# Convince me to keep Hydra



## vascott1 (Jan 8, 2004)

Thinking I have my last chance to potentially move over my recordings (again) next week while my partner is away for the week. Will be easier 

I was on a Roamio and moved to the Bolt. I also have 2 Tivo Minis. I "upgraded" on of them the other day. It is attached to a 40" TV. The other a mush smaller TV. That is still talking to the Roamio. I have been giving Hydra a good, fair shot. The interface is frustrating and the number of extra steps needed here and there is frustrating as is the reliance on the back button. I totally see why they did it to fit the interface.

The mini is sluggish at best and for some reason if I pause a show and go get coffee when i come back I cannot hit "play" it just sits there. If I rewind a bit and then hit play as FF it works. Not sure what is going on there.

So, just wondering if anyone can make a compelling argument to keep Hydra. I already spent way more thanI expected with the $99 lifetime transfer. I didn't notice till order that 6 tuners required the 3TB unit. The thought of having two buy over time 2 replacement next generation minis t $170 each is not a good option. The old ones are perfect for my needs and not connected to 4k TVs.

I am all for progress and seeing what Tivo does to fix this but want to decide what to do before my ability to stream and transfer goes away and before the fall TV season starts when I will start recording way more shows than I should!!

Thanks for all the great input the board affords. Great community here.

Scott


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Rollback and wait for next summer to see how much has changed. I have TE3 and TE4. I will drop TE3 when TE4 becomes more valuable to me.


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## lujan (May 24, 2010)

I can't convince you to keep Hydra because I could only stand it for about 3 days before I downgraded to the old UI.


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## HerronScott (Jan 1, 2002)

vascott1 said:


> The thought of having two buy over time 2 replacement next generation minis t $170 each is not a good option. The old ones are perfect for my needs and not connected to 4k TVs.


Why would you have to buy 2 replacement next generation Mini's?

Scott


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## rdrrepair (Nov 24, 2006)

I've got one new Bolt on Hydra and I'm keeping it at that. The "Spouse Acceptance Factor" has mandated that nothing else will go to that for now. 

I'm mostly pleased with it and not prepared to revert back as I'm more inclined to try something new. Convincing you to keep HYDRA? I've got no compelling arguments for it. I like the voice remote and that's only available via Hydra. But, past that, no other reasons.


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## ohboy710 (Jun 30, 2008)

You won't find a lot of people in this forum trying to convince you to keep it! LOL. I personally like the old one better.


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## vascott1 (Jan 8, 2004)

HerronScott said:


> Why would you have to buy 2 replacement next generation Mini's?
> 
> Scott


The reason I would think of replacing the minis is that they are very slow with Hydra.


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## vascott1 (Jan 8, 2004)

ohboy710 said:


> You won't find a lot of people in this forum trying to convince you to keep it! LOL. I personally like the old one better.


same here but my partner is ok with it and says "you can't let this beat you, it is progress" haha. I am so torn about it. The extra clicks to do things are what gets me the most. It is a good looking UI, Just wish they had a "simple mode" with less huge picture blocks.


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## Luke M (Nov 5, 2002)

The font size is smaller.


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## leiff (Aug 24, 2005)

In the user and preference options in Hydra menu "recording options" you can set that to "no" , for additional options. That at least cuts down on some of the extra clicking.


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## vascott1 (Jan 8, 2004)

leiff said:


> In the user and preference options in Hydra menu "recording options" you can set that to "no" , for additional options. That at least cuts down on some of the extra clicking.


Not sure what you are referring to. Set what to "no"


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## leiff (Aug 24, 2005)

vascott1 said:


> Not sure what you are referring to. Set what to "no"


Sorry, the setting I was referring to can be found under "one pass and recording Options/user preferences. At the bottom, is "always display options". default is yes. Set to no.


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## rdrrepair (Nov 24, 2006)

The longer I use the Bolt with Hydra, the happier I am with my decision to keep it. I decided to link a mini to it, and much to my surprise, I found that the host can still view/use the tuner that the mini is using. FF, rewind, pause, QuickMode, slow, etc works independently of the other.

For a football fan, that's a big win in the column for keeping or upgrading to Hydra. The older UI seizes the tuner on the mini and is unusable to the host.

Not relevant to your question, which is the here and now, but I could potentially see a way that "TunerSync" could be implemented in a future release. That would be a big deal for some TiVo users.


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## schatham (Mar 17, 2007)

Hydra is like these new forum interfaces, here and other forums started to use. Extra clicks and complications for no reason.

Want to quote someone it takes 3 selections, quote, quote these messages and insert quotes. What a pain. The old format you just selected quote once.


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## Resist (Dec 21, 2003)

I'd want to like Hydra, as I'm getting used to it now. I still have muscle memory with the remote from my Premiere, so that mixes me up a bit using Hydra. My biggest dislike with it is not being able to transfer my shows from the Premiere.


