TiVo Minis?

Hey Adam, I'm thinking of switching from a DirecTV setup to a TiVo Bolt+ and a few TiVo Minis. Do you know if your plugin works with the minis? Are they controllable just like the main DVR? I had a 1st gen TiVo when they first came out, and always liked it, but moved to DTV for some reason I can no longer remember. I'm guessing you use TiVo, are you satisfied overall?

TIA,
Terry

I can't speak to Adam's plugin, but I have a Bolt and love it; it's my third (or fourth) Tivo. Your question is timely for me too since I'm working on getting TV and music to the patio (installing a hot tub). Definitely not going to expose an ethernet cable out there though, so the Mini may not be an option, MOCA possibly. An echo piping Amazon Unlimited Music should work for the audio though.

Jim

I have a Tivo Roamio and a Tivo Mini. While I don't have my Mini configured with the Indigo Plug in (as I'm not looking to automate it), I can say that the plug in works well with the Roamio. But if I were to do it again, I would skip the mini and just get two Tivos. This is because for me, even though the Tivos are Ethernet connected, the Mini loses the connection to the Living Room Tivo periodically. Sometimes, unplugging and replugging the ethernet cable corrects the issue, other times a reboot is needed. I may be alone with this issue but it's a hassle, though it only happens about one day a month....so it's not pervasive.

A recent enhancement to my Tivo is commercial skip. Previously, you could FF or jump in 30 sec segments. Now, for many shows, after it records, it determines where the commericals are and you can skip past them with one press of a button. Simply awesome.

Hey Adam, I'm thinking of switching from a DirecTV setup to a TiVo Bolt+ and a few TiVo Minis. Do you know if your plugin works with the minis? Are they controllable just like the main DVR? I had a 1st gen TiVo when they first came out, and always liked it, but moved to DTV for some reason I can no longer remember. I'm guessing you use TiVo, are you satisfied overall?

I don't have any Mini's but there have been people here that seemingly have them controlled -- for example this post is one I remembered off hand.

Overall, I'm happy with TiVo -- my main complaints are not with them but rather with COX and their lack of support or knowledge for CableCARD and tuning adapters. We have two TiVos and, more-or-less, all the shows are recorded on one and played on both (over the network). FWIW, there are a ton of TiVo features that we don't use but are nice when we remember or accidentally use -- such as finding out you didn't record a show but having hte option to load it in Netflix or Amazon Prime right there.

We don't use the TiVo remote - all is through Indigo via the kick-@ss Domotics Pad application. There is a built-in control screen on the device list that works really well on local network (the slight lag in going through the reflector is annoying if for some reason I forgot to turn on WiFi or something).

Adam

Thanks everyone. Adam I actually saw that post but my eyes/brain completely missed the fact that it was a Mini.

I've been doing a lot of research between going all streaming and switching to cable; trials late last year proved that streaming isn't there for our family yet. We tried various combinations of Playstation Vue and Sling, coupled with Tablo, Emby, or HDHomerun's DVR for locals but switching back-and-forth between locally-broadcasted football (CBS, FOX, etc.) and "cable" (ESPN, SEC, etc.) channels was all but impossible. Switching between the two apps providing "local" vs. "cable" would take 20-30 seconds which is completely unacceptable during football season!

We have Charter (now Spectrum) for Internet service and they would also provide TV should we switch. I've used their cable card with home-grown DVRs in the past and they seem to be mostly supportive of non-company DVRs, although I don't think PPV/on-demand services work with cable cards. The Mini's will be a necessity as we have 5 TVs and one projector on DTV now so 6 Bolts would push my return on investment out to some point past my demise! I'll definitely incorporate the most-excellent DomoPad client into the final solution though!!

Terry

The very slick control page for Tivo is great as is the Tivo remotes (I have a regular one and one that slides to open a keyboard). But by far, I love the Alexa integration. So if the remote is out of reach, I usually just say "Alexa, turn Tivo pause on" or "Tivo, turn commercial skip on". Alexa is the remote that never seems to get lost in the couch cushions.

they seem to be mostly supportive of non-company DVRs, although I don't think PPV/on-demand services work with cable cards.

YMMV, but a recent update apparently let us utilize COX's OnDemand service through TiVo -- my wife said she was able to access a show on it successfully (with TiVo you can search for a show/episode and it will give you a list of where it is available, she saw COX OnDemand and tried it... but this was the free, not the paid, on demand content).

We keep threatening to cut the cord because our TV watching is virtually nil. Sports is the big thing holding us back -- from what I saw Sling quality with sports was not all that great, though I hear reports that other providers are better. I can get most of our stuff OTA, but not having the online DVR on some of the sports channels for streaming is not cool. We will often pause a game, especially if it is near son's bedtime, and catch back up.

Adam

We love our TiVo setup. I can't for the life of me figure out why TiVo struggles to be a relatively successful business, given that its product is head and shoulders above even the newest other DVR's out there. I will say that the guide data for us has gotten a little less reliable since they were bought by Rovi. Mostly this was a problem during football and especially college basketball seasons, when local games that I knew were on somewhere were difficult to locate because the guide showed something else on.

We have a Romio Pro and a mini. The mini is located on the other side of the house and connected over MOCA. In the 3 years we've been running it this way, I think we've only ever had one difficult to fix time when they stopped communicating, necesitating a call to TiVo. Other than that one time, the setup has worked great. If we were to ever let the kids have TV's upstairs, I would assume we'd use minis to do that.

I do not use the plugin, but I am a big fan of the official app. I very frequently use that to schedule a recording when I am not sitting in front of the TV.

Good to know that my Mini connectivity issues is unique. Perhaps I will re-evaluate my home network as that may well be the cause of the occasional connectivity issue. It's a large house so I do have a few pieces of equipment, router, modem, access points, switches and lots of cable.

I totally agree on the Tivo UI and function.......leap years ahead of other DVRs. I was one of the original Tivo 1 users back when they only connected over telephone line. I hacked it to work over home Ethernet and put in a larger hard drive which was awesome at the time. I left because the Tivo died and I gave a whack at a MythTV which was a challenge for me as it was not so much plug and play at the time and I knew nothing of Linux. But once working it was great until Hi-Def came along. So I just went with the cable company's DVR as I think at the time Tivo didn't have a sufficient product. But made my way back to Tivo and love it. With the cable-card it does everything my cable company DVR did but with much more elegance. My only headache has been the Mini's connectivity issue which may have nothing to do with Tivo itself.

I totally agree on the Tivo UI and function.......leap years ahead of other DVRs.

Tivo's marketing is non-existent unless you're wandering around Best Buy. That said, I just started using Tivo (Bolt plus 3 minis), and its a remarkable experience.

I will check this plugin out.


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