TiVo Roamio OTA

Low initial cost ; No cable subscription required ; Streaming options and four OTA HD tuners ; Same software and accessories as the regular Roamio

15 monthly service fee, with no Lifetime Service option ; No HDMI-CEC

TiVo's latest is the best over-the-air DVR ever made, but the $15 monthly service fee (combined with the lack of a Lifetime Service option) means you're trading a low upfront price for some high long-term costs.

As close as you can get to an all-in-one box for cord-cutters ; "Peanut" remote works as well as ever ; Low upfront cost

Booting takes forever ; The UI isn't 100 percent HD ; Should be smaller ; Monthly fee

Combines an OTA DVR with a streaming box ; Very powerful software, with a terrific user interface ; Very inexpensive hardware

Mandatory $15-per-month subscription ; No support for premium OTT services such as HBO and Showtime ; Too difficult to program DVR to record only new episodes

As good a DVR as the Roamio OTA is, it would make a cord-cutter’s life even better if it included support for a service such as SlingTV (so that you could get some of the channels that are otherwise available only with a pay-TV subscription), along...

Combines an OTA DVR with a streaming box ; Very powerful software, with a terrific user interface ; Very inexpensive hardware

Mandatory $15-per-month subscription ; No support for premium OTT services such as HBO and Showtime ; Too difficult to program DVR to record only new episodes

The absence of those services, and my nit-picky comment about recording full seasons of new episodes, are my only complaints about the Roamio OTA. A lot of people hate subscription fees, but the power and the convenience that TiVo’s software and...

Great search features ; Extremely smooth video and audio quality ; Spot-on recommendation service

Miserable, unintuitive setup ; Clunky, nonoptimized interface ; Expensive monthly subscription fees ; Huge device

The Roamio OTA is OK at what it does, but it's tough to set up and, considering fees, much more expensive than its $50 price tag lets on.

The TiVo Roamio OTA does not require any sort of subscription.

It can only capture OTA content or streamed video from services you have subscriptions to.

The TiVo Roamio OTA has multiple tuners and 1TB of storage, making it a decent option for a family, though it is somewhat limited in the variety of content it can record.