# Less than 3 months, Bolt Dead



## bellbm (Dec 16, 2003)

Went to watch tv this afternoon, and noticed 4 flashing lights on my less than 3 months old Bolt.
Very disappointing. Laughable when I called support and they said to try plugging it into a different outlet.
Anyway, a "replacement" is on the way, but I'm really disappointed. Not even 90 days??? What junk.

Thinking selling my "replacement" unit and buying a roamio on Ebay. Any thoughts? Do you think an older Roamio is more reliable than these new junk bolts?

Really upset that I got rid of my Roamio for this.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

Have had my Bolt for a year-and-a-half, now, and no issues (knock wood). For whatever it's worth, as you've seen, TiVo seems to have a more liberal replacement policy (gallows humor).

If you want to go the Roamio route, note that TiVo should be offering a refurb. Roamio 1TB OTA, with included Lifetime subscription, for $299, as part of its on-going Winterfest sale, starting tomorrow. (And if you're a cable person and don't mind a modest hack, a cablecard adapter can be purchased and be added to it, fairly easily--there is a thread here on the topic.) I purchased a refurb. Roamio OTA from TiVo a bunch of years ago and have had no issue with it--it felt like it was new out of the box (no scratches or mars/all the feet there/etc.).
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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

bellbm said:


> Laughable when I called support and they said to try plugging it into a different outlet.


Laugh all you want, but they were not wrong, moving to a different power source and/or removing it from a power strip is considered a standard item in most support scripts for products.


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## bellbm (Dec 16, 2003)

Ok - so maybe I should try plugging it in to the wall directly? I guess at this point I’ll try anything since I don’t want to lose all of my one passes


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## djones18 (Jan 6, 2006)

I would suggest you have a backup TiVo if you go with the Bolt again. My first Bolt + lasted 16 months. Hard drive died. TiVo replaced it out-of-warranty for $50.00. I still have a TiVo HD and a TiVo Premiere which have operated flawlessly for many years. One of these duplicated the One-Pass recordings from my Bolt +. Glad I did this as I lost about 200 hours of recorded programming on the Bolt. Loosing everything you've recorded can be very frustrating. 

When a DVR with the great UI, flexibility and recording hours TiVo has allows me to save my recorded programming to the cloud in case of equipment failure, I'll be jumping ship in a heartbeat. Or maybe TiVo will add this capability, at additional cost, in the future.


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## bellbm (Dec 16, 2003)

I had TiVo HD for 5 years, no problems. And my roamio was fine after 5 years too. I wish I would have never sold it. Now that I’m noticing the inferior picture quality others have mentioned about the Bolt, I think I’m ready to go back to roamio. I hope they have one on sale tomorrow as someone mentioned up thread.


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

One drive going bad does not make a box junk. Your sample size is a little too small, and interpolating data from a forum samplimg is also silly, and clearly very biased. Hard drives go bad. Sucks, but they are easily replaced. I have it on good authority tivo does not manufacture the drives themselves.


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## schatham (Mar 17, 2007)

jrtroo said:


> One drive going bad does not make a box junk. .


Their has been a lot of posts of Bolt problems needing replacement.


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## UCLABB (May 29, 2012)

schatham said:


> Their has been a lot of posts of Bolt problems needing replacement.


True. I've never seen the multitude of complaints for previous models. Pretty clear that the drives are not as robust as the old 3.5 inch drives. Not sure if it's the drives or the heat. I've taken steps to reduce the heat in hopes that will extend the drive life.


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## ohboy710 (Jun 30, 2008)

My roamio has been going strong for over 6 years (gave it to mom). My first bolt died after 13 months. They put crappy hard drives in the bolts and not enough cooling. I added a fan below my replacement to help.


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## MrDell (Jul 8, 2012)

It really is sad that the Bolt doesn’t meet the standards of the former TiVos as far as build quality. I also added some external cooling as a precaution hoping that it will prevent future problems. In my opinion the bolt’s hardware is very responsive and very much improved but it leaves a lot to be desired as far as design.


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## jcthorne (Jan 28, 2002)

My Bolt has been running fine for over 2 yrs. I went through 3 Roamios in 4 yrs although the last one is still running fine. Each had a tuner fail.


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## Daviator00 (Dec 5, 2017)

On my third Bolt in less than a year. I feel ripped off. Tivo used to be great but now they simply suck. Their hardware is flaky and prone to overheating. Their software is flaky, the UI is a cluster and their "technical support" is neither technical or supportive.


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## LarryAtHome (Feb 18, 2008)

UCLABB said:


> True. I've never seen the multitude of complaints for previous models. Pretty clear that the drives are not as robust as the old 3.5 inch drives. Not sure if it's the drives or the heat. I've taken steps to reduce the heat in hopes that will extend the drive life.


With no data to back this up, I have always felt when I did notebook repair that the 2.5" drives were much more delicate than the 3.5".
I had also liked the shock mounting (the rubber isolation discs) with the larger drives that are not used with the smaller drives.


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## aspexil (Oct 16, 2015)

Our Tivo Bolt with a 2Gb drive I put in has been running since we got it in 2015 when they were released. We are OTA only and no cable card. It has been on a laptop cooling pad for the past year with OTD of 52 even when the Mini is streaming from it. 

I can't comment about the Roamio as I never had one.


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