KJW said:

Wait a minute -- I don't see any Tivo haters here. I have 2 Tivo's, which I love. But that doesn't mean I'm stupid enough to pay $700 for an HD Tivo-- the user interface may be light years ahead of my cablevision DVR, but its not worth $700. Especially considering a huge feature of Tivo over generic DVR's, namely the TivoToGo, is disabled on the HD Tivo.

Why do Tivo fanatics freak out at even the slightest criticism of their beloved product? I agree, Tivo's are great, but the company's business model stinks. Maybe if Tivo customers started acting a little more rationally, we would get price points that are not ridiculous.

You claim you don't see any haters here, but get out a mirror: you are one.

Just because you're not willing to pay extra for the premium version of their product doesn't mean that finding a below-market price on it isn't a great deal. I don't think any new Rolls Royce is worth $100,000, but if you found one for that price, I wouldn't criticize you for posting it, even though "I'm not stupid enough to pay" $100,000 for such impractical, inefficient and unreliable transportation. (Except, of course, for resale at a profit.)

$199 for a lifetime subscription, even as a transfer from a series 1 or 2 box, is a great deal, and well below market if your Series 3 lasts as long as an average electronic device.

Just because others place a different value on being able to Tivo HD programming rather than just "DVR it" than you doesn't mean it's not a deal. Personally, I found "TivoToGo" nearly useless, as I have my media room off at one end of my home and prefer not to have the media companies infesting the rest of the house. It sounds to me like you have a whole vineyard of sour grapes over not being willing to pay the asking price for something you obviously want very badly.

If I hadn't found a deal for a Tivo Series 3 for under $550, I would've paid the full $800 for it, and the $199 transfer fee. That price is well within the "how much do I think this would be worth to me" boundary. Now that I have it, I can tell you that it's easily worth twice that to me and my family. The interface alone is easily worth it to me, and in my case, I'm comparing to TWO cable company HD DVRs and DirecTV, too.

Am I a "sucker"? No, I just value this more than you. But I sincerely appreciate being able to get a great deal on both the Tivo box, and the subscription.

any current deals on a Series 3? Only a few days left and I need a deal!!!!

Dwynne said:

It is not "cheaper and easier" - I have had a lifetime box for YEARS - I was an early adopter - and paid maybe $199 or $149 for that. You can get your box fixed out of warranty, new power supplies, internal modems, etc. Yes, I have modified all my Tivos as well including the lifetime box. Even under the old price plan ($9.95 per month, I think) paying month to month did not make sense, with today's higher prices it REALLY does not. They are not offering decent priced lifetime subs now, so it is a moot point - but I feel sorry for folks who have have boxes for years and keep paying month to month when they should have done lifetime from the start.

As far as the price point goes, Tivo has to make money. Now that D* and most cable companies have non-Tivo based DVRs they are continuing to struggle. They have to make money or go under - if that means charging $600+ for the box AND $13 a month then that is what they charge. They just hope there are enough Tivo fanatics that will pay that and not get a free/cheap non-Tivo DVR from the sat or cable companies. BTW, Comcast is supposed to be coming out with a Tivo based DVR "one of these days". Right now, for me, it would cost $10 a month to rent two cable cards to run an S3 Tivo - the SAME cost as renting a Comcast DVR per month. So the "break even" point on the S3 is "never" since I would pay $600+ for the box and either $199 lifetime xfer or $13 a month and the cable savings are $0.

So like a lot of folks, I love my Tivos (one SA Tivo, 2x SD DirecTivos, 2x HD DirecTivos) but paying so much and saving "nothing" compared to a lesser box just does not make a lot of sense. I understand Tivo is and seems to always be in financial trouble, but the price is just too much.

Dennis

Are you sure your CableCARDs would cost you that much to rent? I don't think that's a legal rate. The fee should be about $2.50 each, mandated by the FCC to represent the actual COST to the cable company in order to create, promote and preserve competition in the "cable box market". (In other words, they're free to make a profit on the programming, or if you choose their cable box, but not on the CableCARD lease.)

