Tivo Costs !!

Tivo Solution is not cheap.  Based on what you have been paying, it can easily take a year, to re-coop your costs for upfront equipment, installation costs in conjunction with cable TV costs, and my last cost on this list, can really cost you.

Costs for Tivo Bolt w/ 3 Mini Units:

1. $300 Tivo Bolt (1TB unit with 4 Tuners) - black "Tivo Bolt+" unit is better w/ 6 tuners/3tb drive ($500), but does not provide HD Antenna hookup, if/when I want to ditch cable later.
2. $150 Tivo Mini II - does not need it's own tivo service, but relies on creation of "MoCA" Coax or Ethernet network (we'll get to this later, and why I'm publishing this blog).
3. $15 POE Adapter - VERY important (not to be confused with an unnecessary external "MoCA" Bridge"
4. $40 for various Cable splitters - must be "MoCA" Compliant
5. $13 /monthly (paid annually $149) for Tivo Guide Service -- you could buy this monthly for more, and/or purchase a box lifetime subscription for more

Costs for cable company:

1. $2 / month for Cable card - only required for Tivo Bolt main unit (cable company does not advertise this offering, shocking!)
2. FREE / Tuning Adapter from Cable Company - yet another odd box that requires USB connection to your Tivo Bolt, and connection to your Coax wiring. This unit is used for switched digital video (SDV) channels that your cable company provides.
3. $30 / month (NO Contract) - 1st year promotional costs for "middle of the road" package of programming (I was already paying for cable internet, so my cable tv package was a little lower taking advantage of service bundling).

Costs for moving away from DirecTV:

1. Free to $495:   This could be FREE.... BUT, if you're under contract with DirectTV, you're going to pay $20/mo plus $15 for deactivation... eg, if you're a year out, that's $255 !!!

Costs for HD Antenna OPTION:

1. $70 for HD Antenna, my sources say go with "WineGard" Brand, but there seem to be several. There are websites you type your home address, and will give you the amount of signal you need.
2. $175 for technician to remove DirecTV Dish, and replace it with HD Antenna.
• Incidentally, DirecTV will not take the dish off your house when you cancel, you own it, up to you what to do with it.

Costs for Realizing your Tivo Mini doesn't work as you thought... eg, Coaxial Cable is old, hidden cable splitters in the house causing interference, and/or you require Ethernet Cabling in your home?

1. Free to $$$ big money! -- Know your home before you make the switch

Tivo Bolt vs Tivo Mini

Tivo Bolt from initial installation rocks, and it's rock solid!!

• Can flip through a guide, MUCH faster than direcTV Genie
• No ads in the guide!!
• Can get a season/onepass of shows within the Tivo search (not having to go between apps)
• FFW/RW search on DVR is much cleaner than DirecTV's genie
• Hooks up with wifi and existing cable, and Cable company will do whatever it takes to get the cable card (and provided tuning adapter) working at no additional costs.  
• To avoid 5 hours of having Cable installers in your house... Please insure your cable installer gives the correct MAC ID, DATA ID, and other pertinent info to his dispatch/service on the phone.  In addition, they had to put an "amplifier" on my cable coming in the house, this can easily be tested if they put another modem on the cable, to see if they can "lock signal"

Tivo Mini in theory is great!!

• Allows pretty much full access to your Tivo Bolt
• No additional monthly/lifetime service subscription for Tivo Guide
• Small device, takes up little room in the various rooms (similar to DirecTV Genie Mini) 
• You do not need to duplicate your recording lists on various TVs
• The channel list you select on the Bolt is available on the other TVs. (this is really important if you don't want to re-setup "channel lists" filtering 1900 channels - when you truly want only 190 of them)

Now for the Tivo Mini reality...

• Hooking this thing up is 100% your problem, and you are on your own to get it working.
• You will need a wired ethernet connection from your Tivo Bolt to your home wifi router.
• You heard that correct, wifi will not work with the Tivo Mini setup, even if you want to use the Coax networked environment known as "MoCA"
• Tivo Mini units will not support wifi either... OMG, they need either a wired ethernet connection, or the more preferred coaxial cable running back to a main splitter in your home, to create the "MoCA" network.
• After you feel all the wiring is done correctly... You will have provide ample time for several calls to tier1 support in far off call center, only to be instructed to reboot your home router, reboot your tivo bolt, reboot your tivo minis, unplug your tivo bolt, your tivo minis, unplug the coax from your tivo bolt, your tivo minis, repeat the guided setup on your tivo bolt, repeat the guided setup on each of the tivo minis, repeat this entire cycle multiple times.   
• This is a 2 day process, and if you don't want to impact your marriage, have a standby HD antenna you can plug into the bedroom tv, so your wife can get at least a few local channels (and of course streaming HBO/Netflix off your built in apps)
• After you get through this, and nothing else works, please ask to speak to a level2 support, who will run down your home system quickly.  From here, you'll need to know specifications on 1 or more of your splitters, and be able to confirm or deny that you have a POE filter on the cable coming into the house.

Dumping DirecTV after 14 years

After 14 years of DirecTV, it's time for a change... my kids don't watch much TV, and we're paying over $160/month for 4 rooms... which doesn't include all premium channels. I currently have a 2tb Genie (5 tuners), with 3 Genie Minis. IDEALLY, I would like to use an HD antenna on the roof (FREE), and just streaming apps, but maybe this is the compromise.

Problem: How do you get content you want, pay for what you want, and the convenience of what you currently have?  Furthermore, how do you not pay double, or triple for overlapping content?

HD Antenna - Great in theory... but for those of us who have been used to so many channels, are we ready? My issue is no ability to record local channels, eg sports, news, etc.  I also like the idea of having cable news channels, and the various "mind numbing" cable channels I passively tune into. "Passive" watching TV is very important to me... like to flip channels... and streaming just doesn't provide that.  Did you know that HD Antenna provides modern TVs with a channel guide!?! and the picture is AMAZING.

App streaming device instead of directv or cable? 
I have apps built in on all the new TV's in the house, I have also tried Roku, Chrome stick, etc, these  provide more app options including "sling", but they don't solve all my issues as listed above. Showtime can be accessed through Hulu, and HBO Go can be accessed either through amazon prime, or through app on a new Sony or Samsung TV. Fox news, CNN, and other channels can only be accessed through Sling, although I hear DirecTV OTT is offering this on some level. 

Paying for too much media!!
Lately, I have found myself paying for Netflix, Youtube Red (for the kids), Amazon Prime video (as a prime member), Hulu w/ showtime, just to test.  Media subscriptions are not necessarily duplicated, but they OVERLAP. 

My solution...  Tivo !!