TiVo Bolt 1000 GB DVR (Old Version) - Digital Video Recorder and Streaming Media Player - 4K UHD Compatible - Works with Cable or HD Antenna

Nice product! User friendly, and a powerful entertainment hub!The TiVo Bolt is still fairly new to me, so I can only comment as a recent user of the product. So far I absolutely love it! It has more recording space than my old DVR, and the fact that it ties into my online accounts seamlessly unifies most of the entertainment sources in my life. I'll break it down.Pros: So many it's hard to choose, but the SkipMode feature has to be on the top of the list! I don't know if I could live without it now. Very customer/consumer friendly feature. Cable companies don't want us to be able to skip their advertisements, so their equipment intentionally makes doing it difficult; not so with this baby. As mentioned it has a ton of space, and it ties all of the sources like Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, etc together so that you are using a single remote to control them all. The 4K support is nice to have for the future. The TiVo search engine will locate all instances of the show you are searching for and create easily accessible entries for them. The One Pass feature is cool, and menus are user friendly and configurable. The TiVo App also rocks! Nice that it will stream on the local LAN. The ease of expansion is also a great ability with the addition of the TiVo mini.Cons: Not many, and certainly not serious enough to change anyone's mind. It was a slow startup process, which wouldn't have been bad, but the setup instructions were a bit off, directing you to a menu option that doesn't exist. It took almost two hours while it updated its firmware and connected with the online guide service before I finally got a guide and the features were fully functional. It would be nice to see scheduled recordings easier. That use to be one of my first stops with my old DVR so I could see if a particular show was new that night. Easier than finding it through a search or on the guide. I find I'm missing that with the TiVo. The remote is well laid out, and works for 99% of the things you need it to do. However, it doesn't make sense that I can pair it with my stereo and control the volume, but I cannot turn it off. I can turn off the TV, but not the stereo, so I have to grab another remote. It also doesn't make sense to me that you have to unplug the network cable if you want to use Wifi. That should just be a toggle on the menu. I prefer the network cable and want to use it, but it should require unplugging to make the switch. It's conceivable with an RF remote that the TiVo box could be in an inaccessible place. Those are all of my complaints, not even worth dropping the five star rating, and even if they don't address them I wouldn't dream about going back to cable.Not that I want to plug another product, but one last thing I'd love to see at some point in the future is a Tivo Alexa skill for the Amazon Echo. It would be awesome to be able to control even some of the basic functions like play/pause and on/off with your voice. So, if you were on the fence about switching away from the crappy cable rentals, don't be. Just do it!!! You won't be sorry.

I owned a previous Tivo system about five years ago so I thought I'd give the new Bolt a try. Hmmm. A good bit of trouble and money for just a few cool features. For one, prepare yourself to get aggravated with the setup. It takes at least an hour and that's only if you have everything you need--which you don't. If you are not good with TV's and/or general appliance setup, either find a friend/relative who is or this isn't a device for you. I opened up the Tivo box and was all ready to enjoy the new features. That was not to be. Surprise #1: This is NOT a simple plug and play system. Surprise #2: There is no operating manual (the logic of this escapes me)--just a booklet with Tivo's features. That's wonderful, but only if you can get it to work. There was an insert that indicated that I needed an M-Card. This was news to me. It took a while, but I figured out that an M-Card is a Multi-vision card. That's a fancy name for a card that YOU need to purchase or your Tivo won't get any channel reception. Surprise #3--you need to get the M-Card from your cable company since there is nowhere else to get it. Surprise #4: Your cable company may not have any in stock. As you can imagine, they aren't keen on helping you get rid of their cable box and related fees. So I put the setup on hold, got in my car and drove to my cable company's nearest outlet store. I was lucky, there were four M-Cards left in stock. Drove home. Okay, that was the first hour. I got home and wasn't sure how to insert the M-Card. How would I be sure?--there are no instructions from Tivo. I guessed and inserted the card with the name of the manufacturer facing me.I then started the manual setup process on the TV. There are three things you need to do: (i) follow the setup menu on the TV to personalize your Tivo (ii) Call your cable company so that they can Bind (yup, that's the word they all use) the Card to the incoming cable system's signals. On the first try I got most stations, but not CNN, or Fox. After a few tries and about 30 minutes, the attempts did work but the top of the picture on those channels had a scratchy white line at the top like you see in some old scratched up black and white films. More on this later. (iii) You need to Activate; your Tivo. I bought my Tivo from Amazon. What no one tells you is that the Tivo doesn't come activated; when you buy it from Amazon--but it does come activated if you buy directly from Tivo (Why?). I tried several times--each taking about 20 minutes with the Tivo screen finally saying Done;, but then gave the message Not connected to Tivo&;. I gave up and finally called Tivo. The rep was helpful and told me that he had to activate my Tivo for me (Surprise #5), which he did. I then asked about the scratchy white line at the top of a few channels. He ran a diagnostic and told me that although my TV worked fine with my cable box, the Tivo system was more sensitive and it appeared that the signal from the cable company was coming in too strong. I called the cable company and they confirmed the issue and said they could send a tech person out to adjust it for $59 (Surprise #5). I haven't done that yet.Surprise #6 was that you need a strong wireless connection or Tivo can't get it's data downloads. That's a bit of problem since I put the Tivo in my basement and my wifi device is three levels up. Fortunately I have a wifi extender (I told you this wasn't easy) and that seemed to do the trick. Tivo downloaded all of the information and eventually I was ready to go. Of course since there is no manual, I had to guess how to work most of the options. The tech rep at Tivo had to tell me to use the D button to activate the commercial skip button. Later I went on my computer and visited the website. You can get some answers, but it's a bit of a scavenger hunt and they don't make it easy. Who runs this company? Setup process needs to be explained better.Negatives:*The confusing and time consuming setup.*I have one Tivo device and the rest of my house has cable boxes. That's a problem because when I tape a show on Tivo (downstairs) and later want to watch it on a TV upstairs, I can't. I'm down $399 already and I have two choices: I can buy two Tivo Mini's (just $111 each!) plus two remotes so that all devices talk to each other, or I can just record things on my Tivo that I will only have time to watch downstairs. I guess I should have thought of that.*I thought I might save money on Tivo eventually because I got rid of one cable box and remote (combined cost $8/month). Unfortunately Tivo has a monthly cost as well. The first twelve months are free (if you ignore the cost of the device itself), but after that they charge you $149/year.Didn't think that one through either.Positives:*Commercial skip is good, but there are two limitations. For one, only about 25% of TV shows allow you to use it. For the rest you're out of luck. I bought the Tivo to skip commercials during the evening news, but they don't allow it. Secondly, you have to press the "D" button each time a commercial comes on. I originally thought you only had to do it once at the beginning of the show when replaying the taped show. That is not the case. You need to do it EVERY time a commercial comes on during the replay of your show. That's two bad because I had hoped it would be a "one and done". It still saves time of course, but you have to keep it handy to zap it through the next set of commercials.*Netflix and Vudu work well and easier than they do on my Roku.*The Search feature is a nice and easy way to find where you can locate or rent a movie without checking five places. It even searches Vudu and Netflix.Final Conclusion: Although my local cable company aggravates me, the features have improved over time and it seems to do pretty much everything I want for no upfront cost and lower monthly fees than Tivo. I have only had Tivo a week, but the cost, setup hassle, and lack of ability to talk to my other cable boxes offset the few cool benefits it has.