While I can’t say the above TiVo Mini packaging is brand spanking new, I do frequent Best Buy and this is the first time I’ve seen funkadelic Roamio branding applied to other devices in TiVo’s arsenal. Beyond a bolder “TiVo” font and updated graphical elements, 6-tuner and Roamio DVRs are now referenced. Of course, I fully expected this day would come… back in 2013, when Best Buy had TiVo Stream hardware on clearance. Related, this particular retail outpost featured zero Stream inventory, not even a tag.
I wonder if they changed the remote to be a Roamio one as well. I doubt it, because I doubt they would do that without adding the RF controller. I purchased a Roamio one just so that my boxes all had the same style remote. Only thing is that I wish I had a dongle so that I could use it with RF. I guess I could find someone with a Roamio that buys the slide one that might give me the dongle…
@Josh,
My thoughts as well. This change appears to be external only but I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a minor hardware refresh at some point. I suppose TiVo could decide to start selling the RF dongle separately as well or bundle it with the Roamio basic RF remote.
Also Jason Nealis has been lobbying for a wireless Mini…
Josh someone over at TCF scored a free dongle by calling TiVo sales. Maybe give it a try
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=10126779#post10126779
Like you, I’d like the basic Roamio remote in the secondary bedrooms where a slide Pro wouldn’t be needed. I’d prefer RF, but have found the IR still to be very good though.
“Also Jason Nealis has been lobbying for a wireless Mini…”
Since 802.11n has been around awhile and could have easily been included in the Mini’s SoC, right? So I assume that TiVo avoided a wireless option due to their experience with unreliable home networks.
Of course for cable providers, such as Jason’s, they would take care of install and setup as well as support so a Mini with WiFi makes sense. Not sure about retail. And now with multi-user MIMO 802.11ac there’s never been a better time to support WiFi for users with no access to a MoCA or ethernet connection. Or who hate cables.
I think Jason Nealis and RCN pushing TiVo to do things it normally wouldn’t have done has been great for TiVo users.
It’s true that streaming full frame MPEG2 is more intensive than H.264 and I agree there’d be more support or return headaches in retail. Having said that, I hope they do it anyway. :) As to the initial rollout, I imagine they started simple with the lowest BOM possible and development timelines I’d say are at least a year – generally more in TiVo’s case, so who knows what chips they looked at when.
I find it strange that TiVo had the Stream on clearance yet it’s still on sale for $129.99 to this day everywhere, as well as numerous references across the TiVo website with the requirement of the Stream when using the base Roamio (which doesn’t have it built in like the more expensive models) if the user wants to stream content around the house or externally outside the home. Besides, the Stream has a boat load of functionality and hardware potential yet to be unlocked and all that’s needed is to update an app.