digg

I'm not sure that I fully understand this. What was the rate before? It seems like they aren't raising the rate as much as requiring a longer time committment. Maybe I'm missing something though.

I think that you're wrong about TiVo pricing themselves out of the market. Take a closer look at the cable pricing plans and how they define a DVR. It's an upgrade ON TOP OF other charges not a single fee. Compare apples to apples and you'll see that even at $19.99 TiVo would still be a cheaper alternative.

When Comcast installed their service I snagged a price sheet. According to the pricing sheet, they charge $4 for the digital converter (aka set top box) + $9.95 for DVR functionality + $6.95 Digital programming access free (required if you use their DVR) + to top it all off, .20 cents for the remote control. In total it will cost you $21.10 per month to get a Comcast DVR. These are all charges you don't pay if you own a SD TiVo.

If you get HDTV you have to pay an extra $5 per month on top of that. With my S3 I pay $1.50 per month for two cable cards, so I save an additional $3.50 per month there. If TiVo ever tried to bill their boxes as 3 seperate items people would be outraged, yet everyone seems to feel it's OK to only quote the $9.95 price for a cable DVR even though you have to rent it as an upgrade to the digital converter and set top box fees.

The $800 up front charge for the series 3 is another animal, but I don't mind spending that to get a premium DVR experience. It's easy for the cable pricing to get confusing, but it doesn't seem fair to suggest that the monthly fees on cable are cheaper, when you don't do an apples to apples comparrison on what it really costs. The $9.95 DVR fee doesn't exist in a vacuum because TiVo can replace the set top box fees, those charges should be considered as well.

what a rip off, comcast 200gb DVR is $10/month, no extra hardware charge, the DVR has no initial cost, it is like a rental.

Well, there's still dailymotion.com and bittorrent.

MythTV is the way to go.

At least the higher monthly rates now get you WPA
http://digg.com/gadgets/TiVo_confirms_WPA_support

I have the Comcast HD-DVR (2 of 'em) and it costs about 5 bucks a month rental for each. Problem is that the DVRs suck mightily. Press a button on the remote and the DVR will respond a couple of seconds later - if it feels like it. The interface is a mess. Completely counter-intuitive and ass-backwards. I would dearly love to replace them with a Series 3 HD Tivo - but at $800 a pop, I don't think that's going to happen...

DavisFreeberg: Charter, in SC, was charging me almost exactly the same way as you mentioned. needless to say, I'm now a Directv subscriber :)

These rates have been effective for a month or more for one as I saw them while surfing the site over a month ago. The dual tuner Tivo box is now $30 with a service commitment which is why the rates are slightly higher in the shorter contract periods to recoup the cost of the DVR which works out to be a couple hundred bucks with service for 3 years. Heck I think a dual tuner DVR for $30 and $12.95 a month for three years isn't bad at all rather than paying $250 for the DVR and 12.95 a month without a contract before.

Isn't the real hurtle for consumers the high initial cost to get the DVR, nevermind months feeds? They're just adopting a system that worked for the cellular companies, cellular phones don't cost $1 in real life try $160 on up for wholesale cost to the retailer (I've seen the price sheets having worked at verizon for a number of years).

No digg, marked inaccurate.

The author seems to be deliberately dense. TiVo is discounting the cost of the hardware sold directly through them. The discount is more if you agree to a long-term deal, less if you don't.

The base subscription rate is first boxes is $12.95 per month, and that seems to be continuing. The 80-hour dual tuner box is $70, plus:
- $84 with 1-year commitment (extra $7 per month for 12 months)
- $48 with 2-year commitment (extra $2 per month for 24 months)
- $0 with 3-year commitment.

And this isn't "new" - it's exactly the deal they've had for months and months.

I recently converted to a Comcast DVR from DirecTV with TiVO and have to say that Tivo is worlds better. My reason for switching is that you have to use an external antenna for local channels with DirecTV-HD, and Comcast delivers it over the cable. That being said, the TiVo interface is so much better than Comcast's (e.g. putting all shows in a folder, etc), but you really can't beat $10/mo with no up front fee for an HD-DVR.

I paid $100 bucks for a lifetime subscription 6 years ago and not a dime since. I've even upgraded my tivo box 3 times and now have the HD unit. BTW, I have a DirecTV tivo.

I paid for my lifetime subscription for series one.. just got a series 3.. the comcast dvr was lame and almost unwatchable. Yeah, paying through the nose to get an early HD tivo, but worth it for me.. tivo still rocks.

Why not just put the facts instead of littering the title and description with slander?

Marked as lame.

Is there a TiVo alternative that doesn't require a monthly charge (besides a VCR)? I don't mind programming stuff myself, I just want the DVR. I used to have one but we had to cut back on the monthly bills so it got dropped.

