Author: Michael

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.

We first wrote about the new policy allowing lifetime service transfers from DirecTV to Series3 TiVo via the TiVo VIP transfer here.

The word hasn’t spread too well among the TiVo operators, so it seems, but everyone who calls to do the transfer has made it work. If you’re going to try, you might ask your operator to reference article 090717. That should give them the info they need to process the transfer.

If you want to do this, buy your Series3 TiVo soon. The purchase must be made by 12/31/06 to qualify for the program, and the transfer must be completed by 1/31/07.

TiVo has been offering its customers who have lifetime service the option to transfer that service to the new HD TiVos for $199. But this offer had been restricted to customers who had lifetime service on their standalone TiVo DVRs only – not those who had it on their DirecTV TiVos.

If you were one of the early DirecTV-TiVo users and you purchased lifetime service for your DirecTV unit, that lifetime service is now transferable to a Series3 HD TiVo for cable for the $199 VIP fee. To do this, you still need to purchase the Series3 unit by 12/31/06. So if you were on the fence about switching to cable, this should help – and the new Series3 TiVo is truly amazing!

Final important note: The Series3 TiVo will NOT work with DirecTV, so this deal only makes sense if you’re planning to switch to cable.

Just arrived – already half eaten.

Well, it finally happened – and hackers did it before TiVo. Mac users can download shows from their TiVo and play them on their Macs. It takes a little more effort, but it’s really not too bad. And, judging by the work already done to make it easier, it’ll only get easier still.

To start, you need the TiVo decode software. This links to your TiVo (you’ll need your media access key) and pulls down the files, and decodes them. It’s one-at-a-time, but in my experience, it was pretty fast.

Then, you need a way to play the file. QuickTime and iTunes won’t do it. VLC will. And it works pretty well also.

We’re definitely wondering if this will last – so if you want these apps, get them while you (easily) can.