I loved all my Tivo’s but as the author states, they never really changed much in the 12 years I used them with DirecTV. I realize DirecTV had something to do with that but they’ve been promising a new HD DirecTivo since 2009 and still nothing. 

I’ve had at least one HD tv in my house for 4 years, yet DirecTV has been promising a new Tivo unit for almost 3 of those. I hung in there all this time with standard def units, clinging on to the interface I loved and hoping something new would come along. And every time we reached the approximate date of release for this supposed new HD tivo, all I saw were more delays.DirecTV couldn’t tell me anything, Tivo would only let me fill out a web form… forget it…. 

Two weeks ago I got fed up and had DirecTV send out two of their HD DVR Units.  I don’t particularly like them. They’re much slower and clunkier than the Tivo units, but they have HD and that’s what I really wanted. Picture looks great so I’m reasonably happy. 

It still makes me sad to see my two tivo’s sitting, disconnected on the floor in the spare room, but I’m a guy who loves his technology and again, like the author said, they were the best thing of the decade… last decade. Time to move on I guess.

Tivo, I’ll miss you. And despite not having your service anymore, I’ll also miss you when you inevitably go out of business due to continually slagging sales… Good luck my analog friend. 

-maj

IMO, its interface is better than the new Time-Warner DVR I had installed this week!

I can agree that TiVos haven’t improved much, but they really haven’t had to given how much better their interface and usability is compared with other DVRs.

Also, you can’t fault their pricing unless you have a scheme that will make them more money than their current arrangement. After all, they are a business and their business is to maximize their profit.

I have a TiVo and I’m on Comcast cable. It works far better than the cable DVR, which was horrible in every possible way. As for Comcast pricing, their DVR costs $13-$14/month, last I used them 2 yrs ago. The cable card is $2.50/month, so there’s some saving if you have a decent TiVo plan (mine is lifetime).

The truth is, there’s really no good alternatives. It’s not in the cable/satellite tv industry’s best interest to push DVRs at all or make the experience better. They were always in bed with the studios and the Comcast/Universal merger just makes it official. It’s a miracle that TiVo continues to exist at all.

WIFI – Come on – my BluRay has it built in, my iPod Touch v2, my iPad.  The last three Brother printers I purchased have WIFI.  WIFI chips are under $5/unit at manufacturer’s quantities.  TIVO’s decision not to include that capability is just another way they gig the customer.  I had 2 S1 Tivos and upgraded to 2 S2 devices – then I tired of the lack of value/dollar.  Don’t get me wrong – I was an EARLY adopter and still credit Tivo with creating a game-changing product – but enough was enough. 

Oh – and I distinctly remember my Tivos operating well with DTV – what happened?  I dropped DTV service before I left Tivo so I was unaware that Tivo quit supporting sat TV. 

I recently built a i7-based Win7 HTPC – put it in a nice A/V-looking case from Antec and I’m happy again.  I still feel frustrated with TIVO’s pricing though – and I question the logic of their pricing model – I find it hard to believe that they couldn’t maximize profitibility by relaxing the pricing and benefiting from the resulting increase in market share.

Oh, and if anyone is keeping a list of “game changing” products, I would submit Direct TV, (Tivo), Amazon’s Kindle, and Keurig’s coffee system (ok, ok… the iPad also).  And the Pocket Fisherman……

some people in my family use TiVo, they bought it during hype and are not at all tech savvy.

Enjoy your U-verse.  I’m not making excuses for you.

1. I wasn’t there when my ex-wife set up the TiVo. She is what I would call an average consumer. If she chose the older option, it was because the newer option was not intuitive or the explanation did not register with her. In either case, not my choice, and they still could have improved the older UI while also offering the newer one. Why offer a choice between a bad version and a good one, instead of 2 good ones. Running theme in your response: you’re making excuses for TiVo. 

2. I did not publish this at all. I send this to my editor at Slashgear, and he publishes it. I submitted this story on 5/18. 

