OK, sure, you can make a TiVo as dirty as you want.
But as far as a working TiVo innocently plucked from it’s installed environment, we’re pretty sure this is the worst we’ve seen.
Amazingly, it seems untouched by any type of airflow whatsoever.
You should have seen the clouds when we blew this one out . . .
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.
Effective May 19, 2011, if you purchase a TiVo Premiere or TiVo Premiere XL from weaKnees, you’ll be able to purchase lifetime service directly from TiVo. Lifetime service (“PLS” in TiVo-speak, for “product lifetime service”) will cost $499.99 for new TiVo subscribers, and $399.99 for existing standalone TiVo subscribers. For those preferring to pay monthly, service will continue to be $19.99/mo for new subs and $14.99/mo for existing subscribers.
For those who follow these things closely, you’ll notice that the Premiere PLS pricing is $100 more than for non-Premiere boxes, but keep in mind that the price for the TiVo Premiere (and TiVo Premiere XL) dropped $200 when TiVo eliminated PLS for the Premiere and mandated a $19.99/mo plan.
For us at weaKnees, this is fantastic news. We have been begging and pleading with TiVo to bring back PLS for TiVos that our customers purchase from us.
Please remember that these pricing changes go into effect on 5/19, so if you have a newly-purchased Premiere or Premiere XL and want PLS, please don’t activate until 5/19!
If you really want to load up your original AppleTV with tons of music and movies, we now have an even larger upgrade available, to 2 TB. This is double our prior largest size.
For a point of comparison, the original AppleTV debuted with a 40 GB drive. Then, Apple began offering it in 160 GB versions. We can upgrade either to 320 GB internally. And we can go up to 2 TB with an external drive.
You do still need to send us the AppleTV for us to prepare your unit with the external, since it requires an internal, reversible modification to route a cable out of the box for the external drive.
Final note: these upgrades only work on the original style of AppleTV, pictured above, with storage. The newer, black AppleTVs are streaming-only and can’t support local storage at all.
See our 2 TB AppleTV upgrades.