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ReplayTV Price Drop Bait-and-Switch
jkeyes writes "Last week on 12/17 DNNA (new parent company of Replay TV) decided to drop the Replay TV 5504 model down to $149, yet the boxes and website said that it came with three years free service. So immediately it appeared on deal sites like FatWallet with Replay telling people on the phone who called that yes all 5504 models include 3 years of service so immediately Circuit City & Amazon sold out. Then on the 12/22 DNNA released a press release annoucing the new price and claiming that the 5504 models NO LONGER have 3 years free with them and blamed the retailers for dropping the price too soon. Even though their own Customer Service Reps were saying when it first dropped that you got 3 years free. Also to add to the issue the actual devices have giant green stickers on them saying Three Years Free AND a paper inside telling you this. Replay went on to say that if you had a problem with this or your replay was deactivated to just return it to the retailer you purchased it from."
I thought you could.
Goo goo g'joob.
Replay went on to say that if you had a problem with this or your replay was deactivated to just return it to the retailer you purchased it from.
Well, so people have a problem, they got a rotten deal, so they can return it and get their money back. Sounds like basically they have the right to exercise their 3 year warranty immediately.
(By the way, the solution to any ReplayTV problem is called Tivo. Even without dodgy deals, it's always been a better idea to get a Tivo than a ReplayTV)
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I'm on my second Tivo (upgraded to DirecTV with Tivo in order to get two channel recording capability), and couldn't be happier. I've never had a problem.
...a free commemorative poster of images obtained from the Beagle 2 mars lander. Sounds like a good company to me.
Tivo has recently gone to the $30 per call service fee (although it is refunded if it isn't dumb user syndrome). Add the long wait times and you already start out upset. The upside is Tivo doesn't require much maintenance. And over at www.tivocommunity, which is hosted on Tivo's servers yet not affiliated(?) you can get almost anything answered. TivoPONY is a great user, plus you get messages from the likes of TivoSHANNON who sometimes shows up in your under a Tivo yellow star to hawk the HMO, grrrrowl.
I believe there was a Ask Slashdot a few weeks ago regarding building your own PVR. The majority of the comments seemed say "Why bother, just buy a TIVO/Replay TV, its already done for."
Well, this is why you roll your own. Yes, its a little more work, the cost is pretty much the same, but there is no monthly fee, and features don't get yanked out from under you.
MythTV is absolutely amazing, and its evolving incredibly fast. If your lookinng for a PVR, I recommend giving it a shot.
Hasn't it occured to most people here that a lot of the deals and rebates are just crap? Case in point...
A few weeks ago I attempted to purchase the Dell Axim x3i when it went on sale for $79. Dell took down the website and then put it back up. For those of you who know, this particular Axim actually runs for $379. Maybe it was a pricing mistake but when Dell left the page up, I thought they would send out the system. Didn't happen. In the days following our cancelled orders, Dell gave all sorts of rubbish answers to cover up the issue. Some people actually got their Axims, most others did not. The last story we heard was the deal was not a mistake but for corporate customers. I guess I was pretty irrate that I had ten different reasons for not getting my Axim and they all sounded like lies.
More recently, Circuit City was offering three rebates on a particular hard drive. However, the third rebate would not print so a 160gb drive which would have cost between $30-$40 actually cost double that. Bait and switch? You better believe it. The rebate house said that even if the third rebate printed, they would not honor it because they needed the original UPCs for all of them.
Now after the black friday sales and the dozens of rebates I have out, I am getting emails from rebate houses declining to give my money back to me for silly reasons like "date not on reciept". Although the date *IS* on the reciept. I guess what I am trying to say is that I am just tired of dealing with these deals and rebates since businesses are acting like crooks by not keeping their end of the bargain. I mean, if they really wanted to give us a rebate, why not just take it off at the register? I really hope a class action lawsuit or two is launched by consumers in the next few months over one of the rebate/bait-and-switch issues so business get back in line.
What the summary doesn't mention is that DNNA has been deactivating boxes that a) had stickers and papers that said they included service, b) were sold by retailers who assured customers they included service, c) DNNAs customer service said included service, even to people who asked about the $150 boxes, and d) often did show as having service when they were hooked up.
