Customer Ratings & Reviews

Does what it should. Set up was flawless, no issues recording so far. Skipping the commercials is probably the top selling point. Only Ding is could have more tuners and storage.

I was excited to see Tivo in the market again. After having the DirecTV Tivo from 2002 to 2006, I had missed several aspects of the Tivo services since. In 2007 I moved to the DirecTV DVR for the whole home product along with HD. DirecTV kept innovating while Tivo seemed to be behind by a few years. Then the BOLT came out. It offered some whole home aspects with the skip features and I was stoked. I purchased the BOLT along with 2 Mini's, setup my local TWC install, and even ordered a keyboard remote. Unfortunately, the excitement just didn't last. First, the BOLT is curved and white. This didn't seem to be a big issue until I had it setup with everything else. It stood out and I couldn't put anything on top of it. Second, the setup was painful. I made a couple of calls to the help desk. Fortunately, the help desk was very helpful. There were several issues we just couldn't get over though once we settled in with the above issues. One was that you couldn't get OTA with Cable. There were some OTA channels that TWC doesn't carry that we actually watch a bit. The other was with the way the menus work and the number of tuners that you can setup. 4 tuners seems like a lot, until you get used to more than that. With DirecTV, we have 8 tuners throughout the house. 4 alone with the minis runs out real quick. We would have needed to get another BOLT, if that's an option. Another issue was with the start and stop times. DirecTV has figured out that they need to program in some cushion whenever possible. This isn't a configured option, it just works. We hadn't really noticed it much since it just worked. Well, Tivo hasn't figured this out and many shows were cut off at the end and/or beginning. This got really annoying really fast. Setting up every show with a buffer was just extremely annoying. There were several issues with the menus and how things were multiple clicks into it just to configure simple options. The remote had also changed for the worse. The old peanut was something that you could use easily in the dark after getting a little used to it. The newer design is not as user friendly and the buttons don't have a different feel on several that are close together. We used it for 2 weeks and I was still hunting for buttons. There were many little things that continued to add up and we just couldn't make the switch back. It felt like we would give up 5 years of progress to get commercial skips. I will stick to my more expensive monthly service and deal with the fast forward skips that we're pretty used to. It was worth a shot to ensure that we could put the final nail in the Tivo coffin for us. Good luck to the new company that purchased Tivo as an IP strategy. I think Tivo lost it's way as a provider of DVR services.

Assuming readers are already familiar with the Tivo proposition, these comments are vs the Roamio Pro: +s: 4K for streaming, commercial skipping, smaller form factor -s: 4 vs 6 tuners, much smaller HDD

I love the Bolt even though I don't have a 4K TV to go with it... yet.. The only reason this is the second best purchase is because it only has 4 tuners whereas the Roamio Pro has 6 tuners. Some people don't like the white box with the bend in it, but I kind of like it.

I currently use Charter Spectrum as my cable provider and did extensive research before buying the TiVo Bolt. I have been using the cablecard with the TiVo Bolt for about a month and a half, and I love it!! Pros: The interface is updated and much cleaner than the standard guide that most cable providers offer. It's really nice to be able to perform a search for titles across all streaming options as well as live TV. Cons: Doesn't work with On Demand with Charter. The 4 tuners can be a bit limiting if there is someone in your house that records a lot simultaneously.

this is the second time I've bought Tivo. I like the Bolt, just wish they kept the 6 turners in stead of 4

I am a big fan of TiVo and Bolt does not disappoint. Very fast, snappy and has the familiar menus and interface we all love. I am Ok with the shape of it. One thing that I wish it had is more tuners

TiVo's new Bolt is a step backward, not forward, from Roamio. I became a customer primarily because of the 6-tuner Roamio's. More and more cable tv shows now are extending the show's run time by an extra two to five minutes, overlapping into times of shows on other channels. This was almost never a big deal with six tuners, but with only four, recordings are more likely to get chopped off or missed entirely. The new Bolt skip-forward feature is very underwhelming. It's only available on select shows and times each day, and even then there's sometimes a delay after the show finishes before the skip updates are added to the recordings. The new Bolt box shape and color is unattractive and also makes it difficult to stack with other entertainment center equipment because nothing can sit on top of it any more. I also really miss the lights on the front that showed not just when at least one show was recording but how many shows, as the Roamio did. There's now just one recording light with the Bolt. Also on the Roamio boxes when you were transferring a show from another box or device there was a blue light that indicated the transfer in progress. That too is gone and they just use the multi-purpose yellow light now. Certainly nothing huge, but one more thing they took away that used to be neat. I recall bragging to friends over the past year that when TiVo rolled out new updates they did such a good job always making things better, and never taking away good things people liked with the service and design enhancements. I can no longer say that because TiVo has taken away many things that I valued with the Roamio DVRs. TiVo Bolt is a huge disappointment. I returned the Bolt after a few short days. Hopefully TiVo will learn from their shortcomings and add back functionality to future models, as well as improve the new features to be available in more shows.

Only four tuners and no away from home viewing makes this a poor choice. TIVO no longer offers discounts for lifetime subscription for those TIVO owners who stuck with TIVO. I bought my first Series 1 TIVIO in 1999 and have purchases Series 2,3, HD, PREMIER and ROAMEO TIVO's. What a disappointment this box is and how they are treating loyal customers.