Best Multi Room Tivo Solution For This Situation

1 TiVo Pro and 2 Minis

 

Are any of your mom's shows on premium channels? If not and your parents have a computer, have you broached the idea of transferring to DVDs rather than VHS?

That's only 3 rooms and 6 tuners, 2 of which would not be available for recording, as opposed to 4 rooms and 8 tuners that are in place now. Also not sure it is necessary to spend the extra $200 for a Pro vs. a Plus as the only difference is a 3TB drive as opposed to a 1TB drive. Personally, I also don't like the idea of having a single point of failure.

What kind of budget are we talking about, both initial purchase and ongoing monthly?

 

OP: I re-read your requirements. Since each room needs a DVR, 4 Roamio Pluses or Pros, one in each room, minimum of 2 Roamios and 2 Minis.

 

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Not trying to be the "Phrasing Nazi" here, but usually people are trying to reduce the possible points of failure, like deciding to not use an external DVR expander drive, since it adds a possible point of failure.

I think this is more of a "lack of redundancy" here, or a configuration where if that one DVR goes down, there is nothing available to use as a backup/temporary DVR, and the minis turn into bricks.

Glad you made me think about this. Maybe I'd rather stick with my many 2-tuner TiVos with 2TB each, than sell them all to get 1 unit, or even 2 with more tuners, and possibly be limited to a total of 3TB or 6TB total, where even one drive failure or TiVo down could be a major bummer.

What I already have also supports OTA concurrently, although I've never used it, even once, in all these years...

 

I currently have DirecTV with one DTV DVR and one of the newer Tivo dvr (THR22 I think). I am looking into switching to Comcast with Tivo Roamio and saw your questions. You say that you are looking for the least hassle situation. Is the dead Tivo and old SD version? Why not replace the dead directtv Tivo with another one? they still offer the updated THR22. If she had the older standard def versions, they will add a $5.00/month charge for Tivo, but it seems like it would just be a swap out for you. The THR22 still uses the old Tivo interface. Now if she is looking for all the new tivo features you are on the right track with Comcast.

 

I said what I meant and I meant what I said. "Redundancy" would require that you not only have more than one TiVo but that you have enough spare recording capacity (tuners and space) to make up for the loss of a TiVo.

"Single point of failure" does not mean that it is the only possible point of failure, it just means that if there is a failure of that part of the system, the entire system becomes unusable. A system can have multiple single points of failure.

With one TiVo and multiple minis, losing that TiVo results in a complete loss of access - thus it is a single point of failure.

 

Wow, do we need to do some sort of TCF death-match skit, or what?

Chill, I actually benefitted from thinking about points-of-failure.

EDIT/ADD: I concede that point-of-failure can cut both ways, not just one.

 

If that was in response to part of my post, then I'm not sure what you are referring to unless you misinterpreted my suggestion about DVDs. I wasn't suggesting that she use DVDs instead of a TIVo, I was suggesting she transfer recordings to computer and burn them to DVDs rather than recording to VHS,

I'm a bit confused. How many rooms are we talking about and how many domiciles. IOW, what do you need where? Is the lake home a separate place where she doesn't need a TiVo and currently all viewing is of VHS tape? Does the location where the TiVos would go have internet access?