Two Years With the TiVo Stream 4K
I guess you can call this a longterm use review. If you’ve read my previous articles (1,2) you know I purchased a TiVo Stream 4K as my streaming dongle solution a couple of years ago. I’ve been a TiVo user for many years, having started with the DirecTiVo unit in 2004 and advancing through several different units until finally cutting the cord in 2018. As soon as I saw TiVo had a streaming solution built on the Android TV platform, I decided they could have my dollar.
The first thing I noticed with the TiVo Stream 4K dongle was that it had 2 operating systems, the TiVo OS and the Android TV OS. Frankly, I’ve never had much use for the TiVo OS, and with the latest update, it has been minimized to irrelevance on the device. The new face of the device is the Google TV face and it’s easy to navigate with the RF remote. It’s easy to pin apps as favorites and to arrange them in a preferred order. Installing new apps is also easy through the Google Play store. My featured apps include Plex, Amazon Prime, Max, YouTube, and Netflix.
One thing I only recently discovered with the TiVo Stream 4K is being able to pair my Bluetooth headphones with it directly. It means I can listen to whatever I have playing through the device without disturbing anyone. This feature bypasses the TV output so nothing plays through the TV’s speakers. If you need to be able to watch streaming…
