The TiVo Premiere Elite will be shipping starting tomorrow, October 10, from our Los Angeles warehouse.
We’ve successfully upgraded the unit to 4 TB for a total of about 640 hour of HD recording space. And these are also shipping, starting tomorrow. These units use a 2 TB internal drive, and a 2 TB external drive. Both drives are WD AV Green power models.
See our TiVo Premiere Elite models.
We have received our shipment of TiVo Premiere Elite DVRs and we’re thrilled to announce that we’ll start shipping on Monday, October 10th. We will start taking orders on October 9th here.
The Premiere Elite has four tuners–it can record four shows simultaneously, while you are watching a fifth recorded show. It is built on the same Premiere XL platform, but it lacks an off-air digital tuner. Therefore, it can ONLY be used with digital cable or Verizon FiOS, and it requires a CableCARD.
The Elite has some other cool features that TiVo’s other HD DVRs lack, such as built-in support for MoCA. Without boring you with the details, MoCA permits you to run Ethernet and cable over the same incoming line, so if you are unable to run an Ethernet cable to your TiVo, but you have a router near your cable modem, then you can combine the two signals onto the one coax cable line coming into your TiVo.
We have posted the TiVo Premiere Elite specifications for the TiVo Premiere Elite and we have a comprehensive TiVo Premiere comparison chart on the website as well.
Needless to say, we’ll be working on upgrades and will update the Blog once we have news.
Most TiVo DVRs require a subscription to TiVo to do anything at all – without the subscription, they’d be a boat anchor.
But TiVo does have the Product Lifetime Service option (PLS) which means that you pay once for service for your unit, and that unit gets TiVo service as long as it’s in operation. PLS costs $499 currently, or $399 if you already have a TiVo account.
Since the PLS is tied to the unit and can’t be moved, we’ve have some units here with PLS on them, for considerably less than $499. So if you’re interested in buying a TiVo DVR that won’t incur monthly service fees, see our page of TiVo DVRs with prepaid Lifetime service.
Prices start at $199.
Since the last Product Lifetime Service changes from TiVo a few weeks ago, we’ve received a lot of phone calls and emails about converting over existing units with monthly service to lifetime service.
To recap, TiVo finally allowed for Product Lifetime Service on the TiVo Premiere line of units. While the price is a bit higher than in the past, the price of the hardware is significantly lower, so the total package costs about the same, in the end. You just pay less to us for the unit, and more to TiVo for the service.
But what if you already have a unit, Premiere or otherwise? Are you able to get lifetime service on an already-subscribed plan?
The answer is, yes, you can. The pricing is the same ($499.99 for primary units, and $399.99 with the multi-service discount on other units). To do so, you must fulfill your current service commitment first, if you have one, and then lifetime takes over. So if you subscribed a TiVo Premiere at $19.99 per month with a service commitment of 12 months, you need to pay for the full 12 months, even if you haven’t used them all yet.
If you have no remaining service commitment, you can just change over to lifetime anytime.
We think lifetime service is a great deal – on primary units, it pays for itself in 25 months.
TiVo has announced today that TiVo Premiere DVRs are now capable of streaming video from the Hulu Plus library of content. Hulu Plus has mostly television content – and content that isn’t available elsewhere for streaming.
As a promotion, if you start a new TiVo Premiere subscription from now until the end of August, you’ll get six months of Hulu Plus for free. That’s a pretty tempting offer, considering you can then use your subscription on your computer or laptop for this same content in addition to watching it on your TiVo. Existing TiVo Premiere owners can get one month free of Hulu Plus service. Additional Hulu Plus service is $7.99/month.
TiVo has been very aggressive in proving that their set to box is “more than a DVR.” These units can now stream from Netflix, Amazon, Blockbuster, YouTube, Rhapsody, Pandora, and many other services, and now that they’ve added the Hulu Plus content, that just reinforces their leadership position in bringing both broadcast and streaming content to your living room.
Hulu Plus has tons of current and archived television content. Click to browse the full list. Or, view a list of movies available to stream. To sign up for Hulu Plus for use with your TiVo, click here.