I have two S2 TiVos at home (One Humax DVD) and was waiting for the inevitable price drop for the S3 as well as for Time Warner to convert me from a dual-system network so I can actually use dual tuners.

In the mean time, I went ahead and got the Time Warner HD DVR. Within a week of getting it, I'm actually thinking about foregoing the price drop and getting an S3 TiVo. Hands down TiVo has the best service and quality with the fact that the TW HD DVRs have such a limited HD space.

I have yet to see cable-company based DVR (since I don't think TiVo software is yet deployed on Comcast) that is more than just a "digital VCR". There are several features that TiVo has over the TW DVR service that makes it unbeatable.

The biggest of this is the "auto clipping" that will give you the chance to at least clip off the first minute of a 9:00 CT show when LOST decides to air for 61 minutes instead of missing it completely (though dual tuners itself would help eliminate some, but not all, of this, but it's not even an option right now as long as I'm on dual-system). Heck, it won't even let me manually delay the start of recording in order to manually clip.

TW DVR service won't let me do something such as "Record any CSI:NY on CBS regardless of time". Stuck to selecting channel/time and saying "weekly" - just like my VCR used to do.

Having to put up with the TW DVR service has actually been the biggest promoter for an S3 - even if it'll take a while for Cable Labs to bless "ToGo".

Ok, maybe I am missing something, but what is different about these "new" rates than what Tivo previously had? When I signed up for new Tivo service in March of this year, these were the same rate options I was given. So what changed between March and now?

I almost went the MythTV route, but the Tivo works so well. I guess it's great if you have enough parts laying around to build a box. Otherwise it's a stout up front cost. Not to mention a good bit of time spent.

I found the dual tuner Tivo for $50 after rebate. Can MythTV automatically find and record shows based on keywords? Does it automatically compensate for shows that overlap by starting 5 minutes early or late? Is the interface really as slick and stable as TiVo?

Since I've only seen screenshots, I don't know myself. These are definitely things I'm glad to pay for.

God I love my lifetime membership.

I'm very happy that over a year ago I bought a tivo series 2 on ebay and did the lifetime subscription. Had I not done that, I would have built a box for mythtv already.

Answers for pixelriffic

Yes, yes and yes

Tivo doesn't have to compete with cable or sat. They are already IN cable and Sat! They have a contract with Comcast and soon you will see Tivo software on all comcast boxes for the current comcast DVR monthly fee.
It is also on my Direct TV HD DVR and it's only $4.95/month. And I love it.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=325118

The OP says Tivo will have a hard time competing with cable's DVRs, but at least with Directv the "free" DVR sucks. I had Directv w/ Tivo for a couple of years and loved it, but the box died and the directv replaced it with their own homegrown DVR. After only a week of using the Directv DVR I'm ready to ditch directv altogether to find a company with a built in tivo box because the directv DVR software is so bad. I realized that what I liked about digital cable and digital recording wasn't directv it was tivo. Tivo just works the way it should work. It pauses when it's supposed to pause, I can 30second skip, navigation is simple and the remote is great. Directv fails in all these categories....

I don't watch TV. The wife does, though - but for the cost of a tv tuner card and some free software (freevo) in my existing linux file server I avoid all this monthly BS. If you don't want to pay someone else to do it for you, learn how to do it yourself.

I've also been forced to watch HD-DVR with TIme Warner due to Tivo's ridiculous pricing scheme. Dugg.

Just want to take this opportunity to note that part of the uselessness of the TiVo system in 2006 is due to having one of the most passive hacking fanbases out there. Where other technologies would have been rewritten from the ground up at this point so that the TiVo box was useful without the monthly fees, TiVo's customers have sat around like fools as the "TiVo to Go" promises has come and gone, as the "Home Media Option" has sputtered and as the company has abandoned their retail customers in favor of bundled agreements with cable providers.

The next time I see a technology where all forums trip over themselves to "play nice" and beat people senseless who want to discuss using the thing without paying a monthly fee, I'm going to run the other way.

What other technology (and Linux-based!) product these days required a $200 up-front investment and yet became a useless brick once you got sick of paying monthly fees and/or upgraded to new technology (HD+$10/month HD-DVR) that made its core functionality irrelevant? This thing would be a great networked media player if I could get the damn thing to function without paying TiVo every month for a feature I don't use.

After what's happened with the Series 2, who in their right mind would invest in a Series 3 TiVo when the cable company offers free upgrades and a monthly fee?

I laugh as I have been recording my own OTA HDTV with my HDTV Wonder for the last two years. It has inputs so I can record Satellite , cable , etc.It also lets me watch a "live view" of the video source when time-shifting.And best of all...it does frame captures and lets you record and transcode to many formats as well as burn to DVD or make a smaller copy to watch on my Pocket PC.The best HDTV you will ever see is free over-the-air content as it is not compressed like cable and satellite.Mine was built before the "broadcast flag" requirement so it won`t apply to me.

