If you’ve been following the details the last couple of weeks, you’ve first seen us announce 2TB and 3TB upgrades for the Roamio and Roamio Plus, followed by 7TB upgrades (consisting of a 3TB internal and 4TB external). Yesterday we announced 4TB internal upgrades for all three units.
Today we reach the end of the upgrade train, with a two-drive, 8TB DVR (4TB internal / 4TB external). Until Western Digital or Seagate launches a 5TB drive, we’re stuck here at a measly 8TB. (We have come a long way from the 13.6GB Quantum QuickView in the original HDR110!)
The 8TB Roamio, Plus or Pro records up to 1,281 hours in high definition or up to 8,830 hours in standard definition. I’m struggling to come up with the appropriately-staggering example, but try these: If you set a 8TB Roamio Pro to record six channels, non-stop, it would run almost 9 days without running out of space. If you wanted to record just one channel, you could run 24/7 for 53 days. That’s a lot of C-SPAN!
We’re hoping to start selling this monster soon. When we do, you’ll find it on our main TiVo Roamio page. Stay tuned!
6 replies on “The Largest TiVo on Earth? The 8TB TiVo Roamio!”
Separate from your Weaknees products, a few years ago I gave up on the “stock” DVR expander external drive. So can readers assume your implementation is far superior to the “stock” external drive with a better (higher) MTBF ? Is your design fail-safe, I.e. software partition aligned with hardware interface so that if the external fails or deactivated the internal recordings remain intact ?
In conjunction with a 8Tb unit, could a “older” Premier without cable card but both units on hardwire home ethernet…would the old Premier function as an defacto-mini ?
Please, Jeff, find a way to eliminate the TiVo OTA discrimination which prevents top of the line TiVo users from accessing OTA signal. More people are now replacing their costly cable input signal with free antenna input signal (plus Internet). Not only does the OTA signal cost zero, but it never compresses its signal. OTA offers the very best possible resolution.
We have never really been fans of the WD Expander product line. The drive has no fan, for example. We use our own external drive case, which we have found to be more reliable. The implementation of the 8TB unit is 4Tb inside and 4Tb outside, in our weaKnees-branded external drive enclosure. The Tivo software itself dictates where recordings are stored, and it sees two drives as one big drive. It writes across both drives, so whenever one drive fails, you generally lose all recordings that have been recorded after the external was installed.
Yes, so long as the Premiere has service. The main limitation is copyright; if a program is flagged as copyright restricted, transfer/streaming may be limited…but it should be less limited if you are streaming from the Roamio to a Premiere or Mini.
Ah, yes, we have heard this complaint before. We are big proponents of OTA and understand your frustration. I think the issue is the chipsets TiVo uses in these boxes. The base Roamio chipset forces you to choose between OTA and Cable. The Plus/Pro Chipset, with 6 tuners, does not permit OTA. I don’t know if it’s an issue with the technology not existing or the expense of the chipset (have not investigated), but I’m pretty sure TiVo makes its decisions in this manner with its customer base (and prospective customer base) in mind. I do agree though, cord-cutters are becoming more and more common.