# Happy Premiere user...should I upgrade to Edge?



## draegs (Mar 29, 2010)

I've been using some form of TiVo for about 15 years now. My current setup is a 4-tuner Premiere and 2 Minis (non Vox). I connect the Minis over a mesh wifi network as moca was always troublesome for me. We stream most content through an AppleTV or the tv itself as the apps are so slow on the Premiere. For the most part, my wife and I are happy with our current setup.

But we recently replaced our old plasma with a 4k OLED tv. We're also adding another 4k tv soon and it will be used in a home theater setup. This will require an additional TiVo unit and so I've already purchased a Vox Mini. My plan is to place the Mini where the the Premiere is so it can move to the new room.

I'm looking for some advice on whether or not we should bite the bullet and upgrade. We do run at about 90% of our storage being full and occasionally could use 6 tuners instead of 4. I'm also interested in revisiting moca since the Edge has it built in (we do rarely run into streaming issues over wifi). But I've also read a lot of horror stories about issues with the Edge.

Anyone care to chime in? All input is appreciated.


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## chiguy50 (Nov 9, 2009)

I would suggest that you look into getting a used Roamio Plus or Pro rather than the overpriced Edge. You can find many offers on eBay for units with All-In (Product Lifetime) Subscription going for anywhere between $300 and $500. Or you can get a refurbished Roamio Pro from Weaknees for $550 w/90-day warranty.


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## chicagobrownblue (May 29, 2008)

I would get the Edge. Much faster, 2TB of additional storage for your system and 802.11ac 4x4 DBS*. Most Tivo problems are resolved with software updates. The Edge should solve the overheating problem the Bolt had and the combination of a much faster processor with better WiFi may solve your intermittent streaming issue.

In the meantime, have you maxed out the harddrive on the Premiere? I think 8TB is easy to do. Also, what WiFi router do you have? A better WiFi router may solve your streaming issues.

*I have no idea what DBS is.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

chicagobrownblue said:


> *I have no idea what DBS is.


It was Direct to home Broadcast Satellite. I have no idea how that would be used in this context.


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## draegs (Mar 29, 2010)

chicagobrownblue said:


> In the meantime, have you maxed out the harddrive on the Premiere? I think 8TB is easy to do. Also, what WiFi router do you have? A better WiFi router may solve your streaming issues.


I have not done anything to increase storage (another good option to consider). I have an Eero pro network with each TiVo plugged into one of their access points.


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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

Another vote for Roamio Pro or Plus, they're the smallblock chevy of Tivo's, solid build, good parts, good features, while they don't do 4K there's nothing you can receive from anyone other than Verizon FiOS that is broadcast in 4K and there are better 4K stream devices out there, AND you can stay with the solidly performing TE3 as opposed to Hydra/TE4 which comes with Tivo+ and Preroll ads for many users.

Just the fact they use readily available 3.5" drives over the 2.5" ones in the Bolt and Edge lines is a huge plus.


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## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

I'd go Edge

But I would have got out of the Premiere over 5 years ago.  Roamio was a big improvement over Premiere imo. 

Now though go Edge. Just because it's the newest fastest thing and they probably fixed some of the annoyances/issues the Bolt had. I'd wait for the first big deal on it though. In my experience a new Tivo will see a nice price drop or deal within the first year. And it's already been ~4 months.

And since you stream most stuff through ATV, I'd check out a YTTV and other similar service cable streaming service. Not sure the channels on YTTV would cover what you need, but I use it on ATV and liked it more than enough to Ebay my Tivo and Minis. These services are free to try.


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## Sparky1234 (May 8, 2006)

draegs said:


> I have not done anything to increase storage (another good option to consider). I have an Eero pro network with each TiVo plugged into one of their access points.


Edge with commercials and TE4 are a no go for me.

I recommend the Bolt+ first then Roamio Pro a distant second.


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## chicagobrownblue (May 29, 2008)

Sparky1234 said:


> Edge *with commercials* and TE4 are a no go for me.


*SkipMode *

*Skipmode* is available on the following TiVo Experience 3 and TiVo Experience 4 devices:


TiVo EDGE Series
TiVo BOLT Series
TiVo Roamio Series
TiVo Premiere Series
TiVo Mini Series
Am I missing something?


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## yesno (Jun 27, 2003)

TiVo inserting short advert before playing a recording


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## Pokemon_Dad (Jan 19, 2008)

Upgrading to an Edge is not worth the cost and trouble as there's very little 4K out there yet — for most people, none at all — and you're already streaming on another device that will always work better for its dedicated purpose than any TiVo DVR box.

If you do ever need to replace your Premier, I say the Roamios were the last best series TiVo may ever produce. Take another look at the Edge then, but right now it's very new, very buggy, and it locks you into TE4 with all its unfixed bugs, unfinished features, and unwanted additional advertising.


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## Sparky1234 (May 8, 2006)

chicagobrownblue said:


> *SkipMode *
> 
> *Skipmode* is available on the following TiVo Experience 3 and TiVo Experience 4 devices:
> 
> ...


