There have been a lot of changes to the structure and pricing of TiVo service over the years. Here we’ll explain where it all lays out today, with some of the history where it affects the current situation.
DirecTV charges a DVR fee of $5.99/month to customers with one or more DVRs on their DirecTV account. You also pay a receiver/lease fee of $4.99/month per DirecTV receiver, after the first receiver on the account. If you are running an HD TiVo and want the HD channels, that’s another $10.99/month.
If you have a DirecTV Premiere package, the DVR fee is included in the umbrella that you’re paying for, so you won’t also have the $5.99 monthly charge. So if you have this package, all you pay to add a DVR is the hardware cost, once.
Once upon a time, DirecTV and TiVo offered lifetime TiVo service for DirecTV units. This is long gone, but if you had it, it’s now part of your DirecTV account, and, unlike lifetime on standalone units, it covers all of the DVRs on your account, and you can remove/replace old DVRs from your account without affecting the status of this lifetime coverage. If you close your DirecTV account, however, you’ll never get this back.
Standalone TiVo DVRs without DVD burners
Monthly service on TiVo units is $12.95/month for the first unit on the account, and $6.95/month for each additional. TiVo has some bundles on their site where they basically raise your monthly fee, commit you to a longer time period, and then give you the unit free.
Until recently, these units were eligible for lifetime service. TiVo has stopped selling lifetime service for these units. There are ways to get this (eBay, WeaKnees, gift cards) but by and large, if you want a unit with no monthly fee, you should consider a Humax combo unit, below.
The monthly service for these units is the same as that for the standalones: $12.95/month for the first unit on the account, and $6.95/month for additional units on the same account. But these units are still eligible to get lifetime service.
At $299, lifetime service is a pretty good deal, at least for the first unit on your account. This covers the monthly fee for just over 23 months – after that, your service is essentially free, and, since service travels with the box for these, your unit is worth more for potential resale.
To purchase lifetime service for a Humax unit, you need to call TiVo. Lifetime can’t be purchased online at this point.
4 replies on “TiVo Service Roundup – Everything you’ve ever wanted to know . . .”
One note: If you have lifetime service, additional boxes are $6.95/month. You may need to talk to them to make sure the change from $12.95 happens, but my TiVo 1 is lifetime and 2 and 3 are $6.95/month each.
Hi: Your comment above about the DirecTV HD programming package is off by $1. They recently reduced this fee to $9.99, as an excuse for raising the Total Choice tier by a few dollars.
Anybody else get stuck with $200 NFL Season Ticket charges when they watch Absolutely No football? My DirecTV auto deduct from my bank increased every July-Sept by $50 without me noticing! Their answer to my query? Tough Luck.
If you print this, I’ll drop it. If you don’t, i.e. censor it, I’ll crosslink it all over the net.
BTW, that’s $800 over the last four years with DTV.
I purchased the $300 “lifetime” service with my first TIVO unit (a Sony SAT-T60). When I upgraded to an R15, DirecTV insisted on charging me an additional $6.95/mo for my “second” receiver. [What second receiver? I have only one access card registered. I am still battling DTV on this matter.]
I am about to ditch the R15 in favor of an R10 from Weeknees. What can I expect from DirecTV about paying for yet another receiver?