Then it took them a week before they put out clarifying press releases, and some stores continue to sell boxes with service-included stickers that DNNA won't likely honor. DNNA can blame the retailers all they want, but they're the ones deactivating boxes that contain their promises of included service. This as about as classic a bait-and-switch as there is.
Why is there always calls for class action suits? The leech lawyers get all the cash and the consumer gets a coupon for $20 off any product from the company they had the complaint against.
--- Ban humanity.
Yeah, try to go to Best Buy and get your full money out of it. I think that they will try to get $15 or some restocking fee out of you since it is "open." My experience with returning products, even when the manufactor said to has been less than pleasurable. Good luck....TiVo it is!
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
Of course, on /. we are morally opposed to lawyers making any sort of reasonable profit, so we would never participate in such a suit. We just complain and cry over the unfairness of it all, and hope some diety magically fixes the problem.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
would be interested in what is obviously an illegal bait and switch
...you should buy a Tivo instead. Tivo produces a reliable product running on Linux, is hacker-friendly, and respects your privacy. And with over 1 million users (as of this month), they've passed the critical "consumer acceptance" threshhold generally used as a metric in the industry to assess the success of consumer electronics.
.@.
For further discussion, legal talk, and the whole history... here's the fatwallet thread.
a tid=24&threadid=254797
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/messageview.php?c
Davak
I was at my local CC store on 12/17 and they had a sign placed on top of the ReplayTV that explained exactly what was going on, and that there may be some contradictory advertisments still in circulation because of the rapidness of the change.
Those who bought from 11/17 to 12/16 appear to be the big winners... it look like their 110% price protection claims are going to be valid.
That's a bummer that this has happened. What really blows me away is how people seems to forget that old adage.
Even more importantly, people seem to ignore TIME as a factor of cost. As in the time it takes to return a cheaper product that breaks. The extra amount of time it takes to setup products compared to others on the market, and another important time waster, waiting for products or ipod drivers to ship for linux when much better solutions may be out there now on other platforms.(Can you say Gimp vis - a vis, photoshop?)
I guess i look at these things as tools. I always try and find tools that are going to not only entertain me or empower me but also save me time and hassle. Because that is the most costly of all factors in ALL our lives.
In the last year i bought:
a) An ipod: not waiting for a org vobis play becuase frankly i don't have the ears of a dog to "tell" the difference.
b) itunes music store: best of breed dgital music store that is one click easy, and i know the artists are getting SOMETHING unlike kazaa.
c) a dual g5- damn fast.
d) OSX - best of breed combonation between the power of unix and open source and commerical apps.
( I already own a tivo and knew how much better it was then other solutions out there so i won't even bring that one up. Nor will i bring up the point of how much TIME and money of yours it would take to build an myth tv type solutions.Nor do i want a pc in my living room. I know i know put it somewhere else and drag a line in. No thanks.)
Did these cost me more? In some cases yes. But whatever the delta in price was i can GUARANTEE you that i have more than made up for it in increased productivity and not having to pull my hair out trying to get these things set up.
Moral of this story?
Sometimes paying MORE ends up costing you LESS...
Happy holidays...
Best of New Years...
I agree. The last ReplayTV I bought kept on freezing and crashing on me. In the middle of a recording, it would just sieze up and stop.
So I returned the thing and got a Tivo. I've been happy ever since.
I guess ReplayTV is the Microsoft of PVR units.
I am sad to see DNNA shooting themselves in the foot like this. I love my Replays. I have two of them, connected on a 100 Mbps switched network here at home. A show on one Replay can be streamed over the network to the other Replay. In other words, I can play back a show recorded on the bedroom Replay, from the living room Replay - while the living room Replay is recording a show off the air. Try that with a VCR. (I cannot tell if Tivo has that capapbility - I went to www.sony.com/tivo and got redirected to sonystyle.com - and a search on that web site for "tivo" came up empty.)
Anyway, back on topic, I am very disappointed that the management at DNNA is bound and determined to ruin the company. I understand as a company get worried about money, they focus on the pennies, and lose sight of the dollars. They need to reverse their attitude if they want to survive - they need to cut deals that will grow their userbase, not shrink it. But they don't appear to see that. It is sad.
