# Don't buy - I don't trust TiVO any more



## scoopuk (Mar 7, 2001)

With Tivo deciding to abandon its loyal original UK customers - I've changed my mind about recommending TiVo to my friends lucky enough to live in a cable area.

Someone at Virgin rang up promising a Tivo and XL tv deal with broadband etc - and I had been singing its praises to my friend. He doesn't have subscription tv and it was going to be a huge jump for him. But I had persuaded him to just go for it.

Now though forget it. Fortunately he hasn't signed up yet. 

Tivo can't be trusted. You spend hundreds on their service (£600 & many months of £10 in my case) - then they suddenly say they're going to make your box absolete. 

The message is clear - unless Tivo thinks again about its non-cable UK customers - there's no point in trusting them again. Once bitten, twice shy


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## geekspeak (Oct 1, 2002)

Sounds like early indications are that take up is in the higher predicted band so they don't need to rely on any good-will/good PR from (now) ex- customers to meet availability.


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## Tony Hoyle (Apr 1, 2002)

So... because a product that has worked fine for 10 years has reached the end of it's life, you want to stop anyone buying any *future* products. I can't think of any company that could live up to that.

Tivo will have been the people that asked Virgin to put us at the front of the queue for the new one - they didn't need to do that.. but they rewarded loyalty. It's not their fault that you're not in a cable area.. it's arguably Virgin's, but them's the breaks.


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## geekspeak (Oct 1, 2002)

Tony Hoyle said:


> So... because a product that has worked fine for 10 years has reached the end of it's life, you want to stop anyone buying any *future* products. I can't think of any company that could live up to that.
> 
> Tivo will have been the people that asked Virgin to put us at the front of the queue for the new one - they didn't need to do that.. but they rewarded loyalty. It's not their fault that you're not in a cable area.. it's arguably Virgin's, but them's the breaks.


Does seem like bad timing though if Tivo want to make a success in the UK at the 2nd attempt.


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## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

Yep. Just another case of sour grapes. Don't suppose he'll be the last


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## Tony Hoyle (Apr 1, 2002)

Indeed.. pissing off your most vocal evangelists seems a bit like shooting yourself in the foot. OTOH I bet the number of VM Tivo owners already far exceeds the number of S1 owners.


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## velocitysurfer1 (Sep 6, 2006)

Tony Hoyle said:


> So... because a product that has worked fine for 10 years has reached the end of it's life...


the issue is that the product hasn't reached the end of it's life, rather that TiVo has decided to stop providing guide data to S1 tivos. It is also the way in which it is being done, to paraphrase, "don't worry about losing S1 guide data as you can all sign up to the new virgin media TiVo". This also leaves 49% of the population without access to TiVo (regardless of whether they want it or not)


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## Tony Hoyle (Apr 1, 2002)

"TiVo has decided to stop providing guide data to S1 tivos"

ie. It's at the end of its life.

Whether the hardware still theoretically works is irrelevant. I'm sure I still have a 56k modem in a box somewhere that theoretically works too, and there's an analogue TV in the shed..

And the way it has been done is to give you 3 months notice - 3 times the notice period they needed to - which is ample time for an alternative guide system to be setup.


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

cwaring said:


> Yep. Just another case of sour grapes. Don't suppose he'll be the last


You and I may be lucky enough to be in a cable area - it's a black day for those who aren't.
You should see the emails I've had today - much wailing and gnashing of teeth...

I see no reason why we can't get a replacement up and running within 3 whole months though!


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## Trinitron (Jan 20, 2003)

Tony Hoyle said:


> I'm sure I still have a 56k modem in a box somewhere that theoretically works too


So have I, it's in a big silver box with a TiVo logo on the front!


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## Trinitron (Jan 20, 2003)

geekspeak said:


> Does seem like bad timing though if Tivo want to make a success in the UK at the 2nd attempt.


Bad timing, but good business sense. TiVo are not in a good place financially and need the Virgin and other collaborations to generate profits. Supporting S1 units must be a financial drain, more so when their monthly sub collections ended with the VM deal (I am guessing here that they weren't interested in taking over collection and CS from Sky).


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## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

mikerr said:


> You and I may be lucky enough to be in a cable area - it's a black day for those who aren't.


I know, understand and sympathise. Still no need for the attitude of the OP.


Tony Hoyle said:


> Indeed.. pissing off your most vocal evangelists seems a bit like shooting yourself in the foot. OTOH I bet the number of VM Tivo owners already far exceeds the number of S1 owners.


