Can you transfer your shows from old tivo to new Tivo after service is cancelled?

[krye]

I just got a new DT Series 2 Tivo. It replaced my old Series 2. For about a week I had both activated at the same time. I was in the middle of transferring all my shows form the old one to the new one over my network. Easy enough. I was about to enter a new billing cycle so I cancelled service on the old Tivo to save $120 a year. I'm not going to need the old box after all my shows are transfered anyway.

My plan was to continue transferring all the shows off the old Tivo onto the new Tivo. But now, transfering doesn't seem to work anymore. I don't know if it is a coincidence or if it is because I cancelled the sevice on the old box.

When I look in the "Now Playing" list on the new Tivo, I see the old Tivo OK. I can also bring up the show listing from the old Tivo, but when I go to transfer a show it says there's a network problem.

I doubled checked all my settings and everything is good to go. I rebooted the Tivos too. Everything is fine. So my question is this, does Tivo disable the transfer option if you're not paying for service?

I can't even manually record on the old one either. Not that I was going to still use it. I just thought maybe it would come in handy in a pinch. So basically the box is absolutely useless without service? Do they let you do anything with it? I thought I'd at least be able to pull my old shows off it.

[LifeIsABeach]

As you have discovered recording and transferring shows do not work on unsubscribed TiVos. The only thing they can do is watch shows which were previously recorded and pause, rewind, etc the half hour live tv buffer.

[ewilts]

So basically the box is absolutely useless without service?

http://letmegooglethatforyou.com/?q=tivo+without+service

[krye]

What a racket! You spend all that money on a Tivo and it's a paperweight without service. Talk about locking you into a contract. It's criminal!

[ciper]

What a racket! You spend all that money on a Tivo and it's a paperweight without service. Talk about locking you into a contract. It's criminal!
TiVo sold you the box at a loss. You could have bought Lifetime service and it would still work, plus it would have a good resale value.

This is no different from buying a fancy phone for 99$ that requires a two year contract and is locked to one provider.

[scandia101]

You spend all that money on a Tivo and it's a paperweight without service. Talk about locking you into a contract. It's criminal!

That's why they make it very clear that a TiVo requires a subscription. Also, that requirement does nothing to prevent you from watching the recordings on a Tivo with a canceled subscription.

I paid good money for a satellite dish and receiver. Guess what? It's useless without a subscription to the service.

Do you really think that you are entitled to anything other than what you agreed to when you subscribed that Tivo?

[argicida]

http://letmegooglethatforyou.com/?q=tivo+without+service

He's got two posts.... isn't it a little early for that response.

[scandia101]

He's got two posts.... isn't it a little early for that response.

I vote no. It's never to early to learn.

[argicida]

I vote no. It's never to early to learn.

Well I certainly lost sympathy when he said Tivo was criminal for requiring the service.... That's a legitimate business decision that Tivo has made that is well disclosed.

But in general do you want to send them away from the current message board?

Even a link like this would seem to be better

http://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=site:www.tivocommunity.com+%22tivo%20without%20service%22

at least it shows them how to use the current message board.

Winamp had other problems but I remember a decline on the message board when it became popular to tell newcomers to search elsewhere for help with Winamp.

[Resist]

What a racket! You spend all that money on a Tivo and it's a paperweight without service. Talk about locking you into a contract. It's criminal!The experience of Tivo is 50% about the hardware and 50% about the service. Is it expensive....yes, but its ease of use is why people keep using them.

[scandia101]

But in general do you want to send them away from the current message board.


I prefer people be as self sufficient as they can be. If that means they can find information elsewhere, that's great.

[ciper]

In Australia you cannot buy a TiVo with monthly service. They are ALL LIFETIME. Maybe they wanted to prevent crap like this thread ;)

[mr.unnatural]

In Australia you cannot buy a TiVo with monthly service. They are ALL LIFETIME. Maybe they wanted to prevent crap like this thread ;)

That's interesting. ReplayTV originally tried that concept and it didn't work well for them. They eventually switched over to a subscription based service, but they had other issues that caused their eventual demise.

[classicsat]

Americans generally prefer to buy things for as little up front with some ongoing cost, it seems.

Probably, in Australia, thier partner did not want (at least yet) to want to have an authorization department, and wanted to market it as a premium product, so could sell it for full price with service. Keep in mind they lack some, if not all, networking media features.

[ciper]

The only sucky thing is that they have to pay 199 australian dollars to enable the networking features even though they already have a lifetime unit! It caused quite an uproar because everyone assumed it would be 1/5 that price.

Unfortunately those in charge of TCF decided to be lazy and not create a TiVo Australia forum so they were forced to be refuges on DDB and OzTiVo :(