If you happen to be in the market for a TiVo Premiere and don’t object to a refurb unit, Woot’s got the deal for you. They’re offering the TiVo Premiere XL for $200 with service running the traditional $12.95/month. While you could pick up a new Premiere from TiVo.com for $100 @ 20/mo, over the course of a year, the difference between these two products is about 16 bucks. Which is an extremely reasonable fee for the higher-end backlit Glo remote and 1 terabyte (versus 320GB) of DVR storage. As with all modern TiVos, not only do you end up with a fine HD DVR experience, you’ll receive access to various Internet content such as Netflix, YouTube, and Pandora. Or you could just skip the perceived complexity and expense by renting your cableco’s DVR for $15/month… as most do.
If the SDUI 10 minute hang bug were fixed, I’d buy it within the hour…
I could use the better bandwidth and upgradability.
If I knew I could opt for lifetime instead of $12.95/month on this box I’d probably grab one. But I don’t want to be stuck paying $12.95/month if that’s the only option.
“But I don’t want to be stuck paying $12.95/month if that’s the only option.”
One would assume you could pay a year at a time, and it’s $10.75 per month, just like a normal retail box, but I haven’t read the fine print.
Lifetime is available… Tivo’s terms have not changed for refurbs bought from a third party…
I agree it’s a compelling price point… and I was tempted for a moment. But I think I’m going to get a second FiOS TV DVR once IMG 1.9 hits – Verizon’s HD UI looks complete and whole home streaming is my top priority at this point. At least I think it is. On Demand is nice to have around, too.
“whole home streaming is my top priority at this point. At least I think it is. On Demand is nice to have around, too.”
Verizon will get you under their thumb…
I love getting services and devices from separate companies. Just don’t get into a long-term contract for the DVR’s. Maybe TiVo will actually ship a “Broadway” box one of these days.
Assume you can’t transfer lifetime from HD to Premiere?
andy, you are correct, you can’t transfer lifetime service. Its full name is Product Lifetime Service, which means it is for the lifetime of the box (not you).
@Dave,
Wow, 223,000 net loss in one quarter, leaving just 2 million customers using Tivos. Sad, makes me REALLY worry whether they’ll be around much longer. Obviously if the guide data were to cease the devices would become useless pretty quickly.
@Chucky,
Thanks for the heads up on the 10 minute bug. I once trolled the Tivo forums, but not for a long time, since I’m no longer upgrading my hardware. Had wondered if a Premier running the SD interface would be acceptable, and sounds like it wouldn’t. I was already frozen in place by the need to have Comcast out again, potentially multiple times, to get the cable cards installed. Now I know I’d likely have a much worse experience than with my Tivo HD’s. Shocking how little progress Tivo is making on the new platform. Starting to look like I’ll just never upgrade and will have to go back to Comcast DVRs? Honestly if I have to do that, I’ll probably just switch to Direct TV…
Glenn, yeah not only do they continue to lose customers, TiVo represents an ever shrinking percent of total US DVRs. This Nielsen PDF suggests TiVo (stand alone DVRs) represent at best 3% of all DVRs. Chucky likes to argue there’s room for a niche player (citing Apple as a very profitable and generally trailblazing example), but the scenarios are very different. TiVo’s future (and present) is most likely licensing and integration. If they’re successful and profitable in those areas, hopefully they’ll keep the stand alone product line alive until we get to better place… like AllVid.
We went from 5 tivos with lifetime subs to 0 tivos in the house. I would have purchased new hardware if they would have transferred the lifetime subs, but no. That plus the lack of decent streaming within the home network between boxes and the slow networking speeds of the devices in general made it easy to switch to a combination of rokus and netflix enabled blueray players. We use hulu via playon to fill in on current programming.
“Thanks for the heads up on the 10 minute bug”
It’s a real drag. I love my TiVo HD, and I’d very much like to give TiVo my money to upgrade to a Premiere for the non-HDUI improvements.
“Sad, makes me REALLY worry whether they’ll be around much longer. Obviously if the guide data were to cease the devices would become useless pretty quickly.”
I continue to think that if TiVo is truly in a death-spiral, (and I have hopes they aren’t), it will be a very long and protracted death-spiral.
Merely providing guide data at an ASP of over $10/month has got to be a profitable business sideline.
And merely being in the consumer business is likely an aid to their patent-trollery business.
In short, I don’t really have short-term worries about TiVo service going away.
