Here’s a heads up…..According to Stephen Mack on TiVoCommunity.com, today (8PM, Pacific) is the last day for to be able to get a lifetime subscription on your TiVo.

Hat Tip: TiVoLovers.

Dave Zatz was smart enough to read the fine print on TiVo’s latest American Idol Competition. In the fine print, TiVo says that the winner of the competition will receive a Series 3 TiVo with a lifetime subscription valued at $1500. Why is this important? Well, up until now, nobody had any idea what TiVo might charge for a Series 3 TiVo. Also, TiVo has said that the prize will be awarded on May 24, 2006 at 12:00 p.m. PT. I hope this means that we will see a Series 3 TiVo shortly after May 24th.

If you want to join in on the speculation, you could head on over to Dave’s site where he has a prize available for the person who guesses the right release date and price. I guessed: 9/18 for $699!

Two days ago I went ahead and added my Mom’s DVR to the 7.2.2 priority list. For those of you who don’t know, 7.2.2 includes the undelete feature, an improved suggestions engine and updated network drivers so that you can now use the Linksys USB 200M v2. This morning when I went over to my parent’s house to drop off my son, My Mom told me that she received the a message yesterday letting her know that her TiVo was updated. Wow, that sure was quick! I didn’t expect her DVR to get the update for at least a week. How long did it take you to get 7.2.2? Have you added yourself to the priority list? If not, you really should, the undelete feature is pretty sweet!

TiVo has officially launched their new pricing plan. Head on over to their site if you are interested. They’ve also posted a FAQ for many of those common questions.

Since I had already posted two entries (1st post, 2nd post) about TiVo’s new pricing plan, I didn’t plan on mentioning it again until next week when the pricing plan went into effect. That was until Dave Zatz (thanks Dave) sent me an email with a pointer to a thread on TiVoCommunity. In this thread, Stephen Mack (TiVoOpsMgr) goes into excruciating detail about the new pricing plan. In his post, Stephen, explains it in such a way that even I can understand it :). Check it out if you still have some questions about the pricing plan. My guess is that Stephen probably answered them in this thread.

Hey Tom (TiVo CEO), you really should consider giving Stephen a raise. If it wasn’t for him, you may have seen a lot of people drop their TiVo simply because they didn’t get their questions answered. I know that I was a little irritated before Stephen calmed me down. Stephen has done a wonderful job joining in on the conversation (example 1, example 2, example 3). Thanks Stephen! BTW, don’t forget your buddy over at TiVoBlog.com when you get that raise. I’ll make sure to send you my paypal account info :). On a side note, has anybody at TiVo ever read Naked Conversations? If not, somebody really should…..

Call me what you want, but I think that TiVo’s future looks promising. Often times we (meaning the community) get caught up in the media’s hype about TiVo going under. This post is meant to point out some promising items in TiVo’s future. I put a similar post together back in March ‘05 when everybody was “digging” TiVo’s grave.

• Comcast Deal: TiVo has repeatedly said that the Comcast deal is going strong. Comcast is the largest cable company in the country so once this deal goes through you are going to see a lot more TiVo subscribers.
• Series 3 TiVo: The Series 3 TiVo looks really promising. I know that we’ve been waiting for a long time however, the specs are pretty amazing. We’ll have to wait and see how much it goes for but I know that if it is cheap enough I’ll pick one up.
• Financial Situation: TiVo’s financial situation continues to improve. The most recent press release (PDF) shows that TiVo is improving financially and that the company is on the way to a sound financial future.
  

  TiVo achieved its first positive cash flow from operations in fiscal 2006. For the year, TiVo reported a net loss of ($34.4) million and net loss per share of ($0.41), a 57% and 59% improvement respectively, compared to a net loss of ($79.8) million, or ($0.99) per share in fiscal 2005. For the fourth quarter, TiVo reported a net loss of ($19.5) million and net loss per share of ($0.23), a 42% and 45% improvement respectively, compared to a net loss of ($33.7) million, or ($0.42) per share, for the fourth quarter of last year.

• Features: What other company do you know that continues to provide new features at almost no cost to the customer. For example, look at the following new features that TiVo has rolled out of the past year (or so): TiVoToGo, TiVo Desktop (HMO) updates, HME, Yahoo & TiVo partnership, Overlap protection, TiVo Central Online update. These are just a few of the features that have been released or updated recently. The list goes on and on.
• Growth: Even with everybody digging TiVo’s grave, the subscriber base has grown by 45% over the past year! Not to bad!

