europe .. that refers to frame rate I take it. I guess that 60 comes out to roughly 60 frames per second...
> 
> When I replay tivo in super slow motion I don't think that the controls are nearly that sensitive (and, that really isn't a criticism.. I don't expect the investment it would take to allow that for recreational viewers..... but ,
> 
> do you have any idea what the actual frame per second rate is when I use the "frame" advance feature on my tivo box.
> 
> Has that control gotten any finer since the series 3 ? (again not an expectation but just wanted to confirm at least that it didn't go the other direction)


It's a little bit complicated. First off there are basically 2 formats for HD video 720p and 1080i. 720p is simple. It's 1280x720 progressive frames displayed at 59.94 frames per second. Progressive frames are exactly like a photo you would take with a camera. 1080i is interlaced. Interlaced video is a series of alternating fields. So each "frame" really only contains every other line. If you were to combine the fields into progressive frames then it would only be 29.97 frames per second. However the fields don't actually match up like that. When interlaced video is shot it actually captures the odd fields and then the even fields a split second later. So there is some motion between them. If you try to combine them into a full frame you'll get a combing effect where every other line doesn't match. The reason they do this is because way back in the days of analog they discovered that 60Hz interlaced video creates a smoother picture then 30 frames per second of progressive. And the technology of the time did not allow them to create TVs that could do 60 frames per second progressive. The reason this carried over to HD is because there is a limit on the amount of bandwidth available for digital broadcasts. If you count the actual number of pixels then 720p and 1080i are very close and can be compressed to similar digital sizes. There is not enough bandwidth in the broadcast spec to allow for full 1080p video. (at least not with MPEG-2)

Now the one complication in all this is movies. TV shows are specifically shot at either 720p/59.94 or 1080i/29.97, but movies are typically shot at 24 progressive frames per second on film. For SD they used a technique called telecine to convert 24fps film to 29.97 interlaced video. But when the BluRay spec came along they decided to leave movies at their native 24fps and full 1080p. While 24fps is not as smooth as 60Hz interlaced it preserves the original experience and removes the artifacts that were introduced by the telecine process.

The next move for movies is 48 frames per second. 48 frames per second is enough to create smoother motion without losing the unique look of film. A lot of new movies are being shot at 4K resolution at 48fps as a way of future proofing. As of right now the only devices capable of playing them at full resolution and frame rates are the DLP projectors used in movies theaters, but a future revision of the BluRay spec will likely include support as well for home use.

Anyway I hope that wasn't to far over your head. As you can see by my signature I'm sort of an expert in digital video. So if you have any more questions feel free to ask.

Edit: Oh and the reason the frame advance doesn't work perfectly on your TiVo has nothing to do with the frame rate. It has to do with the way MPEG-2 and H.264 video are encoded. They use a technique called temporal compression. What this means is that some frames can not be displayed unless the frames around them are decoded first. So moving one frame at a time can be very difficult. Especially moving backwards. Moving forward usually works OK after an initial jump to a safe spot, but moving back can be very jummpy. TiVo does about as good as it can given the resources it has. In VideoReDo we can do a much better job, but only because we buffer several seconds worth of video every time you seek.


----------



## Bigg

Dan I was going to well actually you when you said most channels use 1920x1080 (i is implied there for cable), but then you corrected yourself below. It's about half and half, although I think 1080i has an edge. Since the major nets are split in half and they own a lot of crappy cable channels, that about splits it down the middle.

4K will initially be H.264, although long-term it will move to H.265, which can do 4K on a cable QAM (38mbps). Cable systems will eventually keep SD in MPEG-2, HD in MPEG-4, and 4K in H.265, although for now, everything is MPEG-2, and there is no 4K. MPEG-4 HD's would free up a lot of space for other uses.

Very few cable companies have channels that are analog only. Some have basic channels in analog, but that's archaic at this point. Comcast has gone all-digital across their systems.

As for TiVo storage, all channels will be about the same, but there will be some variation, such that if you recorded all off of, say ESPN, you would have fewer hours by the time you had hundreds of hours of content than if you recorded all off of the Weather Channel or MSNBC. Also, Comcast triple-channels most of their HDs, usually with one fast-moving one per QAM, and two more normal ones for a nominal bitrate of 12mbps (5.5GB/hr). FIOS doesn't re-compress HDs they get in MPEG-2, so they can have anywhere from 14-19mbps, with 2 HD's per QAM. As a result, a TiVo on Comcast will get somewhere around 20-33% more hours of HD for the same size drive than a TiVo on FIOS. Of course the upside with FIOS is far better picture quality.

