Tivo without subscription fees?

[crimson117]

Is Tivo available without subscription fees?

What features do you lose?

 

[A5]

Originally posted by: crimson117
Is Tivo available without subscription fees?

What features do you lose?

I don't think they do that anymore, but I don't know

Back in the day, if you didn't pay you didn't get listings, which made the whole thing pretty worthless.

 

[Schadenfroh]

You have to pay the fee and it costs far less than what it is worth :heart:

 

[crimson117]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
You have to pay the fee and it costs far less than what it is worth :heart:

What do you get besides access to the TV listings data through your Tivo device?

I get TV listing data and remote recording setup without a monthly fee with BeyondTV right now on my PC, so it's hard to start paying for it :-/

 

[Modelworks]

I used to use a pc for pvr but I got tired of it and it never really worked as well as the tivo has.

For the monthly fee all you really do get is tv listings.
Theres some other perks like being able to admin your tivo over the net, but thats possible with htpc also.

Theres a few tivo apps that I really like.
One is tivo dot net.
Its a real time transcoder that will let you watch anything that your pc can play on your tivo.

Really for me its a convenience thing.
The tivo is small, quiet and can record two channels at once.
I can stream video over the network to it and it just works.
I can transfer recordings to my pc and save them to dvd, or a portable.,

A htpc can do all this but it was a hassle for me to get it to work like I wanted I got tired of trying. Tried Mythtv, beyondtv, gbpvr and everything out there.

The plug and play of it is the reason the fee is worth it to me.

That and I got one of the refurb units that comes with a monthly fee of 12.95.

 

[RupTheKid]

You can buy the TiVO lifetime subscription on eB@y, but it's not cheap ($500ish I believe). This basically evens out after a little over 3 years of service.

 

[kalrith]

They don't make them anymore, but you can get a used Toshiba SD-H400 DVD player / TIVO with TIVO basic like this one. TIVO basic has no subscription fees. It obviously doesn't have all of the functions of full TIVO, but it's free. You can google "TIVO basic" to find out exactly what it does.

There might be other Toshiba DVD/TIVOs out there with TIVO basic, but the SD-H400 is the one I looked into when I was considering going that route.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: crimson117

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
You have to pay the fee and it costs far less than what it is worth :heart:

What do you get besides access to the TV listings data through your Tivo device?

The integration of said TV listings data into the Tivo's recording functionality. Without the subscription, all you probably would be able to do with it would be to tell it to "RECORD CHANNEL 80 @ JULY 25, 2007 5:00PM FOR 1 HOUR"

It might allow you to stream stuff from your HTPC with Tivo Desktop, but that is a horrible piece of software.

In theory, you could use Beyond TV to record your shows on the HTPC, then host them using TiVo Desktop, then watch them off of your HTPC using TiVo, but you could sidestep that and just use the HTPC.

 

[crimson117]

Thanks everyone... I agree that TiVo as a turnkey PVR is top of its class, but I dislike feeling ripped off for guide data. BeyondTV includes a lifetime subscription to guide data when you buy their software. TiVo must make a killer profit margin on their guide data subscription fees.

Maybe they'll bring back lifetime subscriptions some day. I'd love to own and use TiVo hardware, but not if I have to keep paying $100+ a year for it to keep working.

 

[crimson117]

Maybe they take a hit on their hardware prices (selling below cost) and then expect to make it up with service plans? $199 seems like a fairly low price for the hardware you get.

I guess that would work a lot like cell phone plans... get a discounted phone as long as you lock into a service contract with one provider. *shudder*

 

[venkman]

With Tivo Series 3 Lite coming out soon at $299 I was tempted to go with Tivo, but paying $15 a month on top of that is a bit excessive for something I can do with my PC considering 99% of what I would record comes in OTA.

I suppose if you record a lot of cable content, it may be worth it, but you may be better off going with the cable companies DVR.

 

[Modelworks]

Tivo defenitely takes a loss on the hardware.
Atleast for what I got.
I was able to get the Tivo Series 2 DVR with 80 hours storage for 66.95 shipped.
That also came with a reduced monthly fee of 12.95.

Was just too good for me to pass up.

 

[imported_Moo Cow]

This is the reason I don`t give up on my DishNetwork model 508. Got another off of ebay. It`s been 6 years I`ve been "fee-free" as long as they continue to work ....and I stick with Dish.

 

[olds]

Originally posted by: crimson117
Thanks everyone... I agree that TiVo as a turnkey PVR is top of its class, but I dislike feeling ripped off for guide data. BeyondTV includes a lifetime subscription to guide data when you buy their software. TiVo must make a killer profit margin on their guide data subscription fees.

Maybe they'll bring back lifetime subscriptions some day. I'd love to own and use TiVo hardware, but not if I have to keep paying $100+ a year for it to keep working.

Without the guide, all you can do is pause and rewind. You need the guide to record shows for when you are not home.

I have a 1st gen and a 2nd gen Tivo just sitting and collecting dust. When we moved, I got Dish with a DVR. When I called to cancel Tivo, they offered it to me for $5.00 a month.

 

[Shawn]

My dad got a Comcast DVR and it works great. Records in HD. It's $10/month to rent the box I think.

 

[dclive]

I have $16/month analog cable.

I just bought an HD Homerun from Silicon Dust.

This lets me tune and record (via the Vista Media Center) perhaps 10 high-def stations and perhaps 20 more standard def digital stations, all in unencrypted QAM, and all over my analog cable connection. I also see what the neighbors are watching on their PPV, but that's tedious, so I don't mess with that too much.

It's impressive. And it's fee-free too - with Vista MCE it's wonderful. Vista on that box now controls 2 Highdef tuners (HD Homerun) and 2 SD tuners (Hauppauge PVR-500). Programming conflicts are a thing of the past.