Customer Ratings & Reviews

I was tired of paying cable bills, so I cancelled my cable service and just use a $9 HD antenna, which allows me to pick-up about 22-English and 12-Spanish channels, including Telemundo, Univision, and MundoFox. For persons who only watch Spanish TV, you should never pay for cable, as long as you live in an area that can receive all these channels (i.e.NYC). But for English watchers, you must get the Tivo OTA. For about $50 from Best Buy and a monthly charge of $15 from TIVO, you not only get a 2-week complete program guide, but can record 4-shows at once, and, you have tremendous space to record tons of shows. Now, I pick out my shows ahead of time and have a large enough assortment that I barely miss cable at all. When I get home, boom, there are my news shows, movies, and series shows ready for me to watch late into the night at my leisure. And remember, OTA (over-the-air) TV is not just limited to the old networks and local channels; there are about five other channels that show old movies and series (i.e. Bewitched), a Western Channel, a more modern movies channel, showing many classics, and a channel dedicated to mostly crime investigation shows (a la Forensic Files). I lived without the TIVO for about two months, and believe me, it is like night and day. I purchased one for my wife also, who watches and records all her Spanish-language shows, and it has worked out perfectly for the both of us. (Note: You get a $3 discount on additional TIVO monthly charges, and, if you are a bit further from the city, you can buy an amplified antenna for about $40, increasing your range and the channels you can receive). One negative: Of course it is not cable and I particularly miss my local sports teams and many of the other channels I got used to. It is a personal decision -do you want to save $100 a month or can you just not live without sports and other cable channels. With a high-speed Internet connection (**Time-Warner has a plan for only $15/month!!! **), a subscription to Hulu+ ($8/month) or Netflix, and a Roku box ($45) that streams a bunch of content FOR FREE, you really get all you need (except the sports). All I know is I am saving over $1000 a year and have so much new content that I wonder why almost everyone who lives in or near a metropolitan area doesn't just drop the outrageous cable bills they have to pay every month.

Setup and the familliar Tivo interface were a breeze. Research before you buy. Roamio OTA units are known for their poor tuner quality. Many people blame poor reception or think their antenna is the culprit. We have had ours about 6 months now, and we rarely ever use it. Using the tuner in the TV and the same antenna the Tivo uses, we get all our local channels without a hiccup. As soon as we try the tivo, channels cut out, pixelate, and freeze.

I had the very first Tivo years ago and loved it. I bought the Roamio in hopes of having a good solution to record OTA TV, as I am tired of paying too much for satellite. My built in TV tuner gave great signal strength and allowed me to pull in around 20 or so channels, which was fine. With the Tivo connected the signal strength was reduced significantly, to the point that even the strongest channels ( when using the TV tuner) were now week and pixelated when hooked up to the Tivo. I bought a new antenna (ClearStream 2V) and a signal booster from Bestbuy. However, I was unable to improve/boost the signal enough for the Tivo to pass a decent signal strength. I spoke with Tivo CS twice and they explained that as the Tivo has 4 tuners, the signal strength will be effected, because your incoming signal from your antenna will be split for each of the 4 tuners, so you really need to make sure you have a strong and reliable signal for this Tivo box to work. I ended up returning this box to BB. I really, really wanted this to work, but in my particular case I wasn't able t get a good result. I have no doubt that in the right conditions this would be a great solution. I am currently looking into Channelmaster, which may be a better solution for my particular installation, because it only has a single tuner and so I should see little or no signal loss. Fingers crossed.....

I have had my OTA for over 1 month, I purchased it at our local Best Buy in Mobile, AL. When I asked for the OTA in the tv/electronics department, not one of the sales representatives knew about it. I insisted on speaking to a manager and took me to one unit they had just received in the 'new arrivals' section. I connected the OTA to a RCA Ant 751 ($50) on a single section of antenna mast. (It is about 12 feet off the ground) I ran the cable into our family room. At that point, I installed a 3-way splitter. One terminal was connected to the OTA and the other two went through walls to 2 bedroom tvs. All three sets are getting excellent signals. Next I connected a Roku 3 to the tv to which the OTA was installed via ethernet from my internet modem (U-verse). No, I cannot record the Roku channels. The OTA and Roku 3 are routed through my Onkyo receiver so I am able to get Dolby Digital 5.1 audio. That is great for listening to Spotify and Pandora. Finally I installed a pair of Polk Audio Atrium 4 Outdoor speakers on our patio and wired it to the 'B' channel on the Onkyo. The OTA; RCA antenna; Ruku 3; wiring and the Polk speakers cost less than $350. My break even point on savings on my U-verse tv subscription is right at 4 months. After that, I will have the $15 Tivo and $10.75 Spotify monthly charges. That is a savings of $109 per month. The OTA and Roku 3 together are fantastic! With more and more streaming programming becoming available all the time, this is a winning combination.

