TVSquad

TiVo's on-again, off-again love affair with lifetime service plans seems to be back on again. Once upon a time, the company let customers pay for service one month at a time, by the year, or shell out a few hundred bucks to get unlimited service for as long as they keep the same set top box.

A while back, the company stopped offering the product lifetime service option, but brought it back as a limited time deal right around the time TiVo launched the Series3 HD recorder. At the time, the company was only allowing customers with existing lifetime service plans transfer their plans to new boxes -- for a fee. But over the past year and a half, the company has occasionally offered new or existing customers a chance to pay for product lifetime services, with the understanding that this was always a special one-time promotion. Act now while the offer's still good!

But now it looks like lifetime service is back for good. Or at least until someone at TiVo changes their mind. But as blogger Dave Zatz has discovered, TiVo has added lifetime subscription pricing to the official payment plan descriptions. That takes the lifetime service plan out of the realm of promotion and into the world of everyday pricing.

So here's the deal. If you're a new TiVo customer, you can shell out $399 to get unlimited service for as long as you keep your set top box. If you're an existing customer, you can get the same deal on a new box for $299. But keep in mind, if TiVo comes out with a new box in 2 years that you really, really want and doesn't offer to let you transfer your lifetime service, you probably would have been better off paying by the month or year.