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Tivo Institutes 1 Year Service Contracts
azoblue writes "TiVo recently changed their customer agreement, allowing them to institute service contracts with early cancellation fees." From the article: "According to the new service agreement, any TiVo activated after September 6 will require a 12-month commitment. Those who cancel before the end of their contract, or have their contracts terminated by TiVo, will be forced to pay a $150 early termination fee ... Although not specified in the new agreement, some customers have reported that adding a new TiVo to their service makes contracts activated before that date also applicable to the new policy."
According to this article the company has been able to silently (and with no-opt-out policy) upgrade the TiVo to include the red flag stuff(some shows can be delete or not retained more than 7 days...you know..)
Very..."unconfortable"...
From boing boing:
Earlier this month, TiVo owners discovered that a mandatory, non-optional "update" to their TiVos changed the built-in software so that broadcasters could flag certain shows for automatic deletion and for restriction from use with TiVoToGo. David Zatz, a TiVo owner, decided to cancel his TiVo service. After all, he'd bought a device that could record all shows, not one that could record all shows save those that some paranoid Hollywood exec, overzealous broadcaster, or fumble-fingered technician gave him permission to record. TiVo had broken his device and he didn't want to keep using it. But when he looked up canceling his TiVo, he found out that under the terms of his "agreement" with TiVo (e.g., the crap he clicked through when get got set up), he was obliged to pay a $150 "early cancellation" fee.
Apple iProduct. Non importa cosa sia, lo comprerete!
Don't forget fellating advertisers.
☠
I have a MythTV box and I'm tired of maintaining it (Gentoo-based VIA EPIA 1.0ghz C3 Nehemiah utilizing Hauppauge PVR 250). I value my time and I hate tinkering with the system to keep it working (e.g., NTP won't run as often as it should, so my recordings are off by 20-30 secs and I have to login and manually run ntpdate).
I really want to sell the whole thing that cost me over $400 to build and switch to a Tivo. With Tivo, I could spend $200 on a box (get $150 back in a rebate) and pay $14/mo for service. Sounds good so far. This 1-yr contract doesn't bother me as much (like with my cell phone) as long as the thing works. The only real worry is the DRM and the fact that they control their service from afar.
I know people are going to say "blah blah, this is why you should switch to MythTV." Has anyone been successful in prototyping a Mythbox (such that it just works for long periods of time without having to worry about tweaks and workarounds)? If so, please tell me how.
Otherwise, I'm afraid Tivo seems the better way to go if you value your free time.
They're giving 150 rebate for new users so that a tivo box only costs 50 dollars, they're gonna execute that 150 fee back at those people if they cancel.
That being said, maybe they think people will just bend over and take it, since their sattelite dishes and cable TV usually requires a service contract too.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Nothing new here... except the whole "If they terminate your service you still have to pay the cancellation fee". I always thought a cancellation fee was a penalty for YOUR choice stop using a service, not being terminated. Geez, thats like getting fired and being told you have to repay your last 3 pay checks.
There are only 10 kinds of people in the world. Those that understand binary and those that don't.
I recently purchased a PVR (Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300) from Future Shop for $399. It works with my Rogers Cable and I haven't had to pay any additional fees other than a $2 per month digital listings feed. I was also able to upgrade the hardrive in it no problem. It can record 2 shows at once, fast forward / pause live tv, do advanced scheduling etc .. actually its really amazing and has changed the way I watch tv. What makes Tivo better (and more costly)?
HR10-250 High Def DirecTiVo is the answer.
The story is complete misinformation. The 1 year service issues only apply to machines bought now that qualify for a $150 rebate. If you don't keep your TiVo service active for a full year, you get a chargeback for your $150 rebate. All other TiVos use the old monthly service charges or you can buy a lifetime subscription. This is a non-issue.
Since you can buy TiVo units for a cost of $50 now (and for a brief time, you could actually make a $50 PROFIT buying a $100 TiVo on Amazon and getting a $150 rebate) it only makes sense for TiVo to protect themselves from people buying cheap units for the rebate, then dumping them on eBay.
A long time ago, I spoke to one of the top executives at TiVo, he told me that they make no money on hardware sales, they gave all those profits to the hardware manufacturers, they make money only on subscriptions and subsidiary projects like advertising. TiVo is giving up $150, the equivalent of a full year's subscription fees, just to move more hardware. It is a gift to their hardware producing partners. It only makes sense for TiVo to protect themselves from unscrupulous buyers exploiting this project.
Only if you allow it to be that way. First, NEVER sign something without reading it. If you don't understand the agreement and can't get a satisfactory explaination, don't sign. If a company fails to live up to their end of the deal, explore your legal options. That doesn't usually mean hiring an expensive attorney. The business is most likely regulated by multiple local and federal agencies, and threats to file complaints usually result in action being taken. Most businesses scam people who are content to allow themselves to be scammed.
