Quantcast
GTrusted

GTrusted

Discover Products, Check Compatibility, Share Your Experience

How to Stream and Download Shows from Your TiVo Bolt to the Apple iPhone

Wi-Fi Alliance
Product Review
Reviewed Products

Reviewed Products

The TiVo Bolt offers great integration with Apple iPhone and iPad products, so you can stream all your favorite shows anywhere in your home or download your shows to watch them later on the road.  

To set up TiVo on your Apple mobile device like the iPhone 6s, go to the Apple App Store to find and install the TiVo App.

   

   

In the TiVo App, you will need to sign in with the same TiVo account that you used to sign in with your TiVo Bolt. In the Select a TiVo Box screen, choose the name that you had selected for your Bolt.  The TiVo App will recognize that the Bolt is a streaming device and ask you to Start Setup.  

  

After you select Start Setup, you will need to go through the Streaming Setup screens.

    

Unlike the Android App which uses a menu on the left margin of the screen, the Apple App puts the menu on the bottom which is always visible as icons.  Select My Shows, and you'll be able to see all the shows stored on the Bolt as well as on the iPhone.

  

I first tried to stream Super Bowl 50 at the same time as the same show was streaming to the TiVo Mini over Ethernet, and streaming to the Nexus 5X, and 5P over WI-FI. However, I received an error message when trying to stream to the iPhone.  Adding yet another stream apparently exceeded the maximum limit of streams allowed by the Bolt.

  

Rather than streaming, I instead decided to download the show by selecting Download in the show's Info screen.  You're able to choose different quality levels for the download, and TiVo conveniently tells you how much time to download and show much storage it will take up on your iPhone vs. existing free storage capacity.  You can also choose to just download from where you last paused the show, or download the entire show.

   

I found with the iPhone 6s, I had to keep the screen on in order for the download to start.

  

Although streaming is a lot more convenient if you want to quickly watch the video, one major advantage of downloading is that you can more easily scroll through the entire show's time bar.  Trying to find exact points in time during a show is much harder when you are streaming, given the scrolling feature is less responsive for some reason.

One of the other nice features of the iPhone, compared to Android, is that you can actually take screenshots of the shows that you are streaming or have downloaded.

Here it was great to find Peyton Manning's last plays and walk off from the field into probable retirement, crowning his long career with a Super Bowl win.  

Once I stopped the other streams on the Nexus phones, I was able to start a stream from the Bolt to the iPhone. With a popular TV show like "How I met Your Mother", you have a lot of options for how to view the show. You can select Watch on TV, and the iPhone will control the Bolt and play the show on the TV connected to the Bolt.  You can also use the iPhone to command the Bolt to start streaming the show from other online sources like Amazon, NetFlix, and VUDU, and watch on the TV.

If you want to watch on your iPhone, you can select Watch on iPhone, and the show will stream from the Bolt to the iPhone.  Alternatively, you can also stream from NetFlix directly to the iPhone.

  

In this case, I simply streamed an episode of the TV show from the Bolt to the iPhone.  Similar to streaming to the TiVo Mini and Android phones, streaming video and audio quality to the iPhone 6s was great. With this TiVo App, you can really stay glued to your favorite shows with your TiVo anywhere in the house that has WI-FI coverage. Of course, you need to make sure your iPhone and TiVo Bolt are on the same network.

If you want to use your iPhone for other things, and just want to watch your TiVo on a TV instead, if you happen to misplace your TiVo remote, you can select the More icon on the bottom right of the App and then select Remote Control.

 

Unlike the remote control in the Android App which doesn't at all look like the TiVo remote, the iPhone App simulates the entire look of TiVo's famous remote, making it easy for long-time TiVo users to find their buttons. The iPhone App also comes with a touch-based user interface, so you can control your Bolt with one or two finger swipe actions.

  

It's a lot of fun to use the TiVo App on the iPhone 6s, and it definitely enhances the overall user experience with the TiVo Bolt. It's never been easier to find shows just right for you, and to watch them from any source anytime and anywhere that is convenient for you.

Related Reviews
Latest Reviews