WeaKnees Blog

TiVo Releases Three New DVRs for Cable and Digital Antenna

Today, TiVo released three new DVRs, the “TiVo Roamio™,” “TiVo Roamio Plus,” and “TiVo Roamio Pro.” Two of these units (the Plus and Pro) can record a whopping six shows simultaneously and have built-in Wifi, built-in TiVo Stream and built-in MoCA. All three units include an RF and IR remote, another TiVo first.

TiVo Roamio Pro pictured

WeaKnees will have a limited supply of all three TiVo Roamio units in stock later this week. Capacity upgrades are coming soon too. Check the blog for further details.

We have posted a TiVo Roamio comparison chart so that you can easily see the differences among the units, but in a nutshell, here they are:

TiVo Roamio: $199.99. Four tuners. 500GB Hard Drive. Record up to 75 HD Hours. The Roamio can record from ONE input source, either cable, FiOS or off-air antenna. This is the only unit of the three Roamio units that can record from an off-air digital antenna, and it cannot record from BOTH cable and off-air. The Roamio must be connected to the Internet to function and it has built-in Wifi and an Ethernet jack for a direct connection to your router. Alternatively, with an optional MoCA bridge, the Roamio can get Internet access through your coax cable. Like the other Roamio units, this one comes with a remote control that is both RF and IR, so it can send TiVo commands to your TiVo through walls.

TiVo Roamio Plus: $399.99. Six tuners. 1TB Hard Drive. Record up to 150 HD Hours. Unlike the Roamio, the Roamio Plus can record only from cable or FiOS. It has no off-air input. However, the Roamio Plus has a TiVo Stream built into it, so you can stream and transfer content to an iOS device without the need for a separate TiVo Stream. The Plus also has built-in Wifi and built-in MoCA.  The Plus comes with an RF/IR remote, and unlike the Roamio, the Plus has a “Remote Finder.” If you misplace your TiVo remote, just press a button on the Roamio Plus’ front panel and the remote will emit a signal to help you locate it. (If the dog starts beeping, we’ll have replacements soon!)

TiVo Roamio Pro: $599.99. Six tuners. 3TB Hard Drive. Record up to 450 HD Hours. The Roamio Pro is a Roamio Plus with a larger hard drive (triple the size).

Among other features, Roamio units have these features:

• Search entire cable lineup plus streaming apps in a single search—plus on-demand libraries, when available.
• Create customized searches that match your interests by actor, subject or favorite team.
• Set up single-show recordings, or automatically record every episode all season long
• When you can record four or six shows at once, nobody in the house has to miss their favorite shows—even on TV’s busiest nights.
• Share the TiVo experience with other TVs in the house when you connect a TiVo® Mini*. Share and schedule recordings, use apps, or watch TV using the same, award-winning TiVo interface and TiVo peanut remote!
• Remotely manage, browse and schedule recordings anywhere around the house, or while you’re out, with the free TiVo app for tablets and smartphones.
• Stream TV or recorded shows on up to four iOS devices at once over your home network. Or download shows and watch them anywhere. **
• Remote streaming is coming soon. Stream your TV or recorded shows on your iPad or iPhone anywhere in the world you’re connected to WiFi.***

* TiVo Mini service required and sold separately.

** 4-tuner Roamio requires a TiVo Stream (sold separately) to enable streaming and downloading to mobile devices. Not all shows are transferrable due to copyright protections.

*** Coming soon: Out-of-home streaming: TiVo Roamio Plus/Pro will support streaming to one iOS device outside the user’s home network.

As always weaKnees is happy to answer any questions that you might have about any of these DVRs, and we’ll be launching capacity upgrades for all of the units shortly. Stay tuned!

At WeaKnees, we hear from a lot of people who want to eliminate monthly fees. We’ve got cord-cutters getting all of their TV programming via OTA antenna and by streaming, and we’ve got people purchasing lifetime service for their TiVo DVRs to eliminate that monthly fee. We get it – lots of people don’t like a recurring charge on their credit card each month. On the flip side, companies absolutely LOVE these monthly fees – they know that we’re all too inertial to do anything about them most of the time.

Well, here’s a monthly fee you may be paying, and a way to remove it. It’s not a full bill, unfortunately, but it’ll take your cable internet bill down a bit. It’s the lease fee for your cable modem.

If you have TimeWarner, you might have seen that your monthly lease fee for your cable modem is going up by 50% – from $4 to $6. If not, here’s an article about it. In any event, there is a way to get rid of that fee entirely, and that is to buy your own modem.

That’s what some of us here at WeaKnees did. We’re in TimeWarner country, and when word trickled through the office that there was even a cable modem fee to begin with, most of us were surprised – we don’t examine these bills that often. And now, most of us don’t pay it.

The process is pretty simple. You buy your own cable modem, hook it up, call TimeWarner and tell them to activate it and deactivate the old one. Then, if you don’t have phone service with TimeWarner, you give them back their modem. (Oh – and if you do still have and want land-line phone service, we’re working on a way out of that, too.)

We all purchased the Motorola SURFBoard SB6121 which goes for about $70 on Amazon. So within one year, we’ll each save $2. The next year, $72 – assuming the cable company doesn’t hike the fee yet again.

Sure, it probably isn’t even one entire month’s worth of the bill for most people, but it’s something. And it’s a pretty painless process.