When the cable companies moves to MPEG-4, which a few are for some channels, and FIOS is completely, the TiVo's capacity will go way up, as the files will be way smaller. Moving to 5 HD's per QAM, nominally 7mbps, will more than double the capacity over FIOS's current bitrates, and almost double over Comcast, while improving picture quality.

Hence, over time, storage requirements will shrink.

Cable systems need more bandwidth. 860mhz upgrades have been good, and right now Comcast has extra bandwidth on those systems. However, the move to 24x8 DOCSIS 3 over the current 8x4 or less systems will eat up more QAMs, as will network DVRs (basically making everything ON Demand, IMO a massive waste of bandwidth), more VOD, 4K channels, and more HD channels. They will have to get it somewhere, and the next logical step is MPEG-4. Current 860mhz systems would have a significant amount of free bandwidth for upgrades if they switched all their HD channels to MPEG-4, even if they started running 24x8 D3. They would go from nominally 40 QAM's for HD as they are running now (120 HD's, a few are not triple-channeled, so maybe low 40's, plus locals aren't shared the same way, as they share with their subchannels) to nominally 24 QAM's, with 5-channeling, freeing 16 QAMs, which would move them from 8x4 D3 to 24x8 D3 while keeping the same number of open QAMs that are currently on the 860 systems, which is somewhere in the 20 QAMs range. They could also move to 1ghz systems, which are the only Comcast systems currently using or planning to use 24x8 D3, which would give them another ~140mhz, or 23 QAMs for a total of about 43 QAMs open for expansion.

They could do a lot with those QAMs, say deploy H.265 4K channels, some "super HD" channels with high-bitrate feeds, etc. Although knowing Comcast, they will put one or two lame 4K channels up, and then do a network DVR and more XOD.


----------



## aaronwt

On FiOS it's not even close to 50/50. The majority of channels are easily in 1080. One or two channels also recently switched from 720P to 1080i.


----------



## Dan203

It's mostly sports channels that like 720p. Things with a lot of fast movement look better progressive then they do interlaced.


----------



## sirkulation

aaronwt said:


> On FiOS it's not even close to 50/50. The majority of channels are easily in 1080. One or two channels also recently switched from 720P to 1080i.


sorry to go off-topic...aaronwt I got your message, please include your email so I can contact you (can't PM yet)


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## TimA

jfh3 said:


> Comcast is quite good with CableCARD support/activation/re-pairing if you call their CableCARD support number. Not so much if you call the regular support number.
> 
> Two years ago, I would have agreed with you. Now, to update anything with a card takes less than 10 minutes.


Agree, my first Comcast CableCard experience two years ago wasn't smooth, but I had a working CC at the end of the day. My second experience a year ago was excellent. The tech rep was so efficient, I was off the phone in minutes with a working Tivo Premiere XL4.


----------



## TimA

Anyone want to guess how long it will be before we see a 2TB Plus and a 1 or 2TB Base Roamio from Tivo? A 4TB Pro?

Like most people on this forum, I was shocked at the smallish hard drives in the Base and Plus Roamios. I really think it's a marketing thing and they will upgrade the drives in a year without increasing the price. Tivo can then claim "new and improved" without really doing anything.

Drive cost and bulk availability probably were also a factor when they spec'd the current Roamios, but the ability to easily upgrade the Roamio later to lure in additional customers is a big consideration.


----------



## BruceShultes

TimA said:


> Anyone want to guess how long it will be before we see a 2TB Plus and a 1 or 2TB Base Roamio from Tivo? A 4TB Pro?
> 
> Like most people on this forum, I was shocked at the smallish hard drives in the Base and Plus Roamios. I really think it's a marketing thing and they will upgrade the drives in a year without increasing the price. Tivo can then claim "new and improved" without really doing anything.
> 
> Drive cost and bulk availability probably were also a factor when they spec'd the current Roamios, but the ability to easily upgrade the Roamio later to lure in additional customers is a big consideration.


If you want them, you can get them both now.

WeaKnees.com is already listing larger capacity options for both boxes.


----------



## Bigg

aaronwt said:


> On FiOS it's not even close to 50/50. The majority of channels are easily in 1080. One or two channels also recently switched from 720P to 1080i.


