TiVo BOLT OTA

I used a Tivo Roamio OTA for more than 5 years and was very happy with it. Sadly, due to a motherboard failure it was time to move on, so I gave the Bolt OTA a try. It's an upgrade in several ways from my Roamio OTA. First, 1TB vs 500gb drive. Built in streaming. Faster processor. And I suppose you could say the new TE4 interface is an upgrade, though it receives a mixed review from the Tivo community in general. Honestly, I find it works ok. I'm happy that I can still use the Guide button to see an HD version of the same Guide Tivo's known for. All in all, it's been a good upgrade. TE4 is fine with me.But, now to the 'rocky start' in hopes it may help someone else out. As I said, I was already a Tivo user. I received the new Bolt on a Sunday afternoon, with an upcoming 2 week trip the next day. Needless to say, I rushed through the setup. But, all seemed well. I know the standard Tivo message about 24-48 'activation' is a boiler plate, at least from past experience, so I went through setting up all of my one-passes, preferences and so forth even though the Tivo site still said 'activation in process'. Big mistake. While the Tivo let me do all of the above, it turns out every one-pass I setup was non-activated. In other words, it was as if my Tivo subscription had lapsed and the Tivo no longer retained those recordings. I found this out the hard way a few days after we left town. I used the Tivo app on my phone and saw that every single episode, of every single show either said 'not available, deleted, or canceled'. I even tried pressing record on movies and individual shows in the Guide as a test. It worked, but 2 days later they were gone, also with no signs of them in the 'recently deleted' folder.I chatted with Tivo support and explained the situation and they were absolutely no help. Two days later they sent me an email explaining how recorded shows work (red X vs gray X) and closed my case as 'resolved'. When we retuned to town I was ready to pack up the Bolt for a refund, but decided to try one last thing (not knowing, but suspecting what I mentioned above about activation). I decided to do a Factory Reset (important, not a Repeat Guided Setup, but Factory Reset). This, as it says, wipes out everything, including recordings, one-passes, settings. Well, that was the golden ticket. Since my Tivo was now activated every one pass and individual recording I made now works perfectly. So, lesson learned....wait for 'activation complete' on the web site. As a reference, the first time around my Roamio OTA was activated within an hour. Seems like the Bolt took at least 24, if not 48 hours.Now, with that aside, all seems to work well. I don't dislike the new TE4 (Hydra) interface as I thought I would. It seems to work okay on the Bolt and even on the four Gen 2 Tivo mini's we also use. Just keep in mind that you will need a remote with a Back button to effectively user older minis. Since we use Logitech Harmony remotes with everything that wasn't an issue. I just programmed the 'previous' button on the Harmony's to send Tivo/Back. And one last glitch...we use Alexa and Google Home to control a couple of our TVs along with Harmony Hubs. We're kind of used to the Tivo Mini in our Family Room starting up Live TV when we turn it on. With TE4 that no longer happens. An easy workaround is to use the Harmony Hub's "Edit Start Sequence" for your TV activity and add the following "Delay 1s, Tivo/Live TV, Delay 3s, Tivo/Live TV" as 4 new items. Not sure why I had to send Live TV twice, but it ended up with a blank screen if I didn't do that exact sequence and delay amount.Finally, since my review has mostly centered around upgrading from a previous Tivo and the glitches I encountered (most by my own doing), I also wanted to mention why I decided to go with Tivo the second time around. Why not Tablo, Fire TV, Tivo Stream 4k (or Tivo Edge for that matter), Plex/HD Homerun, etc..? Well, quite simply I've tried Tablo twice and there are some plusses, don't get me wrong and I've looked extensively into the others. But, when the dust settles Tivo still has the most robust and easiest recording, navigating, channel switching capabilities, in my opinion of course. I'm technical and have no issues navigating our Youtube TV DVRed stuff, Tablo (while we had it) and so forth. But, let's just say the rest of the household isn't as technical and simply likes hitting "My Shows" to find recorded episodes and especially likes being able to hit the "Record" button when something interesting is being broadcast. In addition, the Tivo minis (which we already have and paid for 5+ years ago) still work well. For us this was the best route. Your mileage may vary. We also have Roku, Fire TV on every TV as well, btw. I DO NOT in any way recommend the Minis or the Bolt for streaming. They are far slower and more glitchy than any Roku or Fire TV we've owned. No comparison. We use the Tivos for OTA DVR and they are great at what they do.In the end we used the Roamio OTA for 5+ years and paid a fraction of what we used to pay DirecTV to mostly watch local channels and network shows. Even with the addition of Sony PS Vue, then later Youtube TV, we only pay monthly around half what we used to pay for DirectTV and we have more channels and capabilities than we had before.

