Tivo. What are the costs?

[djbleach]

Thinking about getting a Tivo. We have cable TV. I would need to buy a Tivo box, and then how much for the service?
Are their other alternatives to Tivo? What's the most economical way to record and not have to watch any commercials?
Thanks

 

[bicker]

There is no charge up-front for the TiVo box. You just pay $16.95 per month for three years, for the box and for the service. After that the price drops to $12.95 per month.

There are alternatives to TiVo -- I've tried them all. They truly cannot compare to TiVo's superior user-interface. So much so that Comcast, which has up to now put out its own DVR, is getting TiVo to design their next-generation DVR.

The TiVo user-interface is key to skipping to commercials. It is so intuitive and you can get very skilled, very quickly, at skipping a set of commercials. I typically use the fastest fast-forward and make it through the commercials in about 8 seconds, and I almost never MISS stopping the fast-forward at exactly the correct time so that we don't see more than a half-second of the last commercial or miss more than a half-second of the show once it has returned. That's because TiVo knows that you cannot react to what you see on the screen fast enough, so when you stop a high-speed fast-forward, it backs the recording up to where it was when you first THOUGHT about clicking the play button!

 

[LorieR]

I also have DVR service through my cable company, Cablevision. I have just had it for a month so really not sure how much it cost, but I had to turn in my old box and they gave me new one. I believe it is about $10/month but am not sure. Why not give your cable company a call and see if they have that service? If they do, it would eliminate you having to have another piece of equipment to work with!!

I am pretty cheap for the most part, but I LOVE having this service and am not too concerned with the price (definitely out of character!!!). I think it is great being able to watch what you want when you want and being able to fastforward through all the commercial!!

Lorie

 

[PlutoPony]

There is no charge up-front for the TiVo box.

This must vary by area then..... Around us you buy the TiVo brand recorder at an electronics store like Best Buy. The price varies depending how many hours of storage capacity you want the unit to have, and there's often a sale or rebate available on them (we got a $100 rebate ourselves). The 80 hour unit is $200 right now. Instead of paying per month for the service, we had the option of paying a lump sum fee up front of like $250 which gives us a subscription for the life of the unit with no additional costs. The break even on that was under 2 years so we're ahead on that now. Our local cable provider has something now but am not familiar with that option.
Oh - at least for TiVo, you will need to connect the unit to a telephone jack in order for it download program schedules each week. We ended up installing a new jack closer to the tv so we didn't have a long cord spanning a couple of doorways. Don't know if that's necessary if you have one from your local cable company.

 

[bicker]

No, it doesn't vary by area. Rather, the pricing just changed (yesterday, actually). There may still be some boxes available for sale for an up-front price plus a monthly service fee (of $12.95) but those are remainders. Also, the lump-sum fee for lifetime service, which we paid when we bought our Pioneer TiVo, is no longer available (again, as of yesterday).

The latest version of the TiVo operating system doesn't require any connection to a telephone jack, neither for the first telephone call, nor for daily program schedule updates. It can be done completely via broadband (wireless, if desired). (Again, there may be some older boxes still in stores that have the older version of the operating system -- in that case, you'll need to connect to a phone line for the first telephone call only. You can even do this at a neighbor's house, if you don't have a land-line in your home.)

 

[travelin' tigger]

I just got TiVo thru a promotion w/DIRECTV (but now over). The unit itself was free ($14.95 s&h) but had to commit to a 2-year agreement at $5.99 per month.

It's been awesome so far!!!

 

[hsmamato2]

we have dishnetwork, and a dvr box- I was put off by the cost of tivo....I know- i'm cheap... Our dvr box cost $49-thru dishnetwork b/c we're already customers- it replaced another plain receiever, we were paying $5 a month for that box already, dvr box costs 5.98 per month to use, so it only costs us .98 more to have dvr- and I LOVE it- check your provider options, if you sign up for a new program elsewhere, the dvr is free!

 

[jennilouwho]

We have Dish Network and a DVR. For both of those we pay a total of $43 a month, including tax. The downside (if I understand right) is that with TIVO you can watch something live while recording something else. With the DVR you can watch something taped, but not live while recording something. However, they will hook it up to 4 TV's, so we have a small tv in our bedroom that we rarely watch that we usually tell the DVR to record to. That way the livingroom is still freed up.

 

[LorieR]

With Cablevision and their DVR box, you can record two things at the same time but you cannot watch a third program while they are recording (but you can watch one of the two). It also stores up to 100 hours of recordings.

Lorie

 

[heathrow42]

I was all set to disagree with bicker but then I went and checked out the tivo forum.. and could not believe what i read!

Tivo Forum Article on new Pricing

We have a 140 hour tivo box with lifetime, and set my grandma up with an 80 hour tivo with lifetime. I am so glad we have lifetime! We paid $200 or so for the box and $300 or so for lifetime and have had it over 2 years, so we're past the point of what monthly service would have cost under the old system. On the new system 2 years of rental and service is $369, 3 years is $469.

