Tivo Subscription

[elrothir]

I've been a long-time Tivo fan and, as such, have tried to talk several friends into getting a Tivo. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to convert a single one of them. The hold-up for all of them has been that they don't want to commit to a monthly fee for something they don't really know if they'll use that much. Now, we all know that once you try Tivo, you'll love it, but getting over that hump appears to be a major obstacle. I think it would help if Tivo would consider changing their subscription model.

It seems that Tivo's subscription model is based on cell phone plans. Tivo is providing a service, so you have to pay for it. And, to get people to buy, you offer the hardware up front for free, but lock them into a monthly subscription. It seems to me, and the friends I've tried to convert, that Tivo would do better to offer the guide data as a premium service instead of all-or-nothing. Why not make the Tivo be able to act as a VCR like the old S1 could do. Have people pay for the Tivo up front($200-$300) and give them one or two months of the premium service for free. Once they see how nice the guide data and other stuff is, when their trial period ends and they have to go back to manual recording, they'll be hooked and will understand what it's all about and will gladly pay the monthly subscription?

The people I've talked with said that they don't like that they can't use it as a dumb VCR if they didn't want the service. So, this seems like it could hook more people in. Just a thought.

[LightMike]

I totally agree with you! TiVo needs to give people a more fair trial period. The All-or-nothing is really getting to me, because my brother and sister were VERY interested in buying TiVos because they heard about all the features from me and were amazed. The only reason they said no is because TiVo quit the Lifetime Membership plan.

I can understand how TiVo needs more revenue, but let's face it TiVo...without your customers you have nothing!

I believe that they should have two packages like this:

1) "Basic Lifetime Membership" ($300 Lifetime)
- Includes: Ulimited Recording of Shows, Minor basic feature (TV Guide, etc), Limited Season Passes, Limited TiVo-To-Go Recording Downloads to computer


2) "Premium Lifetime Membership" ($300 Lifetime / To unlock ALL features add $5 per month)
- Includes: Unlimited Recording of shows, TiVo-To-Go Unlocked, etc
*Offering the Premium Membership for only $5 / month will make the customer think like $5 is nothing & before you know it TiVo will gain the extra money they are looking for. Though before the purchase of any of service all feature are very limited. Let them use all of the features but limit how many recordings they can record....just enough for them to get aware of how to use TiVo while viewing all of the many features.

3) "Monthly Service"

There has been a lot of negative remarks about TiVo after the canceling of Lifetime Membership and the new Kid Zone feature when we were expecting simple features for a long time now. Tivo needs to understand that they need to be rolling out those new features at a faster rate and get back in the competition. They had a huge start over the other DVR companies out there today.