The neatest thing about TiVo has all the time been its fundamentals. No different DVR provides you as a lot management over which applications to file and how one can file them, and no different DVR makes stay TV viewing so handy.
All the extra irritating, then, that the brand new TiVo Edge DVR makes no enhancements within the areas the place TiVo wants them most. The {hardware} is slicker (and quieter) this time round, and now it helps Dolby Vision HDR. But you continue to can’t use different streaming TV units, similar to Roku, to entry your DVR, and TiVo’s personal collection of built-in video apps is falling additional behind devoted streaming gamers. Even worse, the core DVR expertise is now deteriorating with pre-roll video advertisements.
As TiVo stands nonetheless, different over-the-air DVR options similar to Tablo, Channels DVR, and Fire TV Recast are including extra of TiVo’s core options whereas providing those who TiVo nonetheless lacks. As such, even a barely improved TiVo Edge is tougher to suggest than its predecessors had been.
New look, much less noise
For this evaluation, I evaluated the TiVo Edge for Antenna, which prices $350, has 2TB of storage, and may play or file as much as 4 broadcast channels on the identical time. DVR service prices an additional $7 monthly, $70 per yr, or $250 for the lifetime of the {hardware}.
For those that plan to plug in a CableCARD, the TiVo Edge for Cable prices $400, additionally has 2TB of storage, and may play or file as much as six channels at a time. TiVo prices $15 monthly, $150 per yr, or $550 for lifetime cable DVR service.
With each TiVo Edge variants, the design of the field itself is an enormous enchancment over the earlier TiVo Bolt. Instead of getting an arched enclosure, the Edge is a flat plastic slab with a ledge that runs across the entrance and sides. The result’s a greater thermal design that runs lots quieter. With the Bolt, I might hear it whirring from the opposite aspect of my workplace, however the Edge turns into inaudible from only a foot or two away.
The port association round again has barely modified regardless of the brand new look, with a coaxial enter, optical audio output, HDMI, a pair of USB ports, ethernet, and a distant finder button that performs a tone on the TiVo distant. The outdated eSATA port for storage growth is gone, however WD stopped promoting its sole appropriate exhausting drive years in the past anyway. Unfortunately, the USB ports nonetheless don’t help exterior exhausting drives, in order that they don’t serve a lot function past charging your cellphone.
The TiVo Edge has principally the identical inputs and outputs as earlier variations, but it surely drops the out of date eSATA port.
Compared to the Bolt, the TiVo Edge has a quicker processor and extra reminiscence (4GB as an alternative of 3GB), however these upgrades don’t translate to a serious efficiency enhance. You’ll nonetheless discover slight loading delays as you progress by menus, and the interface nonetheless animates at a uneven 30 frames per second fairly than the smoother body charges you’ll discover on fashionable streaming bins.
Still, the Edge now helps Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos, although I used to be unable to get the previous to work on my Vizio M50-E1 TV from 2017. Unless I disabled HDR completely, loading Netflix would make the display screen turn out to be overly dim or unbearably pink, and the one resolution was to disable HDR completely. TiVo says it is a bug associated to my TV being an early HDR set, however I’ve by no means skilled these points with myriad different 4K HDR streaming bins.
As for TiVo’s distant, it stays aggressively chunky with too many extraneous buttons (TiVo’s suggestions don’t even make the most of the thumbs-up and -down buttons anymore), however the TiVo Edge for Antenna distant has one main enchancment this time round: It’s backlit, so the keys mild up whenever you press them. Strangely, TiVo is sticking cable prospects with the non-backlit model for now.
Jared Newman / IDGThe TiVo Edge for Antenna features a backlit distant.
A world-class DVR, with one large caveat
One factor I’ve realized over time is that individuals might be choosy about DVR habits, and that’s very true of TiVo customers. There’s even a contingent of customers who’ve prevented upgrading to TiVo’s most up-to-date working system model as a result of they don’t just like the modifications therein. (I’ve discovered the improve to be mostly positive.)
So it was a bit shocking when, a few months in the past, TiVo began stuffing preroll ads into customers’ DVR recordings. These advertisements haven’t turned up on my evaluation unit, and unofficially, you might be able to disable them with a name to customer support. Still, stomping on a sacrosanct ingredient of the DVR expertise is both a tone-deaf resolution or an indication that present prospects don’t matter within the grand scheme of TiVo’s enterprise.
Jared Newman / IDGTiVo’s “OnePass” menu enables you to tweak recording choices in myriad methods.