3. Yes, I submitted this story on 5/18, so I’m talking about the offer up until then. That was the day I did my research. 

4. “I don’t think it is that big of a deal.” You’re making excuses for TiVo. I don’t have Ethernet near my TiVo. I’m not rewiring my house or paying for a second modem. It was not my ex-wife’s choice to buy the ‘old’ adapter. As I say in the story, she necessarily continued to use the adapter I bought for my Series 2. In other words, 2 generations and they still haven’t added the feature. As for sharing the network, unless I’m streaming video (which I’m usually not), the TiVo sips data, and usually late at night. Not a concern. You’re making excuses for TiVo.  

4.5. In fact, I had a Belkin. It works fine. I use it with my Series 2. No reason TiVo can’t fix their issues with Wi-Fi. You’re making excuses for TiVo. 

5. Where? Here. But even if they cost within $5 of each other, thats ridiculous. One is a full-featured set-top box, one is a decoder card that lets my own box do the heavy lifting. You’re making excuses for the cable company. 

6. Seriously, I laughed out loud for a good minute when you described the pricing as “simplified” and then spent nearly 200 words describing the pricing scheme. I would hate to see what you consider complicated. Here’s simplified: Premiere is free upgrade; XL is $200; plan is $13. If carriers sold mobile phones the way TiVo sold boxes, most people would be on landlines or writing to their congresspeople. 

7. You’re blaming the shows for the “iffy” guide data? You’re making excuses for TiVo. It works fine “most of the time?” That’s unacceptable. It should work fine all of the time. You’re making excuses for TiVo.

8. Cell phones won’t make a call without service. TiVo won’t make a call without service. But a smartphone without service will still play music, videos, games, run many apps that are not data dependent, and will almost always hook up to Wi-Fi. So, um, what was your argument again? Oh yeah, you’re making excuses for TiVo. 

9. “Powerful” season pass system? It can take minutes to delete a season pass on TiVo even for a show that has been cancelled. Minutes. I don’t care about my TiVo box playing Netflix, Amazon, Blockbuster or any of those services. None. Not one. I just want a great, competent DVR. I have plenty of other devices that handle those other services. You’re making excuses for TiVo. “TiVo is working on now and expected this year.” Don’t hold your breath. You can’t sell a TiVo based on upcoming features. It should work well out of the box. You’re making excuses for TiVo. 

In all seriousness, are you TiVo PR? Because the FTC requires you to disclose any affiliation you might have. I’m not being snarky when I say that I can’t imagine anyone with so much knowledge about TiVo making so many excuses for the device, other than a paid representative. 

2. You published this on 5/21 – on 5/19 TiVo re-introduced lifetime for new subscribers at $499.99 and made the ‘promo’ box pricing of $99 for the Premiere and $299 for the Premiere XL permanent.  This actually makes a TiVo with lifetime $100 cheaper as the boxes used to be $200 more and lifetime $100 less.  MSD pricing for lifetime for existing subscribers similarly went from $299.99 to $399.99.

3. You refer to the upgrade plan, and given your statements about lifetime, I presume you’re talking about the offer up through 5/18.  Yes the box cost more than via Amazon, or other retailers, but you apparently didn’t pay attention.  The box cost more, but the offer included lifetime for $199.99 or monthly for $12.95 as the sole box, or $9.95 MSD for an additional box.  The retailer pricing of $99.99 was promotional at the time and mandated a $19.99 monthly fee, period.  No lifetime, annual, or MSD pricing.  So, yes, IIRC the fee for a Premiere was $269 (or maybe it was $249) but the MSRP was $299, and the subscription offers more than made up the difference.