What provider you have is irrelevant. It's based on what the channels are broadcasting.

CBS/Viacom: 1080i
NBC/Universal: 1080i
Fox: 720p
ABC/ESPN: 720p

Discovery: 1080i
History: 720p

It may be slanted toward 1080i, but there are plenty of both, as many channels are owned by Fox and ABC/ESPN. Some sports channels, including any NBC-owned ones are 1080i. In general, I think 1080i looks better, but you can do amazing things with 720p, like ESPN.

Content is also converted back and forth a LOT. A lot of stuff is shot at 1080i and broadcast at 720p, and a lot of stuff is shot at 1080p. Not sure if much is shot at 720p.


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## aaronwt

Bigg said:


> What provider you have is irrelevant. It's based on what the channels are broadcasting.
> 
> CBS/Viacom: 1080i
> NBC/Universal: 1080i
> Fox: 720p
> ABC/ESPN: 720p
> 
> Discovery: 1080i
> History: 720p
> 
> It may be slanted toward 1080i, but there are plenty of both, as many channels are owned by Fox and ABC/ESPN. Some sports channels, including any NBC-owned ones are 1080i. In general, I think 1080i looks better, but you can do amazing things with 720p, like ESPN.
> 
> Content is also converted back and forth a LOT. A lot of stuff is shot at 1080i and broadcast at 720p, and a lot of stuff is shot at 1080p. Not sure if much is shot at 720p.


Yes the provider doesn't matter much, but if I were to go through all the HD channels the vast majority are 1080i not 720P. Just the Premium channels alone I receive are around forty five at 1080i. Add in the other HD channels and at least 75% of them are in 1080i.

Even alot of the sports channels are in 1080i. BEIN, MASN, CSN, Golf, NFL, Yes, NBA, Tennis, NHL, Fishing, etc. are in 1080i.


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## bareyb

jfh3 said:


> Comcast is quite good with CableCARD support/activation/re-pairing if you call their CableCARD support number. Not so much if you call the regular support number.
> 
> Two years ago, I would have agreed with you. Now, to update anything with a card takes less than 10 minutes.


You wanna put your money where your mouth is? I'll bet you a _thousand bucks_ they won't get it working for me the first try. 

Is this still the Cablecard Activation Number?: (866) 986-8486


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## astrohip

bareyb said:


> You wanna put your money where your mouth is? I'll bet you a _thousand bucks_ they won't get it working for *me *the first try.


Well, I can't bet on what will happen to *you*, but my son just went thru activating his Pro (he has an older Series 3 HD-XL, so he knows the cablecard dance) and he said it took less than ten minutes and he was done. Everything works. Premium and all.

Comcast Houston.


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## bareyb

astrohip said:


> Well, I can't bet on what will happen to *you*, but my son just went thru activating his Pro (he has an older Series 3 HD-XL, so he knows the cablecard dance) and *he said it took less than ten minutes and he was done. Everything works.* Premium and all.
> 
> Comcast Houston.


That would make me the happiest man on Earth.


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## Dan203

Me too. I'm dreading the call to get my CableCARD moved over to my Pro on Tuesday. However I did it like 6 months ago for my Sister and it was a total nightmare, so I'm not expecting it to have improved much since then.


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## bareyb

Dan203 said:


> Me too. I'm dreading the call to get my CableCARD moved over to my Pro on Tuesday. However I did it like 6 months ago for my Sister and it was a total nightmare, so I'm not expecting it to have improved much since then.


I did it about a year ago and same here. Took all of one day and part of another. I'm dreading it too... If it goes smoothly I'll jump for joy. Hey. You never know,,, I'm gonna try and think positive.


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## Devx

I called just last night to migrate a CableCard from my Tivo HD to the Roamio and the entire call was 15 minutes. That time even includes hold time, account verification, reading the Host and Data ID back out to me and holding them on the line to verify premium channels and all tuners.


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## MScottC

I'm also a shocked happy Comcast Customer. I called the special Cablecard number, I already had up the pairing screen, read her off the numbers, she read them back to me, and before we could end the conversation, even the premium channels were coming in fine. I'd say no more than 10 minutes. And yes, I have some very not fond memories of this process taking multiple days and phone calls. And that's even recently. They really got their act together on this. 

