Tivo Service on a new Bolt or Roamio

You are reading it wrong. The service for the $199.99 Roamio costs $14.99 per MONTH and you are committed to pay it for at least 12 months.

Unless you have away to get a Roamio through a special deal the Bolt at $300 with one year of service included is a much better deal.

Lifetime/all in service without some deal is now $600 and in my opinion not worth it.

 

Edit: Same info as post 2. Looks like we posted at the same time.

Double check that Roamio. The Pro includes 1 year service for $599

I think the 4 tuner Roamio is $199 +$14.99 is only for the first month, with 1 year commitment."

From Tivo/ "$14.99
Monthly service with 1-year commitment

 

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I think lifetime at $600 is a good deal in some cases, but right on the edge. If the dvr is driving some minis and the dvr is, in effect replacing an X1 at $20 / month, then the payback is not bad. $20 + ($10 x each outlet fee) per month adds up fast. The 1st cablecard is free. Less than 2 years for some average homes. 6 tuner models are the minimum, I think. (Now you see why I think it needs to be easy-peasy with few glitches on the margin?)

 

Last I checked Amazon had the Roamio Pro for $489 with one year of service included. At that point I think it becomes a question of what's more important to you between what the Bolt offers (better streaming) and the Roamio (more tuners/storage). The Bolt in general is faster, but if what you want is to record a lot of cable TV, then I think it's still worth paying at least a bit more for a Roamio Pro. The Roamio Pro is certainly not slow.

TiVo says 75 hours, but my experience has always been that they're a little optimistic. It depends on how heavily compressed your shows are.

Also, for me even 75 hours is tough. That's what my Premiere has (also a 500GB drive) and before getting my Roamio Pro I was constantly juggling stuff on that to keep enough space free for both scheduled onepasses and at least a few suggestions (which I like).

 

It doesn't make sense to pay for lifetime service right away when 1 year of service is included in the purchase price of the Tivo and the value of that 1 year of service is not applied to the cost of the lifetime service.

Based on experiences shared on this forum, it would be better to wait until the final month of the 1 year of service and call Tivo to cancel and negotiate a cheaper rate for lifetime service.

 

Record one hour of ABC HD and one hour of CBS HD. Go to the program and hit Info. Compare the files sizes. Equal?

 

To expand on what Joe said. It depends on what size the shows you record are as an example if look at the stuff I have now I can see 1hr. episodes of Gotham that range in size from about 5800Mbs to 6400Mbs and 1 hr. episodes of Arrow that range in size from 3000Mbs to 3200Mbs. Both are prime time HD Shows, other 1 Hr. HD shows are in between those to ends. What this means is if I only recorded Arrow my TiVo would hold 2X as many HD hours of content as if I only recorded Gotham.

So the bottom line is there is no real answer to your question only guesstimates based an averages.

 

I just got one from Amazon for $448, but as far as I know it didn't come with any service. I'm waiting for the initial software download now so I'll know in an hour or so.

 

I can also confirm it varies from network to network. I've seen some 1 hour HD shows almost 7 GB and others only 3 or 4. 1080i channels seem to take more space then 720p on Comcast.

 

Yeah the one on Amazon does NOT come with a free year of service. You have to buy the Roamio Pro directly from TiVo for $600 to get the "free" year of service.

 

If you ever get real bored, you can check the frequency of each HD channel. The more channels on the same frequency, the more your cable feed is adding compression. Even if you just pick a few, like your locals or premium channels, you can see how your feed groups channels together. Many OTA stations have no subchannels. Those usually look really good.

 

Actually it ended up including the first year of service. I was quite surprised. It saved me $149.

 

Wrong! Just bought mine less than two weeks ago from Amazon and it indeed did come with one year of free service.

 

If that is so, then I stand corrected. But I am very surprised that the Amazon Pro comes with a free year of service, given that it sells for less than the Pro TiVo sells directly that does not come with the free year of service. Also, the Amazon description for the Pro makes no mention of the free year of service, so if they sent you one that did not have the free year, you would really have no cause to complain about it.

 

?? The one TiVo is selling for $599 does come with a year of service: https://www.tivo.com/shop/detail/roamio-pro#/roamio-pro

 

You're assuming I didn't do my homework before ordering.

 

If you click on where it says "Includes 1 year of TiVo service" you get a drop-down box where you can select monthly service and the purchase price drops from $599 to $499.

 

No, it definitely does

I can second that from personal experience. (And I was wrong on the $489 price; $448 is what I got it for also.) $448 for a Roamio Pro with a year of service was a no-brainer for me, but again I record a lot of cable. The Bolt and Roamio Pro are very different devices IMO, so it really depends on whether you're more into streaming or cable. But personally I feel like more tuners and storage are premium features I'd pay more for over a Bolt. The faster processor and more RAM in the Bolt aren't enough to overcome the lack of storage and tuners.