“Had wondered if a Premier running the SD interface would be acceptable, and sounds like it wouldn’t.”
The SDUI bug wasn’t present for a while in the Premiere. It was a software update that triggered it. So it can likely be fixed by another software update at some point.
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“hopefully they’ll keep the stand alone product line alive until we get to better place… like AllVid.”
I continue to think that AllVid is coming, but at a slower time-frame than everyone seems to think. There are still deep infrastructure issues, which will take much more time to clear up than most folks seem to be currently assuming, especially in lean-back quality HD, which is what I’m concerned about.
CableCARD will eventually go away, but it’s still going to take some time.
Similarly, (though on a bit of a longer timeframe), gasoline powered cars are going away. But that’s not happening tomorrow either.
@Chucky,
Given the speed with which all these MSOs are deploying TV Everywhere solutions on the web and iPad, its clear to me that they COULD provide a solution to allow Tivo access to say VOD or SDV using IP if they wanted to, and on a relatively short timeframe. But since they don’t want to/can’t be bothered, and we need a standard to force them, and the FCC is moving very slowly/had its balls cut off, and Tivo probably doesn’t have the resources to implement anything anyway…
Appreciate your feedback on the Premiere. I’d really like the faster Ethernet interfaces for one thing. Probably won’t be upgrading given the state of things until one of my HD’s dies though.
On VOD looks like I’ll have options using my iPad and either AirPlay or display mirroring for some subset of the VOD offerings at least. Of course each step making me less dependent on Tivos…
“Appreciate your feedback on the Premiere. I’d really like the faster Ethernet interfaces for one thing.”
Yup. I want the faster bandwidth and the ability to open it up and stick in a 2gb drive.
I’d been planning on upgrading at TiVo’s $200 price point for current owners. The bandwidth and disk capacity are worth it to me. But I was (luckily) a bit lazy about it, and then the SDUI bug stopped that dead. But since a software update caused it, maybe a software update will fix it one of these days. And then I’ll buy one.
“its clear to me that they COULD provide a solution to allow Tivo access to say VOD or SDV using IP if they wanted to”
Of course. But the wireline providers want to control the box. The only reason TiVo exists is because our Federal government mandates CableCARD.
I’m fine without VOD. I actually prefer locally caching, since I like being able to watch or re-watch stuff without windowing concerns. And I’m fine with getting my “over the top” stuff from Amazon on the TiVo, Netflix on the TiVo, or the stuff I’ve got with my OS X Mini HTPC on input 2.
Don’t see why SD UI bug is a huge deal. I use my Premiere XL with HD UI and it works fine. The only thing that annoyed me was a live video window (I don’t really need it), but I’d learned that Slow button turns that off.
“Don’t see why SD UI bug is a huge deal. I use my Premiere XL with HD UI and it works fine.”
Sure. If you want the HDUI on the Premiere, then the SDUI bug is no problem whatsover.
But I’ve test-driven a Premiere, and I found the HDUI to be a tad more sluggish than what I’m prepared to live with on a daily basis.
So for folks who want to continue using the SDUI until when either software optimizations or a new generation of hardware brings the HDUI with a bit more of ‘teh snappy’, well, the SDUI bug is a deal-breaker on upgrading to the more desirable Premiere hardware. See now?
@Chucky — I come from S2 DT and never found THAT UI to be snappy, so I grew to live with HD UI. Certainly not as speedy as Windows Media Center or U-verse (which is based on Windows tech, AFAIK).
To answer your question from ESPN post, I bought Premiere XL during one of those super-deals ($190 or so) to record OTA HD channels because, at the time, my U-verse was only 1 HD/3 SD and first 6-7 months U-verse kept going down every 3-4 weeks (unfortunately, you cannot watch U-verse DVR when service is down — very, very dumb, IMHO). I switched service from my old S2 DT (from pre U-verse days) to Premiere XL and pay $7/mo. :)
“To answer your question from ESPN post, I bought Premiere XL during one of those super-deals ($190 or so) to record OTA HD “
A-ha. Makes sense now.
“I come from S2 DT and never found THAT UI to be snappy, so I grew to live with HD UI.”
The SDUI on the TiVo HD is quite snappy. The HDUI on the Premiere, not so much. And since I’m not on U-verse, I spend a lot of time with it, so I’m not willing to give up the responsiveness.
You’ve manegad a first class post