Why TiVo’s Series 3 will be their swan song

Sunday, September 3, 2006

You know by now that I am an unabashed early adopter, willing to plunk down a premium price for the newest gadget and often going out of my way to be first in line to buy one.
You also know that I am completely frustrated with the horrible Motorola DVR provided by Comcast, especially the terrible software that makes it a pain in the ass to use.
So it will come as something of a surprise to learn that I will not be buying the upcoming TiVo Series 3, their high-definition standalone recorder.
I think they've just dropped the ball. Here's why.

The Comcast DVR, as buggy and annoying as it is, has two very important pluses: first, it actually exists. TiVo fans have been waiting for half a decade for the company to release an HD recorder. I mean, it was officially announced in January. Rumor has it that it will finally appear this month (9 months later), but by now Comcast has captured the HD DVR market quite nicely and it is just too late for TiVo. Second, the Comcast box is far, far cheaper. By an order of magnitude. Let's compare, shall we?

Comcast HD DVR with two HD cable tuners
Initial outlay: $0
Monthly service fee: $10

TiVo Series 3 with two HD cable tuners
Initial outlay: $863 (with sales tax, not including California recycling fee)
Monthly service: $369 prepaid for 3 years ($10.25 per month, limited time offer. All service plans are contractual now, so there are penalties for early cancellation. Prepay one year for $224, which comes out to $18.67 per month. If you pay monthly instead of in advance, a 1 year contract is $19.95 per month. (For comparison, my old TiVo costs $12.95/month with no contract.)
Cable Card: about $10/month... times two for dual tuners. $20.

So, Comcast: $10 per month.
Tivo: $1,232 plus $20 per month.

One more feature, significant to some people: the Comcast DVR has a Firewire port, which means that you can archive those recorded programs (including the high def ones) to D-VHS tape or to a computer. The TiVo has no Firewire, no way to get that content out of the box to archive it. You can only watch it then delete it.

Now I ask you: how many of these too-expensive, too-late boxes do you think TiVo will sell? And I think the fact that they have switched to a locked-in contract for service shows how desperate their situation is. It's that expensive service fee that really pushes me over the edge. For $800, I expect the service to be built-in -- after all, the service doesn't do anything without the hardware.
So, I predict that the Series 3 will be TiVo's last consumer hardware product. What they really should have done, many years ago, is shake off their expensive hardware and instead concentrate on licensing their software to other manufacturers.

I still have my TiVo Series 2 box, and it sits in my bedroom recording sitcoms and whatnot that I can watch in bed. It is connected directly to my cable, and only receives the low channels. I'm paying $12.95 a month for this TiVo. It occurs to me that I could, for $10 a month, change to a Comcast DVR instead, and get all the channels including the HD ones.
It's just that I don't want to reward Comcast for their crappy service.
Dammit, if only I could break my addiction to television, this would all be moot.

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