TiVo Bolt will rock your TV’s world
MANHATTAN BEACH, CALIF. TiVo Bolt is a DVR. It’s a mediastreaming device. It’s a replacement for your cable box.
It’s actually all of those, as well as a pricey all-in-one unit geared toward the TV lover in a big way.
After spending several weeks watching, recording and finding programming via Bolt, I never want to go back to renting my Verizon FIOS set-top box again. And unlike the new (and less expensive) Apple TV, or other streaming boxes from Roku and Amazon, the Bolt offers a major consumer plus. You don’t have to change the TV input settings to bring on the streaming. Everything is tied together.
TiVo imagines a world in which broadcast, cable TV and streaming media apps such as Netflix and Amazon Prime all live in one universe, and thus if you were to search for a TV series like
Big Bang Theory on the Bolt, you’ll find entries for CBS, local syndication or streaming on Amazon Prime.
TiVo’s program guide is more viewer-friendly than what I get on my cable box, it’s easier to read and more colorful, and finding my taped shows takes fewer clicks than with cable.
TiVo threw in a bunch of fun features to sweeten the deal. A “skip” button automatically jumps over commercials, taking you from the first segment of the show to the second. It’s a total blast. Fine print alert, though: “skip” only works on 20 channels, the broadcast networks and selected cable channels such as AMC, Food Network and Comedy Central, and with shows that have aired from 4 p.m. to midnight.
One feature TV lovers should get a kick out of is TiVo’s suggestions. Once you start recording shows, TiVo begins to figure out your tastes and records other shows. For instance, once I asked TiVo to record Late Night with
Stephen Colbert, it also added The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and The Daily Show. (Suggested shows will be deleted first if you’re running short on space.)
The Bolt starts at $300 but includes one free year of Tivo service. Still, that’s twice as much as Apple TV or about three times as much as Roku. Those boxes, of course, can’t record shows or give you a guide to what’s on TV.