Tivo changes

[yesthattom]

New pricing plan... no life-time subscriptions? Dang, that really sucks. Buy one NOW before the new prices go into affect. Yeah, it ain't cheap but in the long run its a lot cheaper. This is going to seriously cramp my desire to buy a Series3 when they come out.

Summary of the conference call.

The good news is that Tivo 7.2.2 Software release has "un-delete".

Comments

[qnetter]

I've never owned a given TiVo box long enough for the lifetime deal to make any sense.

[emmett-the-sane.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they've been planning to kill the lifetime subscription since I was working there in 2003. I'm surprised they didn't already, actually.

Reason being is that it's a money losing deal for them in the long run. I think they created that pricing structure initially to help sell the idea.

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

Tivo lifetime subs are for the lifetime of the individual box, not the customer. They're not a good deal at all, and I'd be shocked if they were ever able to sucker more than 5% of their client base into it.

[kazmat.livejournal.com]

It does say that they won't commit to the pricing scheme of the series 3 yet, so who knows whether or not they'll have lifetime subs. Probably not, but they aren't saying so yet.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

It worked out economically for me. When I sold me Series 1, I was able to up the re-sell price by the cost of the life-time subscription.

Tom

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

It worked out economically for me. When I sold me Series 1, I was able to up the re-sell price by the cost of the life-time subscription.

Tom

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

I didn't realize you had worked there. Cool!

[tcb.livejournal.com]

I got it, but I've had a TiVo since 2001 or so. furthermore, if I'm not mistaken, there are tools out there to essentially clone a working tivo hard drive, so that when the drive fails, which is the most likely thing to fail, one can just bring a backup online, maybe losing some stored shows, but still having the service.

[entirelysonja.livejournal.com]

I'm not bothered by the lack of a lifetime subscription option, since I don't currently have one anyway. My feeling when I got the TiVo was that there was no guarantee the hardware would last long enough to make the lifetime subscription worthwhile, and there was also no guarantee I was going to be happy in the long term with the particular box I purchased, which was selected primarily due to its cheapness.

[zonereyrie.livejournal.com]

I very, very strongly disagree. I've had lifetime on five boxes, three of which I've resold. If you have the box for more than two years, then you're ahead of the cost of monthly already. And if you then resell the unit, it is worth far more. I had one Series2 for nearly 3 years (purchased 12/2002 and sold last fall). I sold it for $250 because it had lifetime, and it was a 40 hour box. I also had an S1 for about a year that had lifetime and I put 2x120GB in it, and TurboNet, and I replaced it with a second S2 when HMO came out, and sold the S1 for over $600. I sold my first S2, purchased 2/2002, last fall as well, close to 4 years on - a 60-hour box with an added 120GB drive, for $350.

I got plenty of use out of them, and the resale value was up because of lifetime.

Anything after 2 years was gravy, and even if the box fails it is almost always the drive - and reimaging or replacing that is simple.

[zonereyrie.livejournal.com]

Nope, lifetime is going away. The pricing plans for the S3 aren't announced, but lifetime is off the table.