TiVo to Drop Lifetime Service Plan

Thomas Hawk writes "TiVo held their most recent analyst conference call today and on the call announced that they will be dropping their lifetime subscription option as well as offering three new monthly no upfront fee TiVo plans combining their box and service for one year, two year and three year commitments. Additionally they announced that their highly anticipated Series 3 HDTV standalone model with CableCARD support will not be available until after "mid year," a new retail partnership with Radio Shack and the fact that the company is in solid discussions with other cable operators for deals similar to their previously announced Comcast initiative."

MythTV

[Anonymous Coward]

MythTV (www.mythtv.org) is looking better and better.

Re:Is Tivo still relevant?

[jtdennis]

How exactly are they making it more difficult to avoid commercials? I still fast forward through them just like before. The only change I've noticed is more commercials support Tivo's "press thumbs up for more info" thing if you do watch them.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:MythTV

[Iphtashu Fitz]

You obviously don't know a whole lot about MythTV. Yes, you need to buy a tuner card, but at the same time you can display it on a regular TV. In fact I have mine hooked up to my 42" HDTV and the display looks great.

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[account_deleted]

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Current lifetime subs just went up in value.

[profet]

Well... at least I'll get a hell of a lot of money for my TiVo with lifetime sub on ebay.

Remember lifetime sub was for the lifetime of the unit, not your lifetime.

Also. The only thing that has changed is that they have dropped Lifetime subs and added more subscription options.

You'll still be able to go to a store and buy a unit, and get a service only subsription for $12 and change. You'll also be able to buy a second service only subscription and get the multi-service discount of $6 and change on the additional units.

The change is that if you don't want to eat the cost of a unit upfront, there are news subscription options where the cost is amortized for a couple of years.

Re:MythTV

[Sven The Space Monke]

You don't even have to have the machine with the tuner hooked up to ANY display. I've got one running in a closet (the drives & fans make too much noise to be in the same room as a TV), with the frontend running on a modded Xbox. If I wanted to, I could put in more tuners and have multiple frontends all watching different shows on live TV, or browsing through what has been built up to be a rather considerable library. I'd like to add the Torrentocracy plugin, but I can't seem to get it to work with 0.19.

... *For Series 2 Tivos*

[Chris Pimlott]

For those who didn't RTFA, here's an important point:

This pricing plan only applies to the current Series 2 models. Rogers said that they were not ready to commit to this pricing model for the upcoming Series 3 HDTV TiVo due out later this year. Pricing on the Series 3 will be announced closer to its launch.

While it doesn't look like a good sign that they are dropping lifetime for Series 2, it's not yet ruled out for the next generation. Here's hoping...

Transcript of Conference Call

[Fnord666]

Here is a transcript [cestockblog.com] of the full conference call and a quick take [cestockblog.com] of the two most important minutes of that call that relate to the new pricing strategy.

Complete transcript

[Chris Pimlott]

Ah, a commenter on TFA points out the complete transcript [cestockblog.com] nyud.net mirror [nyud.net] of the call is available. A relevant quote:

[Stuff about the upfront-only plan] With this new pricing plan we will no longer be offering a lifetime service option.

To be clear, this new pricing for now will only be available for sales done through TiVo.com. We are exploring the possibility of launching similar types of programs into retail later in the year.

Then later in the Q&A portion:

Q: .. Secondly, will the pricing terms also be available when you roll out your dual tuner HD box later this year?

A: .. When it comes to, what we call our high def product later in the year, we have not yet set specific marketing or pricing arrangements for that yet. As we get closer to that timeframe we'll be looking to put that in place. This applies to our existing TiVo line of products that are in the market today.

So it sounds like lifetime for current models could possibly continue to be available at retail (though I can't say I've heard of a retail outlet offering a lifetime priced bundle), and the next gen HD is still yet to be determined.

Re:Foreboding signs

[Rob T Firefly]

The Radio Shack I frequented in the 1980s was a place with an amazing selection of electronics, hobbyist components, how-to guides, and spare parts, and had knowledgable hackers behind the counter who shared my love of technology and were likely building just as complex gadgets in their own basements as I was.

That place is dead, replaced by a cellphone and set-top-box store with a standard retail drone behind the counter whose blank stare glazes over at the merest mention of a Zener diode or anything else that isn't their newest mobile plan.

Re:MythTV

[Doctor Faustus]

The hard drives on your Series 1 will fail someday. Weaknees sells replacement drives (with the TiVo image), though, and you can pick up some more capacity, too.

Re:Poor TiVo

[greg1104]

The first Tivo I used was bought with a lifetime subscription in 1999, one of the original Philips models. It's since needed a replacement hard drive (at which point the original owner gave the box to me and upgraded to a newer model), and the modem port blew up (switched to the serial port and ultimately a TivoNet card); with those repairs it's still running fine. As of right now that puts this one at around $2.75/month for its lifetime.

