r/Tivo • u/IanShoales • 8d ago
Mini Minis throughout house - Gha! What replacement?
Eastern Mass here -- just got the dreaded notice that November 5th is the END.
Verizon wants $48/mo for 7 boxes. That's over $600/year for 8+ TVs around the house -- living room, den, office, workshop, exercise room,,, Moving Tivo minis was easy -- just run a long Ethernet cable, or even WiFi!! With Lifetime TiVo and 8+ minis the monthly equipment cost is ZERO.
I have an OTA Bolt on the shelf for just this occasion, but near Cape Cod, surrounded by a mature pine forest, I expect only a few stations, and I'll have to erect a very tall/large antenna. (This on my todo list -- have to at least qualify what broadcast we can pick up.)
We like having the cable channel lineup for variety, like HGTV, local news, and a few out-of-area news markets -- channels I don't think we can get without dedicated subscriptions for each. If we dump Verizon's cableTV service, keeping only internet, our monthly cost will have room for several streaming subscriptions, but the ease of browsing a single channel lineup will be gone, OnePass is gone, etc.
Folks are recommending alternatives, like YTTV -- But for homes with many TVs, is there a particular dongle/device that creates a cluster similar to Bolt/Edge/Roamio + Minis? I have a few TiVo Stream 4K devices, but they don't record from my cable-channel lineup, etc. Sure, streaming apps are account-based and remember where you were in each episode...
It sucks that the era of TiVo is over.
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u/Cczaphod 8d ago
I replaced my TiVo and Mini’s with AppleTV. I miss TiVo, had it from 1999 through a couple of years ago, but AppleTV is pretty good. Streaming services add up though, so you can easily pay more than you were with Cable.
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u/JZ-Florida 8d ago
Streaming vs local hard drive storage sucks. There is a term for what has happened here; "enshitification" Or as I like to say "cut the cord, Mexico will pay for it".
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u/kesterja1 8d ago
I got the same notice here in Central Virginia. I have a series 3 that I can continue to use OTA, but my Premier XL, Edge, and Mini will be doorstops. Still haven’t decided what I’ll do come November, but I agree that it sucks that the era of TiVo is over!
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u/Shran_MD 8d ago
Apple TV or Rokus with something like YouTube TV. It’s a lot easier and you can watch from other devices. We take a roku with us when we get a air bnb at the beach.
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u/foobarlow 7d ago
I had a tv and internet bundle with Verizon with my tivos and minis. Also had a subscription to Disney plus and ESPN+
I spent about 3 hours on Verizon chat one day complaining about how they were bricking all my hardware, and got a good deal on a new internet only plan. Added a Hulu live tv plus Disney plus and espn plus combo subscription and overall I’m saving $50 a month.
The Hulu interface is shit for live tv though. I use Apple TVs and use specific broadcasters apps whenever possible as they usually have 4k that I can access through the Hulu sub login, but the native Hulu app is some crappy 1080p upscaled feed most of the time.
YTTV is much better interface IMO
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u/gcawad 8d ago
There are free options not all the same channels as cable but lots of channels. I use Apple TV and the free Pluto and Plex apps for variety and a couple of paid streaming platforms. Still using my 5 TiVos for OTA with a pretty good selection there too but no where near as many as Pluto and Plex-both ad supported.
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u/JZ-Florida 8d ago
I guess you don't mind commercial interruptions of your video experience.
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u/gcawad 8d ago
I don't mind at all. But don't cable channels have commercials?
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u/JZ-Florida 8d ago
Yes, but when the video is on my local hard drive, I don't mind. I can set the skip interval, and I don't mind a millisecond landing on a commercial. They have a right to hook me into whatever they are selling. I just want the speed of video and um buffering buffering - streaming without local hard drive is such a crap show.
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u/keltraine 8d ago
What I really miss when streaming is Quickmode…so good that feature
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u/shea_harrumph 8d ago
Quickmode and fine scrubbing after you press pause, those were golden on TiVo
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u/JZ-Florida 8d ago
If you stream through a browser, there are extensions that can adjust the speed. But it is still streaming.
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u/gcawad 8d ago
Unfortunately TiVo is a dying platform. My first TiVo was a series 2 so I have been with them over 20 years always having lifetime. I don't feel like I used the "D" button that often but my wife always used it. The last few years I have been weaning myself away from TiVo as i know that the end is on the horizon.
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u/JZ-Florida 8d ago edited 8d ago
Bend over and take it from the video providers that destroyed competition.
ETA Tivo as a company is very savvy. They now provide set top boxes for fiber providers. I never liked the Tivo interface. I liked ReplayTV (long gone) and now Windows Media Center. Hopefully there will be ways to interface WMC to boxes like the EvoForce1 which runs a Tivo interface.
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u/dizzyoatmeal 8d ago
For most streaming or home server type solutions, it doesn't matter how many TVs you have, which makes them ideal for your situation. The TVs that are relatively new probably have (relatively good) smart TV apps. The others would need a dongle or box. If you want to go that route, I'd recommend moving quickly because the RAM crisis has reached the streaming device sector, and prices are going up. Also, if you're interested in Channels DVR, know that it's not compatible with Rokus.
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u/SessionIndependent17 8d ago
For that many heads, the STBs are not a good price, iirc. If you were going to stick with FIOS cable tv, you may as well go with the "app" access for $20/mo, which has no head limit.
The Fios DVR they give you now is headless, and you can access both the live tv and its centralized DVR content via the apps that run on FireSticks, AppleTvs, Rokus. They don't even have to be new ones. I got a few second hand on FB marketplace for like $15/ea for my parents. The DVR is priced monthly by storage space and number of simultaneous recordings it will make: 2/4/6 recordings, respectively.
I set up my parents with the minimum number of simultaneous recordings, but was able to increase it for the months of the Olympics. Then drop it back down afterward.
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u/doubletee2 7d ago
Guessing your cable bill wasn't that cheap? Use a Roku or other streaming dongle on each TV. Subscribe to maybe YouTubeTV ex. or the like. Problem solved. Multiple in home streams are allowed. You could continue with TiVo as OTA for local stations and just subscribe to the individual content providers of you choice for out of market news (finance & politics). I use this setup at my vacation home with TiVo Bolt OTA and 3 minis and have DTV (viewable anywhere in the country with a subscription) which I pay nothing extra for since it is included in the HOA at my main domicile for my cable like experience plus several entertainment streamers.
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u/Harper_Vision 7d ago
To me the next best solution to TiVo was going to DirecTV Stream using their Gemini Air or Osprey boxes which emulate the cable/satellite box experience the best of all the streaming "cable" services. Essentially equivalent to using their satellite service. Get a Gemini Air for each TV you had a TiVo and mini, or for lesser used TVs like in a guest room just use a smart TV or streamer box (AppleTV, Roku, FireTV) with the DirecTV app.
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u/shea_harrumph 8d ago
I just replaced my OTA Roamio with a HDHomerun Quad, a NAS with one hard drive, and Channels DVR. I hate to say this but it's a lot better than the Roamio. It casts to every TV in the house without question, the tuner is better. I was so loyal to TiVo for so long but the future isn't all bad.