Slashdot Mirror
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."
This seems reasonable, a way to have guaranteed revenue stream and a penalty for people who cancel early.
I was flirting with getting a tivo, but have reconsidered. I already have a DVD recorder, and as much of a pain as it is, I'm going to build a mythtv box. Tivo obviously does not care about their consumers, only about money and fellating hollywood.
I hate sigs.
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.
Well, with rebates that bring the devices under $50 and their recent radically retarded decisions such as presenting ads to users that bought a Tivo to rid themselves of ads, etc, it's no wonder they are going to these lengths!
I was the first to support Tivo for what their device and service did for my household. I am also the first to complain to Tivo and Slashdot (and various others including my parents who I had originally suggested a Tivo) that their service is no longer worth it.
Good riddance Tivo. While I still use your product (DirecTivo), I'm glad I'm not obligated to fall under any of your contractual and flighty mishaps.
Digital cable (even basic cable) is getting extremely high priced, and this is with no DVR style record feature. Not keen on a satelite dish either, heard some horror stories from other family members and friends.
TiVo looked great, record what you want when you want so you never miss something. Skip commericals (bout frakking time) and more. Now they've taken some ancient MSN/AOL type deal where you gotta have a service plan contract? Sorry, no thank you.
What if something where to happen where you couldn't afford that TiVo every month? (Granted yes money management saves alot but anyone can fall on tough times), you suddenly gotta cough up $150 flat fee cause you needed to save a few monthly payments and use it for gas or food? Yea, that'll go over real well.
Watch for a slow rise in the bittorrent community in the coming year or so as more TiVo like providers probably switch to similar "plans".
Aw Frell this
TiVo - Take(ing) back your TV
If you're reading this, stop it.
I guess this makes sense in a way. But with competitors, wouldn't this cause some potential customers to back away? Once someone buys a Tivo, I'd think they'd stick with the Tivo service over changing to another company. So this affects new customers mostly, who might be scared away.
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!
This is why you shouldn't use Tivo. If you have one replace it with one from a different manufacturer. If you are thinking about buying one get any but tivo several posts here offer alternatives. If Tivo is driven out of business by their customers based on their abusive policies it will be a stern warning to those who follow!
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
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...
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
...Are they trying to get rid of their customers?
I mean, a few years ago, Tivo was a wonderful, one-of-a-kind service. Back then, maybe something like this would fly. But now, with virtually every cable company out there offering their own DVRs, the novelty of having a tivo has pretty much worn off. Sure, nobody's DVR can match the ease of use or features of a Tivo, but I don't think a tivo is worth the $150 price premium they're imposing on their users.
I have two Tivos, a 40 hour and a 140 hour. I have them cuz they 'just work', and I haven't gotten around to building a stable MythTV box yet. I'm also a Tivo Rewards member, with 6 referrals under my belt. With this new pricing strategy, those two Tivos will be the last I ever buy, and I'll never recommend a Tivo to anybody again.
What they're doing is the same as the cell phone companies have done for years here in the US. They reduce the price of the phone to below wholesale to get you to sign up, then they get you to stay by signing the 1 year contract. You might be able to get out of signing a contract if you pay full price for the Tivo...
Every time you call tech support, a little kitten dies.
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.
Wow, this is like Digg three days later.
Anyways, the service contracts seem to be for those customers who get the rebate from TiVo, in order to ensure that TiVo doesn't lose money offering up $150 rebates to new customers.
It's TiVo's marketshare to lose anyways.
Error 407 - No creative sig found
Also, what's the status of being able to skip over commercials? Is this still allowed or has it been significantly changed from the way it was originally? Might this new 12-month commitment presage an end to being able to skip commercials? (So that people can't end their service penalty-free when they realize one of the major functions of TiVo is no more).
And under what conditions can TiVo terminate your contract? Failure to pay your bill on time? Hacking the TiVo? Still having the recording of Janet's boob on it? Or what?
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.
That's why I use Windows Media Center edition 2005, bought a $50 200GB HD and $50 TV card, put them in old AMD 1700+ computer and I pay no monthly fee.
I think that Tivo wanted to see what 65,000,000 middle fingers looked like all at once.
Karma: a simple way of silencing those with unpopular views regardless how correct or just that view might be.
Ok, I'm still stunned there are people who haven't decided to get a TiVo yet in this day and age. Slashdot comments like "Well, I was on the fence.. I was about to get one.. But NOW.. nope!" are astounding.. If you don't have one already, I don't get the feeling you were about to sign up anytime soon.. What else did the box need to do for you - produce gold?
As for this most recent news article, it shouldn't affect anyone who's thought about this for more than 10-15 seconds.. Paying the $12/month fee is a suckers game - they let you pay a one-time fee (originally $199, then $249, now I think $299) for the LIFETIME of the unit.. If you have it more than 2 years, the lifetime subscription paid for itself and you're free - if you opted to pay $12 per month, you're losing money.
Who are these slashdot readers who are getting paid so poorly that they can't afford $299 up-front instead of the screw-you-layaway-plan option? They are the only ones who are affected or should be complaining about this change.
Every time TiVo makes some change that lets them stay alive, someone's there to complain that they're not going with them now. No one's buying it - you're not getting the company to change their plan - they're not reading slashdot to see if you're happy about it or not.
Oh yeah - one last thing.. From now on, anyone considering getting a TiVo: TiVo Inc just made it easier to see that the $$/month is a sucker's game.. To "make out" on that deal you'd have to buy a TiVo, decide AFTER a year that you don't like it, but BEFORE two years.. Then maybe you'd save UP TO $150.. Again - who is making these low salaries?!
(and yes, I know DirecTivo people don't have the lifetime option - but then again DirecTV isn't marketing DirecTiVos anymore either)
..Jeff Keegan
seven syllables explain TiVo: kee gan dot org slash ti vo
Yeah, that sounds user-friendly. No wonder Linux is flying off the shelves.
As far as aesthetics goes, I believe that MythTV is themeable, so you have a few choices.
Here are some screenshots to peruse.
I dithered between the idea of getting another Tivo (one not tied to DirectTV) and building a MythTV box. After their glitch, which allowed people to see the content restrictions that can be put in place, I've decided to build my own.
It'll take a few months though. Until then, I'll stick with the old fashioned way of recording. Setting the channels before I leave the house, and setting the VCR (crap that it is, It still records) to record.
H.
When VCR's are outlawed, only outlaws will have VCR's.
I just bought a tivo. It was free after the $150 rebate.
the box is obviously worth something, so if I cancel before some reasonable time I'd expect to pay for that box (or return the box).
Surely that isn't difficult to understand?
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.
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.
I'm not sure why people are freaking out over this. This is tied to the $150 rebate they offer and it looks like it works just like the cellphone plans. You get a phone for $49, but are required to stay with their service for 2 years. Oh wait, Tivo isn't requiring a 2-year commitment.
You're getting the $199 Tivo for $49 and are bitching that it is linked to a 1-year minimum contract. So you bitch about a $199 box and tell Tivo they should make it cheaper. They figure out a way to absorb the cost only to have you bitch about that.
P.S. Yes, I realize all the DRM crap Tivo is pulling -- but as far as I can tell, it is unrelated to the rebate/service agreement setup they've got going.
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.