# Pro vs Plus



## jilter (Oct 4, 2002)

Any feedback from people who have both?

I am wondering if, after the 3TB gets more and more content, does it get cumbersome to manage?


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## NickWNOLA (Mar 19, 2015)

Wondering the same thing. Is it a waste of money just to end up searing for a show you want to watch.


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

Yes, it gets really heavy. 

Assuming you keep the same number of OPs or ARWLs, the shows are bundled in folders. So you'll end up with either tons more suggestions or more shows in each folder. nbd.


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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

Nothing beats having 3TB at hand.
I have a Pro and a Plus in the house and can't modify the Plus to give it 3TB and it doesn't get SPs because of that, I record movies on the Plus, series on the Pro.


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## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

If you kept everything the same (OnePasses, Wishlists and their settings etc) then I think the only difference is your backlog would be 5x the size of your backlog on a 1 TB drive assuming 500gb for routine tv watching and 500gb backlog on a 1 TB drive. 

I keep thinking on getting a 3 TB drive for my Plus but every time I go to buy one I talk myself out of it because I remember the 10-20 movies and handful of shows I haven't watched on my 1 TB drive. And we're a family of four.


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## b-ball-fanatic (Aug 5, 2003)

jilter said:


> Any feedback from people who have both?
> 
> I am wondering if, after the 3TB gets more and more content, does it get cumbersome to manage?


I don't have both, but I do have a 3Tb Roamio and a 1Tb Premiere XL (and now a 3Tb Premiere). I think you touch on something important in your question.....as HDD sizes keep increasing, TiVo's limited organizational tools really start to show their limitations. Obviously, series get put into folders, which helps a lot, but as the random, one-off shows accumulate, the NPL gets pretty long & unwieldy. I do indeed end up having to search around for "that show I recorded last week that looked kinda interesting." And if you have multiple family members freely hitting the record button for things like that, your very long NPL can look like a disorganized mess.

I know it's not TiVo's style to give users anything resembling "power tools." but I'd love to see some options where we can create and organize our own folders.

All that said, I do prefer the problem of a cumbersome NPL over worrying about running out of space.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

I record, and hold on to, a lot more movies then I would if I had a Plus. But otherwise I wouldn't have any more/less regular recordings. Having more space doesn't change what I watch. Although maybe if I were low on space I would cancel some of the SPs I haven't actually watched in a long time.


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## abovethesink (Aug 26, 2013)

I do not have a Pro, but I do have 3 TB thanks to how easy it is to drop a new drive in. What it allows us to do is basically record everything with no pressure. Every new show, we set a pass for it. Could and probably will be months before we try it and by then we have the whole season. If we like it we can binge, if not we just delete it. We find it liberating, not overwhelming,


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## Arcady (Oct 14, 2004)

I currently have 848 recordings on my Roamio Pro. It doesn't take more than 10 seconds to navigate to and play any show I decide to watch. This much content would not fit on a 1TB disk. It might fill a 2TB.


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## series5orpremier (Jul 6, 2013)

No, 3TB is not more cumbersome to manage. If you want to record a marathon of an entire series to binge watch later that one series can be 10% or 20% of 3TB contained in one folder. That describes four of my current folders.

Using cumbersomeness as an excuse to save $125 but deprive yourself of a significant amount of usefulness for a machine you've already paid a lot of money for just seems odd to me. I have a 1TB Premier XL for OTA and have upgraded a Roamio Basic from 2TB for OTA to 3TB for cable. Both machines hover around 80% full. Even if you think you'll never watch that much and 1TB will force you to delete recordings, when you want to watch something it's better to be able to choose from all the extra recordings than to confine yourself to a knee jerk reaction made earlier when deciding what to keep. Once you start watching it you may regret your decision. And with 1TB you'll feel more pressure to watch more things more quickly to clear enough space for the next recordings. Not worth saving the $125 in my opinion.


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## chiguy50 (Nov 9, 2009)

Arcady said:


> I currently have 848 recordings on my Roamio Pro. It doesn't take more than 10 seconds to navigate to and play any show I decide to watch. This much content would not fit on a 1TB disk. It might fill a 2TB.


Wow, that's a lot! I have a Premiere Elite (2TB) that is currently about 50% full with over 100 recorded HD movies.

It is always at the back of my mind that I could lose a ton of future entertainment in one fell swoop if my HDD goes belly up. My concern is not sufficient to impel me to keep a backup (although all the movies are copy-protected on my system so not revelant anyway). But the bigger the storage capacity, the greater the general tendency to accumulate recordings and the more devastating the loss in case of a crash.

How much are those of you with 3TB drives worried about losing all that programming before you can get around to watching it--especially those who might have to answer to irate family members? And does this concern mitigate the value of the larger HDD in your mind?