The remaining place the cable companies can screw you CableCARDs is on installation. I changed cable companies because I think my last cable company had the most ridiculous CableCARD installation rate in the country. They wanted $100 EACH to install CableCARDs! I would have paid it if I had no other choice, but by god, I would've found a way to cost them at least double that somehow in customer support costs.

Instead, because I had the option, I switched to Time Warner and the installation was $20 each, and $2.50 per month rental.

I have 2 DTV Tivo, 3 stand alone, 1 Replay TV and XP Media Center.
I am no Tivo hater but the HD box is way too expensive and I only paid $200 for lifetime in the first place, why should I pay $200 again to move it to a new box?

Tivo has gone wacky with their fees, different rates for number of years, auto renewal for the high rate, then you can agree to another year for what is the "normal" rate of $13/month, I can't figure out if multi unit discount of $7/month is still available, it is a mess!
I don't trust where Tivo is going with all these fees and have a hard time recommending them anymore.

The only reason this is a hot deal in the first place is because Tivo stopped offering Lifetime. Instead of praise for this deal I condem them for making these pricing changes...

Still I love the boxes and wouldn't want anything else!

Long term I think IPTV is going to change everything so no more investing in Tivo for me...

TheOneCallGuy said:

It's only $625.00 at OneCall.com by the way.

TheOneCallGuy

But it was $599 a couple of days ago. I actually went to the site to purchase it but couldnt get the $599 price.

digitalhotbuys has it right now for $611.

i should have jumped on the Dell deal but am an idiot.

TheOneCallGuy said: I am also aware it is the last version of the Tivo integrated with DirecTV box available. DirecTV is now moving to a 5 LNB dish which will make my boxes completely worthless (if someone knows otherwise please let me know).

As long as DirecTV has non-MPEG4 content on the sats then you (and me and lots of other folks) should be a-ok. We can get the locals OTA and other HD and SD via the sat. At some point - DirecTV may go with all MPEG4 on all the birds - when they do EVERY SINGLE BOX in their whole system will have to be replaced (last I saw they claim about 16 MILLION subs). This would either cost them a lot of money (swapping boxes for free) or a lot of customers (asking them to pay for the new box or lose service). So while AT SOME POINT they may be all MPEG4, I don't see that happening any time soon. Now, we may not be able to get all the content folks with the newer boxes have - but your OTA HD locals would still work and any non-MPEG4 content on the sats.

If you were new to the game, then getting the non-Tivo HD DVR would be OK since you can likely get your locals in HD of the sat with no need of an OTA antenna. Since you already have that covered, you benefit from the Tivo interface on your box over the new DVR.

The only reason to "hurry" into an S3 Tivo is if you have a lifetime sub you could transfer - otherwise just wait as the boxes will get cheaper and you can keep on using your HR10-250 HD DirecTivo.

Dennis

RevRagnarok said:However, for all "the haters" in this thread, have you actually seen and/or used one? If not, you have no idea what you are talking about. It's that simple. It's like when the first Tivo came out and everybody said "but I have a VCR!"



I think the more appropriate question is "when is the last time YOU used another product?" I think many members of the Tivo cult are under the mistaken assumption that Tivo is significantly better than other products on the market TODAY. I know there were a lot of problems with early Tivo "clones", but the competition has since made great strides. The motorola box that comcast allows me to use for an extra $5 per month does everything Tivo does, as good or better than Tivo, with the exceptions of the whole "search by actor" feature and the "pick shows for me" feature.

So once again, when is the last time you tried a non-Tivo product?

upNdown said:So once again, when is the last time you tried a non-Tivo product?Over Christmas at my brother's; the HD box by Cox (same champaign colored Motorola box that Comcast offers in my area). He was thinking about moving his S2 back down from upstairs because the interface is so bad.

TheOneCallGuy said:Sorry, yes you need a secret decoder ring. Here is the linky with the correct parameters to unlock the price.

TiVo Series3 HD Digital Media Recorder

as for the price increase . . . we sold over a hundred of them in a few days at $600 and I about got strung up by management for it (I went a little too crazy on the price and ignored some profitability rules, again). My fallback position was the $625 price. As for the other competitor . . . never heard of them. I have a million reasons to pitch why I'd pay $25 bucks more to deal with OneCall but I am too biased.


