# Bolt recording hours



## paully65 (Feb 20, 2002)

I am not sure what Tivo was thinking when the storage choices for the Bolt are 500/1000GB. Seriously? 1TB only records 150 hours of HD and they are promoting a big feature as 4K compatible. Do you see where I am going with this? 4K content will take up much more space than HD content. Not really worth it.


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## GoodSpike (Dec 17, 2001)

paully65 said:


> I am not sure what Tivo was thinking when the storage choices for the Bolt are 500/1000GB. Seriously? 1TB only records 150 hours of HD and they are promoting a big feature as 4K compatible. Do you see where I am going with this? 4K content will take up much more space than HD content. Not really worth it.


Maybe I'm missing something, but nothing you record will be in 4k for a long time. 4k is mainly/only streaming.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

paully65 said:


> I am not sure what Tivo was thinking when the storage choices for the Bolt are 500/1000GB. Seriously? 1TB only records 150 hours of HD and they are promoting a big feature as 4K compatible. Do you see where I am going with this? 4K content will take up much more space than HD content. Not really worth it.





GoodSpike said:


> Maybe I'm missing something, but nothing you record will be in 4k for a long time. 4k is mainly/only streaming.


And we really don't know what bit rate cable will be using to broadcast 4K content when/if they do start broadcasting it.

Right now if you could record a Vudu 4K movie it wouldn't take any more space than the same Movie broadcast in high quality 1080p via a MPEG 2 cable channel.


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## GoodSpike (Dec 17, 2001)

atmuscarella said:


> And we really don't know what bit rate cable will be using to broadcast 4K content when/if they do start broadcasting it.


Speaking of broadcasts, has there been any talk of upgrading the HDTV signal that is broadcast? And if so, would it be less of a hassle than what we went through with moving to HD?


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## ScottFL (Dec 14, 2015)

Hopefully by the time anyone starts broadcasting 4k (except Directv which won't work on the bolt) TIVO will have released information on compatible external drives that will work with the BOLT. When that happens you can probably pick up a 50TB SSD for cheap LOL.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

GoodSpike said:


> Speaking of broadcasts, has there been any talk of upgrading the HDTV signal that is broadcast? And if so, would it be less of a hassle than what we went through with moving to HD?


If you are talking about OTA going to 4K/UHD we had a disjointed discussion recently, you can start with my post here: http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=10761792#post10761792

It goes on for awhile but it does get flushed out fairly well after a number of misleading or at least hard to understand post. This post has some links to good info: http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=10764157#post10764157

If you are not talking about OTA please clarify.


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## GoodSpike (Dec 17, 2001)

atmuscarella said:


> If you are not talking about OTA please clarify.


Yes, and thanks for the links. I'd totally missed that discussion, in part because I think it will be a while before I upgrade my TV.

But quick question, if you know (that material was a bit technical): Do we know yet that if I were using OTA would that mean replacing the Bolt to get the upgraded service? Basically, is the concern about the Tivo's drives not a concern because the Bolt won't receive the proper signals?


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

GoodSpike said:


> Yes, and thanks for the links. I'd totally missed that discussion, in part because I think it will be a while before I upgrade my TV.
> 
> But quick question, if you know (that material was a bit technical): Do we know yet that if I were using OTA would that mean replacing the Bolt to get the upgraded service? Basically, is the concern about the Tivo's drives not a concern because the Bolt won't receive the proper signals?


Remember we are talking OTA 4K/UHD broadcast not cable. For cable I believe current cable tuners & the Bolt will work just fine with cable 4K/UHD broadcasts. For OTA 4K/UHD the Bolt likely can not work without TiVo providing an external add on solution.

Currently it _appears_ the switch to ATSC 3.0 (required for OTA UHD broadcasts) will require devices with different OTA tuners than what currently exists and the broadcasts will be using h.265 (versus MPEG 2 now).

It seems pretty clear there will be some kind of Dongle/STB to address the issue for UHD TVs. It would also make sense that a Dongle/STB could also down grade the out put and be usable on HD or even SD TVs.

When it comes to existing OTA DVRs things are at best uncertain and at worst depressing. I have seen no solution that would make economic sense for older OTA DVRs that can not decode h.265 streams (everything except the Bolt and HTPCs). For the Bolt and HTPCs there is a possibility of adding Network or USB ATSC 3.0 tuners that can provide the h.265 streams to the Bolt or HTPC to record. The issue is for the Bolt TiVo would have to provide (sell) at least the software to communicate with Network or USB attached ATSC 3.0 tuners and perhaps the tuners themselves.

My personal guess is the change over is going to be long enough in the future (my guess is 5 years minimum) that the Bolt will be too old for TiVo to worry about providing a ATSC 3..0 solution for it. I am also guessing that by the time ATSC 3.0 broadcast exist TiVo will have released OTA DVRa that have ATSC 3.0 tuners built in and someone like Silicon Dust will be making a HTPC solution based on Network attached tuners like they do now with the current OTA broadcasts.

It is two edge sword - if the switch to ATSC 3.0 broadcast happens soon lots of existing OTA DVRs may become nearly useless but until we switch to ATSC 3.0 there is no chance of UHD OTA broadcasts. Not sure what to wish for.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

I vote for ATSC 3.0. Because they could also use HEVC for 2K broadcasts and use only one quarter the bandwidth that they currently use for MPEG2.


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