It’s 12/29 now, so that means you have two days to purchase a Series3 TiVo to qualify for the lifetime VIP transfer. To recap, if you have lifetime TiVo service on ANY box (now both DirecTV TiVos and standalone TiVos) then you can pay TiVo $199 to move the lifetime to a Series3 unit. In the case of standalone TiVos, they will also give you one year of service on the older box (not clear what happens for DirecTV TiVos).
The deadline for the purchase is 12/31/06 – but you don’t need to receive the unit by then, just purchase it by then. Then you need to complete the transfer by 1/31/07.
With rebates, we’ve all grown to assume that when one rebate period ends, another immediately starts. But since this is the first round of this service, we have no idea if the program will renew. Frankly, we suspect it won’t.