Death to TiVo?
With the holiday season is full swing I've been getting catalogs in the mail left and right. Today included one from Circuit City. I have a hard time just throwing a catalog like that away since it has all kinds of technology toys in it. As a was flipping through, I saw the new TiVo Series 3. I don't quite know when it got released but I know it didn't exist at least a year ago when I put my HD system together.
Circuit City is selling them for $799.99. That's even more than the PS3 (ignoring the eBay frenzy). The same catalog has decent computers that cost less. Never the less I consider just what such a purchase would mean. While I sometimes maybe impulsive, I'll at least make sure it fits into some reasonable disposable income level before just slapping down the plastic.
The first thing I did was look at my most recent bill from RCN. There among a bunch of other overpriced features is the monthly line item "RCN HDTV/DVR CONVERTERBOX" for $12.95. That decodes HD and gives me dual tuner HD DVR capabilities all curiosity of the Motorola DCT6412 III unit. Browsing around the TiVo site, the best deal it looks like you can get is the 3-year pre-paid plan. They also have a special going that it looks like you get a year free. Let's call that then $299 for 4 years or about $6.25 a month.
Now I'm not completely up on HD technology and how that plays with cable and the like. The TiVo site says in order to record two programs at once, I'll need two cable cards from RCN. Doing a little digging I can lease cable cards from RCN for $1.50 a month but would no longer be able to get RCN Video On Demand. That bumps the cost up to $9.25 a month in order to support a TiVo Series 3 (part of that "monthly" cost being a $299 lump sum payment).
At this point then I think I can compare some numbers and features (crude list to follow):
| RCN DVR | TiVo Series 3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Hardware Cost | $0 | $799 |
| Monthly Cost | $12.95 | $9.25 ($299 amortized over 4 years and $2.50 cable card rental fee) |
| Tuning Capability | 2 Channels | 2 Channels |
| HD Support | Yes | Yes |
| HD Recording Capacity | 12 Hours (Approximate, I can't find a hard number) | 32 Hours |
| Series Recording Support | Yes | Yes |
| Internet Programmability | No | Yes |
| Multimedia Support | No | Yes |
| Advanced Search/Scheduling | No | Yes |
From a raw technical perspective the TiVo does have more capacity, features, and is THX-Certified. Having used a TiVo series 2, the UI is nicer than the one RCN offers and the TiVo remote just feels better. However, from a raw numbers stand point I can't see shelling out $1098 (to get those features) just to save $10.45 a month. Call me crazy but I don't see the value add of TiVo being worth a thousand dollars. Maybe if I watched more TV those better features and UI might matter, I'd be hard pressed to really justify it even if it was the case.
While the price of the TiVo Series 3 may drop, the fact that you are still paying them a monthly fee, I just don't feel that they offer the value add they used to especially with the feature set cable companies are offering, especially when you consider you need to pay the cable company anyway.