Nail. Head. Point.


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## Brangdon (Feb 9, 2001)

scoopuk said:


> With Tivo deciding to abandon its loyal original UK customers - I've changed my mind about recommending TiVo to my friends lucky enough to live in a cable area.


So if you'd known 10 years ago what you know now, you wouldn't have got TiVo?


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## digiflip (Aug 30, 2010)

Tony Hoyle said:


> Indeed.. pissing off your most vocal evangelists seems a bit like shooting yourself in the foot. OTOH I bet the number of VM Tivo owners already far exceeds the number of S1 owners.


probably true to who actually use TiVo now lol by end of year probs be at least 25000 people with Virgin TiVo, ie apparently 25k signed up for TiVo.

I get mine on 22nd feb 2011.


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## jonphil (Aug 7, 2002)

I'm not bitter about S1 guide data ending. After all Tivo have been supplying this data for years since not even selling boxes in the UK.
They could have easily turned off the guide data back when they pulled out of the UK market, but they kept us running for 8 years since which I think no other company would have done.
I will be very sad to see my S1 finish up dead, but it's just the way things go unfortunately.

I certainly wouldn't be bad mouthing Tivo for this.


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## Zaichik (Mar 21, 2002)

I agree absolutely with jonphil (and others). The timing may be a little off and it may have been better if they'd given S1 owners another year or so, rather than doing it when they need to generate goodwill for the VM TiVos, but I think we're lucky that they've kept the service going for so long (years) after pulling out of the UK market. Can you imagine any other company doing that?

I'm sure that TiVo as a company have bad points like any other, but I really think the S1 users who are ranting about the discontinuation of the guide data and the whole lifetime sub thing need to wake up and smell the coffee.

Even if I couldn't get a VM TiVo and would thus be rendered TiVo-less, I would be sad, but not outraged.


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## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

A couple of common sense posts at last. Nice one chaps.


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## Zaichik (Mar 21, 2002)

Just to add to my post, I bought a Guideplus+ based DVD recorder several years after getting TiVo and that is already obsolete because the Guideplus+ data is now only provided over Freeview or Sky and the recorder's firmware doesn't allow the data to be pulled from Freeview and I don't have Sky.

Really, we've had it good with TiVo and it had to end sometime.


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## solutionsetc (Apr 2, 2009)

My old Replay still gets guide data... and they have been toast for over 5 years now.

Tivo sells a product that has *no value* without service. No analogy to other products reaching the end of its useful life apply.

It didn't have to be that way, but that is the way *Tivo* wanted it. Because of this I feel there is a certain amount of responsibility here. If they no longer wish to provide service they should either find/let someone else to provide it or unbrick the device.

Tivo is obviously too lazy to do either, and it seems clear they do not have any kind of plan in place to unbrick devices they no longer plan to provide service for. This disproves a lot of assumptions made in these forums about the day that might happen.

Most surprising that some of you are ok with this and feel Tivo has no responsibility to do anything, but I am often surprised at what Tivo owners are ok with.

Perhaps when your Tivos are bricked it will not be ok.


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## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

solutionsetc said:


> This disproves a lot of assumptions made in these forums about the day that might happen.


Come back on June 2nd, when it actually _has_ happened and post that and I might agree with you. Three months is a long time.



> Most surprising that some of you are ok with this and feel Tivo has no responsibility to do anything, but I am often surprised at what Tivo owners are ok with.


I think "most of us" just seem to have a little more common sense than others. Read the two posts above my last one and tell why they're wrong and you're right.


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## solutionsetc (Apr 2, 2009)

cwaring said:


> "most of us" just seem to have a little more common sense than others.


If by "common sense" you mean coming to the realization that TiVo has no problem abandoning their customers and being ok with that, then yes it seems there are a number of folks here with more of it than me.


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## scoopuk (Mar 7, 2001)

Brangdon said:


> So if you'd known 10 years ago what you know now, you wouldn't have got TiVo?


Good question. Certainly I wouldn't trust them in the way I did before. And that's why I'd be very cautious now about buying a new one. How long before Tivo decides to abandon its latest customers ?

The Series 1 switch off just shows what little regard TiVo really has for its customers. I must have paid a good thousand pounds overall - for the box originally, the monthly £10 subscriptions and later the £200 "lifetime" subsciption - so I do feel I'm entitled to expect a "lifetime" subscription to mean the lifetime of the box.

