Cost Analysis Of Tivo

My Tivo is dead. After a wonderfully long life of seven years it overheated (I think) and stopped working. Tivo, you will be missed.

My Tivo (which was a Series 1) was purchased back in 2001 when I was living out of state, and it managed to survive three separate moves. At the time I purchased my original Tivo, as it is today, I had the choice of paying a monthly subscription fee for the TV channel line-up data or I could purchase a “lifetime” data subscription for a larger 1-time cost.

I’d also like to put my original Tivo purchase into context. I loved my Tivo. It was by far the best product purchase I have ever made. Period. The software works great, and I’m an ex-software developer and I’m very hard to please. It was easy to use and rarely had issues. My only complaint was that it required a phone like to download the TV channel line up data, which was annoying because it required me to have a phone line (otherwise I’d only have a cell phone).

Now that Tivo is dead I was forced to locate an alternative. I don’t watch much TV, but my wife and I are so used to being able to watch an hour tv show in 40 minutes that it is a wonderful luxury item. If we can afford to replace it.

As I see it there are four main choices:

• buy another Tivo. It could be new or refurbished, or even used from ebay.
• buy a computer with a TV card, which would turn the computer essentially into a Tivo.
• look for an alternative digital video recorder product (DVR).
• “rent” one from my cable provider, which charges a monthly fee.

Buy Another Tivo

This would cost about $150 for the device plus ~$400 for a lifetime data subscription. The “lifetime” refers to the Tivo device, not my lifetime, so if I ever have problems with the new Tivo I’m essentially screwed from the data subscription perspective. Alternatively I could pay $12.95/month for the data subscription. I hate on-going monthly (or annual) plans like this though, and the break even on this would be 400/12.95 =  30 months or 2.5 years.

DIY Tivo

Although I’d like to have a desktop computer for my office and a TV card for it, I don’t have a strong desire to make a DIY Tivo. A computer won’t fit near my TV, I’d need to buy a used computer to make this option even remotely cost effective, and it just feels like too much work. If a computer cost me $300, and the a TV tuner card with software cost $150, I’d still be looking at ~$450+ with this option. Still less expensive than an official Tivo, but less than the rented DVR option.

DVR Alternatives

I did a quick search at Amazon.com, but they most sell Tivos. Their other DVR’s cost $200-$500 and didn’t seem like that reliable of a choice for me.

“Rent” A DVR from My Cable Provider

Renting a DVR will cost $13.95/month according to the cable rep I called. Having educated myself before calling however by searching the web, I immediately noticed that this quoted price was for a 2-tuner DVR. My old Tivo had a single tuner, and after asking the rep told me “Yes, there is a single tuner DVR available. It costs $8.95/month, but wouldn’t you want to be able to tape 2 programs at once?” Nope. I don’t need that much TV anyway.

I also had to upgrade my cable subscription to digital cable (not HD), and oddly enough this change gave me an additional 100 channels (some are just music) and actually saves me $1.50/month. Hmmm. I guess I should have done that a long time ago. Given this savings this option ends up costing $8.95-$1.50 = ~$7.50/month.

Ultimately this is the choice I made. It reduced my risk of equipment failure, and was one of the lower-cost options available.

Other Considerations And Key Learnings

Here are a few other things I considered:

• I started by asking myself (and my wife) if we really needed to replace the Tivo. It’s a valid question, and causes us to really think about what’s important. We have a lot of unexpected bills coming up, and it’s far from a no-brainer to spend extra money on a luxury like this for us.
• If you’re getting new equipment from the cable company, ask if you can pick it up. This saved us $29.95 and a half-day off from work waiting for the cable guy.
• After researching how to fix my old Tivo, I’ve discovered that Tivos and DVR’s often overheat and/or break down. I think it is unlikely that my next DVR-type device will last seven years like my last one did. If the rented DVR goes down I can replace it for free with the cable company.
• Be creative. Don’t settle for the first option available, meaning in this case it would have been a bad idea for me to have gone out and ordered a new Tivo simply because that’s what I bought last time.

Image Credit: angela n

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