Gripe - TiVo quality has tanked.

Ignored.

 

I can see why you're upset. Fortunately, my Bolt box has been rock solid for me (knock wood).

 

Agreed!

 

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If you have all in service, return it again. If you are paying monthly or yearly, then buy a roamio.

 

Consider aftermarket cooling to keep bolt running stable. Or run your bolt with the top lid removed completely like mine runs much cooler.

 

I'm on my 3rd Bolt in about 20 months... But the last one has extra cooling added. The BOLT is a POS... But you can extend its life by reading some on the cooling mods. I've remove the cable card cover and placed a fan under it. I'm hoping the fan mod will last longer than TiVo will be in business.

 

So how's it look?

 

That's way too hot for me. I've been having mine sit atop laptop cooling pads with fan(s) for years now.

I just checked and mine is at 51 C (123.8 F). It is 68 F (20 C) in that room.

74 C is 165.2 F. 69 C is 156.2 F.

In the past, I'd buy laptop cooling pads (containing fan(s)) that went on sale for cheap at Fry's. I'm currently using the Zalman ZM-NC3 pad that I posted about at BOLT Stock Cooling SUCKS. When it gets to be a hot day or we hit prolonged multiple hot days, I will swap it out for one w/an adjustable speed fan and turn it up high/to the max.

Update to what I posted at How reliable are the Bolts?. My Bolt+ ordered on April 9, 2017 w/lifetime (due to a service transfer from a lifetime TiVo HD) and out of the 3 year warranty I bought still works fine.

I've never had any of the issues in the OP other than maybe some reboots that happen at unknown time when I'm not using the TiVo. As for apps on the Bolt+ itself, I honestly almost never use any of them, so I guess I can't give my take on that.

I do agree the software quality has gone downhill. The core DVR functionality works ok but anything beyond is very YMMV. I have the issue at TiVo app suddenly stopped working where the only fix is to reboot my TiVo Bolt+.

IIRC, I've also had occasional problems when using the iOS TiVo app to access my Bolt+, it causing the Bolt+ to reboot.

My Bolt+ has never been opened up and is still on the original 3 TB drive. I've had TiVos going back to Series 1 (a Philips and a Sony).

We did kinda have Xfinity on-demand for awhile until that went away. It wasn't great.

 

After hard drive died on my Bolt prematurely replaced with external WD Red Drive plugged into internal SATA port with cover off. Also have adj speed fan blowing over motherboard and ODT runs 36-38. Hopefully this setup runs for 3-4 years without issues.

 

I suggest the OP cool their Bolt better (e.g. laptop cooling pad), put it on a quality UPS and make sure it's not in anything enclosed nor with a heat source underneath. Also, I have no idea if this helps at all, but I've disabled all power saving/management on my Bolt+, so it's like old TiVos that always left their drives running and thus always recording & playing back.

 

Great I hope we don't have any problems. I'm like you been with tivo since the very beginning had almost everyone. We've had our Romeo since 2013 but now that we have a 4K TV and got a good deal on the bolt yesterday we have one on order.

 

Did you mean you bought the bolt for 4K? That's why we are getting in cause we now have a 4K TV but we love our Roamio and nothing is wrong with it. We're going to try to sell it but the Bolt plus lifetime was on special so we did it. Hope we don't regret it.

 

The first Bolt I got had a bad HDMI port that went out on me after the first four months, but I have had no problems with the second one after that. I've had it for about four years or so, and I am considering an upgrade into the new Edge, failing a more PC-friendly option...