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
It isn't a fscking loophole if the box says it comes with the service and it also comes with papers that say so.
Damn, do you work for the company?
I also have a Replay TV. I'm on my 3rd unit, as the first two went kaput and had to be RMAd. Customer service during this time was a mixed bag, some reps were great, others did not appear to be native speakers of English and I could only understand every other word they spoke.
However, now that I've got a working box I'm pretty happy with it. Never had any problem with dl'ing the channel guide. And with its "sharing" feature and client software that others have written, you can send shows off to your PC for storage (or I think even burning to VCD, though I've never tried that).
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
You had a classic bad-product experience. I didn't, but I'd still recommend TiVo over ReplayTV.
I own one of each. I recently upgraded my 4-year-old TiVo to a 120GB HD (30 hours at top quality; 145 hours at low quality) and love it again. My old HD was one of the ones with seek-timing problems, so there were hiccups in video and audio output and the menus ran really slow (I maintain it was a timing-design flaw and the drives were fine; TiVo maintained it was bad drives, but they still sold repairs using newer drives with much tighter timing specs rather than just non-bad versions of the same drives...) Anyway. I got the new drive (dirt cheap from http://www.weaknees.com) with TiVo SW preloaded, had my machine booting within 10 minutes (no, really) of cracking the case, and didn't lose a nonce of my lifetime service. Zero video or audio glitches, and menus are 5-10X faster.
The TiVo Channel guide is far easier to use for surfing.
The TiVo will step single frames both forward and backward; for no good reason, the ReplayTV will not.
ReplayTV's scheduling and playback-menu software is slightly more featurous, and allows you to listen to the currently output program (live or recorded), unlike TiVo's, which requires you to escape to a silent menu system to browse or make changes. Both have backgrounded audio and video in live-schedule surfing. Otherwise, ReplayTV's menuing is a bit more tedious and fragile feeling than TiVo's.
My ReplayTV has automatic commercial-skip, but it can be confused by non-go-to-commercial fades in the program near the commercial segments. So you lose the first or last few seconds of some scenes. For shows like that, I revert to using the "skip-forward" button that skips 30 seconds and is slightly quicker to deal with commercials than the TiVo method of triple-FF and hit the play button when you see the show return.
Tivo's play button backs up to an estimate of the end of the commercials coming out of double and triple FF modes. And it's surprising how good it is at guessing your reaction time within a second, so the triple-FF method is effective.
ReplayTV sometimes locks up completely if it gets stuck dialing home. That might have been a break-in problem, as it hasn't happened since the first couple of days I owned it.
In general, TiVo seems to be the more mature, better designed system. And now that I've fixed my HW problems, it feels like I have a brand new one. If I'd done that before getting a ReplayTV, I'd have got a second TiVo instead. Mea guinea piggus.
Oh. And the TiVo with the new HD is absolutely silent. No more disk-whirr in the living room. No fan noise. Scary "is it on" silence. The dolts at ReplayTV used a fan with a stepper motor (I think) and it sounds like they actually use it to keep the fan speed low. Dumb. Rumbles all night long. Not noticeable during the daytime, but the human ear is capable of 6-7 orders of magnitude of sensitivity increase depending on ambient noise, and if you're susceptible to insomnia, it's a stressor. I'm thinking of ripping it out and cooling the thing with a bucket of ice.
One last thing: ReplayTVs can be networked to send recorded shows from unit to unit; I understand that's supposed to be available on newer TiVos. I have no opinion of its value.
Here is some kind of devkit, tho it appears to be for the Home Media Option end of things.
IANAProgrammer... But Tivo (series 1) runs linux on a PowerPC processor. I know enough about unix and linux to know that each flavor has a few "tweaks" that may not carry from flavor to flavor. So once you figure out those tweaks on Tivo's linux, then you should be able to develop using standard linux development tools. If you hit the Tivo Community Forum or the Deal Database forums you can find hundreds, if not thousands, of applications written to run on the Tivo.
And, under certian conditions, you can still use your Tivo without a subscription. It becomes exactly a digital VCR. It doesn't have any guide data or anything that makes it as useful as it is when subscribed.
