Mar 12 Listener Review: Tivo Stream
From time to time listeners write in about their experinces with products. Scott Hawk of Bethlehem PA wrote in about his experince with the Tivo Stream (Buy Now $124). The Tivo Stream allows you stream shows to mobile devices in your home, or wirelessly transfer shows and take them to go.
Features:
- Stream your recorded shows from your TiVo Premiere series DVR simultaneously to multiple mobile devices
- Watch a show on a mobile device as it's being recorded
- Wirelessly transfer shows to mobile devices
- Transfer a one-hour show in as little as 15 minutes
After years of hacking Tivo's and using all sorts of manual, geeky software to transfer programs to my computerand IOS devices, I was looking forward to an easier method. The Tivo Stream finally makes it seamless. The Tivo Stream is a small box that connects directly to your router via Ethernet. Once on the network, the device allows streaming from any Tivo box on the network . It can stream to 3 devices without interrupting what someone may be watching on the Tivo already; This is a big advantage over the Sling Box.
My setup consists of two Tivo Premier units provided by RCN cable. It won't surprise you, but it was difficult to get direct confirmation regarding compatibility of the Tivo Stream with my RCN boxes. The Tivo documentation implied that I was at the right software version since I was above version 2.02 and had the Premier model. However, several sites were claiming that I needed the newer, 4 tuner model, for it to work. I was not able to find anyone at RCN to confirm it would work.
One of two Tivo units is connected by Ethernet to the router and the second was bridged onto the WIFI network via an Airport Express. All the instructions said the Tivo needed to be connected via wire, so I figured I could get at least one working. In my setup, the Tivo Stream made it through the first 3 steps of the setup using the Tivo app on an iPad Mini. The Tivo Stream was seen by the software and registered to each Tivo box, but streaming tests failed each time to both boxes (even though one was connected via Ethernet). As you can imagine, I tried all sorts of trouble shooting steps and finally gave up after about an hour.
For the heck of it, I ordered two Monoprice power-line style Ethernet bridges in an attempt to bring the second Tivo box on to the network and give it a faster connection. After some testing, I was getting about the same transfer rate as wifi (about 25Mbps) so I was not surprised streaming still failed.
After more trouble shooting and web searching, I was convinced it should work. So, i went to Amazon (using your link) and bought two Coax/Ethernet connectors. Using this coax bridge, transfer speeds jumped to close to 100M. Now, both Tivo boxes had very high speed connections.
Amazingly, now the Tivo Stream worked!
From here on, the Tivo Stream works exactly as described. It streams at 720p making it much nicer then my standard definition sling box. Of course, the Tivo Stream only streams on the LAN so I'm keeping the Sling Box for when I am traveling. I also prefer the Sling Box for streaming live content because the Tivo Stream will force a "record" function when it streams live content. If you channel surf, you wind up with a bunch of partially recorded shows on the DVR.
Lastly, the download function (to IOS devices only) works very well. The Tivo Stream does the decoding and best quality downloads happen about 4 times faster then real time. What was a multi-step process, using a variety of software tools, is now a single click operation.
In the end, the $130 price tag will probably save me more then that in rentals and subscriptions. Plus, the IOS software has all the features as my regular Tivo, including the 30 second skip feature.
Scott Hawk
Bethlehem PA
Reader Comments (2)
I also have the TiVo stream and found to be a little buggy until I connected my ios devises to the 5g network instead of the standard 2.4. Now download always transfer and streaming works almost flawlessly. I use my stream everyday and has become one of the best devises I have ever purchased. If you own a TiVo and ios devises its makes perfect sense as long as your cable provider doesn't flag copy protected programming.
Are you sure that you're not thinking about the TiVo Mini regarding the 4 tuner requirement?
Plus, your review uses "then" in a few cases instead of "than".
Also, this may be documented, but I never RTFMed.. There are also swipe gestures for skip forward/back that are useful. I use them while walking on a treadmill for example.