I have been ordering from OneCall since 1995 when I used to phone in orders for Unex (sp?) headsets. Some guy named Chris used to help me out all the time.

I know the reasons but digitalhotbuys gets pretty good reviews from reseller ratings. Anything to bring the total cost of s3 w/lifetime is a help.

KJW said:Unfocused said:KJW said:

Wait a minute -- I don't see any Tivo haters here. I have 2 Tivo's, which I love. But that doesn't mean I'm stupid enough to pay $700 for an HD Tivo-- the user interface may be light years ahead of my cablevision DVR, but its not worth $700. Especially considering a huge feature of Tivo over generic DVR's, namely the TivoToGo, is disabled on the HD Tivo.

Why do Tivo fanatics freak out at even the slightest criticism of their beloved product? I agree, Tivo's are great, but the company's business model stinks. Maybe if Tivo customers started acting a little more rationally, we would get price points that are not ridiculous.

You claim you don't see any haters here, but get out a mirror: you are one.

Just because you're not willing to pay extra for the premium version of their product doesn't mean that finding a below-market price on it isn't a great deal. I don't think any new Rolls Royce is worth $100,000, but if you found one for that price, I wouldn't criticize you for posting it, even though "I'm not stupid enough to pay" $100,000 for such impractical, inefficient and unreliable transportation. (Except, of course, for resale at a profit.)

$199 for a lifetime subscription, even as a transfer from a series 1 or 2 box, is a great deal, and well below market if your Series 3 lasts as long as an average electronic device.

Just because others place a different value on being able to Tivo HD programming rather than just "DVR it" than you doesn't mean it's not a deal. Personally, I found "TivoToGo" nearly useless, as I have my media room off at one end of my home and prefer not to have the media companies infesting the rest of the house. It sounds to me like you have a whole vineyard of sour grapes over not being willing to pay the asking price for something you obviously want very badly.

If I hadn't found a deal for a Tivo Series 3 for under $550, I would've paid the full $800 for it, and the $199 transfer fee. That price is well within the "how much do I think this would be worth to me" boundary. Now that I have it, I can tell you that it's easily worth twice that to me and my family. The interface alone is easily worth it to me, and in my case, I'm comparing to TWO cable company HD DVRs and DirecTV, too.

Am I a "sucker"? No, I just value this more than you. But I sincerely appreciate being able to get a great deal on both the Tivo box, and the subscription.

Well, I guess you really proved me wrong about Tivo fanatics "freaking out" at the first sign of criticism.

And you're right, I would love to have an HD Tivo. I just can't justify the purchase given the $700-cheaper alternatives out there. And given the size of the negative rating for this thread, it appears I am not the only one.

By the way, I have a Tivo T-Shirt for sale -- only $300. Sure you could get other T-shirts that cover you just as well, but this one is a Tivo T-SHIRT!!! It says "Tivo"!!! Right on the front!!!!!!!

(sorry for the sarcasm, I just couldn't resist. )

No offense taken.

By your use of sarcasm, I'm led to believe you think I'm "freaking out" because you criticized Tivo. Couldn't be farther from the truth. You criticized a deal that you can't afford, and then pretended the real problem is that the original product wasn't priced fairly in the first place.

Priced fairly is a relative judgment that each of us makes individually. Whether a deal is hot or not is an almost wholly unrelated judgment based on the deal price versus the regular market price.

Your post is basically equivalent to "If only Rolls Royce would price their vehicles like Kia, then half off would be a hot deal!" If you're not willing to pay the luxury price for a luxury good, that's not a problem, but it's a bad case of sour grapes to hate on the company who provides it and on the people who can afford it.

By the way, your example is far better than mine. My wife and I run a business doing custom embroidery work. Most of it consists of shirts that cost between $6 and $9 wholesale, yet people are willing to pay more than double that for the finished product. The only difference is that it looks "better" to them. The shirts are almost identical when I'm finished with them; people must be really stupid to buy them!!! If only I changed my business model to something more rational, maybe my price points would be more reasonable!