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TiVo to Drop Lifetime Service Plan
Thomas Hawk writes "TiVo held their most recent analyst conference call today and on the call announced that they will be dropping their lifetime subscription option as well as offering three new monthly no upfront fee TiVo plans combining their box and service for one year, two year and three year commitments. Additionally they announced that their highly anticipated Series 3 HDTV standalone model with CableCARD support will not be available until after "mid year," a new retail partnership with Radio Shack and the fact that the company is in solid discussions with other cable operators for deals similar to their previously announced Comcast initiative."
Now that they're cutting back on services and making it more difficult to avoid commercials, surely there must be a better service out there...
Is there?
The more I read about the emasculation of various service plans and firmware pieces in the PVR space, the more my lifetime subscription to SonicBlue and my commercial-crushing early-model RTV4504 begin to look like Sacred Lost Crystal Technology from Ancient Atlantis.
Eventually something will break that I can't fix, or some double-A agency will wise up to the fact that I haven't seen a spot break in seven or eight years, and I'll have to bite the MythTV bullet, but until then, *I* control the Vertical and the Horizontal...
I'm not a RadioShack fan by any means but a company that has EPS of 1.78 and a P/E of 10.76, isn't that bad. Their market cap is over 2.5 Billion. Not bad in my opinion. The management fiascos of late are a problem but they will be repaired. I thought RadioShack would die in the 1980's, they are still here.
Before saying a company is on it's "last legs" maybe you should do some actual research?
People would be bored? They'd get their deck of cards and play solitaire? They'd become asses who go around criticizing other people's entertainment choices?
Everytime there's a TV related story, people like you feel the need to say how much better off we would all be if we didn't watch TV. People who watch TV almost exclusively as their entertainment wouldn't suddenly want to become productive if they didn't have TV. They'd find something else equally unproductive.
There may be other options out there for entertainment, but we're not talking about them, are we? We're talking about TiVO dropping their lifetime subscription.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
If TiVo doesn't offer lifetife subscriptions anymore, then it might just suggest that they won't be around for anyone's lifetime.
I'd say it suggests just the opposite. If I think I'll be around for a few years, then offering lifetime service is an expensive offering. First, I have to take on a long term commitment, with no long term cash flow. Second, it allows customers to lock in current subscription rates, preventing me from getting any extra cash if I raise them in the future.
If I think I'll probably be bankrupt next year, then I may as well label my one year subscription as "lifetime". Maybe I'll sell more, and it will delay the bankruptcy.
TiVo is actually very smart to offer the new "no money down" plans - that's the #1 complaint I hear from people as to why they don't buy a TiVo; many people do not like buying a product and THEN paying a monthly fee. Conversely, most people thought the idea of paying an additional $300 for something, even if it meant no monthly fees ever, was ridiculous as well - they just couldn't wrap their heads around it.
TiVo does exactly what I need it to do, which is why I have one. PC-based soloutions are at best clunky, and I have an elegant little box in my living room that does it all for me. I transfer shows back and forth from my TiVo to my PC when I want to archive them, and burn them to DVD when I wish.
The biggest complaint about SD TiVo's is that you can't record two programs at once; that's why many people have two TiVo's. Personally, I live very well with that limitation - there is only so much TV one can watch in a day, week, or lifetime and having to make some choices keeps me from getting OD'd on too much unlimited choice. Sure, choice is almost 100% better in any instance, but here I actually like that I personally have to make a choice between some programs (and the DVD recorder is always there if I really, really have a conflict).
DVR's so completely change how you think about your time, especially in relation to TV (obviously) - but I've used some of the "other" ones and nothing does it for me like a TiVo. Simple, elegant, and it does everything I want. I'm also a monthly subscriber, like the vast majority of TiVo owners, so the removal of the program isn't even going to be a blip on most of our radars.
It's not public relations. It's investor relations.
That's not how I'd expect a capitalist to run their business.
I would expect them to continue selling lifetime subscriptions up to and including the day that they file corporate bankruptcy papers.
I would also expect to see them begin to market the lifetime subscriptions more heavily.
So this, to me, does not indicate that they're going out of business any time sooner. It indicates to me that they want to maximize their revenue, and they feel that they'll be around longer than $250 / $13/month = 19.2 months or under 2 years. By no longer selling lifetime contracts, they will be net positive within two years, on new sales. And, it'll be recurring revenue, instead of a one-time income and then recurring expenses (powering the servers that serve the program guide, paying to have all those phone numbers to dial-in, etc).
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Not horse pucky. Of course I include the cost of the PC - I'm not using my MythTV box to do anything other than hook up to the television. Sure, I'm doing more than a TiVo can do, but it's still not my general-purpose computer. You can't remove the cost of all the hardware you need.
