As TiVo marketing continues to struggle, amidst “Patent Trollvi” merger rumors, the company appears poised to shake up Bolt pricing come May 2nd. While retail sales have been on the upswing, I wouldn’t call them stellar and I can’t imagine TiVo would outright raise prices. However, I could envision a scenario where they drop the bundled year of service to lower the cost of entry and potentially further reduce churn as the folks who buy-in come prepared for a recurring monthly fee. Further, with a Bolt OTA model supposedly back in play, after missing its 2015 launch, they’ll want to make pricing as palatable as possible given a high percent of price-sensitive consumers in the cord cutting category.
Yikes. The “special launch pricing” wording sure makes it sound like a price increase is in the works.
$10,000 for the CableCARD version, and $8,000 for the OTA seems about right to me, no?
If they’re going to de-emphasize retail, might as well pump up the margins.
Perhaps the talks with Rovi aren’t going as well has hoped. The coming “price shake up” is an indication TiVo sees it immdiate future as still independant. If the TiVo/Rovi merger were really close to happening, I doubt we would see TiVo setting May 2 as some sort of big pricing/device day, IMHO.
Nothing is a done deal until it’s a done deal. And even if a merger were to happen, it takes months to close it out and then many more months before synergies materialize, new strategies are put into place, etc. So I wouldn’t make any assumptions based on this May 2nd move that has probably been in the works for awhile.
2 things:
1. I thought the existing Bolt could be used for OTA?
2. Is the Bolt a big enough upgrade to pass on just getting the cheaper/older Roamio OTA?
The existing Bolt does cable or OTA. However, TiVo’s been working on an OTA-only revision, which would theoretically come in a little cheaper. Roamio OTA is a steal with Lifetime at $300, although I don’t think we’ve seen that in awhile. Bolt adds native transcoding to stream to iPad and Android within the home and I heard out-of-home streaming will hit with the next software update. Not sure the 4k capabilities matter to most though and the smaller form factor leading to smaller hard drive is more of a nuisance than a benefit. I’d hoped they’d reconsider the OTA model with fewer tuners, without 4k, etc – whatever they can do to get the pricing down. But I haven’t heard of any hardware revs since Fall intel.
Hope it doesn’t have fewer tuners – after the required year of service, I retired my Roamio OTA because I thought $14.99//month was too much to pay for a backup Tivo (main Tivo is a base Roamio w/ CableCard)
Replaced the OTA with my old lifetime Premiere, but I do miss those two extra tuners, plus the extra speed of the Roamio vs. Premiere.
I’d reactivate the Roamio OTA at a price point around $99/year.
Is it just me, or do the rumors of the “merger” with Rovi pretty much kill any thoughts of buying a new TiVo? Even if it falls through, it changes my thinking about TiVo, which clearly is looking to divest from Retail and let all of us who have Lifetime pound salt. They didn’t even look for a good partner that would keep the vision alive and make them more competitive; Rovi is a patent troll.
I buy for the long haul, which is why I only do Lifetime. The hardware is way too expensive and the service way too expensive for a short term return. This isn’t a cheap Roku you toss after a couple of years—it’s TIVO.
“Is it just me, or do the rumors of the “merger” with Rovi pretty much kill any thoughts of buying a new TiVo?”
It’s obviously a caution flag, but I think you’re overreacting a bit. I’d buy a new Roamio today, if I needed to. I think even in a worst case scenario, things would go into a maintenance mode for a while, and guide data would keep flowing for years.
So, while it’s obviously a worry, I wouldn’t simply avoid the product. I think the odds are well in favor of it still being a value over its lifetime.