TivoHD - Transfer of Lifetime from S1?

already a thread on the first page of the forum for this
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=359967

 

if you had the TiVo for 7+ years then it is grandfathered and you should not pay

 

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He said in the OP that he missed the grandfathering window.


In my opinion, yes, it's worth $199 to transfer the lifetime to the new TiVoHD, if you can get TiVo to do it. For one thing it increases the resale value of the TiVoHD if you ever decide to sell it.

 

Well, if the "special" deal she offered you is not contingent on keeping the lifetimed S1 in your household (in other words, if she's offering you that price even without an multi-service discount), then you could sell the S1 with lifetime and that would help pay for the TiVoHD and 3 years of service.

If that's the price with the multi-service discount, then you have to hang onto the S1 (which you may prefer to do anyway, if you would actually use it elsewhere in your home).

 

*Heavy sigh.*

My crappy SA8300HD DVR costs $6/month more than what the dual CableCARDs would cost to support the TiVo HD--and that doesn't include TiVo's box fee or their subscription costs.

I have a Series 2 with Lifetime... sitting in the closet, unused.


I want to come home to TiVo!

 

I sincerely doubt TiVo will offer a Lifetime transfer offer again, but if they did I would happily buy one of these new boxes and transfer my last S2 lifetime to it.

But if TiVo chooses not to do that, we can hardly complain. They DID tell us that the S3 transfer would be the last one. I just hope they reconsider.

 

my opinion is that I doubt Tivo will offer a $199 lifetime transfer deal-- at least not right away. To me a lifetime transfer deal is like 0% financing or some rebate gimmick car manufacturers use to move inventory. If Tivo has a good product thats priced right, they won't need any additional incentives. Based on casual observations, it looks like people are pretty excited about the Tivo HD.

In some ways, if Tivo offers another lifetime transfer offer, that's almost a bad sign. It seems to make sense that they were offering it last month on the S2DT because it looks like they were trying to clear out their inventory. If Tivo can't sell this new box on its own merits and they have to resort to gimmicks, then to me, that indicates they are having problems.

In some ways Tivo screwed themselves much like some car manufactures did. Now when anyone buys a car, they almost EXPECT there to be some kind of rebates or financing and even if they lower the MSRP, that's still not good enough. Now Tivo is facing the same problem. By throwing a LT transfer offer here and there, I think there's a lot of us here who also expect a comparable deal and will hold off buying a new box until the LT xfer deal comes around again (if it ever does).

I'm kinda mixed on the situation... personally I'd like to see another LT xfer offer so I can upgrade. But at the same time, I'd like to see Tivo be a successful and profitable company so it sticks around for me. If they are "giving away" service on their latest and greatest boxes, what are they doing in business?

 

I have a friend with two series 2 units with lifetime and she's using cable boxes and IR blasters.

IMO the killer app on the new units is not HD, it's cablecard.
Even if they don't offer a lifetime transfer option this time, IMO it'd be worth it to lose lifetime just to get rid of the cable boxes.

Of course I'm still hoping they will offer a paid transfer option for long time subscribers like they did before with the series 3 release.

 

Depends on how TiVo calculates the answer to this question: "Will you keep your S1 or S2 w/ lifetime or buy the new S3-lite & service plan?" If they think people will buy the S3-llite + service anyway, then no transfer offer. If they're worried people will stand pat, transfer offer.

I personally think they'll eventually (i.e., before Xmas) offer a bundle of S3 and S3-lite w/ lifetime transfer.


P.S. How dramatically will the price drop on the S3?

 

I just called TiVo to ask about this, since I have a Series 1 that's old enough, and the customer service person explained that the offer for free transfer from grandfathered Series 1 TiVos did not apply (at least not yet) to the TiVoHD.

 

Most probally they will, to boost Xmas Sales of the THD units.

Again, probally around Xmas time.

 

I'm curious as to why anyone would want to transfer lifetime to the current slew of S3 units. It's a given that any unit will eventually become obsolete. The problem is that with SDV being implemented now, that eventuality for the S3 is now. Even if your provider doesn't use it now, there is a pretty good chance they will any day now.

If I were Tivo I'd keep that $199 offer on the table and come out with a unit that supported SDV ASAP. Then charge another $199 to transfer to that unit.

 

they are working on SDV but it is not a technical issue, that part is already happening in current cable boxes even.
The issue is one of the cable companies not agreeing on a standard to support incoming requests to switch the digital video at all their head ends. They point to OCAP which is a java runtime but consumer electronics can not add in such a beast and need a simpler standard. The issue is politics for SDV.


I would take the lifetime offer on the THD in a heartbeat since my current lifetime box - a 240 S2 model only has one tuner andcan not do digital/HD.I could easily pay more than 200$ on that in subs even at 7$ a month

 

I'm on the phone now with TiVo. Rep says that they reversed their policy since yesterday, and now will honor a grandfather transfer to the new TiVo HD!