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.

If you've been waiting with baited breath to find out how much Comcast was going to charge customers for TiVo software on their Motorola set-top boxes, the wait is over: $2.95.

TiVo CEO Tom Rogers explained the new pricing during TiVo's quarterly earnings statement this week.

Now keep in mind, this doesn't mean you'll be getting TiVo service for just 3 bucks a month. Rather, that's how much you'll have to pay on top of whatever you already pay Comcast for cable service and PVR rental. But since Comcast generally charges less for PVR service than TiVo, this could turn out to a pretty good deal for consumers. And since you'll be using a Comcast box, you'll have access to video on demand without the need for a newfangled adapter.

TiVo and Comcast are expected to to start promoting the new service in the New England area soon.

During yesterday's speech to investors, TiVo CEO Tom Rogers admitted that the $799 price tag on the Series3 HD TiVo probably hurt sales.

Rogers says the company plans to offer a lower-priced high definition unit soon. That ambiguous statement could mean lowering the price on the Series3 or offering a stripped down version of the box.

While some resellers have offered Series3 TiVo for under $600, that's still a lot of money to shell out when you can pick up an HD PVR for just a few bucks a month from your cable or satellite provider. TiVo's been tackling this issue on two fronts:

• By throwing features (like TiVoCast, Amazon Unbox, and web video) onto its boxes, providing features that you can't get on generic PVRs.
• By partnering with cable providers like Comcast and Cox to bundle TiVo software with cable company set-top-boxes.

As much as I hope TiVo plans a major price drop for Series3 units, Rogers might have been talking about rolling out HD TiVo service through Comcast and Cox boxes.

Time for our latest installment of TiVo personal finance. Here's the question: If you sign up for a new TiVo subscription today are you getting a better deal than you would have received last month?

A quick refresher. TiVo had been offering single tuner Series2 boxes for free after rebate (a $180 deal), and monthly subscriptions of:

• $12.95 per month with a 3 year commitment with a $150 early termination fee
• $14.95 per month with a 2 year commitment, with the same termination fee
• $19.95 per month with a 1 year commitment, termination fee applies