Most Tivo loyalists don't like to talk about it, but there are ways to load 3rd party guide data onto your unsubb'ed Tivo.
So, if one is that hardcore, they can buy the Tivo, add a NIC, and get their own guide data loaded. All while never paying a monthly fee.
Paul Krugman in the NYT did a piece some weeks back on "stealth inflation" in which he described a whole host of companies adding on fees, surcharges and other cryptic babble, mostly in the hopes that most consumers would just knuckle under and not complain. This sounds suspisciously like that - except that if the retailers get saddled with a bunch of returns, the retailer will be the one who gets just a wee bit peeved. My bet is that they will be the retailers who won't take back the product because it has been opened or some other lame excuse (not through Circuit City or some other reputable retailer) so the consumers really will be stuck.
While I could see a class action brewing through this, my recommendation would be to seek the assistance of your state attorney general and utilize the consumer protections statutes available to counter this kind of bait and switch. Alternatively, you can also use Deceptive Trade Practices (DTPA in Texas) which allows successfull parties to recover treble (triple) damages from defendants. Keeps the class action attorneys from making the real money, and puts the justice in the pocket of the consumer. Plus, if the company gets hammered all across the country, the bad press will be more than any PR firm can get them out of - see if they are around next Christmas....
Lastly, if the attorney general won't prosecute (becuase they have been defanged by the Bush/Conservative/Victorian era deregulation crowd) you can always call your local TV consumer reporter and get them to make a stink with the retailer you bought it from....
Sort of makes me glad I don't have cable or anything else - just DVDs and Rabbit Ears!!
Merry Xmas!!
Sony doesn't officially sell TiVos anymore... It's just www.tivo.com, and yes, you can stream shows from one TiVo to another, although it'll cost you at least $150 extra ($99 for the Home Media Option on the first TiVo, $49 on each additional TiVo). You also get the ability to play MP3s and view JPEGs with the HMO, which may or may not be an exciting feature.
My English teacher once told me that two positives don't make a negative. Two words for her: Yeah, right.
Yes, the new owners have an excellent long term plan, screw as many people as possible to get $$$ in the execs pockets, and then file for bankruptcy shortly before shutting down the company.
:)
Hmm, that sounds like only a short term plan, but the company executives will benefit from it for a long time after they go out of business. In that sense, it is long term.
I can't afford a sig!
Is there such a thing as a TiVo with a built in channel decoder for Bresnan Digital Cable? I'd buy just about anything to be able to watch one channel and record another on my digital cable.
I am on my THIRD ReplayTV 5080...the first one died within a month, then the replacement died! What's worse is that it took a couple of months for ReplayTV to activate the first replacement unit...I had purchased a lifetime activation and they too forever to switch the activation over from the old unit to the new unit. Things went much smoother for the second replacement...although the fact that I've had THREE of these damn machines is pretty sad.
Once you get past that, the ReplayTV itself is FAR superior to Tivo. Automatic Commercial Skip actually works 95% of the time, and using DV Archive, I am able to download any recorded show over my home network to my mac to burn to DVD. It's just awesome. Their interface is far superior as well...I like how you can organize the shows by category...and they are not displayed by date recorded. That's one thing I HATE about the Tivo...you have to scroll around looking for shows that you recorded a while ago. With ReplayTV, you can find it instantly. Plus you have a buttont to skip 30-seconds without a hack, unlike Tivo series I...and as far as I know Series 2 machines can't do this. Actually, you can fast forward as far as you'd like by hitting a number first and the the skip button. It's little things like that that make the difference to me.
Tivo is the AOL of PVR's, imho. ReplayTV decided not to bend-over for the networks, which cost them money in legal fees...which definitely hurt them. The only thing Tivo is better at is marketing.
There is no gravity...the earth just sucks.
But as was mentioned in other places, my time is worth something to me. Look at it this way, if I want to take a trip somewhere I can take Greyhound for $15, or I can take a plane flight for $400. But it will take a day of my time to get there on Greyhound, and a couple hours on a plane. So, I have to miss a day of work to take the bus.
Well, I make more than $385 per work day, so it actually costs me MORE to take the bus than a plane.
