# Need more tuners



## steviebowillie (Jan 13, 2019)

I defected to Tablo for one year and absolutely hated the experience. So, I came back to TiVo. My old OTA TiVO was getting near the end of its life so I decided to buy a new Edge OTA tuner. Channel Master was offering a lifetime subscription for a very reasonable price so it was an easy choice.

Love the tuner. It works as well as my old one and has integrated well with all my old minis. The problem: IT ONLY HAS TWO TUNERs!!! My old box had 4. This is infuriating when trying to watch a show in more than one room and record another show. 

Any thoughts, or suggestions to overcome this? What makes this worse is that TiVO doesn't offer a 4 tuner OTA DVR anymore. WHY!??! If they did I could probably get rid of my streaming services. Thought about buying another OTA DVR but, this would also entail another subscription, right? Then stream shows would be limited to the specific DVR that the show was recorded on.


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## thyname (Dec 27, 2010)

steviebowillie said:


> I defected to Tablo for one year and absolutely hated the experience. So, I came back to TiVo. My old OTA TiVO was getting near the end of its life so I decided to buy a new Edge OTA tuner. Channel Master was offering a lifetime subscription for a very reasonable price so it was an easy choice.
> 
> Love the tuner. It works as well as my old one and has integrated well with all my old minis. The problem: IT ONLY HAS TWO TUNERs!!! My old box had 4. This is infuriating when trying to watch a show in more than one room and record another show.
> 
> Any thoughts, or suggestions to overcome this? What makes this worse is that TiVO doesn't offer a 4 tuner OTA DVR anymore. WHY!??! If they did I could probably get rid of my streaming services. Thought about buying another OTA DVR but, this would also entail another subscription, right? Then stream shows would be limited to the specific DVR that the show was recorded on.


The "old" Roamio OTA is probably still the best solution. It has four tuners. There are a couple of here for sale with Lifetime service


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## ElT60 (May 27, 2020)

steviebowillie said:


> ...
> Any thoughts, or suggestions to overcome this? What makes this worse is that TiVO doesn't offer a 4 tuner OTA DVR anymore. WHY!??


 Because they didn't sell that well. Initially the would not sell the 2 tuner model in the USA ( Canada only) and only sold the more expensive one. Perhaps trying to herd folks into paying more. What they mostly got was people paying les ( not buying). Without the $150 off All-In who is buying the two turner model. The 4 tuner was "worse" ( competition wise with Tablo , Recast , Silicon Dust , etc. )

If the run rate is low then more cost effective to just do the two tuners model at a lower cost. 




> If they did I could probably get rid of my streaming services. Thought about buying another OTA DVR but, this would also entail another subscription, right? Then stream shows would be limited to the specific DVR that the show was recorded on.


 if it is All-in there isn't pragmatically much of a 'subscription' (as in reoccurring fees). If they are on the same account, then you can stream recordings on the same account between systems. Multiple Room Streaming









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It doesn't want to do it over Wi-Fi. It doesn't exactly work like the older "Mulit Room Viewing" worked.









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but not 100% different either. 


However, the recordings are not completely trapped.

Transfer

That is a pain to do often to moves from a website, but they do (or should if OTA non ATSC 3.0 DRM ) transfer.

The Edge has a lot of "catch up to those streaming only boxes " built into its presumptions. Folks cutting costs massively flipping over to not doing recordings at all at lower costs. The overlap of streaming with "cable/sat" live at about the same costs is something they didn't see.


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## DrTek (4 mo ago)

ATSC 3.0 codec supposedly uses less space than 1.0. You'll be able to get more on a smaller hard drive.


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## pfiagra (Oct 13, 2014)

If I hadn’t been able to grab a 4-tuner Edge refurb from CM before they stopped selling them, my plan was to use a 4-tuner Roamio for central recording only (not viewing) with Mini Vox/Lux at all my TVs for the viewing experience.


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## DrTek (4 mo ago)

I read that the OTA tuners in Edge were horrible, compared to the Bolt. And that it was harder to upgrade the drive. 
I do want the option to record ATSC 3.0. So TabloTV looks like an option besides Home Run.


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## mpf541 (Nov 25, 2009)

Well I have had mine for a while now but I bought a 4 tuner refurb edge when they were selling them. It works great. But I will be moving away from TiVo when this dies. The compitition have better solutions now. Either Plex or HD homerun now have DVRs that work as well as TiVo. And they don't try to stream in every other app just so they look better. And I can always just add another tuner to the setup and have multiple tuners.

But to be honest what I am starting to see with the new streaming options there really is not much of a need for a tivo anymore. As a typical TiVo never gets an update to 3rd party apps like Netflix or prime.

I do believe TiVo is on its last days now. I doubt we will ever see new hardware from them again.


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## atebit (1 mo ago)

A few years ago I (unwittingly) fell into the same 2-tuner trap. We had a 4-tuner lifetime Roamio, but the tuners won’t so great in terms of reception. So during an “all-in” promotion for the Edge, I decided to pick one up, naively expecting it to be at least as “capable” as my current Roamio, given it was two generations newer.

Imagine my surprise to find that it only has two tuners! We also have four Minis that I had to play hell with the Edge to get them to be recognized and work. I contacted TiVo support and they were surprised to learn that Mini’s even work with the two-tuner Edge OTA! Depending on what’s going on, it’s sometimes still a battle to get a Mini to release one of the two Edge tuners so we can watch from another Mini.

So yeah, I’m about ready to be done with TiVo, as well. But I don’t know much about HD HoneRun or Tablo…do they offer the “equivalent” of a Mini, for instance?


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## pl1 (Jan 18, 2007)

atebit said:


> it’s sometimes still a battle to get a Mini to release one of the two Edge tuners so we can watch from another Mini.


If you put your mini in to sleep mode before shutting off the TV, that should release the tuner.


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