How much is my TiVo worth?

[benallenuk]

Hi guys Ive just swapped my Tivo for a brand new twin freeview tuner Media Center. Ive been looking on ebay and a standard Tivo with a 40Gb HD just went for £26.00, eek! Mine has a TurboNet Card and a 300GB HD (which is only 2months old as it got replaced under warranty) but is a little beat up as its been opened 20 or so times. How much is mine worth? Is it worth selling it seperatly, ie HD, Tivo (without HD) and TurboNet Card?

Thanks

Ben

[Automan]

I'm not sure but I suspect the imminent release of freesat pvr's will further push their value down.

Automan.

[DX30]

IMHO selling the TurboNet card separately would be a good move. I'm not so sure about the Hard Disk (especially if I'm reading your post correctly and it means selling the TiVo without a drive).

[iankb]

If the prices are low, I would keep it as a spare.

My first Media Centre failed completely. I replaced the PSU, but the CPU fan or motherboard failed and fried my CPU. I was extremely glad that I still had my TiVo to fall back on, since I didn't have time to build a new Media Centre machine for a while. It also records from my unsubbed Sky digibox, which gives me a slight variation to my twin Freeview tuners on my MCE machine.

The TiVo is also better for buffering live TV, since Media Centre only starts buffering when you are watching a channel. I keep the TiVo on BBC1, so that I can watch and rewind the Breakfast program, which is the only program that I now watch (more-or-less) live.

[benallenuk]

I think its a bit much to keep tivo and freeview box turned on just to buffer tivo tv, although in my opinion its better. I think i will sell the turbo net card separately and try and sell the tivo along with a dawoo freeview stb. Its sad that I'm converting but my media center earns it keep better.

[Pugwash]

Definitely sell the card separately, and if you have the original 40GB drive, stick that back in. You can use the 300GB drive in something else, like a PC or Caddy/NAS.

[woody]

I'd sell the network card, but if all I was going to get is £25-30 for the Tivo and STB, I would keep it, and use it for recording any clashes in programming, or backup with the 40GB drive, and use the 300GB drive in a PC.

[Pete77]

Ben,

You omit the critical information as to whether your Tivo has a Lifetime Sub or not?

A Lifetime Subbed Tivo with Turbonet card and 300GB hard drive is likely to fetch over £200 + postage and perhaps as much as £250 with a following wind. The idea that taking the Turbonet card out is better is in my opinion baloney as they don't fetch more than £30 (why would they when a new Cachecard can be imported to the UK for around £65) on their own on Ebay, perhaps not even that now that you can get a brand new TurboNzCard (equivalent to Turbonet card from our NZ Tivo hacking friends) for around £35delivered.

If your Tivo has no Lifetime Sub then as it is I suspect it may be worth around £100 as plenty of people don't want to have to install network cards and hard drives themselves. A Lifetime Sub probably adds just over £100. Obviously the remaining value of a Lifetime Sub ought to be falling a little at this point in time. I personally reckon that our Tivos may be supported for subs until around 2012 (10 years on from when the last of them were sold in substantial numbers in the shops) unless something unfortunate happens to Tivo itself (taken over by Sky for instance) in the interim. Obviously as the number of Lifetime Subs left dwindles to a few thousands the pressure from the accountants at Tivo HQ to bin the service will grow. The main high fixed cost is the data contract with Tribune as the cost of the 0800 calls and the Sky Tivo support desk costs can be reduced as numbers of Tivos still in use declines but the cost of the data for Sky and Freeview remains the same and does not decline.

In any event I reckon your Tivo with only a 300Gb hard drive and no Turbonet is only worth £50 on an optimistic projection. With the Turbonet card its worth around £100 and with a Lifetime Sub around £200. So I personally do not believe that breaking it up in to the hard drive and Cacecard makes sense, especially if it has a Lifetime Sub. If you broke it up and have your old hard drives to reinstall then you might get £20 for a bog standard Tivo and 40GB drives with no Lifetime Sub, £30 for the Turbonet and £50 at best for the working Tivo formatted £300Gb hard drive. Hence therefore why break it up and have to go through separate Ebay sales................?