TiVo has save my life, 13, 15, or 19 bucks a month is more than I want to pay, but to be honest, I am not about to start screaming about it. I will just keep shelling out the clams. As long as I get my DAILY dose of Futurama. I just cannot stay up that late... :

this may have been mentioned, and I've said it before, but if you're paying $12.95/month for Tivo, call them and tell them your cable company has a cheaper deal - and let them offer you $6.95 a month. If they don't, call back and try again. It took me 3 tries, but it worked.

http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/messageview.php?catid=18&threadid=387215

DirecTV screwed up by dropping the DirecTiVo. I loved mine, but it broke. Unlike a stand-alone TiVo, I could record two digital shows at once while watching a third that was already recorded. The stand-alone only has one input from a cable box (even the dual tuner model - ?!?!). So, I figured that if I have to give up TiVo anyway, might as well look around to see if there's anything better.

Goodbye DirecTV, you lost me as an A-list customer solely as a result of your own arrogance and stupidity; Hello FIOS.

Just restore the life membership fee and I'll buy a second Tivo-- maybe a third.

We love Tivo, but not so much we'll pay a monthly fee until the box dies.

Apple should buy Tivo, and offer a DVR Mac Mini to the customer base for $499-- lifetime updates.

One word answer to Tivo ....... ReplayTV. After having a few Tivo's I was surprised at how poor the things are next to the ReplayTV. Specifically the 5040 or 5080 (or any of the older ones with skipping and sharing). Even the newest Tivo's look crude in comparison. But if HD is the most important issue, then you're out of luck. But if commercial skipping, extreme "hackablility" and over the web "Replay to Replay" sharing is important, ReplayTV is the only answer. Miss a show? .... no prob, go to Poopli and register (it's free) and prepare to be amazed. I describe to novices that Tivo vs. the Replay is much akin to an Instamatic camera to a modern digital SLR. They both have their markets, but only one is really coveted by video enthusiasts. I just wish someone had told me this before I wasted my money on my first Tivo's. Even though I have an AMD box for media, the Replay is just soooo much more convenient. Check Ebay....make SURE it's got a lifetime subscription ... should run around $300. If it's less, beware .... these things don't lose value, even when used. The units hacked with bigger drives run more. This is one those "how did I live without it?" items .... get one and you're hooked, if you watch TV. Check out planetreplay.com if you're interested to get more info. Next to the Slingbox, it's one of the best electronic purchases I've ever made.

I still want a non-subscription based TiVo. I don't mind paying 300 bucks for one with no subscriptions.

TiVo Arrogance. They do not appreciate their customers and we have stopped appreciating them.

We are two time TiVo customers that purchased a Series 1 in 2000 with lifetime service and again purchased a Series 2 in 2005 with lifetime service. The Series 2 box died in 13 months. TiVo said “Sorry but you’re out of warranty. We will send you a replacement for $150. If you want it faster, give us a $300 deposit and we will ship sooner and refund the deposit when we receive your broken unit.” My wife protested and they did us a favor by only charging $80 to replace the box that was a year old and should not have broken. The “advanced ship” was not sent a week after the initial call – why? We called back, they “had no idea why but they are very sorry”. The new box showed up 14 days after the initial call. Four days after installing the new unit, the hard drive died – you have got to be kidding….

I called this time. Same song and dance only we were in luck this time - since it was within the 30-day warranty we only had to put down the $300 to have then send an advance ship to replace the new, um, broken, um, DOA box. I protested strongly. Told them they are not treating their customers well. Told them we were loyal customers, upset at how we’ve already been treated and that it would be reasonable to expect them to take care of this DOA replacement ASAP. They said sorry but there was nothing they could do. Pay for an advance ship or send the box back and they would then send out after they received it. By the way, this was a “supervisor” who was offering up all of this help. I asked to speak with a manager but he informed me there was no one else to speak with – nice.

I seriously question the level of talent this company has in the ranks of management. They are short sighted and totally missing the big picture. Positive service experiences are what will keep a company healthy and prospering. They don’t get it. How about asking for a credit card as collateral instead of charging their customers for the privilege of responsive service? They can put a $300 credit hold on the card to get their security without looking like small minded money grubbers that you should feel good about because they are doing you a favor. Then again, they wouldn’t get the interest float on the bank account if they did that, would they? How about going above and beyond the normal (crappy) protocol after you’ve just delivered a lemon to a customer who has already expressed dissatisfaction with your company? Arrogance!

TiVo has been struggling for a long time and I’ve been a cheerleader, singing their praises to anyone that would listen. Talented engineers, morons in every other department. My view of them has changed 180 degrees. My wife and I are done with them. We’ll use the boxes as long as they shall live since we have already forked out the dollars for lifetime service and a repair of a box that should not have broken. We will NEVER again purchase anything from TiVo and will be more than eager to share our experiences with any that will listen.