TIVO made the decision to stop providing a service and that decision makes the box redundant. Go back a technology - I didn't spend anything like as much on my VHS recorder - and that still works.


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## scoopuk (Mar 7, 2001)

cwaring said:


> Still no need for the attitude of the OP.


Rereading my post it does come across as a bit stark - but it's the honest truth. Only last weekend I was urging my friend in a cable area to fork out for the new TiVo even though he didn't want Virgin's XL channel pack - I was doing my usual TiVo evangelism.

Now though all of a sudden with the switch off decision, it's like a new world - where I realise TiVo doesn't really give a damn at all and could switch off any service whenever it wants, despite having spent (in my case) over a thousand pounds getting it.



cwaring said:


> Yep. Just another case of sour grapes. Don't suppose he'll be the last


No it's not. Sour grapes sounds like just yah-boo-sucks.

It's much deeper than that.

This feels like a massive kick in the teeth and a big warning flag not to trust them again - especially when you've been so loyal to one brand for years - something that's been very important to you. Let's face it at the start, for me it changed a lifestyle, freeing up my time while making better TV instantly accessible.


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## deshepherd (Nov 30, 2000)

scoopuk said:


> TIVO made the decision to stop providing a service and that decision makes the box redundant. Go back a technology - I didn't spend anything like as much on my VHS recorder - and that still works.


So ... does PDC still work on your VHS recorder?


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## scoopuk (Mar 7, 2001)

deshepherd said:


> So ... does PDC still work on your VHS recorder?


Never used PDC whatever that was. The machine still plays tapes and records TV, badly.

So does this mean everyone here genuinely trusts Tivo and Virgin not to do the dirty on them in a few years - or are you so well off you're not in the slightest bit worried ?


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## Digital Fanatic (Feb 16, 2011)

scoopuk said:


> Never used PDC whatever that was. The machine still plays tapes and records TV, badly.
> 
> So does this mean everyone here genuinely trusts Tivo and Virgin not to do the dirty on them in a few years - or are you so well off you're not in the slightest bit worried ?


Hi,

I'm new here 

Virgin Media are in for the long game with TiVo. TiVo are basically doing all of their stb software and EPG.

There is certainly no indication of VM wanting this to be a short relationship, like BSkyB.

p.s. PDC is Programme Delivery Control, it was used by BBC/ITV/C4 on terrestrial for VCR's.


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## Fixerman (Jan 31, 2011)

Digital Fanatic said:


> Hi,
> 
> I'm new here
> 
> ...


Welcome DF!:up: Nice to see you. Now checkout the complaints!


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## Digital Fanatic (Feb 16, 2011)

Fixerman said:


> Welcome DF!:up: Nice to see you. Now checkout the complaints!


Hi Fixerman :up:


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## Tony Hoyle (Apr 1, 2002)

I'm not sure I'd call what a VHS recorder does now 'working' as it'd need to be connected to a freeview receiver and timed records etc. wouldn't work properly as it can't change channels.

OTOH with a little ingenuity from the smart people around here the S1s will keep chugging along with an alternative data source for a while.


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## Tony Hoyle (Apr 1, 2002)

Digital Fanatic said:


> Hi,
> 
> I'm new here


Nice to see VM people around... The more the better!


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## Digital Fanatic (Feb 16, 2011)

Tony Hoyle said:


> Nice to see VM people around... The more the better!


Cheers... nice to be here.


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## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

scoopuk said:


> ...so I do feel I'm entitled to expect a "lifetime" subscription to mean the lifetime of the box.


Except that it meant the lifetime of the EPG _not_ the box. _That's_ where your issue comes to a dead halt. IMO only, of course.


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## Brangdon (Feb 9, 2001)

scoopuk said:


> Good question.


I thought so. My position is that if I'd known then it would be supported for 11 years, I'd have been happy. People who feel the same don't have a lot of basis for complaint. It was a good deal, even if we'd rather had 20 years.



> How long before Tivo decides to abandon its latest customers ?


Well, lets say for the sake of argument the new boxes are supported for as long as the s1 boxes were. Does that make this new deal a bad one?



> so I do feel I'm entitled to expect a "lifetime" subscription to mean the lifetime of the box.


It was never going to mean that. It means the lifetime of the service. As long as the service is provided in the UK, you get it for free. And lets not penalise TiVo (or rather, Thompson) for making boxes that last. Would you really feel better if yours had packed in after 8 years?