The same story was on digg a couple days ago with the same misleading topic. Just like on Digg, people who dont read the story bashed TiVo. If you read the story, OR the comments then you would know the $150 cancellation is due to the $150 rebate they give you.
I wonder which news (cough) source will post the same bullshit headline next.
Ahh, sensationalism at work.
Excellent advise! Never, NEVER, sign a contract unless you fully understand your role and the other parties roll, and, especially for a company, how they can rape you if you, or in this case either party, breaks the contract.
But, if they do try to take advantage of it, and they know it, often times if legal action is mentioned, they will not bother with $150. That is small change if they only have to give it up once in a while.
My sig beat up your sig.
The $150 charge is only for those that get a new tivo unit at $150 off the reg price. So if you buy one, then decide that you don't want to continue the contract, then they can impose any penality they wish. IMHO, their penality is not bad at all, considering you bought the hardward at a discount.
Second, buy a lifetime contract. I have three tivos, all with lifetime contracts. For $299, the service is available for the life of the unit. And that doesn't mean that once the HD fails you are out. You can send a failed unit back to tivo, pay a mere $150 in repair/replacement costs, they will replace the tivo for you and they will transfer your lifetime subscription to the new unit. You can do this for up to 10 failures. If a HD fails every 2 years, this means you have up to 12 years for a single subscription. Do you have any piece of technology in your house that carries this kind of lifecycle promise? How often does your HD fail?
Anyone who wants to claim that there is a better alternative out there is wrong. The service improves constantly, the help desk at TIVO is one of the best out there (probably only topped by GIECO), and the attitude of the company in response to hacking the unit it great (I've got a 640+ hour hacked unit).
As for the broadcast flag comments, anyone who wants to archive their shows should go out and buy a decent tv capture card. Tivo was actually smart in granting the limited access to download shows from the unit directly, but preventing people from (easily) distributing the shows. This satisfied the MPAA and the like by adding copy protection, but still allowed the basic user at home to store shows on his/her computer. If you were really planning to distribute video over the internet you already own a capture card and didn't need tivo anyway.
All in all, this is not much of a change for Tivo users, and people should not consider this a reason not to own one. I love my tivos, and I still recommend them to my friends.
"ReplayTV also requires a subscription and they reserve the right to change your software whenever you connect to their server."
I've had a Replay for 2 years now, haven't had any problems with them removing services or anything. Commercial skip still works, etc. It even has a network port. If I download the right software I can grab those shows. They even have a website where you can set your unit. (it takes 24 hours for the changes to take effect, though. It makes sense considering it only calls home once a day.)
With that said, though, I think the unit is going bye bye. It's not out of disatisfaction, though. Comcast has a DVR option now. I've had it for a couple of months and I like it. There are some downsides to it. I cannot hit it over the network. It doesn't have auto commercial skip. I think it has less capacity than the Replay, though it has enough I haven't noticed much. I liked Replay's interface better, it handles categorization etc. (I.e. My girlfriend had her own group and I had mine.) Sounds like a crummy unit, right? Nah. Thing is, I have digital cable. I couldn't get the Replay to work with the digital cable. (well... supposedly I can get an IR thingy for it, but as I say more here you'll understand why it's not of much importance to me.) So I cannot record HBO etc with the Replay. The Replay lets you watch TV and pause etc, but it's not as elegant as Comcast's DVR does it. It's slower to change channels etc. Even when I only had analog cable, I despised using the Replay this way. I think the Replay I have only has one tuner. The Comcast box I have now has two, and it's come in handy. I also like that the Comcast DVR doesn't eat up a network port. That's the main reason I'm seriously considering getting a second unit for the bedroom. I only wish those two units would talk to each other so that stuff I record in the bedroom could be watched in the living room. It doesn't auto skip commercials but fast fowarding is easy enough. To make a long story short, the Replay has merits above the Comcast DVR, but I'm happier with the Comcast box. Mainly, though, the difference is my preference for digital cable.
In any event, you have choices out there. I don't know if your cable company has a DVR. If you don't, the Replay is a fine unit. Honestly, I prefer the Replay over TiVo to begin with. I know a guy with a DVR on his satellite reciever. He's happy with it, though I'd highly recommend one with two tuners. That's bitten him a few times.
"Derp de derp."
Why so long? You want to know a little secret from one satisfied MythTV user to a potential user? Seperate your backend system from the front end you're going to hook up to your TV. It'll add more to the cost but you will appreciate it in the long run. I use a plain old AMD Athlon 1.4 GHZ system with 512MB of RAM and two Hauppauge WinTV PVR 250 cards on the backend and a little diskless book-sized system on the frontend using a Via EPIA M10000 motherboard and MiniMyth.
