My High Def Life: My New HDTV TiVo

After 8 years, several hard drive upgrades, and a great lifetime of service, my daughter made our Series 1 TiVo go boom the other day. She knocked over the TV, the TiVo, and our DVD player/recorder. In the end, daughter was fine (albeit in big trouble), the HDTV also survived without a problem. The antennas on both the TiVo and DVD player ended up at about 45-degree angles off where they should be. Within hours, the TiVo reception had degraded to unwatchable.

A quick google turned up this TV Squad post that mentioned a Series 1 upgrade to HDTV TiVo for $500--$300 for the unit, $200 to transfer the lifetime service. I pulled out my long-suffering Visa card and ante'ed up.

In theory, this offer goes until November 8th. In reality, TiVo offers this kind of upgrade pretty regularly. Last year, transferring service would have cost me almost $1000. This year, it's half the price. And next year, I expect the price to drop further.

What's more, given the ready availability of really inexpensive tuners and scheduling systems like Elgato's EyeTV, TiVo has to fight back not only with their great interface, beautiful remote, and vaunted reliability, but also with price.