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."

Comments

Sell the blades, give away the razor...

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

Just a change in business plans, RTFA. Tivo is giving deep discounts and rebates for the hardware. $50 for a Tivo means that they *have* to get a service commitment to break even.

Nothing new here, move along...

Re:MythTV

[SeaFox]

actually its really amazing and has changed the way I watch tv. What makes Tivo better (and more costly)?

Actually nothing. The interface may be better, I don't have a TiVo. What's going on here is U.S. Cable conglomerates being greedy. You're in Canada I take it being on Rogers. In the U.S. cable providers don't make their boxes available to buy at Best Buy, Circuit City, ect. If you did manage to procure a box (like by keeping one from your cable provider or buying one on eBay) the new provider would refuse to authorize it on their systems. In fact, if I remember right, buying digital cable boxes online is illegal (probably since the boxes are never meant to be sold and therefore are considered stolen property on the marketplace). And now they've probably added DMCA stuff to the mix.

If you want to record a digital cable station while watching another you can either rent a second converter box to use solely with your TiVo or other PVR (none of which can deencrypt the digital signal on their own), or rent a PVR with dual tuners from your cable company. U.S. cable companies will not allow you to purchase outright any digital cable box, only rent.

Cable companies sucker people in with the extra channels on digital cable, not mentioning how it will keep them from being able to record and watch the higher channels without paying a second box fee like they have been able to with analog cable and a VCR for decades. Plus, they do stuff like disable the S-video port of cable boxes so TiVo can't make the box tune stations on it's own. When you call and complain, they will be sympathetic, then they'll offer you a DVR rental for a low monthly fee to alleviate your sudden issues using TiVo. :-)