I hope that these 5 points make you realize that TiVo’s future isn’t all that bad. In my opinion, the company is stronger now then ever!

I consider myself to be a smart person however, after spending 10 minutes reading through a very long thread on TiVo Community, I’m still confused about how the new pricing plan is going to work. Maybe somebody can help explain it to me. Here are some questions that I have:

Update 03/09 @ 8:29 AM: Stephen Mack (TiVoOpsMgr) has answered all of these questions in the comments. He has also put up a detailed post on his personal blog. Thanks Steve!

• Is the MSD (multi-service discount) still available? Yes or No? What if I already have two TiVos and I buy another one. Will I be able to add this new TiVo as a MSD TiVo? In other words, how much will I have to pay per month for the new TiVo?
• What happens if I get a TiVo for “free” and the device breaks after two months? Will TiVo send me a new DVR?
• Once the commitment is up do I have the option to go with a monthly based subscription?
• Why so many pricing options? Choice is great but at the same time you don’t want to confuse the consumer and discourage them from buying your product. How am I supposed to recommend a TiVo to my friend/family member when the pricing options are so damn confusing?

I’m sure that most of these questions have been answered in the TiVo Community thread however, after reading through the entire thread I’m still confused. Please help! Maybe an FAQ is in order!

TiVo has announced a new price plan (press release, PDF)whereby the DVR is included for “free” in the monthly service fee. Here are some details on the new pricing structure:

• $16.95/month or $469 prepaid with 3-year commitment
• $18.95/month or $369 prepaid with 2-year commitment
• $19.95/month or $224 prepaid with 1-year commitment

Each of these monthly fees include an 80 hour Series 2 TiVo. The new pricing structure is supposed to go into effect next week.

Along with this news, TiVo has also announced that they are going to get rid of the lifetime subscription plan. In my opinion, this is the biggest news from today’s announcement. The lifetime subscription plan allowed anybody to pay some cold hard cash up front and never have to send another dollar to TiVo. I really think this was a mistake on TiVo’s part. I understand why they did it however, die hard TiVo fans like having the lifetime subscription as an option. Like Dave Zatz said, we’ll just have to wait and see what the market thinks…

TiVo has partnered up with Verizon to offer: “TiVo Mobile”. According to an article on USA Today, TiVo mobile will allow you to schedule recordings on your TiVo straight from your Verizon wireless cellphone. The feature is expected to be released early this summer. Pricing for this new feature has not been disclosed.

“TiVo isn’t just about a great way to watch television but it’s also about a great way to manage your TV life, and to do that, we realize TiVo can’t be isolated. It has to be integrated with all these other digital devices in people’s lives,” TiVo CEO Tom Rogers said in an interview.

Unlike Dave Zatz, I’m extremely excited about this new feature. I’m already a Verizon customer so when the service is released this summer I’ll be one of the first to try it out. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been talking with somebody and they mention a show that I should watch only to realize that I don’t have an internet connection available to program my TiVo. Later on when I do have an internet connection, I tend to forget what show they recommended. Maybe I’m just a geek or I have a bad memory? In any case, this feature will be just one more reason why TiVo is better then the competition. I wonder if other cellular carriers will team up with TiVo and offer the same service. We’ll have to wait and see….

Since the Sopranos are starting up soon, I decided to stop by my local Adelphia office and pick up a digital box. I’m so cheap that I only get HBO while the Sopranos are on ;). Now that I have a digital box, I moved our TiVo into the main living room. Unfortunately, this room does not have a network run and I don’t feel like running one since we’ll be moving out of this house in less then two months. Without a network drop, my only other option for broadband connectivitiy is to go wireless.

I just placed an order for one of those TiVo branded wireless adapters. I could have gone with one of the other cheaper adapters on the recommended adapter list however, I’ve heard good things about this adapter and ever since it came out, I’ve wanted to give it a try. Unfortunately, the adapter is on backorder so I’ll have to wait a little while. I’m willing to wait because a number of people that I respect (Dave Zatz, Mostly Muppet) have said good things about it. I’ll let everybody know how well it performs as soon as it arrives. I plan on running a couple of tests to see how long it takes me to transfer a show wirelessly as opposed to using my current wired setup. Stay tuned…