You can apply this same principle to other things, open source PVRs amongst them. I just don't want to screw with it. I essentially pay TiVo to maintain my PVR for me because I don't want to do it.
I find the people who have the most trouble understanding why someone would pay for something are young people. They have no money and a lot of time, as opposed to lots of money and no time. So, they'll do things like spend 2 days downloading a movie in order to save $15.
The RIAA and SPA are fools for not understanding that there are things that college people simply won't pony up the dough for (like Photoshop) at full price. On the other hand, to a graphics arts professional, $500 for Photoshop is nothing. Due to the better features and useability of it, they''ll make the $500 back on a single contract job.
Anyway, perhaps now you can see why the right solution for you isn't necessarily the right solution for everyone.
As to being a lifetime corporate cash cow, I don't like to buy anything on subscription. Some things (like cell phones or cable) are only available monthly. But for the most part, anything I can pay one time for I will do so on. That's why I bought the lifetime TiVo option for $250 (I think). Since I'm a DirecTiVo customer, I get lifetime service on as many TiVos as I have, not a single unit. So, I also share your annoyance at becoming a lifetime cash cow. But I also know that some things are worth it if you can't get it any other way.
Perhaps some day in the future, MythTV or whatever will be good enough that paying for TiVo makes no sense to me, even at a few dollars a month. I predict that for me that day is a long time off since I use DirecTiVo and I don't expect MythTV to be able to legally or reliably operate directly on DirecTV streams like my DirectTiVo can.
Number of sites around the web are still selling Replay's with 3 years service. My advice - buy one + if Replay don't live up to their deal take them to small claims court. You'll easily win + there are no lawyer fees. (Actually Replay won't even show up for the case so it'll take all of 30 seconds for you to get the judgement). How to collect: Invoice them with the court documents or (if you want to be really nasty) stick a collection agency on them -- it'll cost you anything up to 50% of the court award, but the satisfaction will be pure bliss. Enjoy!
Rich people are eccentric. Poor people are strange. Me, I'd be happy with odd.
As much as i hate being part of a 'sue-happy' society, sometimes the legal system is needed to keep companies that pull that sort of crap in check.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Follow these steps and your tivo's "->|" button becomes 30 second skip:
Select
Play
Select
3
0
Select
It will at least get rid of this source of annoyance.
P.S. Tivo Rocks!
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
Sure they will accept returns, that way it doesn't become a legal issue.
A good reason why they (and maybe other manufactorers) did this is to boost this years financial numbers.
The units are sold in December this year and will not be returned until January next year. (its not going to be earlier since they were given as gifts and no store is going to accept returns until the new year)
This year they moved 1000 more units -> bean counter happy, people get bonuses. So what if they get 700 units returned, they have until December next year to make up for it.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Responsability for correcting the fault lies with he who makes it, in this case the retailers.
The price was dropped by large numbers of stores in at least three national B&M chains as well as several online stores. A little Occam's Razor exercise: What's more likely, that DNNA gave clear directions and a half-dozen large retailers all made the same mistake, or that DNNA put out a muddy, ambiguous message? Keep in mind that DNNA is a company that thinks making these kind of changes right before Christmas was a dandy idea. There are also numerous accounts of people being told by DNNA that $150 units included service, so DNNA was at least as confused about what was going on as the retailers were.
Even if it is the retailers fault, the problem should be worked out between DNNA and the retailers. Customers did not create this mess, but DNNA is the one "fixing" it by taking something their customers were told they had paid for. When a company sells something to you for a mistakenly low price they're not allowed to correct their mistake after the fact by coming to your house, taking whatever they sold you and tossing a refund on the table. It should be no different with electronic services.
What software do you use to burn shows to DVD after you have grabbed them with DVArchive? I have a Mac, but have not been able to figure out how to do this. Every time I have seen instructions, they want you to use about 20 different programs to demux, convert video and audio, and remux, and even then I can't get a burnable video file.
ReplayTV is hardly a small company. It is owned by DNAA, the company which ownes Denon and Marantz (think (relatively) high end audio equipment)
Installable pre configured Knoppix based Myth TV solution, ready to roll.
