- So I've got a confession to make.
I have never, ever used a TiVo.
Just never had any reason to do it, right?
Back when I had cable, I had DVRs and everything.
Now that I'm streaming everything,
well, its all in the cloud.
So I'm telling y'all that because
this is the new TiVo Stream 4K,
you can buy it now directly from TiVo for about $50.
I just don't really have any context for TiVo, is all.
Now, Android TV on the other hand,
I have all kinds of context for that.
In fact, I've been using it long before
it was even called Android TV.
And this new TiVo thing?
It is Android TV.
But what does that mean, really?
And is there any reason why you should buy
the new TiVo Stream 4K over, say,
Roku or Apple TV or Amazon Fire TV
or even another Android TV box?
All right, let's go do this.
(upbeat music)
So this is it, the TiVo Stream 4K.
It's $50 directly from TiVo right now
and I'm sure we'll see it on sale
somewhere else at some point.
So its a dongle, which means that it will dangle
from the back of your TV ever so slightly.
Its got eight gigs of storage on board,
but really you have access to a little less
than half of that.
It also has two gigs of RAM,
if that's the sort of thing you're worried about.
It's got dual-band WiFi five,
that's 802.11AC if you care about such things.
And its powered by a micro-USB cable
even though there's also a USB-C
for external storage or ethernet.
What a world, right?
And you heard that correctly,
it's got micro-USB for power, USB-C for everything else.
This is why we can't have nice things.
So as the name implies,
the TiVo Stream 4K will in fact stream in 4K,
which is good 'cause that would've been
really awkward if it couldn't.
It'll also do Dolby Vision for HDR,
and Dolby Atmos for audio if you happen
to have a setup that does Dolby Atmos.
Chances are you don't.
And that's it for the hardware, mostly.
Except for the remote control,
which we will get to in a minute.
So like I said, the TiVo Stream 4K
is built on Android TV.
It's got an Android TV home screen.
Take a bigger look at that in a minute
but just know that the software is mostly Google.
Okay, so what makes this thing a TiVo?
I mean it doesn't have hard drives for recording,
which is really what I tend to think about
when I think about TiVo.
Really what we have here is Android TV,
and I kinda can't stress that enough.
From the initial setup, very much Android TV.
That said, this is the first Android TV box
I've seen that really forces me to
install that much bloatware.
Now don't worry about it,
you can get rid of those apps later.
You can uninstall them if you don't wanna use them,
but- (sighs)
Come on.
Otherwise, guess what?
It's Android TV, and that means
the same Android TV home screen
and settings that you're used to.
It means Google Play for more apps,
it means that Chromecast is built in.
And it means that the user interface
is a little more complicated than
what you're gonna find on Amazon Fire TV or on Roku
or especially Apple TV, which is super simple.
And for what it's worth,
the TiVo Stream 4K is running Android Nine,
which is normal for Android TV
and mine updated to the March security patch
when I first installed everything.
But again, none of that is really TiVo, right?
And neither is the fact that this thing
really wants you to use it with Sling TV
for all your live TV needs.
Now it doesn't quite force you to,
you can still use it with YouTube TV
or, I don't know, Hulu with live TV,
or whatever else you want.
So long as it has an app on Android TV,
you can use it here.
And you can still use an over-the-air antenna if you want,
that's still baked into Android TV too.
So now the TiVo part really comes in
with a TiVo Stream app, and that's actually
what you see over my shoulder here.
And, well, this kinda hit.
So it's an app that aggregates content
from all kinds of different sources.
Now not everything ties into this,
but most of the big ones do, all right.
Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, you get the idea.
So if you caught it real quick during the setup process,
it's gonna ask you about other
streaming services that you use.
But then, it's gonna ask you about
what kind of shows you like, and say,
"All right, pick this one or this one,
that one or that one".
And it's gonna take that information and start
recommending shows to you in the Tivo Stream app.
And that's fine, I mean that's not that unusual, right?
Apple does it, Android TV does it, Roku does it.
Where I think TiVo Stream 4K is
doing a really good job, though, is it says,
"Okay here's this show, now here's
where you can go watch it".
Whether it's on Hulu or Amazon or Netflix or wherever.
It shows you all the options, which is really really cool.
And, look okay, there's really nothing magical about that.
I mean, the algorithm maybe, but I don't think so.
But really its just the fact that it shows the
multiple locations where you can watch a single show.
Not everybody does that and not everybody
does it as clearly as TiVo's doing here.
It's really that simple.
The UI gets a little busy,
but it's still really nicely designed
and I tell ya, it's a hell of a lot easier to use
than just the default Android TV user interface.
It's also not as simple as Roku,
and really I think this is what
gets into my major problem with this TiVo Stream 4K.
And that is the TiVo Stream app itself is just an app,
it's just an app running on top of Android TV,
which is in and of itself
a fairly complicated user experience.
Now back to the TiVo Stream app,
the other really cool thing is
this is where it directly integrates with Sling TV.
It's where you're gonna find the live guide,
it's where you're gonna find more programming information.
Now it'd be really cool if you could do all this
with all the other livestreaming services
like Hulu or YouTube TV, right?
But I get it.
Sling TV gets preferential treatment
and you get a $50 streaming dongle.
All right, one more thing here,
I promised to talk about the remote.
And it's usually feast or famine
when it comes to remote controls, right?
Amazon's remote is pretty much crap,
Apple TV's remote, it's even worse,
don't use it, please.
Roku's remotes are okay, but they're
really nothing to write home about.
And Nvidia Shield has a triangle.
Now TiVo has the peanut remote, the infamous peanut remote,
'cause it's shaped like a peanut.
It feels really good in the hand.
The buttons, they're are a lot of them,
maybe too many, but they're also well within reach
even for my freakishly small thumbs.
The old skip button is still here too,
and it's a little hit and miss.
It works in some apps to skip forward 10 seconds,
and others it doesn't, but whatever,
give it a shot.
So yeah, good remote control.
Thank you TiVo, that's good to see.
All right, time for the big question.
Is the TiVo Stream 4K worth your money?
Well, I'm gonna ask you one other question first.
How much do you watch Sling TV?
If you're all in on Sling TV, it's almost a no brainer.
This is a really good experience,
especially with that direct integration and the live guide.
If you don't use Sling TV as your
livestreaming video provider of choice,
it's still a pretty good experience.
You're just gonna miss out on
some of the bells and whistles,
but it's still a pretty decent
Android TV experience, again for 50 bucks.
So even if you try it and decide it's just not your thing,
you're not out, say, $200.
And this is probably the best $50
Android TV experience I have had so far.
There's some pretty bad ones out there.
Now that's not to say everything's perfect here,
because it's not.
Now, what don't I like?
Well, trying to teach somebody to use
the TiVo Stream app on top of
the Android TV user experience,
and why they're not the same,
that's gonna be confusing on a good day.
If TiVo Stream were the complete user interface here,
that'd be a totally different story.
But it's not.
I've also had a few hiccups with the Dolby Atmos audio,
specifically it wasn't working for me
in the Amazon Prime Video app.
So you might have to dive into the settings a little bit
and see if you can figure things out.
And the hardware is a little bit sluggish.
That's not surprising for a $50 piece of hardware
but just know that it's-
It's not a Shield TV, it's not that powerful.
But all in all, you get a lot here for $50.
It's not a bad experience at all.
And again, it's also not the most expensive.
If it doesn't work out for you,
it'll work just fine on a secondary TV.
So that's it for the TiVo Stream 4K,
if you got any other questions hit me up
in the comments down below, go find me on the socials.
You know where I am, modern day and all that stuff, right?
That's it, see you next time.
(upbeat music)