Another very significant difference between the XL & the XL4 is that the XL supports ATSC decoding, while the XL4 supports only QAM and cablecard. Which means that this tivo is only useful if you subscribe to cable. It is not able to decode over the air HDTV.
For the price of this unit + a lifetime subscription, you can also have no monthly fees. That comes to about $700 (if you know someone who already has a tivo) or $800 (if you don’t).
Another thing to consider is that lifetime subscription effectively puts equity into the tivo because you can sell your tivo+lifetime and recover some of those costs. Check ebay for the resale price differences between lifetime tivo’s and non-lifetime tivos.
U would think it may not work as it needs to download content - BUT you can manually record a specific channel at a specific time for a specific duration…so perhaps you still could do it. We bought lifetime & so far so good - we’ve had it at least 6 yrs (bought pre-kids, so I know it was before kids) and no problems. I still love it. I have no clue which one we have - that is my Dh’s job in this house. He is a techno geek & I am just the poor fool muddling along behind him trying to figure out what buttons on which remote I am supposed to use this week. My Tivo is the only thing easy in that department.
This unit will NOT work with OTA antenna - “(does not support satellite, AT&T U-verse, antenna or analog cable)”.
I was almost in for one…
If that is the case, I can get one of those remote controls that turn the tivo on at a certain time, change it to a certain channel and press record.
But how can I change the channels on the other tuners? Switch to tuner #2 and change channels, then press record? Or are those multi-tuner gizmos only available via timer recordings?
I had the TivoHD when I had cable (switched to Dish). Once I stopped subscribing to the Tivo service the TivoHD would no longer record. As I didn’t have cable anymore, I could only use OTA. I could only change channels manually, as there was no guide information, and any attempt to record resulted in a dialog box informing me that a service subscription was required. I’m sure that the Premiere Elite has the same restriction.
People still pay this kind of money for a DVR? Cute.
This was on sale last week for $350 off their website. Argh, I went ahead and took the plunge. Oh well what is fifty dollars right?
Do yourself a favor. Don’t buy any of this garbage that makes you pay a subscription to record a show. Here is a link to a great DVR.
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Magnavox-MDR515H-F7-500GB-HDD-and-DVD-R-with-Digital-Tuner/15080509
Just like a large portion of people still pay their cable co for a DVR that doesn’t do what TiVo does so well.
I only see one cable card slot. My TivoHD now has 2 single stream cards (2 card slots) because the multi cards the tech brought out were defective. I have only heard of the multi stream cards doing 2 tuners and even at that when I called Cox Communications they acted like I was speaking alien when I told them I needed a cable card for my Tivo.
Where would one even get a single card that can tune 4 separate signals??
They run Linux, which means that they’re very easily modified. For example, if you want more storage, you can just buy a huge hard drive and add it to your unit. My old TiVo came with an 80 gig drive (80 hours standard def) so I upgraded it to a 250 gig drive (250 hours). My current DVR has a 2 Tb drive so I can record what I want without having to delete things to manage space. If you have the skills necessary to replace the hard drive in your PC, you can upgrade the drive in your TiVo.
As far as four tuners go, having multiple is a great thing. I don’t have to give up recording an episode of The Doctor so my wife can record Woz on DWTS.
I’ve sold TiVo units on eBay with Lifetime service; that service transferred to the new owners with no hassle. It’s a pretty good deal.
I love TiVo. A lot of people swear by HTPC’s and Windows Media Center and a TV Tuner card blah blah blah.
However, there is only one TiVo interface. There is no other DVR that comes close to this experience.
First, a 4 Tuner DVR is awesome. Yes there’s a PC tuner card that also has 4 tuners. But I want to use my PC to do stuff like play games. I don’t want to dedicate a separate big tower box to recording and then use networking to all my TVs.
Having one box with this amount of recording space all with the Tivo interface is great.
Tivo just updated their software so their YouTube and Netflix apps are more like what you see on your video game consoles.
Tivo records “suggestions” based on what you watch and how many thumbs up/down you give a show. It’s a very cool way to discover new shows. It’s also saved my butt when I forgot to record a EURO 2012 soccer match. It knows I like soccer so it records it for me as a suggestion. Phew. You can turn it off of course.
New to the Premiere is the ability to stream shows from one Premiere to another. While this only applies if you have more than one TiVo Premiere, it’s great. In the past you would have to transfer an entire recording from box a to box b, and if it had the broadcast flag, you were SOL. However with streaming there’s no broadcast flag to worry about and even going from one tivo to another wirelessly is very lag-free.
I’ve had Tivos for about 10 years now. I’ve used Cable TV DVRs and I even started with the now defunct ReplayTV. TiVo is the gold standard of DVRs. Yes, you can make your own DVR with a paper clip, a TV Tuner, an old hard drive and PC and some string :), but it’s not TiVo. There’s a reason why they can charge a monthly fee.
(End blind devotion) LOL
Information I’ve seen is that an M-card will support 6 streams - and that was a card cable providers were supplying 2 years ago.
Can anyone explain Moca in layman’s terms. I have a Tivo HD XL now that I’d move to my bedroom if I got this and have the Elite in my living room. Moca sets up comms between the two thru the cable lines?
EDIT: I guess it wouldn’t work unless I had 2 premieres. Oh well.
I have this unit connected to Verizon FiOS. Verizon offers MStream cards and you only need one those in the 4-tuner Elite.
Lifetime isn’t included at that price? That is a lot of money for a fancy VCR. Why not just get the cable company one, or torrent?
Ditto for me. I built up an HTPC but found there were just too many hickups: system glitches, shows not appearing in the listings, channel not found by the tuner (only one, but one I wanted - that was some issue with my cable companies mapping of clear QAM channels). The Tivo is not the cheapest option, but it’s really seamless and reliable. That last part is very important if you want your non-techie wife to enjoy the device too. Note: I have an older Tivo HD, not this Premier.
Can someone please take pity on me and tell me in simple words if/how I can use TiVo - I’ve always wanted one. I have digital cable box/DVR I rent monthly from cable company. If I get this do I return the cable box and get a non-DVR box from them? TiVo works through that? I have two TVs on digital cable boxes - only one with the DVR. Pretend I’m your favorite Granny and help me out here. 