12/1/2020 - What vintage and SW is your primary HOST TiVo box?

The only box currently in use is Roamio Plus on TE3. Plus A93 mini.

Parents are using a Bolt 500GB on TE3 and TiVo HD (S3). Both are on my Account.

Not in use: NIB Bolt VOX 500GB w/ All-in, TiVo HD w/ LT, S2 DT w/ LT.

 

2 Roamio Pros, 2 Roamio OTAs (2 homes) ... all running TE3.

 

Primary is a Roamio Plus bought in 2014, upgraded to 3TB a year later, running TE3, cablecard.
Secondary is a Bolt 500GB bought in 2017, upgraded to 3TB a year later, running TE3, OTA.
The Bolt replaced a 1TB TiVoHD.

 

Advertisements

Roamio OTA... TE3. Don't need anything more until 3.0 comes around.

 

1x Bolt (6-tuner 1TB) TE3 with 2x A93 Minis connected to it - frontroom, guest room, kitchen
1x Premiere Q (1TB drive upgrade) with an A95 mini connected to it - PQ sits in the frontroom rack, mini in my bedroom
An old HD sitting in storage, gets powered up for a week every 6 months in case of an interesting transfer offer.

 

Our Roamio Pro on TE3 will be our last TiVo DVR. Our Bolt was a nightmare, and TiVo is no longer the same the company that made the Roamio and previous generations. I almost didn't replace the hard drive when it began to fail in January, but decided to give the ol' Roam one more lease on life. At this point we use TiVo only for live TV (we still love that buffer feature) and Channels DVR for recording. Photo here.

 

Premiere 4 with separate Stream and a Mini. Had it since 2013, saved over $3k compared to renting a DVR from Cox over the same period.

 

Roamio OTA with lifetime & a pair of minis. TE3.
Have an inactive non-lifetime OTA for parts if ever needed.

I tinker with other options, but always come to the conclusion that the classic style program guide and simplicity of the Roamio is the best experience.

 

My primary is a Roamio OTA 1TB Refurb rolled back to TE3 bought December 2018 with Lifetime with a WD Red (CMR, not the crappy SMR) 4TB drive formatted using the Ross Walker method. I use a Mini 93000 series using TE3 connected via Ethernet.

I have a white Bolt 500GB that I used from March 2016 to December 2018 that is currently inactive. I used the e-SATA modification to connect an external 3.5" drive, but got burned (along with dozens of members here) about 1 year later when TiVo issued a major TE3 upgrade and lost all of the recordings on the Bolt. Between that and the $150 yearly service fee, I decided I wanted to use the Roamio OTA with lifetime instead once I could buy for $250. I haven't regretted it. I only regret I didn't buy a Roamio OTA refurb lifetime back in 2016 INSTEAD of the Bolt to start with.

When the Roamio stops functioning, I am not sure what setup I will use for OTA DVR functionality, but it probably won't be a TiVo.

 

Roamio OTA (with cable card added but on OTA) running TE3 at the apartment

A Roamio basic sitting in the closet. I downgraded to TE4 to see what the fuss was (plus there was a time a month or so ago that TE4 was getting guide updates but TE3 wasn't). Crazy thing is on my account it shows inactive (which is true) yet when I boot it up it says "Account in Good Standing" and works just like a Tivo should (it was hooked up for like 3 weeks at one time)

Premiere in the closet

TivoHD set up in the bedroom "just because"..Its used for OTA and I only have 4 channels in my market so I just use it more for trick play when watching TV in the bedroom. The TivoHD and the Premiere until about May would be swapped out at my mom's house in suburban Minneapolis. Since Mankato only has 4 stations (CBS, FOX, NBC, CW+) I set up an antenna at my mom's house to basically record stuff from the subchannels like MeTv, Antennatv, Quest, Circle, Decades, Laff and Cozi (along with a couple programs off CW and an Independent station). When I would go visit her I would swap out the TivoHD for the Premiere (or vise versa) and bring the other one back to view the programming
But since Covid hit I haven't visited her much (she's high risk and technically I am too as a diabetic) so in May I pulled the Tivo out and brought it home.