Comcast and Tivo

[yesthattom]

Our house as 2 Tivos, neither are HD but both have a Lifetime Service Agreement (no $1x.00/month fee). They aren’t selling Lifetime agreements any more... normally. However for a short amount of time Tivo is letting you buy an HD model, transfer the Lifetime Service to it, and the old one gets 12 months “free” of the monthly service. That’s good enough to sell the old one and tack on about 100 since it’s prepaid for the next owner.

However we have Comcast. Comcast has worked with Tivo to port the excellent Tivo software to their junky DVR box. It’s now becoming available! I’m told that if you have their DVR, you pay $7/month and they download the better software. Suddenly you get all the nice Tivo UI, plus some extra features, such as the ability to do the Comcast “channel 1” pay per view and free services from Tivo-looking menus.

On the other hand, we could buy a Tivo HD, get the Lifetime service (no $15/month) but we’d have to pay $2-5/month for CableCard rental, and I presume extra cost for HD service (currently we have HD-capable TVs but no HD service).


On the other, other, hand, we don’t use the Comcast features much.

On the other, other, other hand, if we moved or Comcast got bought or the relationship with Tivo soured, we’d be back to paying monthly for our Tivo since we would have missed the Lifetime Service. (Oh, and then we’d need to BUY a Tivo. ...which might have an advantage since there will be a newer Tivo model by then).

Hmm... so many trade offs.

I guess I’ll wait to hear if multi-room-viewing and other features are in the Comcast system. We use those features more than, say, the pay per view stuff.

Thoughts?

Comments

[kimuchi.livejournal.com]

Television and its accoutrements became too expensive and confusing for me about 6 years ago, so I'm no help.

Do The Upgrade

[dballing.livejournal.com]

Acknowledge the fact that -- very soon -- those Series1/2 lifetime subscriptions are going to be useless, and it makes the decision tree easier. Those units are either going to break (ending the subscription) or be functionally obsolete (meaning you'll have bought yourself a new unit out of need and put those out to pasture).

What's the WORST CASE SCENARIO, if you transfer the lifetime to one of the new units:

You buy the TiVo HD, you xfer your lifetime subscription to it and then you decide "Wait, I want the Comcast unit instead"... well, now you've got a very rare beast -- a TiVo HD with a Lifetime Subscription that you can sell on eBay. :-)

Re: Do The Upgrade

[rainbear.livejournal.com]

Good point...

Re: Do The Upgrade

[awfief.livejournal.com]

I was going to say this, except give it to a friend. Preferably one who would be OK to give it back in 5 years or the next time you upgrade, etc.

[edhorch.livejournal.com]

Comcast has worked with Tivo to port the excellent Tivo software to their junky DVR box.

SWEET! I wish Cablevision would do that. Our cable-box DVR interface sucks rocks. We've had TiVos since they first came out, and their UI has totally spoiled us.

But when the first HD TiVos came out a year ago, about the same time we got our HD TV, it would have been the better part of $1000 for the TiVo and the lifetime service transfer. That's a lot of DVR at $10/month above our existing cable bill, so we decided to keep the old TiVo and add the DVR.

This has the advantage of implicit parental control. The kids use the TiVo, and we use the DVR.

We'll wait to upgrade the TiVo until they have a zillion-hour box, or Cablevision pisses us off one too many times.

[ninaf.livejournal.com]

I have two Series 3 Tivo's and of course love them to death. I just got upgraded to the lasted software so I have MRV. You will want to check the local tivo communities since the comcast tivo is missing major features which you might miss.

As for the cable cards, Tivo HD supports M version cable cards. That would mean you could get away with just one cable card per tivo and still have dual tuners.

[la-directora.livejournal.com]

On the other, other, other hand, if we moved... we’d need to BUY a Tivo. ...which might have an advantage since there will be a newer Tivo model by then).

That right there was a big part of why I chose to go with the DVR I could get through my cable company. The HD Tivos are still a bit more expensive than I want to pay. So I went with the cable company DVR for now to bide my time until the technology is cheaper and/or better. There just wasn't a Tivo on the market when my old one died that I was insanely happy enough with to justify the expenditure, and the ones that weren't big expenditures just weren't good enough.

