TiVo TCDA94000 Stream

• Stream up to four recorded shows simultaneously
• Watch a show on a mobile device as it?s recorded
• Wirelessly transfer shows to mobile devices

First, what it doesn't do: It doesn't let you stream outside your network. If you want to stream outside your network then something like a SlingBox is the way to go.

Now, for what it does do: It'll stream recorded shows from your TiVo to your iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch. It'll allow you to download recorded shows from your TiVo to your iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch. You can stream live TV but it really just setups a recording and then starts streaming that recording to your iPad or iPhone.

What works really well is the streaming of recorded shows. You select a show, push the 'Watch on my iPhone' button and off you go. You can watch as long as you stay within range of your wireless network.

For streaming of live TV, it works well, too, but it's going to leave little recordings around on your TiVo. So, if you see 'Local Nightly News' is live in the guide, and start to stream it, it'll setup that recording, stream it to your iDevice and you'll be happy. When you go back into your Now Playing List on your TiVo you're going to see a recording of "Local Nightly News". Now, you could argue that it should clean this up or you could argue that it should hide it or maybe there ought to be an option. As it is, it's just sort of left there. Not a huge deal but it just seems like it should have an option to hide / cleanup such recordings unless you specifically say, "Record this program."

Downloading to your iDevice: Here's where if falls a little short. Yes, you can download non-copy protected shows to your iDevice. There are a few things to note with this:

Things like movies on HBO will almost always be copy protected.

Some cable companies (wrongly) copy protect everything in their lineup (thankfully mine doesn't). So research a little to make sure you don't fall into that camp.

You kind of have to baby-sit the downloads as there's no automatic way to make it happ. You can't, for instance, tell it, "Download and keep all of the latest Simpsons episodes," so you'd always have something to watch on mass transit on your way to work. Instead you have to individually select what you want on your iDevice each day that you want to watch something different.

The downloading takes some time. A 30min show is going to run you about 5mins and a 1hr show will run you about 10min. Not a big deal but say you want to load up 5 shows on your iDevice to watch that day you're now spending nearly 30mins to do it. So it's not like something where you can get out of the shower, select a few shows, and then head out the door. You're going to need to set it up probably the night before or just as soon as you get up and, because, as I mentioned above, there's no automated way to do this, you'll be selecting each program you want to watch individually each day.

When downloading the TiVo app has to remain open. So if you're downloading 5 shows at nearly 30mins your iDevice is going to be stuck on the TiVo app until it's done. As mentioned above you'll probably want to do this the night before and charge it while it happens. It's not stuck in that it's frozen the device. You can still exit out and do other things but if you do so the downloads will be paused until you open the TiVo app back up and allow it to finish.

So, the downloading works, but really isn't convenient. I'd have a hard time imagining someone using it day to day. It'd probably work well for loading up some shows for the kids for a trip. You'd just need to plan beforehand so that all of the shows you like were loaded before you left (so think a night or two before depending on how much you're loading).

Oh, one other thing about downloading that's not so great. You have two quality modes. Think of them as 'low' and 'high'. I can't tell the difference between the two on my iPhone. The low quality will be about 300MB/30min. The high quality will take up 500MB/30min. Now, the annoying thing is that there isn't a setting to say, "Always use high quality when downloading," or "Always use low quality when downloading" (and if they did add that setting it'd be nice if they added, "Always ask"). The problem with this is that while you're are selecting each program individually to download, which is already rather tedious, you're greeted with this other option in the app in the app each and every time you select a show to download.

I think if they added the preferred quality setting to the menu, allowed you to download either individual programs or groups, and maybe add some kind of automated iDevice Season Pass like option, that they'd be well on their way to making this a 5 star and, really, most of this review is about the app and not the Stream but you're interfacing with app to use the Stream. I still think they're going to be stuck with having to have the app open while you download as I believe it's just a limitation of iOS.

Finally, they need to update the app to support the iPhone 5's larger screen.

To my knowledge there is not currently an Android app (Nov 2012) but one is supposed to be available in 2013 so you Android users make sure that there's an app first and it supports the TiVo Stream before buying this.

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Full disclosure right off the bat, I got my Stream with AMEX points from ShopAmex. Hooked this up to my TiVo XL and followed setup instructions without any trouble. Yes, you do have to have your tivo hooked straight up to the network but since I am a Comcast subscriber my network box is right by the tv anyway.

I got this box because I have kids ranging from 7-17 and they never want to watch the same thing and everyone groups around the big tv in the livingroom even though they have good tvs in their bedrooms. The stream and tivo allow four actions to be happening at once. Any combination of recordings on the tivo and playings on ipads and you can of course be watching one more thing live. So feasibly we could ALL be watching something different in the same room with my five member family. (as long as we were not currently recording anything.

Streaming to the ipad is seamless so far after a week of heavy use. I don't see any latency issues. Picture quality on the iPad is great. You can download shows to the ipad and watch them on the go UNLESS this function is disabled by the copyright holder. Boss and Homeland episodes will not transfer from my tivo because of this, grrr!

Really, this entire feature set should be integrated into the tivo itself, instead of having to add yet another box to my home theater, but since we are a capitalist society and the name of the game is to make MO MONEY... it's all good.

I'm giving the product 5 stars in thanks for delivering me from iCarly!!!

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Easy setup and install. Though you do need a direct ethernet line to the unit. I ended up getting the moca adapters which worked flawlessly.

The good news is when it does work, it's great. Love it, love it!