For what it's worth, I think 10 years is a reasonable lifetime for technology like that. Now we have things like HD and YouTube which we didn't when s1 TiVo came out. In 10 years time, we may be wanting to replace these current VM boxes with ones that support 3D (or Smellovision, or whatever is next). I have an HD telly. If I hadn't known about the VM TiVo coming, I would probably have switched to an HD PVR by now. For me it's not worth looking for an alternative EPG source, because that would be clinging onto an archaic SD technology. I realise other people differ.


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## telajayra (Feb 24, 2006)

I am a soon to be ex S1er paid £600 for a machine with lifetime sub & currently pay VM £27 per month for Phone, TV & Broadband.
I got a call from VM tonight offering me a special deal!
Pay them £149 & £63 a month for the VM Tivo, thats £582 in the 1st year on top of what I would normally be paying for a system I already have.
Now tell me why S1 owners are so annoyed.
If Tivo had thought about this, both systems running in the UK would strengthen their position & create more Tivo interest & more sales.
Instead of creating this problem & sabotaging VM's launch.


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## Tony Hoyle (Apr 1, 2002)

It's not &#163;63 a month. It's &#163;3 a month. &#163;63 a month is XL TV, XL Broadband and XL Phone, not the charge for Tivo. There is no requirement to upgrade to a package that expensive at all. 

It won't be long before even the XL requirement is not there.. this is still pre-launch.


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

The XL requirement for TiVo is also only for the TV package
cheapest package as I see it is £34/month (inc £3 tivo fee) for:

Phone line rental
Unlimited weekend calls1 to UK landlines and Virgin mobiles 
XL TV package (channels)

http://shop.virginmedia.com/digital-tv/tv-size-xl.html

I bet most people are still paying BT £12 for line rental... so assuming you cancel BT 
and move to VM phone line, how much more would you be paying?

£22 for TiVo + XL TV package  160 channels, many premium

... is that so bad a deal?


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## jonphil (Aug 7, 2002)

I maybe completely wrong here, but many people are blaming Tivo and Virgin for this.
Lets not forget that Sky were involved along the line.

As Sky seem fit to block TV channels from the small video window how involved are Sky in the termination of guide data for the S1 boxes to start bad publicity for Tivo here in the UK. 

Maybe no truth in it at all, just a random thought.


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

scoopuk said:


> TIVO made the decision to stop providing a service and that decision makes the box redundant. Go back a technology - I didn't spend anything like as much on my VHS recorder - and that still works.


How's your old analaogue phone doing? Or a first generation Skly box?

Actually, VCR's quite a good analogy. It will still play back recorded stuff fine (as will TiVo) but recording new stuff will involve adding hardware (a Freeview box) and a lot of fiddling (setting up a times recording on the VCR AND the same times recording on the Freeview box).


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

jonphil said:


> I maybe completely wrong here, but many people are blaming Tivo and Virgin for this.
> Lets not forget that Sky were involved along the line.
> 
> As Sky seem fit to block TV channels from the small video window how involved are Sky in the termination of guide data for the S1 boxes to start bad publicity for Tivo here in the UK.
> ...


Sky have no involvement in the guide data.


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## jonphil (Aug 7, 2002)

TCM2007 said:


> Sky have no involvement in the guide data.


But wasn't it Sky who still manned the customer support line?
Tribune provide the data, but was Tivo or Sky paying that bill?


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

TiVo.


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## scoopuk (Mar 7, 2001)

Brangdon said:


> It was a good deal, even if we'd rather had 20 years.
> 
> Well, lets say for the sake of argument the new boxes are supported for as long as the s1 boxes were. Does that make this new deal a bad one?
> 
> It was never going to mean that. It means the lifetime of the service. As long as the service is provided in the UK, you get it for free. And lets not penalise TiVo (or rather, Thompson) for making boxes that last. Would you really feel better if yours had packed in after 8 years?


Fair point. The boxes were good; are good. The principle here is whether anyone now thinking of forking out quite a lot of money up front and then committing for 18 months to a fairly hefty monthly charge - considers it worthwhile if TiVo haven't got the stomach to keep on delivering. If could go wrong like before. TiVo have proved they're not interested in supporting their customers the long term.
And next time it could be quicker than 10 years. What then? I certainly don't trust TiVo anymore.

It is just possible this marriage between Virgin and TiVo might end in divorce (like TiVo's first marriage, to Sky). It's just possible that despite the new TiVo boxes being far superior to V+HD, Virgin's customer service will remain as terrible as before and it doesn't take off as TiVo hoped. Just possible. It certainly makes you think twice.