The payback period for the lifetime subscription has been between 2 and 3 years of product use, well within the expected lifetime of the box. Even in the rare case where the Tivo fails before then, it usually adds something to the salvage value of the unit if sold on ebay. As such, I have advised everyone who purchases a Tivo that they should consider the lifetime subscription part of the purchase price of the unit, and to look at it as a 3 year purchase--after which they would normally expect another couple of years worth of free service before the hard drive fails and they need to spend more money.

Now I'm going to have to tell them something else altogether, as Tivo has just priced itself out of the market. Looks like it's time to get familiar with my local cable provider's DVR box.

Re:Foreboding signs

[Sethb]

You miscalculated in choosing the monthly fee option, I've had 6 TiVos since the year 2000, and always bought Lifetime. I've always sold those units later on eBay, or to friends, and recouped most, if not all of the Lifetime service I paid on them, which I would roll over to my next box. Lifetime service meant there was an increased value attached to your box, which you could recover when you sold it. The only time that monthly service made sense was if you knew you wouldn't have the box more than 23 months, and that you would never sell it, in any other situation, you were losing money, though if the box was your second unit, which made you eligible for $6.95/month pricing, it took more months to make Lifetime pay off...

Re:TiVo is hurting financially

[blakestah]

TiVO has a deep patent portfolio that is starting to be leveraged against the companies that are ripping off their inventions. As each new box comes out, TiVO is reverse engineering it and finding patent violations.

TiVO also has 4-5 million boxes in service (far far more than number two), each with upgradeable operating systems. They can leverage this in a "google ads" kind of way to link TV content and internet-based advertising, and blow the doors off the competition.

As is often the case, people are missing the forest for the trees. People look at the PVRs as a recorder, or as a mechanism to deliver content on-demand (both of which are true). But the PVR a la TiVO will become a novel advertising stream, with click-through ads during television content that will be worth a mint and have the potential to revolutionize TV-based advertising models. Then TiVO will be giving the boxes away to get your ad revenue.

Re:Is Tivo still relevant?

[blakestah]

TiVO indexes the programming guide and descriptions of programs, categorizes them, and allows you to use this to set up your search and record functions. If all you want to do is record by time and date, and manually schedule each recording, then TiVO would be a waste of money. Sort of.

The thing is, TiVO is so easy to set up, even a grandmother can do it. And in business terms, that is extremely valuable.

Also, if you use some other PVR, you miss out on the TiVO experience. TiVO has broadband capabilities. You can schedule programming from your cell phone or computer. You can download shows to your iPod and watch them on a airplane, or download them to your laptop and watch them in the car.

And much more. But the untapped new advertising stream will be the kicker. When you see that little thumbs up come on while watching TV and you click through, TiVO will have gone far beyond other PVRs.

Re:Not offering, or discontinuing?

[schnikies79]

I've been checking up with some people in the know. You will are able to keep your lifetime.

Re:Is Tivo still relevant?

[eraser.cpp]

I would have agreed with the difficult part 3 days ago, but then I watched my buddy set one up from scratch in only a few hours. And that was on cheap, dated hardware. It works well and looks beautiful, here is the guide [wilsonet.com] he used.

Re:MythTV

[pla]

What are we MythTV users going to do for digital TV, though?

Pay 20% more for the tuner card to import it from Canada or the UK or Taiwan or Vanuatu, who will all (in decreasing order of "give a shit what the US says to do") laugh heartily at we stupid Americans that let our Corporate Masters(tm) sell us inferior products simply by labelling them "new and improved".


I keep hearing scary things about encrypted signals, broadcast flags, and other Orweillian bullshit.

Currently, US law doesn't force the broadcast flag on anyone (and no hardware manufacturer will support a "feature" that makes their product less desireable unless forced to).

Don't rest easy on that thought, though, because that particular war hasn't ended quite yet (nor will it ever, most likely). The RIAA just started pushing congress for the same thing for digital audio, and don't think the MPAA won't support and try to extend that proposal...

But as I said, those of us who love freedom, particularly the freedom to use our posessions as we see fit, will always have the option of simply breaking the law and importing hardware that ignores such nonsense.

Re:MythTV

[treke]

Are you running 0.19? Auto-expire was a feature in older versions, but it wasn't the default behaviour. Due to some changes in the live tv portions of myth, auto-expire is automatically enabled.

That said, I think the hang on disk full bug was fixed in one of the 0.18 releases. I'm not absolutely sure though.

Re:Foreboding signs

[Gandalf_007]

This is why I order from Jameco and Mouser more often than Digikey -- no handling fee for small orders. Plus Jameco can ship USPS which is cheaper than UPS or FedEx for small packages.

And while there is a local electronics shop in this town, they're way on the other side of town, and usually more expensive than Radio Shack. They do have a much better selection however, so they're at least an option if I need something today.