Cable Card Pairing (887) 405-2298


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## bareyb

Maybe it's a Northern California thing. I'm crossing my fingers because it's the one thing holding me back from pulling the trigger on a new box. Not that it's probably going to stop me. I'd dearly love a faster UI. Now that I know it's available the pokey one on my Elite is getting increasingly annoying.


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## bareyb

Well it looks like they are in stock at Amazon.com with PRIME. 12 left... Any reason not to buy it from Amazon?


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## overFEDEXed

Dan203 said:


> Me too. I'm dreading the call to get my CableCARD moved over to my Pro on Tuesday. However I did it like 6 months ago for my Sister and it was a total nightmare, so I'm not expecting it to have improved much since then.


Dan,

I have a question for you. I do have Cox cable and not Comcast, so that might make a difference.

Yesterday, I opened up my Plus to upgrade my HD. I pulled my Cablecard out of my Elite, that I sold on eBay, and put it in the Plus. i was preparing to call the Cox CC activation line to swap it over, but everything works!

Is this just temporary? You think that I will have problems down the road? I must say that the last time I called Cox, it took all of 15 minutes, so it's no big deal to call. I was just wondering why it accepted the card. I've always called in on new and swaps, as channels would be missing initially. (Channels not authorized)

When I first got my CC's we went through NINE cards, to get three Tivo's up and running. It is much better now.

Also, I never fired up the Plus with the original drive. I did do the setup without the old Elite CC, then popped it in after.


----------



## I WANT MORE

bareyb said:


> Well it looks like they are in stock at Amazon.com with PRIME. 12 left... Any reason not to buy it from Amazon?


No reason I can think of.


----------



## innocentfreak

I WANT MORE said:


> No reason I can think of.


If you plan on upgrading yourself, Best Buy might be a better option if you plan on getting the extended warranty. Not sure how TiVo might handle the extended warranty and upgraded drive even if you replace it with the stock drive.


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## Dan203

overFEDEXed said:


> Dan,
> 
> I have a question for you. I do have Cox cable and not Comcast, so that might make a difference.
> 
> Yesterday, I opened up my Plus to upgrade my HD. I pulled my Cablecard out of my Elite, that I sold on eBay, and put it in the Plus. i was preparing to call the Cox CC activation line to swap it over, but everything works!
> 
> Is this just temporary? You think that I will have problems down the road? I must say that the last time I called Cox, it took all of 15 minutes, so it's no big deal to call. I was just wondering why it accepted the card. I've always called in on new and swaps, as channels would be missing initially. (Channels not authorized)
> 
> When I first got my CC's we went through NINE cards, to get three Tivo's up and running. It is much better now.
> 
> Also, I never fired up the Plus with the original drive. I did do the setup without the old Elite CC, then popped it in after.


Check the Premium channels. When a card is not paired correctly any channels marked Copy Once will not work. Most cable companies only do this to the premium channels.

Even if they do work you may want to get it paired anyway because if they ever do enable the protection those channels will suddenly stop working and you may not realize it immediately causing you to lose recordings.


----------



## jmpage2

innocentfreak said:


> If you plan on upgrading yourself, Best Buy might be a better option if you plan on getting the extended warranty. Not sure how TiVo might handle the extended warranty and upgraded drive even if you replace it with the stock drive.


Yep. Thats why i cancelled my Amazon order and put an order in to pick up at BB when i get back into town tonight. Even though i had to pay sales tax.


----------



## bareyb

innocentfreak said:


> If you plan on upgrading yourself, Best Buy might be a better option if you plan on getting the extended warranty. Not sure how TiVo might handle the extended warranty and upgraded drive even if you replace it with the stock drive.


Do you mean if I plan to upgrade the Hard Drive? I was planning on getting the Pro so I think that's going to be plenty big enough. Not familiar with the extended warranty... Is it from Best Buy or TiVo?


----------



## Dan203

As long as you don't plan to open the case you can buy an extended warranty from TiVo. It's $30 for 2 years or $40 for 3 years. You can buy it after the fact even if you got the TiVo from another retailer, you just have to call.

The reason people like Best Buy for units they plan to upgrade is because Best Buy has no way of knowing you opened the case, so there is no danger of them refusing to honor the warranty. And TiVo will honor a Best Buy warranty and allow you to transfer lifetime service to the new unit.