(2nd update)Note below, I went from an enthusiastic 5 stars to an annoyed 1 star due to their new advertising platform, showing a short ad before every recorded show. This has started now, and is annoying, but at the moment the ads are at least very short. However, the reason for my return to 4 stars is that if you complain to them enough, they can actually disable this 'service' on your device, you just need to be persistent in your complaints. They still lose a star for the whole concept and for making it so annoying to opt out, but TiVo really still is an amazingly well designed device!----(update) You will note below that this was a glowingly positive review, but I have now given only 1 star. Everything I say below remains true, but only a couple of months after my happy reunion with TiVo they have now announced they will be rolling out a new advertising 'service' which will be forced on all users. Any time you play back a recorded video you will first see a TiVo provided advertisement. They point out "but you can skip it!". Why they believe this will be acceptable for a product where one of the key features is automatically skipping all of the network provided advertising in the shows is hard to understand. ie - we let you skip over all of the network ads, but you'll have to watch or manually skip ours! A) I am paying you guys a suspiciously high monthly service fee, and you aren't even providing content, just schedules, and now you want to add your own ads too!?!? B) seems like spitting in the face of the networks who live off ad revenue (don't get me wrong I still want to skip their ads too). I haven't yet decided to cancel my service when they roll this out, but I am really angry and disappointed. Time to start researching other options again :^( !!!----I had a cable TV TiVO back when the company first formed, and before the cable companies offered DVRs. It was one of the best-designed devices I had ever used at that time, and when I had to drop it in favor of a cable-provided box, I was really sad. The big point about TiVO is that they really got the user interface design right, and that fact has persisted over the last decade. Everything is completely intuitive, and works as you'd expect. The remote (which isn't IR so you don't need line-of-sight) is a joy to use, with the most needed buttons located in the easiest to reach places. When I became a cord-cutter, I started with a Tablo, which has a slightly lower monthly subscription, was a bit less expensive, and offered a nice streaming app for my AppleTV. Unfortunately it was very painful to use, with frequent interface glitches, rebooting due to overheating, and other problems. Finally I saw that TiVO had embraced the cord-cutters and decided to take the plunge with the Bold. Very happy I did. While you still have to pay a monthly fee (or opt for a large one-time payment) for guide services, it's quite comprehensive, including the mass of digital subchannels. While I have other boxes for apps, and was skeptical about their integration of Netflix, Hulu, etc., it actually works amazingly well. When you record a show, it will show you complete info about all of seasons of back episodes of basically any show, going all the way back to the 50's and 60's. If the shows are available via streaming, it will even offer you that option, directly from the episode that you recorded. It's a lot like the integration apple promised with their "TV" app, but in this case it actually works seamlessly. I've noticed a few comments about hard drive failures, and these are probably accurate (though I haven't had one myself). TiVO records up to 4 channels at a time, and is pretty aggressive about recording stuff all the time. This is hard on hard drives, and eventually they tend to fail. This problem existed with the original TiVO's as well, though I think my first one lasted ~3 years before having any issues. On the bright side, if you are even a little handy, swapping out hard drives is generally pretty easy and seamless if necessary. Anyway, I couldn't be more happy that I switched!!!

el avance de la tecnologia lo debemos aprovechar y este equipo cumple en solo aparato todos las aplicaciones necesarias

After receiving the product and calling to activate the customer service took some time to find out but eventually came back to the phone to say this product does NOT work in Canada. Not sure why they have it listed on amazon.CA and don't mention that it is for the USA only.I am sure it works well in the States so do not like to give only one star but as it did not work in Canada I could not say how good a product it is.

service non disponible au Quebec

Will not work in Canada don’t waste your money and time.

Product looks great , seems easy to install and use..... unfortunately service is not supported in Canada, definitely not in Québec and not in Ontario either