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

By "becoming available", Comcast means that they are offering it to a select group of beta testers in new england. There is still no timeline for general availablity across the NE region, nor any confirmation that other Comcast regions will be offering it at all. I'd be shocked if NJ get it before mid-2008.

Me, I recently picked up Tivo HD (I don't expect Comcast California to get the tivo service until 2009 if ever) and adore it. I'd say transfer the lifetime subscription to it, hands down.

[missionista.livejournal.com]

When I read the first paragraph, I immediately thought, "Heather has 2 mommies. Tom has 2 Tivos."

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

Tom's mommie has 1 Tivo :-)

[awfief.livejournal.com]

And Tom's "Daddy"?????

*giggles*

[zonereyrie.livejournal.com]

The current TiVo software for Comcast has *no* networking features - no TTG/TTCB, no MRV, no music and photos, etc, etc, etc. It is a bit like DirecTV's TiVo units in that it is restricted. Some of these may be added in the future, but don't hold your breath.

Also, they have *just* started to roll out the software in New England, and probably won't even have it full available in that area until early 2008 - anything beyond that is going to take longer. It looks like the fee will be $2.95/month for the TiVo software *on top* of whatever Comcast normally charges for their DVR.

As others have pointed out, if you go with the TiVo HD and do the transfer now you get the benefit of the newer TiVo hardware and software *now*, including all the network features. And you now how a rare beast, a TiVo HD with lifetime, which would fetch a pretty penny on eBay should you ever decide to switch.

(I run tivolovers and TiVoLovers.com)

[rog2867.livejournal.com]

If you get the new hd tivo and a comcast cable card, can you still access on demand? I dont think so as there will be no button the remote to get there. Can someone confirm this.

[zonereyrie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, 3rd party CableCARD devices, like TiVo, cannot access OnDemand or PayPerView content. Unless your system has the ability to order out-of-band (by phone or online) and then tune to the appropriate channel manually.

[sjthespian.livejournal.com]

That should be fixed in the not-too-distant future, it's due to the fact that the current cablecards can't communicate back upstream to the mothership. Rumor has it that TiVo is working on a USB dongle that will go in-line on the cable to enable this.

That aside, I love my Series 3 TiVo, and I would never get Comcast's DVR. It was worth it even without being able to transfer the lifetime from my old TiVo. And, with the new software rev you can plug an external drive into the TiVo to add more space (something I'm going to try the next time I get a coupon for an external 750GB drive from Costco).

[sjthespian.livejournal.com]

Oh, one other thing -- you may not have to pay all that much for the cablecard for the TiVo. Out here in the bay area, Comcast gives you the firs t one free, you only have to pay if you want two. And, you don't have to pay an additional fee for HD, since you don't need to rent the set-top box from them.

[zonereyrie.livejournal.com]

Actually all CableCARDs are bidirectional, always have been. It is a disagreement over the standards for bidirectional communication. The cable industry insists that devices support OCAP, or the OpenCable Platform as they call it now, which allows the cable MSO to push software down the box. But that allows the cable company to put their software on the box and control the UI - which would make the TiVo no longer a TiVo, so what's the point? CE vendors are generally not happy with this and refuse to use this system - hence an impasse.

The USB dongle is the Tuning Resolver. That is NOT meant to work for VOD/PPV, it is a proposed solution for SDV - Switched Digital Video. SDV is a system increasingly used on digital cable wherein not all the channels are sent to every home all the time. Some channels work more like OnDemand, only being send to your home when you tune to that channel. But for this to work the tuning device needs to send a message to the head end to start sending the channel. Right now this also demands OCAP. But the FCC and Congress are viewing SDV as an end-run around the spirit of the open access push that brought us CableCARD, so the NCTA (cable industry) is working with the CE industry (TiVo, etc) to develop this Tuning Resolver to allow Unidirection Host Devices, like the TiVo, to work with SDV.

It is possible that this solution could be extended to VOD/PPV later, but right now those are explicitly excluded from the effort, which is focused solely on enabling SDV.

I still love my TiVos. :-)