Tivo Edge First Impressions

Several do

 

Did you get the 2tb, 4 tuner (American) or the 500gb, 2 tuner (Canadian) model?

 

The Netflix and Prime apps on my bolt don't always respond to my remote. FF'ding and not being able to get it to stop when I want it to makes it practically unusable and I have to resort to using the Roku. Are the apps any better or is the same app platform holding the Edge back too?

 

4 tuner American

 

If you check other threads here, you'll see one on FIOS broadcasting some specific sports broadcasts in 4K.

Scott

 

It’s a huge upgrade over my Roamio Pro and I’m very happy with it after 2 weeks. Connected to an LG OLED via a Pioneer Elite receiver. The upscaled 4K with HDR is an excellent picture quality and colors are similar to my oppo4k player and Apple TV 4K. The speed different is huge. I had no problem with setup. The UI is very snappy. No crashes. Much quieter than the Bolt I have upstairs. I would have like a backlit remote. No missing 4K content from Comcast as I get that from other sources. High quality pictures eg football game I’m watching now is excellent. Colors, no artifacts, no issues with movement (which my Roamio suffered from)

happy customer here. Don’t understand why they are not marketing it more. Maybe to clear out the Bolts over the Black Friday period.

 

We just set up the Edge today, and this is the first TiVo we've ever owned. Initial impressions...
I think the styling of the unit is just fine. Simple box design - way better than the previous Bolt. Initial updating of the unit was a little troublesome. It tossed an error during the verification stage, but we think that was a service activation snafu. It cleared up after a call to TiVo customer service.
I'll echo what some have said here about the HDR setting. The colors on our Samsung RU8000 just looked blown out and weird. I disabled HDR in the TiVo menu... much better!
The GUI is pretty responsive - no complaints there. Searching for shows to record and create a One-Pass seems quick an intuitive. We haven't watched any recordings yet, so I can't comment on the pre-roll ad "feature."
Again - this is just initial impressions from a TiVo noobie... so far, so good.

 

You mentioned the Bolt. Is it noticeably quicker than the Bolt? That indeed would be impressive.

 

That I cannot answer. This is the first TiVo we've ever had, so I have no basis for comparison. From a styling perspective, the standard "box" design on the Edge is superior to the curved Bolt design, in my opinion.
After spending an afternoon and evening with the Edge, the GUI is as responsive as I'd expect. Using the Voice Control feature to search for shows to set up OnePass recordings was very nice. I had exported a list of Series Recordings from my previous Media Center and printed that list, so the voice control simplified that whole process on the TiVo.

 

I first got a lesson on digital TV quality when I bought a Samsung Smart TV, the 8000 series and used the built in Smart App to run Netflix. I came from a ROKU and I immediately noticed as I 'resumed' a movie that the picture quality of running Netflix through the TV SMART apps was not anywhere near as nice as what the ROKU delivered. It was an enlightening experience. I actually took the time to run both simultaneously, so I switched from one to the other with the same scene and movie and noticed clarity issues, crispness and digital artifacts with the SMART side and not the ROKU side.

 

I'm hoping Spectrum starts pushing 4K out in the next year, but the tech I talked to said 2021. I think he was joking. I hope he was joking.

 

Here my first impressions. I had one for a week, and the hard drive went bad and the NON LUX remote (Which is STANDARD in the cable version.) did not work. Instead of TiVo sending me a replacement, I had to go thru Amazon. Luckily I used the remote from our Bolt.
I have to say, not that impressed overall. Old streaming apps compared to our Smart TV. And with the only main difference being that the Edge has Dolby Atmos? Not worth an upgrade. Also, on the Edge, if the HDR is on, it's ON for EVERYTHING. And that is very annoying.
So with TiVo's dismal customer service, I sent the unit back to Amazon, and told them just to issue a refund. That was a few weeks back. And then I get an email regarding their Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals. On Edges you ask? No. On newer Bolts? Noooo. Only on refurbished units. My God. How low can this company go? No wait. I forgot. Tivo+. Tada.

 

I could do with higher bit rate HD streams. I just came from DirecTV and equipment wise its pretty bad, mostly the Genie stuff is slow super super slow, but the picture quality is pretty good. Not OTA good (spent a month or so trying to come up with a DIY OTA option that my wife wouldn't hate) But now I remembered why I left Brighthouse for U-Verse so many years ago. They really should switch to MPEG4 and bump up the quality, especially since they are switched digital anyway. My wife couldn't careless, I mostly watch netflix stuff anyway, but realistically for all the salt on the forums being flung at Tivo they are legitimately the best at what they do, nothing else comes close. This is the real issue as without competition, even from cable companies things slip, prices go up, products are incremental upgrades, sometimes one step forward, some steps back (Like by forcing HDR 100 percent on auto instead of just keeping the bolt HDR functionality they have functional code on and adding an always option) see Intel, Nvidia, etc...

To me the first impression of the Edge is its a pretty nice piece of equipment. The last tivo I've had was a Series 2 that needed IR blasters to switch the Comcast box.. Since then I've had a lot of different DVRs, Brighthouse's was pretty decent. But they all were lacking some thing and most were slow. I spent a decent amount of time trying to figure out a Plex or a Plex like solution and its realistically just not a polished product. Coming from DirectTV the Tivo+ stuff inserted into the guide I don't even see, I just flat out ignore it. Hopefully they add the Bolt HDR option in like Tivo_Ted said soon so I can turn it back on and hopefully since it will just let the apps handle HDR/Dolby vision and I should be pretty happy.

Negatives are Netflix barely works because of some interaction with how they start dolby video and my Vizio TV doesn't like it. I believe apple TV had the same exact issue. And now that I have gotten a cableCARD from Spectrum the guide in my area says SD instead of HD for almost every HD channel I get, despite it actually being HD. That is a small nitpick as I still would get rid of every duplicate SD channel anyway, but my actual spectrum lineup with the HD box I still have doesn't have any SD channels so I think part of that is spectrum keeping old lists for the tuning adapters and when i do guided setup I don't even have a digital spectrum option, but I do have a Uverse option and tivo doesn't even work with uverse. zap2it doesn't show spectrum standard guide as existing, but does have 2 digital guides and all of them have the HD channels, ie TLCHD instead of TLC from 200-399. Also the guide thing is probably not an Edge thing, but it does detract from the experience.