Digital Video Recorder is a thing from the past and still exist to these days because we still need it especially those who love watching movies or shows. Along with the growth of streaming services, a dependable recorder needs to be upgraded to be more modern. Tivo is probably one of the most popular manufacturer and Tivo Bolt vs Premiere XL are their two favorite box in the catalogue. Separated by released time, they also carry different capabilities, if you are curious, check our article below.
In this article, we are going to give you information about:
– What are Tivo Bolt and Tivo Premiere XL
– What Tivo Bolt and Tivo Premiere XL Look Like
– What Tivo Bolt and Tivo Premiere XL can offer to you
– Tivo Bolt vs Tivo Premiere XL
About Tivo Bolt
When looking for something, we tend to also look for the brand whether it is among the top list with good record or not and for a DVR itself, Tivo is probably one of the most well-known brand. With the release of Bolt, the company seems to move forward from their former products which is only a device to record videos to now becoming your unified entertainment system. This one replace the popular Roamio from the 5th gen with of course more upgraded capabilities.
Tivo Bolt Design
We should agree on something that Bolt is indeed look more attractive than many other Tivo’s DVR because it is not using the most common black box design anymore. As you can see, this one is in white color with a curved shape which makes it even stand out in your living room. There is no clear actual benefit from the design but probably to allow better airflow while the prominent benefit is how good it is to the eyes.
Tivo Bolt Features
Just like its predecessor, Roamio, this unit also works with a CableCard from your service provider or with an HD antenna if you want to record over-the-air programming. Since it is an upgraded recorder, you don’t have to worry about how many content you can take at once because Bolt has 4 tuners and if you wish for more, you can add Mini extenders that sold separately to let you use up to 3 extra tuners for viewing and recording contents in other TV.
Not only give you access to TV shows, it will also give you access to OTT content from popular services like Amazon Prime, Hulu Plus, Vudu, Netflix, and more. For those who love seeing content in extra high quality, Bolt is now capable of recording 4K contents from various sources such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, and YouTube. Another upgrade they decide to bring along this quality is on the design itself because it now has station graphics to freshen the appearance of their program guide. Read also: Tivo Bolt vs Tivo Premiere here.
Even though it is not a new capability anymore, this guide can also be filtered by specific topics to let you browse easier according to your keyword. The interface is also becoming HD even though when it first came out you can still find some in standard definition, the improvement showed by the company is very good. What makes some people turn off by Tivo’s DVR like Bolt is the service fee that can get too expensive. For this unit, the capacity available are 500GB and 1TB, so it can record up to 150 hours for HD content.
About Tivo Premiere XL
Not only Bolt, the company has several other units that have the same dependability as well as features to let you record and watch content from across services. If you are looking for more affordable units but still don’t want to lose much features, you may want to check Tivo’s older releases, the Premiere XL. This is very similar to the regular Premiere but with some more better features such as the THX certification and of course a bigger capacity.
Tivo Premiere XL Design
When looking at the unit, you can see that this one is more compact than its predecessor even though the design is still the same and not as compact as the newer launched units. It is sporting a clean and flat as well as sleek appearance which is making it look okay but not special. Moving to the back side, taken from CNET here you can find its Cable Card slot, component video out, A/V out, optical audio out, HDMI, Ethernet, USB ports (2), and eSATA Connector.
Tivo Premiere XL Features
What has been improved in this DVR from older models is now the framework is based on Adobe Flash Lite to promote easy to develop more functionality in the future. The user interface is upgraded to provide more eye-pleasant quality which moved from the previous 480p to 720p HD. To ease you when surfing on the content you are currently want to watch, there is search function which is upgraded from the Beta version, so if you ever used the older models, expect it to be better.
All the older key functions like Record, FF/REW, Playback Recorded Programming and Surf Two Tuners are still available but instead of fast forwarding skip, now the player will play the scene while fast forwarding for 30-second. One of the big plus of owning a DVR like Premiere XL is the capability to hook up approved hard drives for up to 1GB if you need more storage even though it is kind of unfortunate that you can’t plug just any hard drives.
To let you record few contents at once, Premiere XL is coming with two tuners, so at least you can record more than one shows/movie in case their time is overlapping or there is another person also want to use the DVR. In term of capacity, this unit offer 1TB of storage that can be used to record up to 150 hours of HD recording.
Comparison
Now, let’s compare Tivo Bolt with Premiere XL. As you may already know, both of them offer a similar capabilities, but the prominent upgrade they put on Bolt is more tuners (4 vs 2) and the ability to record 4K content which is still not available for XL. Another difference is Premiere XL is THX certified which means it is claimed to have exceptional sound and video quality.
Tivo Bolt vs Tivo Premiere XL
Conclusion
All in all, the decision is all yours to make. In our opinion, both of them are similarly dependable and you can pick based on your need but if you are looking for the better among them, we will highly recommend you Tivo Bolt.