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## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

series5orpremier said:


> Using cumbersomeness as an excuse to save $125 but deprive yourself of a significant amount of usefulness for a machine you've already paid a lot of money for just seems odd to me. I have a 1TB Premier XL for OTA and have upgraded a Roamio Basic from 2TB for OTA to 3TB for cable. Both machines hover around 80% full. Even if you think you'll never watch that much and 1TB will force you to delete recordings, when you want to watch something it's better to be able to choose from all the extra recordings than to confine yourself to a knee jerk reaction made earlier when deciding what to keep. Once you start watching it you may regret your decision. And with 1TB you'll feel more pressure to watch more things more quickly to clear enough space for the next recordings. Not worth saving the $125 in my opinion.


 A 1tb drive gives you 150 hours of recordings.

To get through that many hours of tv is a full time job for a month.

I know I'm not being deprived by a 1 TB drive. 

And that's before I toss in Netflix and Amazon Prime and HBO GO.


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## jilter (Oct 4, 2002)

dianebrat said:


> Nothing beats having 3TB at hand.
> I have a Pro and a Plus in the house and can't modify the Plus to give it 3TB and it doesn't get SPs because of that, I record movies on the Plus, series on the Pro.


I like your system!



b-ball-fanatic said:


> I don't have both, but I do have a 3Tb Roamio and a 1Tb Premiere XL (and now a 3Tb Premiere). I think you touch on something important in your question.....as HDD sizes keep increasing, TiVo's limited organizational tools really start to show their limitations. Obviously, series get put into folders, which helps a lot, but as the random, one-off shows accumulate, the NPL gets pretty long & unwieldy. I do indeed end up having to search around for "that show I recorded last week that looked kinda interesting." And if you have multiple family members freely hitting the record button for things like that, your very long NPL can look like a disorganized mess.
> 
> I know it's not TiVo's style to give users anything resembling "power tools." but I'd love to see some options where we can create and organize our own folders.
> 
> All that said, I do prefer the problem of a cumbersome NPL over worrying about running out of space.


I would love to see Tivo offer more organizational ability as well. 
Voting: YES!



series5orpremier said:


> No, 3TB is not more cumbersome to manage. If you want to record a marathon of an entire series to binge watch later that one series can be 10% or 20% of 3TB contained in one folder. That describes four of my current folders.
> 
> Using cumbersomeness as an excuse to save $125 but deprive yourself of a significant amount of usefulness for a machine you've already paid a lot of money for just seems odd to me. I have a 1TB Premier XL for OTA and have upgraded a Roamio Basic from 2TB for OTA to 3TB for cable. Both machines hover around 80% full. Even if you think you'll never watch that much and 1TB will force you to delete recordings, when you want to watch something it's better to be able to choose from all the extra recordings than to confine yourself to a knee jerk reaction made earlier when deciding what to keep. Once you start watching it you may regret your decision. And with 1TB you'll feel more pressure to watch more things more quickly to clear enough space for the next recordings. Not worth saving the $125 in my opinion.


I am weighing a 200.00 difference, as I am not planning on doing any upgrading of HD myself. Although I understand if you still think the question is odd  thanks for your feedback.


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## Arcady (Oct 14, 2004)

chiguy50 said:


> How much are those of you with 3TB drives worried about losing all that programming before you can get around to watching it--especially those who might have to answer to irate family members? And does this concern mitigate the value of the larger HDD in your mind?


My Premiere Elite records most of the same content as my Roamio Pro. If one of them were to suffer a hard drive failure, the other would have 90% of the critical content needed. We don't record a whole lot of movies, because by the time they make it to HBO or another premium channel, we have probably either bought the Blu-Ray, watched on Netflix, or downloaded from the internet anyway. We don't generally watch movies on non-premium channels, because we don't like edited movies.


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## kturcotte (Dec 9, 2002)

Tivo should just implement a search feature within the NPL. If you search for just a show, it goes to it's folder. You could also search by episode title and it would go directly to that episode.


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## gespears (Aug 10, 2007)

jilter said:


> I am weighing a 200.00 difference, as I am not planning on doing any upgrading of HD myself. Although I understand if you still think the question is odd  thanks for your feedback.


It's only a 100 difference if you use Spherular's code. Less than the price of a 3TB harddrive.


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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

jilter said:


> I am weighing a 200.00 difference, as I am not planning on doing any upgrading of HD myself. Although I understand if you still think the question is odd  thanks for your feedback.


of all the models out there, the Roamio is by far the easiest to replace the drive in, literally open it up, swap the drive, plug it in, no need for a computer or any other prep.
However I say go for the Pro, folks almost never regret more space, it's the rare person that says "gee, I don't need anymore storage space, thanks anyway"


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## jilter (Oct 4, 2002)

Thanks for your post Diane.
I appreciate your time.
What are the current hard drives folks are using to upgrade the capacity in Roamios?


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

The Western Digital WD30EURX seems to have attracted many fans--see the reviews at Amazon.com. 3TB.


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