TIVO

Jeff is amazed by the uncompressed quality of HDTV you can get with a TV antenna. Leo says that's because the signal is sent over the airwaves uncompressed. You don't get that with cable or streaming. But is there a DVR for over-the-air recording? Leo says yes, there are a few. TIVO makes one. ChannelMaster is very popular. And then there's the SiliconDust HDHomeRun. Leo likes the HDHomeRun the best. One box can feed multiple TV and mobile devices around the entire house. But it's just a box.

Stan wants to buy the TIVO Edge recently. Leo says that the current deal of $249 is a pretty good deal, but he'll also have to pay for the service, guide, and commercial skip. Stan wants to get a model that he can use over the air with no cable. Leo says that's a good way to go if he's within range of the towers by line of sight.

Gary got a TIVO Bolt six months ago that uses a cable card, but it's now stuck in "guided setup" with his zip being wrong. How can he reset it? Leo suspects that particular Bolt is defective, perhaps with a faulty hard drive. But Leo replaced his, and it's wasn't the hard drive. So the next option is the power supply. But it sounds like the Bolt isn't all that reliable.

But Mike B in the chatroom says that your cable card may not be correctly configured. Go to your cable store and either ask for a new one or repair that card to your account. 

Jerry bought a DVR from Dish, and now he can't use it because he canceled the service. Is that fair? Rich says that even though you bought the DVR, Jerry still has to use the Dish service for it to operate. Rich recommends getting a TIVO; you can use it with a variety of services.

Tony has a TIVO Bolt and like Leo, he's getting the "red rainbow of death." He thinks it may be the power supply. Leo says he's already replaced the hard drive, and it's been booting up for five days. So a $25 power supply from WeakKnees may be the next best solution. 

Mike B. is calling to talk about the plan by TiVo to put in ads. Mike says that TiVo is obviously needing to in order to keep TiVo going. The good news is that if users have a TiVo Roamio or older, they won't get them. Only the Bolts or latest TiVos will. Leo says that it may just be easier to go with PLEX or the Silicon Dust HD Home Run.

Roland wants to know if there's an over the air DVR and if Amazon's new Recast is a good buy. Leo says that Recast is a new product that will work in between the antenna and the TV, but he will also need a FireTV or EchoShow to talk to it. Over the air, DVRs include the TIVO OTA Model. ChannelMaster. Silicon Dust HDHome Run. 

Mike is thinking of getting an over-the-air DVR and antenna. What's the best one to get? Leo says he's a TiVO fan, but it is the priciest option out there. There's also ChannelMaster, which is a nice OTA and they don't charge for the TV Guide. Silicon Dust also makes the HD Home Run. But Leo is a fan of TiVO because it lets him ad-skip. 

As for Antennas, check out TVFool.com and AntennaWeb.org.

Kevin wants to know how he can update the firmware on his old TIVo Roamio. Is there a way to put a new OS on it, like KODI? Leo says that would be difficult, it was designed to be a streaming media player. TIVOCommunity.com is a good place to go to see if anyone is doing that. Another good source is WeakKnees.com since they resell hardware.