Has to be installed, but get a WinTV-Go, add a HD to a decent box, add TV-out vid card or VGA converter (seems to be the preferred method, TV out usually looks like hell) and it looks like you are ready to roll.
Disclaimer--- DLed ISO last night, made sure it booted etc, building "fresh" box now.
Just posting FYI, as I can actually be "on topic" for a change.
You haven't used a TiVo in a while, or if you have, it's been a Series 1. In the latest TiVo OS, you can have all episodes of a show show up in a folder, so all Simpsons episodes are categorized under one "Simpsons" folder. You can also change sorting options, so you can sort by date recorded or by name.
Automatic Commercial Skip... meh. DVArchive... I admit it would be nice to have something that simple, but I can hack my Series 1 TiVo and add show recording and so much more, so I'm not concerned about it. The 30-second skip isn't really a hack, it's more like a cheat code, and I'm pretty sure that Series 2 does have it.
One thing about ReplayTV I'm unsure of.. On a TiVo you have a complete list of all your Season Passes (shows you want every episode of) and Wishlists (wildcard searches that let you search by name, actor, director, etc.), and can put them in a list according to their priority. You can also go through the entire list of shows it will record (in a list format, not on the TV guide) and see what it will record, as well as get a list of what it won't (and didn't) record and why. If at any point you see something that's not to your taste, you can cancel/enable recording and the TiVo automatically re-adjusts all the recordings. What conflict resolution methods does ReplayTV have? I've heard they're inferior, but I haven't had it explained to me very well.
My English teacher once told me that two positives don't make a negative. Two words for her: Yeah, right.
I've been happy for the most part with the two ReplayTV units that I own (both purchased used off of eBay.) The biggest problem I ran into for both units was that the hard drives had errors on them that would glitch the OS and crash the player if you recorded too much material. I was extremely pissed after the first couple of times that this happened, since the player reset itself after the last time - erasing all my existing recordings. Another unit freezed up completely and would no longer boot. Both problems were easily solved by taking the cover off, and replacing the hard drive - I haven't had any problems since (and I got Maxtor to replace both of the bad drives under warranty). Don't forget to use the "secret menu" - 243+replayzones to reset the unit to factory defaults after you're done (yes, you'll lose your shows.)
The best feature of the ReplayTV 4k and 5k units (aside from commercial skip, which only works intermittently these days) is the built-in 10/100 ethernet. I can run DVArchive on my win2K box, export all of my shows (Simpsons, Mr. Bean, Stargate SG-1) to my hard drive, edit them with VirtualDub, and burn em to VCD with TMPEnc. ReplayTVs record shows in MPEG2, at D1(?) resolution - 720x480 at high and medium quality, I think low quality is half D1 - I'm not sure, since I never record anything at low quality. High quality shows are recorded with 48khz audio, requiring downsampling before you reencode to VCD.
Bottom line, if you're comfortable disassembling consumer electronics and re-imaging hard drives using the ReplayTV Upgrade patch, you should be fine. Many "dead" units can be brought back to life by re-imaging the hard drive - the premise being that somehow the on-board OS got corrupted. For privacy advocates, buy a used 40xx unit (as I did), as these are pre-activated, so you don't have to provide any information. If you're not comfortable messing around with the innards of a $400+ machine, and taking the risk of frying both it, and your computer (if you need to re-image, you have to hook up the replacement drive to your computer), then don't get a ReplayTV.
If you're a super-uber geek, then you can try putting together a MythTV box (next on my list of stuff to do, after I build a MAME cabinet - I think I'll put the MythTV box into the MAME cabinet...)
Last tip - BACK UP YOUR REPLAYTV BOX. If ever you need a disk image for your box, and ReplayTV goes under, you'll be SOL unless you've got a current, clean (stable) backup.
As for what Replay is doing with their "free" offer, it appears to violate the Federal Trade Commission Guidelines for use of the word "Free". These are quite specific.
when the purchaser is told that an article is ``Free'' to him if another article is purchased, the word ``Free'' indicates that he is paying nothing for that article and no more than the regular price for the other. Thus, a purchaser has a right to believe that the merchant will not directly and immediately recover, in whole or in part, the cost of the free merchandise or service by marking up the price of the article which must be purchased, by the substitution of inferior merchandise or service, or otherwise.