4. I agree it would be nice to have WiFI built in now, but I don’t think it is that big of a deal.  Ethernet is built in.  TiVo also offers an 802.11n bridge in addition to the 802.11g adapter you’re familiar with.  Again, this was your wife’s choice to buy the ‘old’ adapter and not the new one.  Or not to use some other solution.  In fact, if you have a number of networked devices – PS3, XBox360, Blu-ray player, Slingbox, Roku, etc., you’re better off using one WiFi bridge and connecting those devices to it via Ethernet.  Multiple WiFi devices in one small area, like an entertainment center, will often interfere with each other and reduce performance for all.  Plus the nature of WiFi means the more devices sharing the network the lower performance is for any given device.  Having WiFi built into every device is generally not a good solution if you have multiple devices.  And TiVo is hardly alone – Slingbox doesn’t have WiFi built-in, many Blu-ray players have only Ethernet and no WiFi, a number of connected TVs have only Ethernet, etc.  Some have no native WiFi support at all, others use USB adapters – huh, like TiVo.  As for it costing ‘a fortune’, it has long been around $30 online, sometimes less.  That’s ‘a fortune?’

4.5 Oh, and if you had TiVo since 1999 you didn’t noticed that TiVo used to support 3rd party USB network adapters and only introduced their own when that became problematic?  They didn’t plan to make their own adapter, they wanted to support commercial products.  But, unlike a PC, TiVo is a consumer electronics product, based on Linux, which much include drivers in the OS.  The problem was network vendors kept changing their adapters – changing chips, etc. – which would break compatibility with TiVo.  TiVo would have to scramble to get drivers into an OS update, but often the new chips only had Windows drivers with no Linux support.  Worst of all it wasn’t like this was a new model, you’d have something like WUSB11 supported by TiVo, but then WUSB11 Rev.A would show up on shelves – product and packaging looking identical – and it wouldn’t work.  The only difference was the small ‘Rev.A’ somewhere on the box, often hidden.  Or, worse, not on the box at all but just on the adapter itself.  It became a treasure hunt to find compatible adapters, and you couldn’t order online with any certainty at all.  TiVo even partnered with Linksys hoping it’d give them a steady supply of compatible products, but Linksys would still change their chipsets and not tell their partner until customers complained that the officially compatible models – weren’t.  After that TiVo gave up and developed their own USB adapter which they could ensure would be compatible.  More than that, since they were developing the adapter *and* the host, the TiVo adapter is special – it includes a network processor to offload network processing work from the box’s CPU.  This created a *big* jump in performance on the old S2 boxes when it was introduced, as they were CPU bound.  So there was a real advantage to consumers to use the TiVo adapter over a 3rd party product.  It probably isn’t as big of a deal now with the newer boxes that include network support on-die, but it probably has some benefit.  But the main issue was reducing problems for the consumer in getting a compatible adapter.  Note that other CE products that use USB WiFi adapters often have branded solutions as well, or a very specific list of supported products.

5. Where do CableCARDs cost as much as a cable box?  Pricing on CableCARDs range from free to $5 for the most part, though I think I’ve heard of $7 in some places.  For me, with Charter, it is $2/month per card.  I believe Comcast provides the first card free then $2/month for additional cards in most areas.  TWC is more expensive IIRC, about $5/month for a card.  But that’s still less than any of them charge for a box rental, let alone DVR rental and service.  Yes, combined with the cost of a TiVo monthly subscription the TiVo is more, but it is a better DVR and does more than the cable box.

