What are the pitfalls of a TIVO lifetime contract with an HD Tivo for $698?

Question

Tivo has this special of a Tivo box and lifetime subscription for $698:

http://www.tivo.com/promo/bluemoon.html#

What are the pitfalls of doing this?

Answer 1

The lifetime subscription is tied to the motherboard inside the Tivo unit.  If your hard drive(s) die, you can replace them, and continue using the Tivo with the lifetime service.

The only downsides I see are this:

* While the HDTivo will receive your basic cable stations, and any local HD channels (e.g. NBC-HD) if you want HD cable stations, like Discovery-HD, you'll have to upgrade to digital cable and lease a cable-card from your cable provider.

* The lifetime contract is roughly equivalent to buying about 2.5 years of service at the monthly rate.  If you aren't sure what your TV needs will be during that time, you may not get your money's worth from the Tivo.

On the other hand...

The lifetime service contract is tied to the motherboard of the Tivo.  This means you can modify your Tivo by adding additional hard drives, for instance, and still keep your service.  This also makes it very easy to sell your  Tivo on eBay or whatever for a pretty good price if/when you decide to move onto something new.

If I didn't already have Dish and their (albeit, crummy) DVR, I'd go with this Tivo deal in a heartbeat.

Answer 2

the only pitfall that I can think  of is that the lifetime subscription goes with the TiVO BOX and not the subscriber. If the box dies, if you decide you want to upgrade, you lose the life time subscription.