You are right, though - a machine comparable to a TiVo can be built for money comparable to what you'd spend on a TiVo. I don't know too many folks who build MythTV machines that are comparable to a TiVo though. The 80 gigabyte harddrive is never enough, the single tuner is rather paltry, etc. So, I suppose I should have been more clear - most MythTV users will spend more on their machine than if they bought a TiVo, but they also have about five times the capacity and much more expandability and more features and no DRM. Better?
Illegitimi non carborundum
It's hard enough to get people to stop using their VCR's. You think there would be enough people using MythTV and such to make a dent in Tivo's base?
Proud member of the American Non Sequitur Society. We might not make much sense, but boy do we love pizza!
Good to know I'm not the only one having problems. I have tried 3 different distributions (some of them 2-3 times each!), sometimes following tutorials, sometimes not, with different results each time. The common thread between the results is that something doesn't work right when I'm done. You hit the nail on the head: the core documentation absolutely sucks.
I've spent a ton of time on it, and even if I get it to work, I still have to train my wife. She gets the TiVo interface just fine, but even I don't understand why Myth does things how it does sometimes.
I'm about ready to just eBay the hardware and get the cable company's HD PVR. Yeah, the interface sucks, but I don't have as much time for this crap anymore.
I miss my grandfather's horse whip business, but when times changed he got a filling station (all true, and the station went bust in the Depression.) Ratshack couldn't make it on the radios covered in fake fur so they looked like poodles, and the "Battery Club" never brought in THAT many folks, so they had to move on.
Radio Shack is everywhere. Something like 95% of US households are within 10 miles of a Radio Shack. 99% of all US household members wander through a Radio Shack every few years. That makes them closer then the big box stores, just the place to drop into for the odd watch battery, TV cable, or gadget gift.
Radio Shack has that to their advantage. So they went with it. No huge inventory of electronics parts taking up room that turned over every few years. Instead they can make more per square foot with bogus air ionizers, RC cars, and over-over-priced A/V & computer stuff. And now TiVo.
But ya know what? They sell! $45 for a keyboard, the same one as Best Buy for $30 and $10 online, it pays the bills. S-Video cable, hit the local RS for double the cost or go wandering the bowels of Circuit City, past the washing machines, with chirpy kids insisting to 'help' when they wouldn't know an S-Video cable if you flogged 'em with it (yes, thank you, I'm literate, I can read the labels on the store shelves for myself, no need to annoy me with your non-assistance.)
So RS stays in business. Heck, with cellphones they've even prospered. Sure I laughed out loud the day I read on the bottom of an email "Radio Shack: You've got questions - we've got blank stares. And cell phones!" but truth be told they're more convenient then a carrier's store and the staff is better then the kiosk monkeys.
This will be a smart partnership for TiVo. They'll get huge visibility, their products won't be lost in the bowels of BigCo. in the dark areas behind the giant flat panel TVs, instead front & center in every mall & burg in the US. That's what TiVo needs, now they just need to give every RS employee a TiVo for 2 months, then let 'em loose to sell away!
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
If I purchase a new TiVo under the old pricing plan and keep it for four years and it is working at the end of that time I would end up paying about...
/w $50 resell
80 hours S2 TiVo: $250
Lifetime sub: $300
Resale value at EOL including sub: $(300)
TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP: $250 or $5.21/month
Even at three years you end up with a total cost of only $6.94/month.
Under the new plans you end up with a total cost of
$469 (pre-pay for 3 years) = 11.64/month if you stop at 3 years
$203 (16.95 * 12 months - see note below)
$(50) Resale value - best guess
TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP: $622 or $12.96/month
IMO, this just sucks for the average TiVo owner who can afford the upfront costs of the box + lifetime service.
NOTE: This is my best guess about the cost of the sub. after your 'contract' period is up. Could be less or more.
Just wanted to say - thanks for telling the truth. There are so many Linux obsessed people on Slashdot who don't realize that yes, Linux, and custom installations are a lot more work than standalone devices. They're fine if you have the expertise, and loads of time, and you use it for learning purposes, but sometimes stuff just needs to work. Out of the box. No tinkering needed.
I own a Tivo and thank god it's one device that's been working solid for 2 years without me even as much as looking at it. I hate having to troubleshoot basic appliances like this in addition to all the other crap I have going on.
"If you could only see what I've seen with your eyes..." - Roy Batty
All this weeping and gnashing of teeth about Tivo reducing functionality...I haven't noticed any of it. I use it for basic functions...I setup season passes, it records everything I tell it too, nearly flawlessly, and I can skip commercials. I tried the PC based solution, and it was just too much hassle. Bizzare unsolvable video/audio synch issues, keeping the tv schedule/guide stuff uptodate and trouble free...driver conflicts, manual software updates...I might have saved some cash, but the amount of my very valuable time wasted trying to get it to work made it useless in my opinion. Alot of us here are geeks, and I work all day solving technology based problems...when i get home and want to relax and veg on the couch for a bit, the last thing I want to do is figure out why something I wanted recorded isn't there or is borked up. I love Tivo, because its easy to use and reliable.