6. As for the subscription pricing – you work in mobile and you don’t get it?  It is the same model as cell phones – subsidized hardware with a subscription.  As of 5/19 pricing is simplified – $99.99 for a Premiere, $299.99 for a Premiere XL, and $19.99/month or $499.99 for product lifetime.  If you’re an existing subscriber adding a new box the HW is the same and it is $14.99/month or $399.99 for product lifetime.  Until 5/18 it was a bit more confusing.  MSRP was $299.99 and $499.99 for the two boxes, with monthly $12.95 and product lifetime $399.99.  MSD pricing was $9.95 and $299.99.  Starting last fall, in time for the holidays, TiVo also had promotional pricing at the $99.99/$299.99 level through retailers, and those units had only the $19.99/month plan option.  There was also an upgrade promotion (through http://www.tivo.com/upgrade) for eligible users which, IIRC, had boxes for $269.99/$469.99 and lifetime at $199.99 or monthly at $12.95 or $9.95/MSD.  So effectively what they’ve done is lower the HW pricing and raise the subscription rate – except they made lifetime an even sweeter deal by dropping the total cost $100.  The upgrade promo has ended, there isn’t one at this time.  That’s not unusual, it was introduced when the Premiere launched, they’ve done some kind of limited time upgrade promo with new product launches for a while.  I’ve owned six TiVos, and still own two, and I got lifetime on every single one.  It is by far the better value.  Right now break even on a new box is 25 months – after that you’re saving money with lifetime.  *And* there is equity value as the lifetime remains with the box so you can give it to someone else or resell it later if you upgrade – which is what I did with the four units I’ve upgraded from.  I’ve made good money reselling the lifetime units, I wouldn’t do it any other way.  You decided to pay monthly, that was your choice, and I think a bad one.

7. “It’s especially bad at separating first run shows from reruns on the same channel from syndicated reruns on less-popular networks.” I’m not sure what you mean by this.  Season Passes are tied to *one* channel only, so there is no ‘separating’ from ‘less popular networks’.  A Season Pass will *NEVER* record from any channel other than the one you set it on, period.  Now, on the same channel there are some shows notorious for having iffy guide data – The Daily Show and The Colbert Report leap to mind.  They’re much better now than in years past, but that’s Comedy Central, not TiVo, and cable DVRs generally have the same problem.  They can only go by what the guide data says, and if the network fails to provide specifics then the DVR can’t make an informed decision.  But it works fine most of the time and, as I said, is hardly an issue unique to TiVo.  TiVo offers more control over recordings than most other DVRs in general – reruns, first run only, or all episodes, how many episodes to keep, keep until deleted or until space needed, start early/end late, clip up to 5 minutes with an overlap, the priority ranking system, etc.  And that doesn’t even get into WishLists which offer a lot of flexibility with their pattern matching and negating.

8. The old Series1 records without a subscription, as to the Pioneer and Toshiba Series2 DVD combo models which included TiVo Basic, all other TiVos will not record without an active subscription.  Again, the cell phone model – they won’t make a call without service.

9. AT&T U-Verse has a few features TiVo doesn’t have, but lacks many, many features TiVo does have.  But then, despite the length of time you used TiVo, it sounds like you weren’t really all that familiar with what TiVo could do so I guess you just missed out.

In my case it took Time Warner THREE trips to get my new Tivo Premiere working.  I won’t go into detail, it was such a painful experience I really don’t want to re-live it again.

Regarding Tivo and cable-cards  I do have two very important points that should be considered by anyone considering this option.

#1:   Time Warner has added a new technology called SDV (switched digital video) which allows them to push more channels through their existing bandwidth.  The problem is (if you own any Tivo unit) you now need to add another box to allow for compatibility to this standard.  In addition to being placed in-line on the way to your Tivo box using the standard coax connections you also need to connect a usb sync cable.  This new box also requires its’ own power source.  The worst part?  It’s absolutely unreliable.  Even though my cable signal strength is near max there are times this box loses its sync several times per day.   When this happens you get a black screen with a message letting you know what happened.  Most of the time you can fix this by changing the channel and immediately switching right back to what you were watching.  If you were not actually watching but recording then of course you’re screwed.   If I had only one setup then I’d assume I just had either a bad Tivo or SDV box.  I have FIVE Tivo Premieres.  They ALL do this at one time or another. 

#2:  Part of the reason I switched to cable tv from satellite was because it’s the only way you can receive Howard Stern on demand.  Don’t judge me!  That guy is absolutely the best celebrity interviewer on the planet.  I realize I probably sound like a guy saying he subscribes to Playboy for the articles…  Back on topic – Tivo boxes can NOT receive any on demand programming.  For that you will need to add yet another box; one of Time Warner’s standard cable boxes or one of their DVRs.   Yeah, the ones with the laughable bad interfaces…