That difficulty apart, the TiVo DVR expertise stays prime notch. With any present, you’ll be able to select which channels to file from, what number of current recordings to maintain, and the way a lot buffer time to incorporate earlier than and after the recording. You can watch recordings in progress and skip by the commercials, and you may pause or rewind any stay program with out having to file it first. Finding potential reveals to file is simple as effectively, because of a “What to Watch” menu that allows you to browse throughout genres.
Jared Newman / IDGThe “What to Watch” menu is useful for seeing what’s on throughout stay TV and choose streaming apps.
When it’s time to observe these recordings, TiVo does a positive job serving to you kind by them. The “My Shows” record is a click on away in the principle menu, and it has a useful “Continue Watching” part for sequence that you just’re in the midst of binge-watching. TiVo may even use its unoccupied DVR area to routinely file reveals it thinks you’ll like.
Jared Newman / IDGCatching up on recordings is simple by TiVo’s “My Shows” menu.
TiVo has additionally added an automated commercial-skip possibility in current months, so that you don’t have to hit the distant’s “Skip” button throughout each break. TiVo nonetheless depends on human editors to determine commercials, nonetheless, and whereas this method is extra correct than the ad-detection algorithms that another DVRs use, it additionally means some recordings received’t help ad-skipping in any respect.
On the upside, TiVo’s distant does have a 30-second skip button, and its “QuickMode” function, which will increase playback velocity with out altering the pitch of the audio, is a useful strategy to get by applications quicker.
Still ready for streaming
The largest drawback with TiVo right now is one which’s existed for a very long time now: Turning it right into a whole-home DVR will get costly quick.
At current, the one strategy to entry TiVo on multiple tv is with further TiVo Mini bins, which price $180 apiece. Although TiVo has demonstrated streaming apps for Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV, and Android TV, it has but to launch any of them and has no updates on when it’d achieve this.
TiVoIn January, TiVo introduced plans to let customers entry their DVRs on streaming units similar to Roku beginning within the spring. It hasn’t stated something about these plans since.
This omission is getting tougher to excuse when so many different succesful whole-home DVR choices exist, together with Tablo, Channels DVR, Plex DVR, and Amazon’s Fire TV Recast. With these units, you’ll be able to entry stay and recorded TV on a variety of streaming video gamers, and the {hardware} is most often cheaper than TiVo’s as effectively. Most of them (save for the Fire TV Recast) even provide ad-skipping.
The sorry state of TiVo’s built-in app choice can also be turning into a much bigger difficulty as new streaming providers arrive. With TiVo, you’ll be able to entry sure video apps similar to Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and HBO Go and not using a separate streaming participant, and a few of them even combine with TiVo’s DVR menus, so for any given program, you’ll be able to view recordings and on-demand episodes in a single record. Still, the record of apps that TiVo helps is small, and the omissions are piling up. To watch Disney+, Apple TV+, Pluto TV, Crackle, PBS, Tubi, Sling TV, Philo, Spotify, YouTube TV, or Hulu’s stay TV service, you’ll want a separate streaming participant.
Jared Newman / IDGYou know the app state of affairs is dire when Ameba and FlixFling get distinguished billing.
As for the much-ballyhooed TiVo+ app, which streams stay video from on-line sources similar to FailArmy and FilmRise, it is in tough form in the intervening time. I’ve skilled channels that stutter periodically or fail to load outright, and the combination with TiVo’s menus is ham-fisted at finest. While TiVo+ channels seem in the principle grid information, they do not really let you know what’s at present taking part in, and there is no strategy to disable these listings in case you’re fairly not see them.
Besides, a lot of the content material on is identical as what you’d discover on Xumo, one other free streaming service that TiVo partnered with to supply TiVo+. And as a result of you’ll be able to’t file these channels, there’s actually nothing to differentiate TiVo’s model. Ultimately, TiVo+ charges extra like a halfhearted try to get extra advertisements in entrance of customers than a service that fills an precise want.
Should you purchase a TiVo in 2019?
One may think an alternate historical past for TiVo, during which it doubled down on its DVR fundamentals by letting customers file extra of the video that they’re watching over the web, and during which these recordings had been seamlessly accessible throughout any machine.
But as TiVo has made increasingly clear, customers are however a tiny sliver of its total enterprise, which is extra involved with promoting DVRs and DVR software program to TV suppliers, after which additional monetizing that large-scale viewers by advertisements. Tackling customers’ precise ache points-–particularly within the realm of cord-cutting-–has taken a again seat.
As a end result, most of TiVo’s enchantment lies with people who find themselves already deeply invested within the platform. And even then, TiVo is arising with new methods to scare them off.