----------



## bareyb

Dan203 said:


> As long as you don't plan to open the case you can buy an extended warranty from TiVo. It's $30 for 2 years or $40 for 3 years. You can buy it after the fact even if you got the TiVo from another retailer, you just have to call.
> 
> The reason people like Best Buy for units they plan to upgrade is because Best Buy has no way of knowing you opened the case, so there is no danger of them refusing to honor the warranty. And TiVo will honor a Best Buy warranty and allow you to transfer lifetime service to the new unit.


Ah. Gotcha. I'll have to think about that. Thanks.


----------



## Dan203

I bought one for my Elite and will again for my Pro. $40 seems like cheap insurance for a $1000 device. ($600 + $400 lifetime)


----------



## monkeydust

Dan203 said:


> As long as you don't plan to open the case you can buy an extended warranty from TiVo. It's $30 for 2 years or $40 for 3 years. You can buy it after the fact even if you got the TiVo from another retailer, you just have to call.
> 
> The reason people like Best Buy for units they plan to upgrade is because Best Buy has no way of knowing you opened the case, so there is no danger of them refusing to honor the warranty. And TiVo will honor a Best Buy warranty and allow you to transfer lifetime service to the new unit.


So, Tivo knows if you've opened the case even if you put the original drive back in?


----------



## Dan203

monkeydust said:


> So, Tivo knows if you've opened the case even if you put the original drive back in?


Their logs can tell that you've called in with a bigger hard drive installed then what is standard for your unit.


----------



## bareyb

Dan203 said:


> I bought one for my Elite and will again for my Pro. $40 seems like cheap insurance for a $1000 device. ($600 + $400 lifetime)


Yeah. That sounds like a pretty good deal. I don't plan to crack the case so the insurance from TiVo would be fine for me. When will your new Roamio arrive?


----------



## Dan203

bareyb said:


> Yeah. That sounds like a pretty good deal. I don't plan to crack the case so the insurance from TiVo would be fine for me. When will your new Roamio arrive?


Tuesday. It arrived in a warehouse the next town over Friday night. But between the weekend and the holiday I have to wait until Tuesday to get it.


----------



## bareyb

Dan203 said:


> Tuesday. It arrived in a warehouse the next town over Friday night. But between the weekend and the holiday I have to wait until Tuesday to get it.


Ah man... I feel your pain. I'm seriously ready to pull the trigger myself. I'm just dreading dealing with Comcast... 

ETA: Maybe I'll see how it goes with yours. Are you gonna try to get it paired on Tuesday?

Side note: Amazon seems to be selling a LOT of these. 
They showed 17 available yesterday morning and by last night they only had 2 left. Today they are showing 18 more in stock (more on the way!) and in the 30 minutes since we got to the Hotel they have sold 3 more and now have 15 left. It would appear that TiVo may have a winner on their hands. I don't recall the Elites flying off the shelves like these are.


----------



## Dan203

Yeah I've got a 2 tuner Premiere with working CableCARD so if they totally hose it I'll still be able to record everything I need for the short term. Still a couple weeks before everything comes back.


----------



## jmpage2

Dan203 said:


> Their logs can tell that you've called in with a bigger hard drive installed then what is standard for your unit.


Well, another advantage of the BB warranty over the TiVo one is that if your TiVo fails BB will likely just give you credit towards a new one (whatever version is current) whereas TiVo will probably send you a refurb.


----------



## bodosom

overFEDEXed said:


> Yesterday, I opened up my Plus to upgrade my HD. I pulled my Cablecard out of my Elite, that I sold on eBay, and put it in the Plus. i was preparing to call the Cox CC activation line to swap it over, but everything works!
> 
> Is this just temporary?


If you can get encrypted channels then it's effectively paired. However you don't need a CableCard to receive clear QAM channels. The card holds "keys" that are specific to the host id, the card id and programming. I'm pretty sure it's a violation of CableLabs terms to circumvent that binding.

A positive test is a premium channel although checking the CableCard Content Access (CA) screen will tell you if a channel is encrypted.


----------



## bareyb

bareyb said:


> Ah man... I feel your pain. I'm seriously ready to pull the trigger myself. I'm just dreading dealing with Comcast...
> 
> ETA: Maybe I'll see how it goes with yours. Are you gonna try to get it paired on Tuesday?
> 
> Side note: Amazon seems to be selling a LOT of these.
> They showed 17 available yesterday morning and by last night they only had 2 left. *Today they are showing 18 more in stock (more on the way!) and in the 30 minutes since we got to the Hotel they have sold 3 more and now have 15 left.* It would appear that TiVo may have a winner on their hands. I don't recall the Elites flying off the shelves like these are.