That's clear enough. It's binding on the supplier as well as the retailer; the supplier can't pass the buck here.
California also requires this: (Business and Professions Code 17509).
-
Any advertisement, including any advertisement over the
Internet, soliciting the purchase or lease of a product or service,
or any combination thereof, that requires, as a condition of sale,
the purchase or lease of a different product or service, or any
combination thereof, shall conspicuously disclose in the
advertisement the price of all those products or services.
That's clear enough.If you own a ReplayTV, you know the killer feature for it is DVArchive. (sourceforge site)
However, I'm rather concerned about it. The website, although hosted on sourceforge offers no source code and repeated attempts to contact the author have been ignored. He's allegedly planning a rewrite of some kind, which is fine, I just want the source for the older version.
Is anyone a developer for DVArchive or have access to the source? This is not at all an insult to DVArchive or its developers, it's a great program, but in the spirit of its license, I'd really like to see the source code.
http://www.talknerdy.org
Doesn't explain why Replay's telephone CSRs answered that the 3 year deal was valid for SEVERAL DAYS.
First of all, the beef would be with the seller, not directly with Replay. And they can simply refund your money and take it back; that's generally considered complete restitution in a case such as this. Even under your math, Replay doesn't owe anyone $616 or $449; at most (if your interpretation were correct) was 3 years of service. The cost of that service (if bought) is $299; of course it costs them less, but that service fee subsidizes the below-cost-of-goods sale prices that both TiVo and Replay are now selling at.
As others may have said, Replay told retailers to remove the 3-year stickers, etc before dropping the price on all current inventory. CC and Radio Shack didn't bother to do this, and didn't update their websites either. Replay had set the price change for around Dec 20th; CC and Radio Shack (to get extra Xmas sales I assume) jumped the gun and did it about a week early. That's not Replay's fault. And the reps called to ask about the price answered correctly so far as they knew - the retailers were supposed to wait to change the price and the terms.
All those FatWallet-ers who bought the units knew it was an unintentional mistake (and probably knew it was the retailer's mistake). They figured they were getting something for nothing (effectively).
Basically, Replay is getting screwed over here by CC and the Shack (who also screwed themselves). Many of those units (bought by FW-ers) will be returned, and have to be sold eventually as refurbs or open-box units. (Earlier this year, Replay sold refurbs with lifetime service for ~$300 (service was $250 then)).
CC and RS are telling Replay "cancel the activation on these serial numbers, we sold them without service, then send us a check" since CC/RS paid for that inventory when it did include service, but they now sold it at the new, lower price without it. CC & RS are the ones who are claiming they sold it without service, but didn't so mark all of the units.
BTW, my understanding is that most or all the units in the Radio Shack stores had stickers on them that said "Service Fee required for use" etc. Read the FW/etc posts (if you care to wade through 10000 messages) - people bought them anyways at $150 and figured they scored when they initially came up as "fee paid" - until RS told them to turn it off.
Disclaimer: My wife and I own two ReplayTV 5040's, one upgraded to 160GB, and they've totally changed our TV-watching habits. Once you use one, you won't go back. And their network capability is wonderful, as is DVArchive (which allows you to move shows to, or watch shows from, the PC's harddisk). DVArchive is also totally happy running on Linux, BTW.
I've had two TiVos for about 4 years and I love them to death (I've used Reply and don't love them to death).
In response to a post about the 30 second skip remote function replacing the skip-to-the-end button, I wanted to point out that you can have both features (mostly) at the same time.
If you've done the "select, play, select, 3, 0, select" thing, then when you press the ->| button, it advances the play position by 30 seconds, but if you're scanning forward (fast forward, at any speed) and hit the ->| it will skip ahead by 15 minutes. So, FF, then stab ->| four times and you're at the end of the current recording (60 minutes ahead, anyway).
And in response to the post about the TiVo clipping the start and end of shows, I think I can say that its clear you don't have a DirecTiVo that syncs its internal clock with the time of day data in the satellite feed. If it ever misses the start or end, then its almost certainly (always, in my experience) due to the network programming being late.
