Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I picked up a base Roamio box yesterday to replace my current 2-Tuner Premiere which is currently connected to an Mohu Leaf Ultimate Amplified Indoor HDTV Antenna. My current condominium has an exclusive deal with satellite provider DIRECTV and I'm unable to get cable television. For anyone new to the TiVo world, I highly recommend the Roamio as an entry-level box for OTA or CableCARD television. The upgraded TiVo TCD848000 Roamio Plus HD DVR or TiVo TCD840300 Roamio Pro HD DVR offer some advantages over the base Roamio but don't support OTA. The Roamio supports Whole Home / MultiRoom on up to 8 thin-client TiVo TCDA92000 TiVo Mini boxes to extend the Roamio television experience to other TV's in the home. Roamio also supports the TiVo TCDA94000 Stream which currently allows streaming or downloading (non-copy protected) for off-line viewing to iOS devices. I already have a TiVo Stream in my setup so the Roamio recognized that device without any issues. I would not hesitate to recommend the Roamio to family or friends to enable the TiVo experience with OTA television. I would probably recommend upgrading to the Roamio Plus for CableCARD viewing and the Whole Home experience because of the internal TiVo Stream and built-in MoCA. PROS * Extremely Fast * Internal WiFi * App Platform with DIAL Support * ASTONISHING OTA reception quality * 1080p Internal Scaler * RF Remote * Whole Home / MultiRoom Experience * Updated/Refreshed TiVo Interface * TiVo Stream compatibility * Small, Quiet, Low-power * Low cost CONS * No internal MoCA * No internal Stream * Lengthy setup process * More personalization needed * No backlight on the remote DETAILS EXTREMELY FAST The Roamio is equipped with a modern Broadcom processor that yields a snappiness that has to be tried to be believed. The hesitation and sluggishness of the Series 4 Premiere boxes is gone! I'm using the internal WiFi of the Roamio in my setup and haven't noticed any degradation in performance over a wired connection. INTERNAL WIFI The Roamio is the first TiVo box that includes internal WiFi. It easily connected to my WPA2 protected 802.11n 5GHz router. Typing in my WPA2 password with the RF Remote was very easy. APP PLATFORM WITH DIAL SUPPORT TiVo introduced a new Opera HTML5 app platform with the Roamio boxes. At this point its unclear whether this platform will migrate back to the Premiere boxes. The app platform also support's the DIAL (Discovery and Launch) Protocol which results in the Roamio box appearing as a TV destination on tablet or smartphone YouTube and Netflix apps. Other apps will be added because TiVo is launching an app store and writing HTML5 apps should lead to better developer support over the Premiere's Adobe Air platform. ASTONISHING OTA RECEPTION QUALITY OTA reception was the biggest surprise for the Roamio. I read some anecdotal reports on the TiVo Community Forums about improved OTA reception over the Premiere box but the improvement is DRAMATIC compared to my 2-tuner Premiere box. Every single available OTA channel is coming in with fantastic quality. Granted I'm in the downtown Tampa, FL area but I'm using an internal Moho HDTV antenna and I'm just shocked at how good it is. This OTA reception leads me to believe that Roamio is a cord-cutters dream box. 1080P INTERNAL SCALER Roamio support scaling all video to 1080P and 1080P/24. It appears that the internal scaler is very good. This makes all transitions between channels and apps very seamless with no blanking associated with HDMI switchover to new resolutions. RF REMOTE The Roamio includes built-in RF remote support so a USB dongle is not required for non-LOS control. The RF remote is very responsive in my room. Initially I had my RF TiVo Slide remote connected as well but there appears to be some sort of interference having both remotes active at the same time. TiVo also sells a TiVo Slide Pro Remote for Roamio DVRs which is a nice upgrade with its QWERTY keyboard. WHOLE HOME / MULTIROOM EXPERIENCE The Roamio fully supports Dynamic Tuner Allocation (DTA) and you can connect up to 11 TiVo Mini's to the Roamio. I'm currently connected to two Mini's over MoCA. UPDATED/REFRESHED TIVO INTERFACE TiVo updated and refreshed the TiVo Interface to look more modern. I really like the Yellow highlight bar. Some of the rarely used setting screens are still in standard definition as is the Amazon application. There are reports that we should see an updated Amazon Prime app