Wow. I went over to sit in a Tesla (showroom is next door to the Hotel) and now they are sold out. That's 18 units sold in an hour. I guess I moved too slow...


----------



## Beryl

The amazon reviews of the Plus are not encouraging. I hope more owners post reviews.


----------



## Bigg

aaronwt said:


> Yes the provider doesn't matter much, but if I were to go through all the HD channels the vast majority are 1080i not 720P. Just the Premium channels alone I receive are around forty five at 1080i. Add in the other HD channels and at least 75% of them are in 1080i.
> 
> Even alot of the sports channels are in 1080i. BEIN, MASN, CSN, Golf, NFL, Yes, NBA, Tennis, NHL, Fishing, etc. are in 1080i.


Fox and ABC/ESPN alone are more than 25% of channels. I'm not doubting that it's uneven, but it's not THAT uneven. I usually personally prefer 1080i, although ESPN is the best looking channel, and it's 720p, so go figure...


----------



## DCIFRTHS

Beryl said:


> The amazon reviews of the Plus are not encouraging. I hope more owners post reviews.


I see 4 reviews, and one if the is a DOA (not good). The other 3 seem like accurate reviews.


----------



## lessd

DCIFRTHS said:


> I see 4 reviews, and one if the is a DOA (not good). The other 3 seem like accurate reviews.


If TiVo is not doing any check on the blank hard drives expect some hard drive DOA, that would make the customers TiVo DOA.


----------



## DCIFRTHS

lessd said:


> If TiVo is not doing any check on the blank hard drives expect some hard drive DOA, that would make the customers TiVo DOA.


They should be. As mentioned in another thread, this costs more, but I believe the cost is well worth it.


----------



## aaronwt

jmpage2 said:


> Well, another advantage of the BB warranty over the TiVo one is that if your TiVo fails BB will likely just give you credit towards a new one (whatever version is current) whereas TiVo will probably send you a refurb.


Supposedly they will try to get it fixed first. Since their new extended warranty policies went into effect things have changed. I know they used to not even bat an eye and just give you full credit. But I know the last item I took to BestBuy that was hosed and on the extended warranty, they sent it to get fixed.


----------



## aaronwt

Bigg said:


> Fox and ABC/ESPN alone are more than 25% of channels. I'm not doubting that it's uneven, but it's not THAT uneven. I usually personally prefer 1080i, although ESPN is the best looking channel, and it's 720p, so go figure...


Then the provider must matter, because I can go through all the HD channels on FiOS and it is easily that lopsided. Which is how I came up with the number in the first place.

I went through all 145+ HD channels that FiOS has and the percentage was that lopsided.


----------



## jmpage2

aaronwt said:


> Supposedly they will try to get it fixed first. Since their new extended warranty policies went into effect things have changed. I know they used to not even bat an eye and just give you full credit. But I know the last item I took to BestBuy that was hosed and on the extended warranty, they sent it to get fixed.


Maybe. With something like a TiVo it might not be feasible. If you change anything other than the power supply or hard drive the service will need activation.


----------



## lessd

jmpage2 said:


> Maybe. With something like a TiVo it might not be feasible. If you change anything other than the power supply or hard drive the service will need activation.


Best Buy can and will move the activation for you.


----------



## innocentfreak

lessd said:


> Best Buy can and will move the activation for you.


Well TiVo will with the warranty paperwork. Best Buy doesn't do anything for activation unless something changed.


----------



## lessd

innocentfreak said:


> Well TiVo will with the warranty paperwork. Best Buy doesn't do anything for activation unless something changed.


If you have a TiVo Best Buy warrantee for say 3 years and your TiVo goes south in say 2.5 years, and your TiVo has Lifetime on it, Best Buy will repair or give you a new TiVo and have TiVo move the Lifetime under their warrantee deal as a TiVo re-seller.


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## innocentfreak

lessd said:


> If you have a TiVo Best Buy warrantee for say 3 years and your TiVo goes south in say 2.5 years, and your TiVo has Lifetime on it, Best Buy will repair or give you a new TiVo and have TiVo move the Lifetime under their warrantee deal as a TiVo re-seller.