This easy to check too, btw. You can have the TiVo display on the screen in the lower right corner its internal clock, as well as the position in the current recording that's being played. With that display on, you can easily watch what time the TiVo thinks it is and see when that coincides with the red "recording" LED turning on. To enable that time display use: select, play, select, 9, select. Do it again to turn off the display. (As always, its best to enter these remote codes while you're watching a show on disk (not live TV) so the TiVo wont try to change the channel while you're entering those numbers on the remote!
And one more regarding the TiVo not single-frame stepping backwards: In my experience, if you pause and them immediately hit the "step backwards" button, the TiVo will jump to the first I-frame that immediately precedes the current play position (which is usually not what you want). But, I've found that if you hit pause, then wait about 2 seconds, then hit the back key that it will then start stepping backwards one frame at time.
And finally, a plug for DirecTiVo. I love the fact that my recordings are never recompressed and are stored in a (largely) unaltered form from the way that they are received from the satellite. Having no generational loss is just great -- there is never a reason to watch live TV with this setup in my opinion. (also, it was trivial to install an 802.11 wifi card, web server, ftp server, bigger disks, etc...)
Both Tivo and Replay need to find a better way to make money. Charging as much as they do for guide data reminds me of a newspaper or magazine trying to make all their money off the subscription. They don't, because nobody would buy even the NY Times for $10 per day.
I'm not sure what that is, but perhaps selling more and more compelling software options, more widely licensed software to consumer electronics resellers, broader marketing of usage info (yes, I know the tin hats will go batty here...).
I love my Tivo, but it's a an extremely expensive device when you factor in the box and the lifetime, especially against CATV-provided PVRs, which can be had for as little as $5 per month in some areas. Yes, I'm aware they suck compared to Tivo, but it's a non-investment that doesn't *have* to be perfect for many people.
The Direct TV Tivos appear much cheaper, but that's if you want to invest in Satellite and can get a signal (I can't, so its a moot point).
The retailer bought the units from Replay with the 3-year-activation for $XXX, and was reselling them for ~$500.
When Replay decided to change their model, the retailer took the option of selling the units without the activation for $150, and getting a check back from Replay for circa $200 (on their old stock). When they made that deal, it was incumbent on them to sell them without activation in order to get the check from Replay. They (CC) sold some of them (not all) without telling the consumer that the activation had been removed, but they then went and told Replay (or had already told Replay) that those units had been sold without activation.
It doesn't matter what's sealed in the box if the retailer (correctly) tells you that the deal is different. The retailer changed the deal, but didn't tell (all) the consumers. Replay has no direct knowledge of which consumers the retailer sold to under the old model or the new model, it only knows that CC told Replay that all those units (at $150) were sold without activation.
Note again that some CC's correctly marked them, and others marked them sometime during the day. Also note that most Radio Shacks correctly marked them _and_ the boxes had stickers that said activation required.
Circuit City screwed up, bigtime. One way or another, they're liable (though perhaps only to refund purchasers their money, perhaps to Replay (i.e. circuit city doesn't get the $250ish from Replay, and Replay provides the service that CC sold them)).
CC will probably claim it can't determine which people were told and which weren't, and so will probably only offer to refund people's $150ish in exchange for the units back.
The seller is not a 3rd party to the sale, they're a 1st party. They are not merely an agent for Replay; they buy inventory from Replay, then sell that to consumers. Replay can't tell them to mark the stock down and remove the activation, and Replay can't go in and demand they change the stickers. Replay can make a deal with the retailer, though, for the retailer to remove the activation and get paid by Replay when they sell it or when the user activates it, etc. In that case, it's incumbent on the retailer to live up to that bargain, and so inform the buyers of what they're buying.
Remember, when you buy something in a store you're buying it from the retailer. The manufacturer has a requirement to honor the deal they sold it to the retailer under - but in this case the retailer and the manufacturer agreed to a new deal that involved the retailer remarking the unsold stock, and the retailer screwed it up.
The phone reps at Replay couldn't know that CC has screwed up, nor that CC had jumped the gun and dropped the price early.
You stated that Replay "did NOT tell them to take off the markings". There is considerable evidence that they did, but that CC didn't do a good job of getting the website people and all the store managers involved in getting word out and remarking the shelves/stock.