Having lived with the TiVo Mini in our master bedroom three months, we’re generally pleased with the solution. Yeah, it’s possibly overpriced at $250 (including Lifetime service)… but remains the only game in (my) town given Verizon’s FiOS TV Media Server delay. And that bug where playback drops towards the end of recordings currently in progress stings. But, if/when Netflix and Amazon apps land on the platform, all will be forgiven.
If you too have acquired a Mini or are considering it, and intend to hide the mini in a cabinet or hang it behind your television, the TiVo store is now selling the promised USB IR extender ($15) and a wall mount+extender bundle ($20) — although brace yourself for shipping fees that could run over 50% the product cost. (via TiVo Community)
FYI… I got a TiVo Mini this month. It’s hooked up to a 30″ 4:3 picture tube TV I got in college years back. Apparently it doesn’t support the 4:3 aspect using the composite breakout cable. I have a ticket entered with TiVo about it, but they’ve known about the situation with another guy for a few months.
At least with the shipping, it seems that if you purchase with a Mini, it is free.
My only real gripe about the Mini, aside from the locked down tuner issue of course, is that I ran into some problem that locked it up. I travel a lot, and the Mini is in a guest bedroom and I regularly use Sling Player on my laptop to access it from hotels. Something I did, perhaps attempting to initiate a transfer from the desktop (can’t do this from the Mini for some reason), locked the Mini up. Or at least whenever I logged in via the Sling Player it was unresponsive and just showed me a black screen. By the time I got back a week later, it had recovered, but I spent several days being unable to use it for what I paid for it. Hasn’t occurred again. No idea what the problem was. If it happened a lot I’d put a WeMo or something on it so I could power cycle it, but I haven’t seen it again.
That said, I won’t be buying a second one to replace the TiVo HD in the master bedroom until they a) fix the tuner allocation, b) release a 6-tuner TiVo with a faster processor.
What’s the giant box at the end of the wire? The IR receiver!? I’m already using an IR extender with a much smaller visual footprint. They run about 40 bucks on Amzn, shipped. No handy dandy custom bracket (which should be an every unit item BTW), but more versatile with IR repeating and multiple heads. This needs to be cheaper, smaller and extensible to more devices to be enticing to me. As always with TiVo over the past 8 years, almost…
not needed at all… 3M velcro and a light colored wall / white ceiling and im in business for about 4 bucks… the tivo mini is so light, it does not need a bracket.