This is my first tivo and i am so happy with my purchase! A great dvr and with web apps too! i would have easily paid twice the price i got this for($49.99). I don't miss cable at all! i had bought a roku stick right before i found the tivo roamio ota and although the roku is nice i like the tivo better ;)

We “cut the cord” to our cable/satellite about 2 years ago. We currently watch all of our shows through our HD antenna and our subscriptions to Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Amazon Prime. The only thing that we truly missed from our cable/satellite days was the DVR functionality. With young children it was difficult to watch our adult shows until after they were asleep and by that time they had already started or we completely missed them. Also, being the only male in the house it was next to impossible to watch any live sporting events. So I decided to make the jump and by the Tivo Roamio DVR, which was the only one with OTA capability, and costs up to $200. I was literally on the TiVo website to complete the purchase when I saw the new TiVo Roamio OTA. For someone who has already cut the cord and has no intention of going back it was a no-brainer to purchase the Roamio OTA for ¼ the price. I went to Best Buy after work yesterday to purchase one. They didn’t have them on a shelf so I had to ask an associate to get one for me and they quickly brought me one from the back. I took it home, hooked it up, and recorded 4 shows on the first night. We watched 3 of them after the kids were asleep. All I can say was it was outstanding. We were finally able to watch our shows when we want even if they were in progress, could fast forward commercials (impossible on Hulu), watch them the same day they air (also impossible on Hulu), and watch some shows from CBS (also not available on Hulu). To watch CBS shows we had to connect our Laptop to the TV. Another major benefit is we are able to set up a “season pass “ which will automatically record all episodes of a particular show. You do have to purchase the TiVo service which is $15 per month, but we will be cancelling Hulu ($8 per month). For the features you get with the TiVo I would gladly pay the $15 monthly fee. It took less than an hour to install and probably 45 minutes of that time was waiting for it to install a system update. If you’re familiar with any cable/satellite DVR it functions in basically the same way and is easy to figure out without using any instructions. The Remote programmed to our cheap store-brand LCD TV in less than 2 minutes and works great to control power, volume, input source, etc. The 2-week guide lets you look ahead and see what programs are coming up in advance and set up recordings. (I set it up to record a movie on a channel I didn’t even know I had at 2 am) I just bought it yesterday so I can’t speak to it’s durability, but overall I am extremely pleased with the product. Would highly recommend and purchase again in a heartbeat.

I had a TiVo 10+ years ago before the cable boxes. I'm Happy to have some of the features back and I love that there is now a good option for dvr addicts to escape cable/satellite. My only complaints are reduced reception quality...a few channels had perfect reception w/o the box but freezes with the box. I was able to swap the antenna, but just something I noticed. Also, the required one year service plan makes it feel like cable commitments. Those are the only reasons for excluding the 5th star.

I've owned several TiVo models through the years, but my purchase of the Roamio OTA is the best one yet. I cut the cord a while back and have never looked back. However, there were some significant problems with my TiVo Premiere, not the least of which was how long it took to launch Netflix and YouTube. My little Roku launched them almost immediately but the TiVo took almost 90 seconds at times. This new Roamio is every bit as fast as the Roku! Now that TiVo has included access to Amazon Prime and Vudu...along with now including built-in WiFi...it is the best unit yet for my needs.

So far the roamio is great, better digital tuner, Wifi and it's much snappier and faster than the premier. For the price I would say yes.

I bought this to cut the cord on my $150 cable TV bill, but I didn't want to give up DVR. I researched other DVR's and solutions, but each had something about them that I did not like. This had a small upfront cost, in case it didn't work out. I bought a Mohu leaf antenna and hooked it up to one of my cheaper LED TV's to see if I could get good reception on at least CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox channels. No problem, I was even able to pull in a few more channels. So, I bought the Roamio OTA and hooked it up to my leaf antenna and was blown away by how the tuner in the Roamio OTA was able to pick up even more channels with my leaf antenna, with the antenna in the exact same location. Actually, I get 55 channels, crystal clear. CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX, ION, GRIT, BOUNCE, CW, ... Plus, the ability to easily get other sources I already subscribe to like Netflix, Amazon Prime,.... Tivo aggregates these so efficiently. It's much nicer than how you access them via smart TV/appliances, in my experience. The remote works great, by the way, and works via RF, so you can even have the Tivo behind a cabinet door. No line of site needed. If that wasn't enough. You can download the Tivo app to your smart phone and there is a remote included in that application that works like a charm. I also love how you can turn your Tivo Roamio OTA into a whole home DVR by adding the Tivo Minis to it or add Tivo Stream if you'd like to stream to a device. You can even watch live TV from the Roamio OTA using the mini. No real need to have antenna for the extra tv. I have one Mini and intend to purchase a couple more.

