mardi 27 septembre 2016

Series 3 has better Picture than Bolt

I recently bought a 1TB Roamio OTA (with a Stream Box) with lifetime to replace my aging 1TB Series 3 with lifetime.

It installed like clock work, but in the end all I got was Commercial Skip.
The Stream Box was almost useless, since it never allows streaming out of home.

For $500 I figured I'd rather hold out for an affordable (and more current) Bolt so I returned it. But Roamio OTA worked fine.

Finally a few deals started showing up on Bolt's (I refuse to pay $849 for lifetime 1TB) with the new Bolt+ announcement.

So I picked up a brand new 1TB bolt with lifetime for $650.

After a bumpy start I noticed something wasn't right about the picture.

I have a 65" 2016 LG OLED 4K TV (C6). I've been very happy how it handles the TIVO 1080i (typically).

Not trusting my memory I hooked both up and A/B back and forth.

It's just a little bit softer. On a 65" OLED a "little bit softer" is really exaggerated. I noticed it as "pasty cheeks and foreheads".

I tried to enabled all Video Formats in the TIVO (so it would transmit Native) as well as Only enabling 1080i to make sure it didn't upsample 1080i.

I had my wife blind test it and she could clearly see it.

I also have a very high end home theater and the Fan in the Bolt is much noisier than the Series 3. Bolt runs uncomfortably hot in a very cool room with a dedicate shelf with no electronics below it. Series 3 always ran pretty cool.

I didn't notice either issue with the Roamio OTA. The Series 3 and Roamio look the same as the Native tuner in the TV.

The fact that the "4K Bolt" does NOTHING 4K, if and when it ever does, I just don't see how it possibly could do 4k properly since it can't even match an 8 year old Tivo at 1080i.

It's pretty depressing because this is Tivo's "Top tier" platform now.

Unfortunately Bolt is going back. Luckily I can return it.


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