Tivo tells us that the lifetime membership follows the unit and not our account. They did failed to inform us of this when we purchased the DVR.
A complete SCAM! We have had no less than 3 returns due to faulty equipment in the last 3 years, unfortunately this last unit lasted just over a year (our last RMA was in august 2008) so it is out of warranty already.

We deeply regret purchasing lifetime subscription and will ditch Tivo altogether. The slow and cumbersome user interface, the faulty low quality hardware, and most of all the latest stab: lifetime subscription not really lifetime at all, but only for the lifetime of something that dies all the time.

If you are considering buying Tivo. Don’t, it is expensive, their hardware breaks all the time, doesn’t work properly with satellite tuners, and you will probably feel tricked and burned after a few years like us.

Most people I know do not even realize that they have Windows Media Center on their computer and do not have a tuner or the computer hooked up to the TV. If they clue in then this will make it even worse for TIVO.

I have had computers set up doing the recording for about 4 years. 7 TV’s in the house and 4 computer media centers hooked up.

I just upgraded most of the MediaCenters to windows 7 and while it is pretty I am not crazy on the interface(performance sucks on the older computers), most of them are dual boot with Linux which I have just upgraded to Kubuntu 9.10 and MythTV(Which works good on the older boxes). I still have the MythTV linux boxes for recording restricted content and they work well once the setup learning curve kicks in.

As an aside Kubuntu 9.10 is the first Linux version that I have seen that actually has functionality and user friendliness to actually have a chance some level of public acceptance (not that I see it taking any great market share but nice to know it could).

I have to admit that I am watching less live and also less recorded TV and watching more and more content streamed off of the internet. Of course most of that is crappy quality, sound can be off and does not work with the media center remote all that well, if at all.

I seem to prefer when I can watch several episodes of the same show back to back.

Also for some reason I am watching less movies than I use to and am not sure why that is. We have not gone out to a movie in months and months and used to go a lot.

So funny but with all the recording capablities we have that we are do more direct internet streaming. If HULU worked in Canada we would probably being doing even more.

And he still took up most of the DVR space!

Prior to having a Comcast DVR w/ OnDemand, routinely 30+% of the capacity of my ReplayTV was used up holding kids shows, and god help me if they’d seen everything in the inventory, which happened a lot even with frequent new show recording. Now, almost none of the DVR storage is kids shows, and there is *always* something new available for them in OnDemand. That’s a huge decrease in hassle level for me. Now, the only things I record for them are the 1-2 shows they like that aren’t available in OnDemand.

Another nice thing about kids shows OnDemand is they have either no commercials, substantially fewer, or just in house promos.

The beauty of On Demand is you don’t NEED to worry about recording anything. Why do something even slightly harder if there are easier alternatives and you don’t find the TiVo software that big of a deal versus cable company DVR?

Especially for people who have kids, there’s always a ton of content available on both the entertainment and educational fronts On Demand. I can’t imagine ever not having a DVR but I can’t imagine ever not wanting the access to the On Demand options too.

Windows Media Center is a huge leap ahead of Tivo and with hulu.com through http://tubecentric.tv you have the best of everything.

TiVo is just going to have to face the music. The world has changed. The TiVo experience is just not compelling enough by itself (even with Amazon and Netflix) to charge a monthly subscription fee.

Also, with a little planning you don’t need OnDemand when you have Tivo. Just record the stuff you’re interested in & watch it “on demand” when you want. Plus there’s all the Amazon/Blockbuster/NetFlix stuff to sate your “I want it now!” appetite.

So, I built a Windows based HTPC. 4 TB of HD, 6 HD Tuners, auto senses commercials so I don’t have to even fast forward, sends video to every room in the house.

I will never ever look back.

I like TiVo enough that if they’d have let me transfer lifetime program guide service from one box to a TiVoHD, I’d have gotten the cable cards for TiVo and kept the Comcast STB without the DVR so as to have the best of both worlds. Cables, extra inputs on my TV and shelf space on the TV stand I can handle.

But having to buy hardware AND pay more for the program guide than the cost of the HD DVR rental with program guide, I couldn’t handle. If they had either given the hardware away (arguably something that ultimately pays off with their data services business) or not charged for the program guide or let me transfer my lifteime service, I’d probably still be on TiVo.

As for the subscriber loss, you’ll see it was primarily from the MSOs category. Those are nearly all DirecTV customers. While I have no data to back it up, lots have likely upgraded to an HD set and just taken the DirecTV provided HD-DVR box.