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Recording OTA TV with Tivo's Roamio

Roamio is Tivo’s new set top box designed for recording over the air programming, as well as programs from various Internet-based services, including Netflix and Hulu. In this article, author Michael Miller discusses who Roamio is designed for, and how it can make life easier for all the cable cutters out there.
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Have you cut the cable cord? Do you watch most of your television program from online services or over the air (OTA)? Then Roamio is for you. Roamio is the latest set top device from Tivo, and it can record programs from an OTA digital antenna or stream programming from Internet-based services, such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon.

Is Roamio something you need in your household? Just who is Roamio designed for? And how do you get the most out of it? Read on to learn more.

All About Roamio

TiVo is long known for its innovative digital video recorder (DVR) devices. The original TiVo box revolutionized television recording, and the company continues to sell a variety of DVRs today.

TiVo calls all of its current generation of DVRs “Roamio.” There are currently four different models of Roamio boxes, with different feature sets and recording capacities.

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Tivo’s Roamio OTA DVR for antenna TV.

For our purposes, we’ll ignore the two higher-end and higher-priced models (Roamio Plus and Roamio Pro), both of which are designed for cable TV users and do not offer OTA viewing or recording. Instead, our focus is on those two models that let you view and record local TV channels over the air—the basic Roamio and no-frills Roamio OTA.

Both of these boxes are super duper DVRs designed for people who get their network and local programming over the air. These DVRs are a lot more versatile than your old cable or satellite DVR. They you record up to four OTA channels simultaneously, and can store up to 75 hours of HD programming (or 500 hours of SD programming).

Even better, both Roamios do more than just record OTA programming. They also let you play streaming video from various Internet-based services, such as Netflix, Hulu Plus, and YouTube. You can also use any Roamio to play streaming music from Pandora, Spotify, and other music services. So if your cable cutting involves both Internet-based streaming and OTA programming (which it no doubt does), Roamio is a one-stop shop for all the programs you watch.

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Last Update: November 17, 2020