I'd only trust TiVo again if they thought seriously about some sort of at least basic support to keep S1 boxes alive. Trust - that's the issue


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## Brangdon (Feb 9, 2001)

scoopuk said:


> and then committing for 18 months to a fairly hefty monthly charge - considers it worthwhile if TiVo haven't got the stomach to keep on delivering.


Call me reckless, but I'm willing to gamble that if Virgin Media abandon TiVo within the next 18 months, they'll also stop the £3/month charge for it.


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## Tim L (Jan 5, 2002)

The only thing that miffs me is that I kept paying monthly because I never thought I'd get my money's worth out of a lifetime sub. This is entirely my own fault of course - if I'd got a lifetime sub back when I bought a Tivo in '02 or whenever i was I'd have saved loads. But once Tivo had left the country with just the guide data ticking over, it was inevitable that the service wouldn't last forever.

Now, I'm in a VM area and got one of the new boxes today, but prior to that I was happy that they'd dropped the monthly charge as a prelude to the end, and I'm confident that the very talented community modders will ensure that series 1 Tivos will live on.


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## Cata (Dec 12, 2005)

Not that it would be any consolation to S1 owners still on dial-up, but is there a chance the internet based EPG will still be available post 1-June?

It's just that when I was called by Virgin offering the VM Tivo, I asked about the EPG for the S1 and the response inferred that although the dial-up EPG would definitely cease, they were not sure whether the internet EPG would also cease.

Does one of our VM contributors know the definitive answer?


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## scoopuk (Mar 7, 2001)

Brangdon said:


> Call me reckless, but I'm willing to gamble that if Virgin Media abandon TiVo within the next 18 months, they'll also stop the £3/month charge for it.


And what's to say it wouldn't happen - or TiVo abandon Virgin Media.

It's a case of once bitten twice shy. If the UK's only experience of TiVo until now is that they eventually dump on their customers - why should we trust them again?

There's a simple solution to this - keep up an EPG at least for the main 100 or so channels. No-one's going to be bothered if the endless channel renumbering and appearance/disappearance of the adult, gaming and shopping channels gets dropped - but at least give us listings for, say, those channels featured in radiotimes.


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## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

scoopuk said:


> And what's to say it wouldn't happen - or TiVo abandon Virgin Media.


Well there's that thing called a Contract. Though of course we don't know the details. There may be a 'get-out' clause in there 



> It's a case of once bitten twice shy.


Hence them not going with Sky again.



> If the UK's only experience of TiVo until now is that they eventually dump on their customers - why should we trust them again?


I'm willing to bet that the average person will have never heard of Tivo until now.


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## Glen (May 9, 2004)

I can see both points of view here! I remember all those years ago when I first discovered what a TiVo actually was, trawled the net and was lucky enough to find a spanking new one, I was hooked! I have my TiVo in the loft in its original box to keep it safe from dust etc. One tuner wasnt enough, and even with mode 0 activated, picture quality wasnt fantastic, and the lure of a 49.99 upgrade to a Sky HD Box was too good. I did look at the Virgin offering, but like many many others i'm not covered, and wont be for (in VM's own words) years.


As soon as TiVo abandoned their UK plans, but continued development of the US boxes, the UK S1 started to become obsolete! Sure it does whats its meant to do still (until switch off at least), but, going back to the VCR analogy, so does that. If I were to get hold of a betamax tape and stick it in a beta max machine, it would still play it back, but its still obsolete! My SNES still plays its cartridges, but again, its obsolete. 

TiVo were very good to continue to provide the data for as long as they did, and this wasn't going to be forever. This has been in the air for a long while now, and you all know it. 

I can see why people here may not trust tivo tho. We know they are in financial difficulty now, and what were to happen if it got worse, and they were forced to pull UK operations again. What would happen to all the new VMTiVo users? That would make me think before taking the plunge too.

I would love it have a TiVo like the Premiere available in the usa, and have it work with my Sky box, and it irritates me that Sky did what they did, and I do wonder that if it had gone the other way, what would we have now?

Alternative data looks like it might be on the way for you S1 UK users. So its all good

Glen


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

Glen said:


> I can see why people here may not trust tivo tho. We know they are in financial difficulty now, and what were to happen if it got worse, and they were forced to pull UK operations again. What would happen to all the new VMTiVo users? That would make me think before taking the plunge too.
> 
> Glen


TiVo haven't restarted UK operations; they've licensed their software to Virgin to use. There's nothing for them to pull out of?