My point was at least in my experience Best Buy only replaced the box. I had to call TiVo to transfer lifetime and fax them the paperwork. Best Buy handled nothing when it came to transferring service. Now maybe it has changed since this was years ago.

I agree with the fact TiVo will transfer lifetime with a Best Buy warranty, but Best Buy did nothing to help the process other than give me the paperwork.


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## jmpage2

innocentfreak said:


> My point was at least in my experience Best Buy only replaced the box. I had to call TiVo to transfer lifetime and fax them the paperwork. Best Buy handled nothing when it came to transferring service. Now maybe it has changed since this was years ago.
> 
> I agree with the fact TiVo will transfer lifetime with a Best Buy warranty, but Best Buy did nothing to help the process other than give me the paperwork.


I would be interested if BB has the ability to repair them through whatever third party repair service they use. TiVo is not a BD player. Sort of a specialty device.


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## Dan203

jmpage2 said:


> I would be interested if BB has the ability to repair them through whatever third party repair service they use. TiVo is not a BD player. Sort of a specialty device.


Fixing the HDD is as simple as just dropping in a new drive now, so I could see them doing those sorts of repairs. Other then that there are really only 3 pieces. The mobo, the power supply and the wifi card. Those are all pretty specialty so they probably wouldn't try to fix those. Unless TiVo has some way for them to easily order up the parts, which they never have in the past.


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## jmpage2

Dan203 said:


> Fixing the HDD is as simple as just dropping in a new drive now, so I could see them doing those sorts of repairs. Other then that there are really only 3 pieces. The mobo, the power supply and the wifi card. Those are all pretty specialty so they probably wouldn't try to fix those. Unless TiVo has some way for them to easily order up the parts, which they never have in the past.


With the Roamio a hard drive repair is a simple drop-in but that was never the case before. Certainly i think that TiVo simplified this type of repair as it is probably the most common and very easy to do in the field. This will reduce their costs and enable MSO repairs too.


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## Dan203

That's what I'm saying BB may try to do self repairs of TiVos now because the most common problem is the HDD and because it's so easy to replace now. Whereas before their only option was really to replace the whole box.


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## GoHokies!

lessd said:


> If you have a TiVo Best Buy warrantee for say 3 years and your TiVo goes south in say 2.5 years, and your TiVo has Lifetime on it, Best Buy will repair or give you a new TiVo and have TiVo move the Lifetime under their warrantee deal as a TiVo re-seller.


That being the case, it's still possible (in theory) for Best Buy to replace the unit, you call up TiVo and ask to move the Lifetime because of the warranty replacement and for TiVo to check the logs, see that you had an upgraded unit and tell you that they won't move the lifetime.

No idea if they will do that, but as long as TiVo "holds the keys" with respect to transferring lifetime and has the means to check on the logs for every box out there, it may no matter who does the warranty replacement.


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## uw69

GoHokies! said:


> That being the case, it's still possible (in theory) for Best Buy to replace the unit, you call up TiVo and ask to move the Lifetime because of the warranty replacement and for TiVo to check the logs, see that you had an upgraded unit and tell you that they won't move the lifetime.
> 
> No idea if they will do that, but as long as TiVo "holds the keys" with respect to transferring lifetime and has the means to check on the logs for every box out there, it may no matter who does the warranty replacement.


I agree that this could happen, but does anyone know of a case where TiVo has actually done this?


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## atmuscarella

GoHokies! said:


> That being the case, it's still possible (in theory) for Best Buy to replace the unit, you call up TiVo and ask to move the Lifetime because of the warranty replacement and for TiVo to check the logs, see that you had an upgraded unit and tell you that they won't move the lifetime.
> 
> No idea if they will do that, but as long as TiVo "holds the keys" with respect to transferring lifetime and has the means to check on the logs for every box out there, it may no matter who does the warranty replacement.


While I agree anything is possible, TiVo's User Agreement states:

A Product Lifetime subscription lasts for the lifetime of your TiVo device (not your lifetime), and may not be transferred to another TiVo device (except in cases of warranty repair or replacement under applicable warranty terms). ​In the case of a Best Buy warranty the applicable warranty terms would be Best Buy's terms not TiVos.


