Hardware

Top: Roamio Pro; bottom: a TiVo Premiere box.

The connections and form factor of the TiVo Roamio Pro are very similar to that of the Premiere line: a CableCARD slot, one coax connector, two USB ports, Ethernet, eSATA, Toslink, analog audio / video and HDMI out. What's new are the internals, including 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi and a new chip (a Broadcom BCM7241) that has the power to speed up the TiVo user experience, as well as launch third-party apps quickly and stream content to other devices. All at the same time. There are also more tuners and bigger hard drives. At the high end, we have the Pro for $599 with six CableCARD tuners and 3TB of space. Next is the Plus, which also has six tuners, but only 1TB of space for $399. At the other end of the price range is the standard Roamio for $199, which only has four ATSC or CableCARD tuners, a 500GB hard drive and no built-in Stream functionality or MoCA. None of the new models support analog cable. These limitations are not a big deal for most, but some will be disappointed. Cable-cutters certainly won't be, though; the ATSC model is the box they've been waiting for, as the old ATSC model only had two tuners and didn't support the TiVo Mini.

The fit and finish of the new box is appealing, with the cheap plastic of the Premiere gone and a nice, textured gray material with a glossy piano-black faceplate taking its place. Oh, the face. Yeah, the TiVo guy on the front of the Roamio doesn't have one, which is odd since he isn't faceless on the remote. The other newsworthy additions are the touch-sensitive power button and a new remote finder button; press it and the remote will start emitting the same music as the TiVo start-up video. The last mentionable change is the recording indicator. Now, there's only a single-circle recording indicator, then five smaller semicircles off to the right. And the lights on the box are, of course, not so bright that they're distracting, and can be turned off completely via the settings.

The new remote gets its own section, but one aspect we must cover here is the lack of HDMI-CEC on any of the new TiVos. We surely sound like a broken record at this point, but this time around should be much louder, as the missed use case is worse than ever. TiVo obviously recognizes the value in moving away from IR, but by not including HDMI-CEC in the Roamio, the new RF remote must still rely on IR for TV power and volume. This creates a somewhat disjointed experience because you can control the Roamio without any regard for where the remote is pointed, but to adjust the volume you must be sure to point it in the right direction. Add in our old points about the prominence of CEC in modern TVs and AV receivers and our dream of being able to turn our TVs on with the great smartphone and tablet apps from TiVo, and, needless to say, we're disappointed. There's the chance that it could be added later, as our understanding is that the lack of CEC in most DVRs has more to do with software than with hardware, but we aren't holding our breath and TiVo isn't commenting.

Remote

The only thing that TiVo releases less often than a DVR is a new remote. The entire Roamio lineup includes the same remote, which means that while the base model also gets the benefits of RF, the top-of-the-line models' remote no longer features a backlight or the ability to learn IR codes (the built-in IR database is very extensive, though). Upon unboxing the remote, we almost immediately referred to it as the stubby peanut -- affectionately, of course. It reminds us of the size of the discontinued TiVo Slide Remote, but not quite as short. We were happy with the size of the old ones, but the smaller size does make it a bit easier to reach all the buttons. The other big change is the addition of a "back" button.

From left to right: the old TiVo remote, the Glo remote and the new Roamio remote.

The TiVo user experience still doesn't require a back button; this new addition is for the streaming apps like Netflix and YouTube (the back button provides the same function as the left button while in the native TiVo UI). This is undoubtedly the result of a decision by TiVo to no longer optimize the streaming apps for the TiVo experience. Whatever the impetus, it pretty much squashes any hope we might have still had for a congruous user experience.

That being said, it does come in very handy when you leave the TiVo experience for another app; it's less jarring than switching inputs. In most cases. The only other notable button change is the front-and-center repositioning of the guide button, pushing the mute and record buttons aside. We find this very odd, as this button is primarily for those who watch live TV first, as opposed to our TiVo experience of going straight to My Shows when we sit down -- TiVo users typically watch less live TV than most. We would've preferred to see the space used for a shortcut to Watch Now or My Shows, but this is likely an attempt to appeal to those not currently using a TiVo.

The big point of differentiation here, though, is the remote's RF capabilities. No longer do you need to worry about having line-of-sight to your TiVo to control it, which means you can hide the DVR behind closed doors, or change the channel without moving your hand outside the warm and comfy confines of your favorite blanket. The remote does still emit IR, though, but only to control your TV and AV receiver -- as we mentioned before. The Roamio also still features an IR receiver so you can use your old TiVo remote or, say, a programmable one.

Software

With the new Roamio hardware comes a few updates to the software. The entire user interface has been refreshed, which essentially amounts to a darker, almost black, background instead of blue. The What to Watch Now feature from the smartphone and tablet apps has been added to TiVo Central, but without any configurable options. The really exciting new feature is the long-awaited ability to use the iOS apps to stream and download content from outside the home. This is of course limited by your available throughput, but it's at least easy to set up. It works well enough, but despite having FiOS internet service and LTE on a mobile device, the picture quality of the live stream was still far from what we've come to expect from a Slingbox. We imagine adaptive streaming isn't an easy thing and hope the quality gets better in future releases.