The owners of the new VM box ate NOT TiVo customers.


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## richard_hamblen (Nov 7, 2002)

scoopuk said:


> I didn't spend anything like as much on my VHS recorder - and that still works.


guess what, the Tivo isn't redundant and isn't a brick, it still works just like a VHS recorder!!! A lesser known feature is for you to manually set record times. But you have got too use to the epg helping you.

So you still have the box and it still will work recording everything on a harddrive for you. Its just a little more difficult to record.

But a brick it is not!!!

(PDC was a series of numbers to help simplify setting record times on a vhs recorder http://625.uk.com/pdc/)



Brangdon said:


> So if you'd known 10 years ago what you know
> now, you wouldn't have got TiVo?


changing the question slightly to 
'if you'd known 10 years ago what you know now, would you have got a Tivo?'

YES, knowing I paid £200 for 10 years service, I would still have bought the product.

In the last 17 years I have got through numerous VHS recorders, DVD players, DVD recorders, HD recorders and only one TIVO. I never expect recording and playback devices to last forever, I expect them to have a life of 2-3 years. When I bought the TIVO with a life time subscription I assumed I would get 3 years from the product not 10.

But worse than that, to answer the question, if Tivo had lived longer in the UK and released a series 2 then a series 3 box, I would have relegated the series 1 box to the garage, where I keep all that old technology junk, long ago. I wouldn't have got as much value from the series 1 box as I have to date and would have spent many hundreds of pound more on Tivo products than I have to date.

I don't feel cheated I feel lucky to have had a TIVO for so long and not needed to put up with sky+

Yes its a shame TIVO can't continue to support the epg, but its no surprise.
I'm actually pleased that VM have worked with Tivo to bring a new lease of life to TIVO and I am excited to see what happens in the next few years with TIVO if VM make it the middleware for ALL their products (statement from CEO report to shareholders which is public domain)
What will SKY do in responsd? Only time will tell.


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## richard_hamblen (Nov 7, 2002)

and forgot to add, there is work on the community delivered epg which again extend the life of S1.

So it really is a case that S1 isn't dead yet. It's still fighting to the last breath.


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Cata said:


> Not that it would be any consolation to S1 owners still on dial-up, but is there a chance the internet based EPG will still be available post 1-June?
> 
> It's just that when I was called by Virgin offering the VM Tivo, I asked about the EPG for the S1 and the response inferred that although the dial-up EPG would definitely cease, they were not sure whether the internet EPG would also cease.


That's a VERY interesting idea, though I personally think its a cut off of the whole service.

*Just cutting off the dialup number (and sky support number) would kill all "official" S1 TiVos. *

Remember the network/cachecard has always been a 3rd party unsupported add-on, never sold by TiVo themselves. So such methods are "under the radar"

Provision of UK guide data from the US servers over the internet may be accessing the same raw database as the Virgin TiVo (just different programs to extract to UK S1 and S4 slices?).

We know VM took a deal from tribune directly for something - but we don't know if that's for the TiVo EPG or for provision of EPG to other boxes (so VM keep same data across all). If the latter, TiVo would still need their UK tribune data as before,
and TIVos guide database would stay current.

It's a long shot though - and also relies on a lazy/friendly admin in the US not killing a script !


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

mikerr said:


> T
> We know VM took a deal from tribune directly for something - but we don't know if that's for the TiVo EPG or for provision of EPG to other boxes (so VM keep same data across all). If the latter, TiVo would still need their UK tribune data as before,
> and TIVos guide database would stay current.


We do know. It's for TiVo. It was in the press release.



> CHICAGO and AMSTERDAM, Jan. 5, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Tribune Media Services (TMS) announced today that TMS entertainment metadata will help power the next-generation entertainment platform from Virgin Media, the United Kingdom's leading entertainment and communications company.
> 
> Virgin Media selected TMS as it launches Virgin Media TV to customers across the U.K. Virgin Media TV powered by TiVo features an advanced user interface enabling viewers to combine the live TV schedule with catch-up TV, a huge library of on-demand programming and popular web-based applications alongside a market-leading personal video recorder.
> 
> TMS will provide Virgin Media with rich, deep and robust entertainment content including linear TV schedules, program and video-on-demand metadata, celebrity metadata and images. The agreement also includes TMS TV Showcards which offer show synopses, logos, cast ensemble and cast-in-character photos plus award histories. TMS Unique IDs serve as the data taxonomy which ties all the information together allowing easy search and discovery of related content across all programming sources and consumer devices.


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