Yes, not related to SM:

TiVo inserting short advert before playing a recording


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## compnurd (Oct 6, 2011)

dianebrat said:


> Another vote for Roamio Pro or Plus, they're the smallblock chevy of Tivo's, solid build, good parts, good features, while they don't do 4K there's nothing you can receive from anyone other than Verizon FiOS that is broadcast in 4K and there are better 4K stream devices out there, AND you can stay with the solidly performing TE3 as opposed to Hydra/TE4 which comes with Tivo+ and Preroll ads for many users.
> 
> Just the fact they use readily available 3.5" drives over the 2.5" ones in the Bolt and Edge lines is a huge plus.


Many more cable companies then Verizon are broadcasting in 4K. Mine has a full time channel


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## philco782 (Sep 28, 2014)

I just moved from a Premiere 4 to an Edge. Pretty large jump for me. I'm kinda getting used to TE4, but so far it's kinda neat, I'm getting the hang of it. The processor is fantastic, it is lightspeed compared to the Premiere. I have a TCL Roku TV, series 6, and since the Tivo puts out HDR it's kinda weird, I find myself messing with the brightness settings sometimes, but I figure I'll find something that works good across the board.

Of course with a Roku TV there isn't much reason to use the streaming functions on the Tivo, so I can't comment much on that. 

One pretty nice touch with the Edge is that the font for closed captioning is actually decent. Premiere's closed captioning always looked kinda blurry. Might be the native 4k support? I'm aslso pretty easy to please. I wouldn't call myself a super power user, however I have used pytivo to put videos from the PC onto the Premiere, and kmttg or tivo desktop to put videos from the Premiere to the PC. I hear that functionality doesn't work anymore. Oh well, I have a FireTV stick and Kodi for that.


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## Narkul (Nov 7, 2004)

I'd stick with the premiere unless you can find a really cheap Roamio. With the app platform outdated and likely to start failing in the near future, I'm not sure what you'd need more processing power for. I have a TivoHD, Roamio and Bolt and see no difference except for the HD's outdated UI and no skip. The Roamio and Bolt perform equally in my eyes, have skip, and the apps suck equally. It is nice to just be able to drop a hard drive in those without using external format tools though.


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

draegs said:


> I've been using some form of TiVo for about 15 years now. My current setup is a 4-tuner Premiere and 2 Minis (non Vox). I connect the Minis over a mesh wifi network as moca was always troublesome for me. We stream most content through an AppleTV or the tv itself as the apps are so slow on the Premiere. For the most part, my wife and I are happy with our current setup.
> 
> But we recently replaced our old plasma with a 4k OLED tv. We're also adding another 4k tv soon and it will be used in a home theater setup. This will require an additional TiVo unit and so I've already purchased a Vox Mini. My plan is to place the Mini where the the Premiere is so it can move to the new room.
> 
> ...


I copied the original drive from my Premiere over to a Western Digital "White Label" RED WD80EMAZ 8TB 5400RPM 256MB 3.5" Hard Drive using the steps for mfstools in the 8TB Premiere thread. It worked perfectly. I switched my Premiere back to the SD interface and it is much more responsive. The apps are useless on a Premiere.


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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

compnurd said:


> Many more cable companies then Verizon are broadcasting in 4K. Mine has a full time channel


I was under the impression almost all of them were IP-based like Comcast not QAM thus meaning you can't view them via Tivo?


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

chicagobrownblue said:


> .... 802.11ac 4x4 DBS*. ....
> 
> *I have no idea what DBS is.





JoeKustra said:


> It was Direct to home Broadcast Satellite. I have no idea how that would be used in this context.


It depends on the chip manufacturer. Dual Band Simultaneous which is combining the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands for faster throughput or Dynamic Bandwidth Selection which adjusts the bandwidth from 20 MHz up to 80 MHz (or maybe 160 MHz)


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## compnurd (Oct 6, 2011)

dianebrat said:


> I was under the impression almost all of them were IP-based like Comcast not QAM thus meaning you can't view them via Tivo?


Nope. Most are QAM like mine and work fine with TiVo


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## draegs (Mar 29, 2010)

I went ahead and purchased a Roamio unit with all-in subscription from WeaKnees. So far I'm happy with that decision. The only major downside appears to be that a lot of the content on my Premiere is copy protected and unable to be transferred to the new box. As far as I understand, products like pyTivo would help me get the recordings off the Premiere and onto a computer, but won't be able to push them to the Roamio. Is this correct? Are there no other options? I tried searching around on this but couldn't find a definitive answer.


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## Pokemon_Dad (Jan 19, 2008)

draegs said:


> I went ahead and purchased a Roamio unit with all-in subscription from WeaKnees. So far I'm happy with that decision. The only major downside appears to be that a lot of the content on my Premiere is copy protected and unable to be transferred to the new box. As far as I understand, products like pyTivo would help me get the recordings off the Premiere and onto a computer, but won't be able to push them to the Roamio. Is this correct? Are there no other options? I tried searching around on this but couldn't find a definitive answer.


The Roamio is an excellent choice, congratulations. Sorry to say though that even with pytivo you likely won't be able to transfer protected content, like shows from premium sources like HBO. Luckily these days much of that same content can be streamed on demand from those providers' apps on your Apple TV box. Same with anything you may have purchased from third parties like Amazon back when those downloaded instead of only streaming, as you still "own" them in your streaming library in that service's Apple TV app.


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## draegs (Mar 29, 2010)

All good points. Most of the protected content is the damn kid's shows from Nick and NickJr that air constantly on repeat anyway. I'm sure I can build the backlog up again within a week or so.


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