tomryan said:
Actually, I don't understand why they even have the line. If its true that the lifetime is 4 years, why wouldn't they want to do everything in their power to "reset" people on that expiring lifetime? I understand the strong desire to generate revenue off of those no longer on the books, but why would they not want to pursue all avenues of revenue.
Do they make money off of the hardware sales?
If break even == hardware sale PLUS some number of months of service, then it wouldn't behoove Tivo to allow the transfers sooner than that.
Even if Tivo HD price + $199 just barely broke even, it would give Tivo new money that they wouldn't have, and potentially reduce need for dial in (assuming people were using Ethernet(*)) and potentially reduce S1 support long term.
So even though I think they should have never gotten rid of lifetime at all, I can see that it might make economic sense for them not to have it for everyone..
(and they managed to get me to spend around $850 on the S3 lifetime offer... and I don't even have a HDTV... and I'm STILL thinking of the TivoHD offer for my other s1 lifetime... fool me twice??)
(*) My S3 is on a phone line.. and I even bought a TurboNet off of eBay to get one of my S1s off of the phone.. and now it may not be necessary long term if I take advantage of this offer. (I still need a 'game adapter' to connect to the wireless downstairs.)