The New Tivo Roamio – no subscription fee
Tivo’s latest OTA (over the air) Roamio will be aimed at the cord-cutting market that doesn’t like paying subscription fees. The idea of cord-cutting is to get rid of the strings and attachments, not just to cable companies, but to any type of re-occurring cost. However, this DVR comes with a substantial up-front cost of $399 for a 1TB model. Normally Tivo charges a $15 monthly fee for the service, but units can be had for as little as $70 for a 500 GB model.
This isn’t Tivo’s first foray into subscription-free units. Back in the early 2000’s Tivo worked with Toshiba, Pioneer, Sony and Phillips to produce units with lifetime free basic Tivo service. These models were designed to work with cable, satellite or an antenna. Today’s OTA units will only work with an over the air antenna and were offered to compete with Tablo, a network-based OTA DVR with a cost of $299.
Compare to Tablo
The Tablo also charges a $4.99 monthly fee, or a one-time $149.99 cost for lifetime service. However, Table is viewable throughout the home’s network on different devices or over the Web.
Compare to ChannelMaster DVR+
The ChannelMaster also comes with a 1TB drive for extensive recording of programs, but only two tuners compared to four for the Roamio.
Cost
In addition to Tablo and the ChannelMaster DVR+ Tivo’s new Roamio will be competing with, well, Tivo. Lifetime subscription’s have fluctuated. Today’s cost is $600, but was as little as $250 a year ago when paired with the older Roamio or $300 for both the unit and service together. However, compared to today’s lifetime fee, the new Roamio is a steal. So, is this new offering much different than what they have done in the past, not really, but timing is everything.
Features
There is more to the new Roamio than the inclusion of free lifetime service. The newest version has a huge 1TB hard drive which will enable TV enthusiasts up to 150 hours of HD programming. Tivo includes their newest software like QuickMode and SkipMode. Now users with less time on their hands can play back recordings in less time, 30 percent less. SkipMode allows viewers to bypass commercials with a simple press of a button.
Standard features remain like OnePass (combining over-the-air broadcasts with streaming services), OneSearch (universal search). The new Roamio will still work with Tivo Minis to allow users to watch on more than one TV, but at a cost of coarse ($130). Tivo includes 4 tuners to allow recording of up to 4 different shows at once. You won’t need a separate streaming device to watch Hulu Plus, Netflix or Amazon Prime, you can do that all with Tivo Roamio.
Conclusion
At Savings Beagle we focus on saving you money. Will the new Roamio do that? Well, it all depends on what you want to save on. Compared to paying $100 a month on cable, sure it will. The new Roamio will only cost about 4 months worth of cable, let you record up you to 150 hours of programming, and gives you the reliability and ease of use Tivo is known for. The problem with low cost DVR solutions like Homeworx or Viewtv DVRs is that they are very buggy and not as reliable.
Also worth noting, while we like the flexibility of Tablo’s networked DVRs, they don’t get rated very well (3.6 stars on Amazon). Tivo’s have the highest ratings, usually in the mid 4s on Amazon, the new Roamio comes in at 4.3 stars with over a thousand reviews. For users that just want their DVR to work, it is hard to argue against a Tivo.
