Earlier this week, TiVo and Verizon joined together to announce TiVo Mobile Scheduling which will allow users to remotely record shows by using their Verizon mobile phone.This means that when you’re miles from home and you realize your favorite show isn’t scheduled to record, you can easily schedule that recording while on the go by searching through the TV listings right from your phone.
While this would be a nice extra free incentive to offer customers and to draw in potential customers, there will be a $1.99 fee charged per month to get your access. Also important to note is that it will be available only to those who have a Series 2 or Series 3 TiVo box, and the Verizon phone would need to be enabled with Wireless Get It Now.
This is the second time in the last two months that TiVo has joined together with another company to offer something extra for their customers. Early in February, TiVo and Amazon joined together to offer TiVo customers video downloads right to their box.
Going back to the Verizon and TiVo deal, so far around the web it appears that most people aren’t too impressed because if you have a computer with Internet access, you can do the same thing for free. A writer over at TiVo Lovers says, “Honestly, this doesn’t impress me. One carrier, and a limited number of phones at that – and a fee.”
It probably would have been a good idea to try and get other wireless providers in on this as well. They’re targeting only a portion of the wireless market, and for those reasons, it doesn’t seem that offering this service would be worth it.
I love my Tivo but I’m not about to fork over any additional money to use it’s features. If I miss a show, then I’ll download it via BitTorrent and transfer it to my Tivo. Problem solved.
I always thought Tivo was expensive as is. Now adding another $24 a year?
It’s not for me.
We managed to get a ReplayTV set-top box (which is just like a TiVo) before they turned to purely being software for a computer. At the time it was either $13 per month or $299 for lifetime activation. We opted for lifetime activation in hopes that the system wouldn’t crash and burn on us, because if the system had to be replaced we could not transfer the activation.
I had calculated it out and we needed to have the system for around 2 years to recoup what we would have paid in monthly fees. Now we’re going on 3 years with it and it is going strong. It is really nice because it has a built-in commercial skip feature that turns 1 hour shows into 35 to 40 minutes.
Not only that but they have a community called Poopli.com (yeah, a stupid name) where you can request shows from other users and they can send them directly to your box. The transfers are normally pretty slow (maybe about a day for a 1-hour show) but everyone is very nice and is pretty good about sharing shows. So if we miss something we’re only a few clicks away from being able to download it.