Hey, just so you know ... this post is now about 10 years and 5 months old. Please keep that in mind as it very well may contain broken links and/or outdated information.

When I got my first TiVo back in 2003 it seemed like I was adding new TiVos to my “collection” almost every year and had four of them by 2007. With the recent release of the TiVo Roamio line I decided to do a little consolidation and upgrade my setup with the latest hardware.

My existing TiVo setup consisted of the Premiere (2 tuners), the OLED S3 (2 tuners), and the THD (2 tuners). I still have my original Series2 (single tuner, non-HD) box but it’s been sitting in a closet, unused, for some time (kept only for sentimental reasons).

I ended up selling the THD on eBay but kept the OLED S3 and Premiere for now since they both have lifetime service (although they are now in the closet with the S2). I replaced the lot with a new 6-tuner, 3TB Roamio Pro.

The Roamio is TiVo’s fastest DVR to date … the HDUI absolutely flies on it, a welcome change from the sluggish performance that has plagued it since its introduction in 2010 on the Premiere. The six tuners remove the need for extra DVRs in the house (no more recording conflicts) and the 3TB hard drive means no external hard drive and still 450 HD recording hours. The Roamio (Plus and Pro models) also has an internal TiVo Stream that allows you to stream recorded content from your TiVo to your iPhone or iPad via the iOS app. You can also now stream content while away from your home network (called OOH, or out-of-home streaming) but the caveats there are that currently it’s WiFi only (unless you’re jailbroken) and you can’t (and probably will never be able to) stream copy-protected content. The redesigned peanut remote is smaller than the Premiere’s remote but larger than the Slide (now replaced by the Slide Pro) and can communicate with the Roamio via RF (no more Bluetooth dongle). There’s even a neat little remote-finder feature: press a button on the front of the Roamio and the remote will play a little TiVo tune until you find it hiding between your sofa cushions. In addition to supporting ethernet and MoCA for network connectivity, the Plus and Pro models also have built-in WiFi. For a more complete, detailed view of the Roamio, check out the Ars Technica article here.

I was replacing three TiVos with the Roamio, but still needed a way to watch recorded content in other rooms so the other two DVRs were replaced with TiVo’s extender, the Mini.

The Mini doesn’t have a hard drive and thus can’t record content but it can stream shows from the Roamio (or older Premiere) once connected to your home network via ethernet or MoCA and can temporarily borrow a tuner from the Roamio (or 4-tuner Premiere) for Live TV watching. It also supports the same apps as its big brother DVRs like Pandora, Netflix, Hulu Plus, etc. You can also use it to manage your To Do List and Season Passes on the host DVR. It’s small and quiet which makes it perfect for a bedroom and can even mount relatively easily out of sight on the back of your flat screen TV. Unfortunately, the one downside of the Mini is that it requires a service plan (personally, I don’t pay monthly subscriptions anymore and always go with the Lifetime service).