I received this yesterday and am very pleased. I for years have not had live TV, just NetFlix, HuluPlus and Amazon Prime. I was finally able to get my antenna set up to receive all the local networks. After setting this up, it appeared my reception was a bit clearer. People complain about the $14.99 subscription cost. I essentially cut that to $7.00 by cancelling my HuluPlus subscription, which I only used for streaming network shows. $7.00/month is a small price to pay for freedom from the broadcasters' schedule.

I bought a TIVo romeo last summer. It had IP issues from day one. So when it started Rebooting I called them and said this is not the upgraded box you said you sent, its a refurbed Romeo. They said it only had a 2 month warranty. I complainned and they sent a replacement. It was DOA. So I sent it back. I asked to buy a new Romeo from TIVO. They said they didnt selll them, only used. So I looked on Best Buy and they have Brand new Romeos for the same price as used at TIVE, plus Tivo wanted $38.00 for a 3 years warranty. Best Buy gave me a 4 year for $19.00. TIVO has a great Over the air picture and i love it, but TIVOs employees dont know the product very well, and the answer is different every call, and they are swindlers if they think youll let em do it. Just go to Best Buy Trust me.

Best thing ever for cord cutters...... Record 4 shows at once!!!! Able to watch when I want and as many times as I want!!!!! This is AWESOME!!!!

can i hook this up to my out side camras to record

This is not the Roamio you want. BestBuy sells the Full Roamio for $150. By paying $100 less you forfeit the ability to pay yearly or pay for LifeTime service. If you buy this, your only option will be to pay $15 monthly forever. If you call customer service they will direct you to the cancellation department where you can cancel with an early termination fee of $75. This box is only worth it if your plans for Tivo are short term. (Like 1 year) CNet was right "Not recommended" So, instead of saving you from the cable company, they are just replacing it. Roamio is a great product, but I now do not trust the company.

Been a TIVO owner since the first models long ago. Experimenting with cutting the cord. My Series 3 HDXL works well but is only 2 tuners and doesn’t stream. So I bought a Roamio OTA today. Its reception RF sensitivity is definitely lower. It studders and pixelates where the HDXL did not. For example signal strength for CBS is 50 vs 63 for the HDXL. (I know the signal strength between units is relative and may not be directly comparable.) I may have to return it… will keep experimenting. YMMV :(

I live only 5 to 11 miles from the transmitters and I receive more than 20 off-air channels, all with good reception on our Toshiba TV. I was quite disappointed with the Roamio OTA's receiver sensitivity compared to our TV. The two channels that we like the best are very weak on the Roamio, and we often see picture and sound break-up, especially on rainy days. I've tried three antennas to improve the situation, and added an amplifier to boost the signal. With the best antenna and an amplifier, reception still isn't consistently good. Tivo technical support was no help. They said that since the Roamio splits the incoming signal to feed four receivers, reception will always be worse than with our TV directly. What good is it to be able to record 4 channels at the same time if none of them have a good enough picture to watch? If you are considering the Roamio, don't expect reception to be as good as on your TV.

Works great for managing and recording over-the-air signal. But as a "smart" device to watch on-line streaming services it is awful. I cannot watch Netflix with it...it stalls and buffers constantly. I plugged it directly into an ethernet cable, and still it does not work. I eventually bought a Roku device which works flawlessly (using the same internet connection that the TIVO fails on). It sucks that I had to buy a second device to make up for the shortcomings of the TIVO.

I've had this Tivo DVR for a little over a month now and I am very impressed with the service and the device. The navigation is easy to use. You can set you DVR to record "Season Passes" which means your DVR will record all shows from the series that you select. If you're a cord cutter and want a DVR option, you cannot beat the $50 price tag and service that TIVO provides.

I ordered this TiVo for taping TV shows. Many thanks to previous reviewers to let me know that without substitution of 14.99/m, you can only watch TV but cannot record it. I'm going to return it. So, I had to search other places and found "Ematic AT103B Digital Converter Box with Recording Capabilities" at cost of $32.98. Within 1 hour, I found 43 TV channels with it and easily set TV recording programs without any extra cost. I do wish Bestbuy has such a product too.