[benallenuk]

Thanks for the reply, good idea. Ive listed it as a single auction along with my Daewoo Setpal freebox, 2 x remotes. Its on a monthly sub.

Thanks guys for all your help over the years.

[Pete77]

Thanks for the reply, good idea. Ive listed it as a single auction along with my Daewoo Setpal freebox, 2 x remotes. Its on a monthly sub.

Might be a good idea to set a Reserve at £95 or whatever if you have enough Ebay feedback to let you do this?

If you sold the drive and Turbonet card and Tivos separately I really can't see you getting more than £10 to £15 extra in total at most and probably it could actually be less than selling the existing Tivo together as a working unit.

At least all together and working someone is going to get a lot of enjoyment out of that much functionality for only £100 or so and thus is more likely to be able to justify to themselves paying a £10 per month sub. Obviously as and when Freeview Playback works properly for Series Link on all channels and when Freesat and Freesat Playback is working properly (say at least another year from now) then the advantages of Tivo (Advanced Wishlists, 3 weeks of data and better Season Passes plus Suggestions) versus its deficiencies (only one tuner and no adjustment of the program if the broadcast time is severely delayed) will begin to influence more and more potential Tivo purchasers. Not to mention no HD support of course.

Thanks guys for all your help over the years.[/QUOTE]

Is Windows MCE clearly that much better than Tivo from your point of view though? Or is it really the £10 per month cost that means your Tivo now has to go?

[benallenuk]

The thing I found annoying was only having a single tuner, for example The Apprentice on BBC1 starts at 9.00 and Grand Designs Revisited on C4 is also on at 9.00. If I was still using Tivo then I would set it to record The Apprentice using tivo, then grab the TV remote and switch over to the freeview box, the grab the freeview remote and switch to C4. Ok Tivo would be clever and find another showing of either one to avoid the conflict, but most annoying thing was having 5 remotes. One for the TV, one for the freeview box, one for Tivo and one for the AV reciever/amp. Now ive got just one remote as ive programmed my media center remote to control the tv and amplifier. Also Ive connected my Xbox 360 as an extender. Sorted

[Pete77]

Ok Tivo would be clever and find another showing of either one to avoid the conflict, but most annoying thing was having 5 remotes.

Surely this was soluble though with Tivo by buying one of the various clever learning remotes that also covered the Tivo S1? What about losing 21 days of EPG data or proper Season Passes or Suggestions?

I agree that lack of dual tuners was an issue with the Tivo S1 but now with BBC, ITV and C4 download sites available any program not recorded due to a clash that you spot within 7 days can still be pulled down and viewed off those channels websites. Having said that ITV does not let you download the program but only view it live and does not have all programs available for download after broadcast but only major blockbuster series. On the other hand ITV lets you watch programs like The Palace for many weeks and episodes after broadcast and the BBC only gives you 7 days to download.

What I am getting at is that when someone develops a piece of auto download software to pull the programs off these websites on to your PC hard drive on an SP like basis and when Five also joins the pack then most recording conflicts are fixable after the event and the need for an elaborate PVR that records all programs as they are broadcast (on the basis the broadcast is only one time and slot) become less and less. As also does the need to have more than one tuner..............

[TCM2007]

I expect one day true VOD over broadband will be a good solution.

But for now, dual tuners are very useful!

[Pete77]

I expect one day true VOD over broadband will be a good solution.

Except that making it that easy will make us complacent about the need to get round to ever watching anything at all.

It seems likely that television programs and films as we know them may break down in the long run in favour of more directly interactive broadcasting formats?

But for now, dual tuners are very useful!

Or even triple or quadruple tuners for multiple clashes and overlapping endings of programs.

[TCM2007]

Or even triple or quadruple tuners for multiple clashes and overlapping endings of programs.

Indeed. A dual tuner MCE box, Sky HD and a Sky-connected TiVo makes five, which covers most eventualities!