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TiVo Premiere: much more than a DVR

Yes, I still love my TiVo Premiere. I was amazed to find that new product lifetime subscriptions now cost $499 -- we we bought ours, the service was $299 and was a tough call at that price. Ultimately, we went with product lifetime and now we've owned it for over two years -- break even is 20 months (with two consecutive 1 year commitments at $14.99 per month).


Of course, since we bought the TiVo 2.5 years ago (our third TiVo since 2002), I've stopped watching broadcast TV (my wife still watches a handful of shows) and have switched from traditional cable service to terrestrial over-the-air broadcasting using a rooftop HD antenna and the TiVo has worked flawlessly on both providers.


It will be interesting to see how the coming years pan out; with services like Verizon FiOS, AT&T U-verse, and new players like Google Fiber and a potentially fully realized Apple TV ecosystem all competing in this space, things are finally looking like we'll get some real innovation over the next decade after many years of stagnation. Let's face it; the cable TV service most of us use now is largely the same service we grew up with in the early '80s with some minor exceptions like on-demand (service side DVR/IP TV) and set-top boxes (client side DVR). Google and Apple getting into this market makes sense. It is beyond ripe for disruption.


I'll continue to add my vote for up-front price plans over recurring cost "services"... both the TiVo lifetime, the over-the-air digital TV antenna, and my Ooma VoIP package are all saving me money at this point and I couldn't be happier.

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