The advantage to going this way is that the backend can be very low-end (a PIII-500MHz or slower would be sufficient) since the MPEG2 encoding is done on the Hauppauge cards. The frontends are also pretty low end (mine is around 1GHz) but they have built in MPEG2 decoder hardware on the motherboard so they use very little CPU while playing back video.
If you run Debian unstable you can get pre-built packages from Matt Zimmerman's web site, so the hard part is getting the IVTV drivers working so you can capture video from the PVR 250 cards. It's well documented and they've stabilized a lot in the last 2 years. My setup has been running without any problems since March when I finally traced back some issue I was having with 0-byte size recordings to an IRQ sharing conflict. Once I disabled the USB and parallel ports I wasn't using and put each tuner on a separate IRQ in the BIOS it's been rock solid. Once you get the capture cards working, mythtv itself is simple to setup. apt-get install the packages, follow the setup prompts, and then run the mythtv setup program to configure your tuners, setup your guide data download preferences (North America uses the free Zap2It Labs Data Direct service that downloads listings in a nice XML format (labs.zap2it.com).
I've been using MythTV for two and a half years now and I honestly never get jealous of TiVo or ReplayTV users. If anything I pity them for being locked into a proprietary pay service with their video locked on a hard drive which forces you to jump through hoops to get at it.
Different cable providers have different software. Videotron up here in Quebec includes a Show Finder utility you can get to by hitting the yellow triangle button, as well as a splash screen with live updated weather, picture in picture, email, etc.
:)
I've had my 8300 PVR for about six months now with only one problem in that time. A single episode of Voyager got corrupted, which wasn't so bad, since it was a rerun and sucked anyway.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
Commercial Products and Services:
ReplayTV: TiVo's ancient nemesis, it also 'just works'. I can't say whether it is more user friendly than TiVo, but it is far more customer friendly.
Windows XP Media Center Edition: Yes, them. Choose from multiple manufacturers but expect to face Microsoft Corp's version of the 'personal' computing experience.
Hardware vendors are now pushing DVD/HD Recording devices quite a bit. RCA, Motorola and Panasonic have products available.
Service Providers like Comcast and DishTV are now providing time shifting hardware and tv-on-demand solutions. Check with your choice of cable or satellite service provider.
Hobbyist Solutions:
MythTV: The Open Source, Do-It-Yourself DVR. Expect to build your own machine and play around a bit before it works the way you want. (Linux)
Freevo: MythTV, but not. (Linux)
MediaPortal: Who ever said Open Source was limited to Linux software? (Windows)
Meedio: It was a community based freeware product (myHTPC) that morphed into a commercial product without warning. Still a reasonable alternative to Microsoft for PVR function on the Windows platform. (Windows)
eyeTV: This Mac product has me seriously considering picking up a Mini-Mac to use as a media center. (Apple)
SnapStream (Windows)
SageTV (Windows)
Chris-TV (Windows)
ShowShifter (Windows)
On a personal note, I purchased the ReplayTV when it was first released and am entirely satisfied with it. Plus, by purchasing early I have never had to pay a subscription fee for data that is freely available elsewhere. If there had been a subscription fee I would not have purchased it.
Dan
They are, which is why it's hard to get them to go after something as small as $150. When I worked at an independent long distance company, the collection agencies usually wouldn't help us out, since most of our bad debt was in that range of less then one or two-hundred dollars. We were pretty much on our own to send threatening letters, etc.
Depending on how you paid your monthly fee, Tivo probably just bills your credit card or drafts your bank account the $150. You might be wise to take 'evasive action' (alerting your bank or credit card of fraud or whatever) before cancelling your Tivo to avoid the fee. Then just tell TiVo you changed the terms -- didn't you see my webiste? It was right there for you to look at.
I am not a crackpot.
Quit being a dick. Nobody claimed this was plug and play, but the original poster is guilty of not engaging his thought processes. Doing the same repetitive task over and over again and then blaming the system for it when the system has a very well known mechanism specifically for handling periodic repetitive tasks like this is asinine.
/cronjob-scripts
/usr/sbin/ntpdate pool.ntp.org
/cronjob-scripts/timeupdate
If you had an employee who was constantly performing an easily cronned task by hand over and over again, what would your impression of them be?
And for the record, I run Myth, had the same time drift problem as the original poster, and solved it with a cron job.
Here: I'll even make it easy on you. Make a directory called "cronjob-scripts". Then go into that directory by typing
cd
Then make a file, we'll call it "timeupdate"
Use your favorite text editor, vi, emacs, echo to a file, whatever floats your boat. Put this in it:
#!/bin/sh
Now, make the file executable:
chmod 555 timeupdate
And lastly, su to root and run it once a day in the cron. In other words, type as root:
crontab -e
Then go to the bottom of that with the arrows, press "o", and paste this in:
6 3 * * * nice -n 19
then press escape, type ':wq' and press enter
Done.
Now that will run at 3:06 am local time every day, syncing your clock.