I guess they finally realized that they would see more recurring income if they switched to monthly/yearly fees. It's probably quite good for their books.

Last day to convert or sign up for lifetime is March 18th -- If you have an existing tivo on month to month you can call till March 18th and convert to lifetime.

As to your original question.. your local cable provider may have an option for you - if you have satellite your provider almost definately has an option for you (and some of those boxes are cooler, because they have 2 tuners in them!) and if you have a techy geeky person in your life, or are one yourself, you can build your own dvr.. which has gotten significantly cheaper and easier in recent years.. even if you're not an uber geek, but can follow directions you should be able to build your own. Also, I think it's an option when you a buy a Dell anymore, to get the software to do some basic dvr stuff, so you might not even have to build it yourself.

Check out the forums on www.tivocommunity.com for more info and reviews about dvr's

--heather

 

[jjnv]

I use a Sony 500 GB DVR as my HD tuner. I only use over the air High Definition broadcast TV. You can also use it with cable service. There is no monthly fee at all. The box itself is pricey though. I programmed my machine to skip 30 second forward everytime I click skip forward. It works great. I can usually finish an one-hour show in about 30-40 minutes.

 

[KristiA]

We love our TiVo. I bought it for my husband for Christmas. I got a pretty good deal at Best Buy- don't know if I remember all the details. But here goes- I think the 40 hour box was about $200 with a $150 rebate, plus I got a free three month membership card. So, I paid about $50 bucks and will start paying the $12.95 monthly fee within the next month. It is really cool and I don't really even know how to use it and we are probably not even using all the features that it has to offer. So much nicer though than digging for that VCR tape and using that.

 

[ceiligh1]

I have a media center Pc instead of Tivo. we dont pay a monthly fee and it records two stations at once, while I can watch something else that has been recorded. I can also listen to music and radio through it. We have it networked to our family room tv so that we can watch out there as well as on the computer screen. If you are thinking about an upgrade to your computer it is another way to go. Depending on which brand and how many tunercards ect you want the price does change. If you dont need a new computer though it would not be as cheep as tivo. We went with it for a couple reasons. I needed a new computer, we didnt want yet another monthly bill and we had heard through FIL that they were having problems with the TIVO service deleting programs that they had not watched or deleted after about a month. That might not be a common issue though as I have never used a tivo.

 

[disneysteve]

What's the most economical way to record and not have to watch any commercials?

Since this is the Budget Board...

The most economical thing is to buy a cheap VCR. They run about $30 or $40 dollars. Record your show. Fast forward through the commercials. That's what we've been doing for over 20 years now. Works fine. No monthly fees.

 

[Makdyn]

I have the dvr from cox cable it is about $5 a month for the box and service, but you have to have digital cable which is about $45-50 I think. I am in love with it. I don't know how I live without it

 

[ceecee]

Since this is the Budget Board...

The most economical thing is to buy a cheap VCR. They run about $30 or $40 dollars. Record your show. Fast forward through the commercials. That's what we've been doing for over 20 years now. Works fine. No monthly fees.

That's what I always thought until I went to watch Survivor that was taped and the tape was all screwed up. We are on our fourth cheap (one not so cheap) VCR and I called the cable company the next day! However, I can not justify the cost since we would need to upgrade our cable service and add the DVR....it would cost an additional $45.00 a month!!! Seems we are on a grandfather clause and get basic cable cheaper than it is now.

 

[hsmamato2]

I was all set to disagree with bicker but then I went and checked out the tivo forum.. and could not believe what i read!
-heather

You were going to bicker with Bicker?

 

[hsmamato2]

We have Dish Network and a DVR. For both of those we pay a total of $43 a month, including tax. The downside (if I understand right) is that with TIVO you can watch something live while recording something else. With the DVR you can watch something taped, but not live while recording something. However, they will hook it up to 4 TV's, so we have a small tv in our bedroom that we rarely watch that we usually tell the DVR to record to. That way the livingroom is still freed up.

Disneysteve...you are a budget king, however- no matter what i tried, i could never record with my vcr through my satellite box- and without the satellite box, we got no channels!
jennilouwho- how do you hook the dvr up to another set? we hooked up our own,on one set, i was wondering how to get around that"watch and tape" thing- any specifics? other than that- cost is $31 a month for our dishnetwork including the dvr box, so I'm happy!

 

[disneysteve]

Disneysteve...you are a budget king, however- no matter what i tried, i could never record with my vcr through my satellite box

I know it's possible because my mom has a dish and uses her vcr just fine but I don't know how it is all hooked up.

 

[Jennifer Frommer]

My husband and I don't have tivo but we have something just like it!!

We were in the market for a new computer... we bought the HP Media Center computer. There are two versions (one for really techie people and video guru's which is much more expensive and one for the everyday joe who likes using tv, radio, etc.)... anyways... it has a feature that allows you to save tv programs just like tivo but no added expense of tivo service, box, etc.

If you aren't in the market for a computer than I would go with another choice but this option has worked out great for us, as we were originally planning to get tivo.