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## jmpage2

GoHokies! said:


> That being the case, it's still possible (in theory) for Best Buy to replace the unit, you call up TiVo and ask to move the Lifetime because of the warranty replacement and for TiVo to check the logs, see that you had an upgraded unit and tell you that they won't move the lifetime.
> 
> No idea if they will do that, but as long as TiVo "holds the keys" with respect to transferring lifetime and has the means to check on the logs for every box out there, it may no matter who does the warranty replacement.


If that was going to happen then tivo would not consider Weaknees an authorized reseller and business partner, but they do.


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## Bigg

aaronwt said:


> Then the provider must matter, because I can go through all the HD channels on FiOS and it is easily that lopsided. Which is how I came up with the number in the first place.
> 
> I went through all 145+ HD channels that FiOS has and the percentage was that lopsided.


If a channel is 720p, it will be 720p on all providers. Same for 1080i. The ratio can get skewed, since FIOS has a TON of HD channels, so maybe some of the less-watched ones that aren't on other providers are skewed more towards 1080i. However, among the major channels, they are split pretty evenly.

Just look at how many are owned by ABC/ESPN or FOX, and you have a LOT of 720p channels. Add in some random ones like History, and you've got a good percentage of 720p channels.


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## headless chicken

What is the largest drive that can be manually placed into the Roamio successfully?


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## lessd

headless chicken said:


> What is the largest drive that can be manually placed into the Roamio successfully?


3Tb at this time.


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## Joe Siegler

jbaum said:


> I think the only difference is the storage 150 hours vs. 450 hours. Is it worth $200?


Some of them are out in the wild now, have we found out that this is truly the case, where Pro vs Plus is just a matter of HD space, and nothing else?


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## jmpage2

Joe Siegler said:


> Some of them are out in the wild now, have we found out that this is truly the case, where Pro vs Plus is just a matter of HD space, and nothing else?


Well pro says "pro" on the faceplate. Yeah they appear to be identical other than HD capacity.


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## headless chicken

jmpage2 said:


> Well pro says "pro" on the faceplate.


Oh yeah, that's totally worth $200 right there


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## aaronwt

headless chicken said:


> Oh yeah, that's totally worth $200 right there


If it had the THX logo on there it would be.


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## headless chicken

How is weaknees able to accommodate up to an 8GB HD in the Roamio?


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## Philmatic

headless chicken said:


> How is weaknees able to accommodate up to an 8GB HD in the Roamio?


That's a trade secret.


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## headless chicken

Philmatic said:


> That's a trade secret.


Hmm...Well a 3TB drive will still be 3x more than what I have in my upgraded S3 OLED so maybe it's time to pull the trigger. There will be the added benefit of not having to pay $10 for the requisite 2 CableCARDS to run the S3.


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## Dan203

I had 2TB in my XL4 and only once saw it breach 90% and that was with a few shows where I had 2-3 full seasons worth. I don't foresee ever filling up 3TB.

But if I were sharing with an entire family I could see where more space might be necessary.


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## headless chicken

Dan203 said:


> I had 2TB in my XL4 and only once saw it breach 90% and that was with a few shows where I had 2-3 full seasons worth.


How many season passes do you have? I've got anywhere between 65 and 80 at any given time, though of course only 1/3 - 1/2 of those shows are currently airing at any given time.

It will be nice to have more than 2 tuners, that's for sure. Right now I have to wait for repeat airings and other means to catch the shows that don't record. However, I hated the slow and buggy XL4 so much I returned it within a week of purchase. I decided I liked the S3 menus, clock/OLED display and sleek finish over the promise of 4 tuners.


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## Dan203

I have 106 SPs. Quickly scrolling through the SP manager it looks like maybe 1/2 have scheduled recordings. (They're a different color so you can tell)


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## Bigg

I'm confused to to why there are Weakness upgraded Pros? The Plus is the same thing with a smaller drive, so why not just start with the Plus? Given the pricing TiVo is offering with upgrade deals and whatnot, I'd say it would be hard to justify the 4TB upgraded Plus over the stock Pro, but if you want the ultimate TiVo, the 4TB Plus/Pro is it...


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## Dan203

Some people might want the Pro badge on the front.


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## Bigg

Dan203 said:


> Some people might want the Pro badge on the front.


Ok lol. I'm not crazy then.


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## ltxi

Dan203 said:


> Some people might want the Pro badge on the front.


I'm offering TiVo snob replacement front panels for Plus units from stolen Pros for only $25.99 plus $10 shipping.


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