The bad news is, it doesn't work consistently. Fortunately, unplugging and replugging the unit fixes the problems. I find I do this annoyingly too often however.

The issues I've experienced when streaming tivo shows to my ipad:

* picture looks scrambled (this happened one time the day after purchase)

* slightly jumpy/jittery pictures (I see this often)

* just doesn't work sometimes, error message indicating network related problems

These issues weren't related to the show I was watching, it happened consistently across all of the shows I had taped.

Again all these problems get resolved when I unplug and replug the unit's power.

Pretty disappointing overall, I've been waiting for this product ever since the announcement. I regret making the expensive purchase (of both the stream and moca adapters).

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The TiVo Stream is a great product that is badly marred by TiVo's restrictions. Eliminate one critical flaw, and I would give this 5 stars.

Pros

* Easy to set up

* Can stream over WiFi if you do it right

* Great picture quality on iPhone, iPad

Cons

* Set-up time is close to 30 minutes

* Audible fan noise

* Runs warm

* No key-hole slots for mounting

* Cannot stream or mirror to AppleTV

The last "con" is, by far, my biggest complaint.

SETUP

Setup is easy, but two issues require a lot of patience. First, the startup of the TiVo Stream takes about 10 minutes. This is ridiculous and is as bad as my TiVo Premiere. Second, you need to use the TiVo app to select your DVR and then set up the Stream. This process redirects you to your TiVo account where you need to activate your Stream. Once activated, it takes 15 minutes (!) to "pair" the Stream to your TiVo box. So don't get too excited when your Stream is delivered. It will be a while before it is actually working.

FAN NOISE

The fan noise is surprisingly audible for such a small device. It's actually louder than my TiVo box. It starts out fairly loud when first plugged in, but then slows down once it has completed startup. As the Stream gets warmer, however, fan speed (and noise) picks up again. If you plan on having your Stream near your TV or in a common living space, consider putting it inside a cabinet.

HEAT

The Stream runs warm, so make sure it will have plenty of ventilation. I don't have mine inside a media cabinet yet, so I don't know how much warmer it will get once I move it.

MOUNTING OPTIONS

There are none. It would be nice to be able to mount this inside my media cabinet or near other networking gear.

TiVo SOFTWARE

I am not surprised that the TiVo app does not natively stream video to an Apple TV. But I was really disappointed that it actively blocks mirroring to an Apple TV. Audio will transfer so that you can listen through your stereo, but what's the point of that if you are watching on a small screen? Headphones would be more appropriate. I suspect that TiVo blocks this to encourage you to buy another Premiere and another subscription. It may also be motivated by cable companies to help increase rentals of additional TiVo-enabled boxes. Boo! I consider this a very poor decision on TiVo's part.

The TiVo software does not yet support the wide screen of the iPhone 5. For wide screen content, this means there is letter boxing AND black pillars around the video image. I really hope this gets updated soon.

Playback of video streams supports play/pause, replay (8 seconds back) and skip (30 seconds forward). There is no fast-forward or rewind, so don't expect to experience the "bloop-bloop-bloop". There is a "scrubber" to set the playback position, but it is not responsive enough for instant feedback, nor is it accurate enough to replace fast-forwarding or rewinding.

NETWORKING

There has already been much discussion on the ability to use the TiVo stream over WiFi. Part of the issue is that the TiVo stream simply does not have WiFi capabilities, so it cannot join a WiFi network. But another issue is the demand placed on a WiFi network for this kind of application.

Supposedly, the TiVo Stream compresses the video before sending it off to your mobile device (which is connected via WiFi). If that's the case, then the biggest piece of bandwidth is the original data being transferred between the TiVo box and the TiVo stream.

My solution was to connect my TiVo Premiere and the TiVo Stream to the same network SWITCH mounted on the back of my media cabinet. I already had one there anyway to connect my TiVo box and Blu-ray player to the network. By connecting the TiVo Stream to the switch, the TiVo box and the TiVo Stream can communicate directly without involving WiFi. My network switch is then connected to a wireless bridge. In my case, this is an Apple Airport Express configured in bridge mode. The Express then connects via WiFi to a Netgear router for network access. The upside is that the heavy bandwidth of the original video never travels over WiFi. The downside is that the compressed video now travels twice over my wireless network. Once from the bridge to the router, and once from the router to my iPhone.

OVERALL EXPERIENCE

The picture quality was excellent for HD content. I had no problems on my iPhone, but there were a few hiccups on my iPad. Part of that might be that I have a first generation iPad. The iPad also has a larger screen, so the bandwidth may be larger. At one point, the iPad stuttered badly, which I think was related to my kids use of the wireless network. So don't expect multiple streams to work well over a WiFi setup.

The inability to stream video to an Apple TV is a huge disappointment. I was at least hoping for mirroring so that I could watch recorded content in my basement "theater" while my wife watched her favorite TV shows live in the family room. I strongly urge TiVo to drop this restriction. It may actually convince non-TiVo users to finally take the plunge.

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My wife wouldn't let me put a TV in the bedroom because it disturbs her when she's sleeping. However I like to fall asleep watching TV which meant I had a lot of nights where I fell asleep on the couch and then wondered into bed in the middle of the night. After I got my iPad I started watching podcasts in bed and my wife was OK with that because the iPad is small with low audio so it doesn't disturb her. This was a lot better for my back, but I missed watching my real shows so I still spent a few nights a week on the couch. When TiVo released the Stream I bought one immediately. Now I can watch my real shows in bed via my iPad and everyone is happy. :)