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## HerronScott (Jan 1, 2002)

schatham said:


> Hydra is like these new forum interfaces, here and other forums started to use. Extra clicks and complications for no reason.
> 
> Want to quote someone it takes 3 selections, quote, quote these messages and insert quotes. What a pain. The old format you just selected quote once.


If you just select reply it will quote someone with a single click (or if you want to selectively quote someone's message, you can highlight the section/sentence and then you are given the option to +quote or reply.

The only time you have to use the +quote and insert quotes is if you want to quote from multiple messages or want to make separate quotes of only parts of 1 message (and the latter you can really do manually after replying to the entire message.

Scott


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## schatham (Mar 17, 2007)

HerronScott said:


> If you just select reply it will quote someone with a single click (or if you want to selectively quote someone's message, you can highlight the section/sentence and then you are given the option to +quote or reply.
> 
> The only time you have to use the +quote and insert quotes is if you want to quote from multiple messages or want to make separate quotes of only parts of 1 message (and the latter you can really do manually after replying to the entire message.
> 
> Scott


Thanks, this quote was easy using reply.


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## Sibedog (Aug 28, 2018)

Resist said:


> I'd want to like Hydra, as I'm getting used to it now. I still have muscle memory with the remote from my Premiere, so that mixes me up a bit using Hydra. My biggest dislike with it is not being able to transfer my shows from the Premiere.


I just got a replacement Bolt with the new UI (which I am hating) and was wondering about the transfer option as I couldn't find it. Just 1 of a multitude of things I don't like about it. Waiting for them to be able to switch me back to the old UI. I can't deal with it now with having to set up so many One Passes, Wish Lists, etc.


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## tivochiguy (Feb 16, 2004)

lujan said:


> I can't convince you to keep Hydra because I could only stand it for about 3 days before I downgraded to the old UI.


Same here. Run as fast as you can back to the old interface.


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## Anotherpyr (May 6, 2015)

Once I embraced the back button, hydra was just another interface. It has some pros and some cons. I figure it’s best to get used to it as it is the way forward and at some point the old ui won’t get any updates or new features.


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## Resist (Dec 21, 2003)

Sibedog said:


> I just got a replacement Bolt with the new UI (which I am hating) and was wondering about the transfer option as I couldn't find it.


Because you have to do that with your computer online, can't do it directly through the Bolt, which makes no sense to me.


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## leiff (Aug 24, 2005)

If you have many recorded programs, scrolling using the tivo online interface takes forever because it doesn't support folders. Which makes that transfer feature Hydra abandoned all that more painful to lose


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## tthkbw (Aug 16, 2010)

I'll give you two good reasons:

First, the idea that Tivo will continue to support and upgrade TE3 in the future is wishful thinking at best. It will be dropped and you will be forced to go with TE4 (Hydra). So, be realistic and embrace the change.

Second, use voice control, only available on TE4. I had a Roamio that I upgraded to TE4. I really hated the new interface, too many clicks required, confused by back button, inconsistency, and on and on. I avoided upgrading to Voice with a new remote because I have never liked voice controlled stuff. I rarely use Siri on my Apple TV or iPhone, for instance.

Then I upgraded to the Bolt Vox, and because it was new, I tried voice. I find that it is very good and very useful. My epiphany occurred when I read through the voice capabilities. Then, wanting to record the Oregon State Beavers football game (Why? you might ask since they were going to lose by 50+points to Ohio State? There is no explaining the hope that springs eternal in the heart of an alum . . .), I pushed the microphone button on the remote and said "Show me Oregon State Beavers football". I was immediately taken to a screen showing the next game, channel and time and offered a season pass for Oregon State Beavers football. It would have taken me a few minutes and lots of clicks to discover that the game was on ABC, not PAC12 Network, and that it was at 9am Pacific time. Very good.

Now I pretty much avoid clicking through Shows to find what I want to watch. I just use voice and avoid all those clicks. Voice works really well.


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## lujan (May 24, 2010)

The only problem with that is you need to use the original TiVo remote to do voice. I use a Harmony remote for all my devices except the Apple TV 4k because the Harmony won't emulate the "tap" feature of the ATV4k remote. I don't want to start having multiple remotes like we had to do in years long past.


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## Rkkeller (May 13, 2004)

I can only speak for myself, but 15 year or longer TiVo user and switched to the new UI and just got used to it. It's no biggie, after 2 weeks your a pro and using it same as the old UI.
I hated it too the first few days and planned to go back, but just like I got the Apple X, iPhone 10 whatever its called :> with no home button and different gestures, you go with it and just get used to the newer technology and ways to do things.


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## paully65 (Feb 20, 2002)

Less clicks (from a techie)


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