and a Vudu support in the coming months. TIVO STREAM COMPATIBILITY I already have a TiVo Stream on my network and the Roamio recognized that without a problem. The higher-end Roamio Plus/Pro boxes have an internal TiVo Stream but TiVo probably had to make some size/weight/power/cost compromises and left the Tivo Stream out of the $199 Roamio base unit. TiVo support Out of Home Streaming (OOHS) to iOS devices. Android OOHS is coming to the platfom in October 2014. SMALL, QUIET, LOW-POWER The Roamio box is much smaller than the TiVo Premiere or Roamio Plus/Pro. Build quality is excellent although some consumers have complained about the use of plastic as the material of choice. The Roamio is the first TiVo DVR that uses a small external power brick which makes power supply changes easy but might reduce the longevity of the power supply -- time will tell. It appears to be the exact same power brick as is used by the TiVo Stream. LOW COST The Roamio's $199 MSRP is very competitive. TiVo made some compromises to hit that price point including the lack of MoCA, no internal TiVo Stream, and a smaller (500GB) hard drive. TiVo Community users report that the upgrade process of adding a larger internal hard drive is extremely simple with the Roamio compared to the Premiere units. The Roamio also supports certain external eSATA drives for storage expansion. NO INTERNAL MOCA OR STREAM I spoke to this earlier but the lack of MOCA means that a user would need to add an external Actiontec MoCA adapter to support Whole Home over Coax. An external TiVo Stream costs about $100 to add as well. If MoCA or Stream functionality is required for your setup I would recommend upgrading to the Roamio Plus for $399. Roamio Plus comes with a larger 1TB hard-drive as well. LENGTHY SETUP PROCESS TiVo hasn't really optimized the setup process. It requires multiple reboots and software downloads. I recommend activating the box online at TiVo's web site prior to setup. MORE PERSONALIZATION NEEDED TiVo has added some personalization with its What To Watch Now feature but more is needed. DIRECTV does a better job, for example, with Sports. I would also like TiVo to support user profiles. TiVo recently released a software update to help filter the My Shows list which is an improvement. NO BACKLIGHT ON THE REMOTE The included RF Remote isn't backlit which probably means improved battery life. Some consumers have complained that the remote isn't learning either. In my case, I was able to easily use the remote to control my TVs volume, power, and input so I didn't need learning/programming functions. The TiVo Slide Pro remote is a worthwhile upgrade. //9/25/2013 Update After reading how easy it is to upgrade the Roamio's 500GB hard drive, I decided to give it a try. I purchased an Amazon Warehouse deal WD AV-GP 3TB AV Video Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, SATA II, 64 MB Cache - WD30EURS drive. I figured I'll never fill up 3TB and for $125.62 my total sunk cost on the Roamio is now around $325 with a Roamio Pro size drive. The upgrade was very simple. The only trick is having the right Tork 8 & 10 screwdrivers which I happened to have in a screwdriver kit. I removed the two small screws from the back of the Roamio and poped off the top plastic cover. The hard drive is secured to the chassis with three screws. I unplugged the 500GB Seagate drive and removed and replaced the 2 hard drive brackets on my replacement 3TB drive. I'll keep the original drive for safekeeping in case of a failure since I have a 4-year Best Buy warranty on the Roamio. The Roamio automatically recognized the new unformatted drive and went through a complete start-up process again. Note: You'll lose all of your existing recordings during this process. After a long update process and a service update as well I'm up and running with approximately 477 hours of HD storage! More info on this process can be found in the Roamio subsection of the TiVo Community Forums. //9/19/14 Update I've updated my review to include more current information. I sold my 4-Tuner Roamio and upgraded to the Roamio Pro. TiVo also released an OTA version of the base Roamio for a $50 up-front cost with a one-year subscription requirement at $14.99/mo. Product Lifetime Service (PLS) is currently not an option on the Roamio OTA and the new box is only available at a subset of Best Buy stores. Unlike the base Roamio review here, the Roamio OTA does not support CableCARD but other functionality should be identical.