Review on TiVo Streaming Player Control TCD849500V by Saumeen Shamoon

The bolt works as advertised and is pleasant to use. I bought both Bolts and a Mini for my home. I wish I knew then what I know now. Installation and setup would be much easier. Here are some tips for those considering buying a TiVo Bolt for cable TV: 1. They tell you you need a CableCARD, and they do. BUT. What they don't tell you is that the CableCARD only works with the MAIN cable. If you have ANY levels above the base level, you should have an additional little box called a matching adapter. The typical cable TV technician doesn't carry any of these on his truck and you will have to go to your local cable TV office to pick them up.2. The setup adapter is required for tier 1, 2, movie channels, pay-per-view, video-on-demand, etc. as all of these channels require separate IP addresses. The CableCARD alone does not help. My first setup adapter was defective, which delayed its full functionality by almost a week after receipt. Be sure to hire a cable service technician familiar with CableCARD and tuning adapters. Through my experience. Very little. The Bolt communicates with the Mini either via Ethernet (good if your house is hardwired with Cat5 cable) or via a network protocol called MoCa (which stands for Multimedia over Coax Alliance). There is no need to buy external MoCa investments to build such a network. Bolt himself will act as the MoCa bridge. Basically, it uses your home's coaxial cable (the one you use for cable TV) as the network connection. BUT.4. Make sure your cable manufacturers install a MoCa filter on the internal cables so they don't weaken the connection between your Bolt and your Mini. My cable men installed a MoCa filter in the attic where the line enters my house from the outside. There is a splitter to run individual cables into each TV room and they installed a filter just before the splitter. What does it matter (they said). This prevents the MoCa signals between your Bolt and your Mini from escaping out of your house and down the cable lines to your neighbor's house and weakening the signal. Before I got this filter, the Mini would often lose connection to the Bolt and it was difficult to reconnect. I used to have to reboot my router, bolt and mini one by one and go through a lot of tricks to get it to connect IF it would connect. NO LONGER! with a denser network. It connects quickly and easily without restarting everything. This setup is DVR. Yes. But much more! You don't need to know the date, time and channel. IT KNOWS all of this. You tell him what you want to record and he goes there and finds it. INCLUDING STREAMING CHANNELS like NetFlix, Hulu, Revain Prime, YouTube and many more. (My cable man was shocked to hear this was possible. He said it was "dope!") It can also be set to record entire seasons of any TV show. As I already mentioned. built-in AppleTV or Roku. The most popular streaming channels to watch in addition to cable channels. The remote control is both IR (must be pointed at Bolt or Mini) and RF. That means you don't have to point it at the TV or the Bolt. You can point it in the opposite direction, it doesn't matter, it just works. It is also a smart remote control. It remembers the codes of your TV or AV receiver, and you can use it to turn the TV on and off, switch video inputs, and adjust the volume on either the TV or AV receiver. Wife loves not having to use so many remotes! Finally. Although the first few days were frustrating and tried my patience. It was worth it once I finally got everything set up correctly. LOVE IT!