# Ugently need a Cachecard ...



## Gaspode (Jan 25, 2002)

OK - I've brought a Tivo for a friend who has been lusting after mine ...

I've arranged to do the 150 mile round trip to set it up for her tomorrow - only problem is the Tivo has a turbonet card card in insted of a cachecard ...

Given it's got a 320GB drive in it its gonna get slow real fast ...

So - I need a cachecard put in the mail RMSD today (its only about 5 quid) ...

So - If you have a cachecard (firmware 2.2 please) you want to get rid of PM me please - will pay by paypal happily ...


Gas.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

PM sent


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Gaspode said:


> So - I need a cachecard put in the mail RMSD today (its only about 5 quid) ...


I think cachecards cost a liitle more than £5


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

mikerr said:


> I think cachecards cost a liitle more than £5


Especially if they are Cachecards that are purchased from TivoHeaven.  

They are quite a lot cheaper from the seller on Ebay and even cheaper still by direct mail from www.9thtee.com in the USA. But then you need to wait a few days or even weeks for delivery from 9th Tee.......

Your friend would be ok without the Cachecard but with a Turbonet card though if you set her up to record everything in Mode 0 for now as that's only around 100 hours recording. If she used Basic for everything and had 360 hours of recordings it would be a different story. Don't forget she won't get the Cachecard speed benefits unless it also has at least a stick of 128MB and preferably 512Mb of memory in it too.

Convenience has its price though. If you must have a Cachecard tomorrow regardless of cost then I'm sure Tivoheaven can accommodate you.


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## andrew502 (Jan 29, 2003)

I can post you one on Saturday by Special Delivery if you want one quickly, will arrive Monday as long as its posted by 12 noon (failing that Tuesday). Let me know if you are interested, you can email me for more details . Sorry if this isn't allowed on here.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

andrew502 said:


> I can post you one on Saturday by Special Delivery if you want one quickly, will arrive Monday as long as its posted by 12 noon (failing that Tuesday). Let me know if you are interested, you can email me for more details. Sorry if this isn't allowed on here.


Andrew,

I think that you are well within the rules as the only rule that is pretty strictly enforced here is not posting a direct link to a current Ebay auction item. But there is nothing to say you can't tell people here to type the word Cachecard into Ebay and see what comes up etc. Those of us like myself who have previously bought Cachecards from a certain seller on Ebay with whom I think you are possibly extremely well acquainted can certainly vouch for their speedy delivery and A1 condition.

My only question though is don't you now have an opportunity for a further slight reduction in your prices given the current strong rate of the pound against the dollar and also a recent cut in the price of the Cachecard by Silicon Dust itself. 

On the other hand the unfriendly new Royal Mail postage rules will obviously have hit you hard on the costs of shipping products of this kind. :down:


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## andrew502 (Jan 29, 2003)

Yeah, the postage charges have added a few punds on to the cost of delivery, though this is more than offset by the exchange rate movements. If anyone on here wants one then I'll offer free 1st class recorded delivery for the mean time, just say when buying one (I think you can select collection which removes the postage charge). Sorry but I couldn't really consider any retrospective discounts though.

**SORRY, OFFER NOW WITHDRAWN AFTER £10 PRICE CUT***


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

andrew502 said:


> Yeah, the postage charges have added a few punds on to the cost of delivery, though this is more than offset by the exchange rate movements. If anyone on here wants one then I'll offer free 1st class recorded delivery for the mean time, just say when buying one (I think you can select collection which removes the postage charge). Sorry but I couldn't really consider any retrospective discounts though.


Do you find you ever get any returns of Cachecards from customers as Dead on Arrival though?

blindlemon has always maintained that a certain percentage of Cachecards are dead on arrival from Silicon Dust and that this is why he tests each of them before he sends them out to customers.

You seem to sell a lot of stuff on Ebay overall but are you also a Tivo owner end user yourself?


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## andrew502 (Jan 29, 2003)

Hi Pete
I am a loyal Tivo user myself, I use a cachecard and have a monthly sub (always too worried about Tivo going belly up to pay the £200 for the lifetime sub).

I have yet to test a faulty cachecard having sold over I'm sure over 200 of them in total. I have had a few returned recently from the same batch that I've yet to test though (I just sent out replacments as I'm often too busy to find the time). Will be interesting to see if they are or not, even if both are though its a pretty low fault rate.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

andrew502 said:


> I have yet to test a faulty cachecard having sold over I'm sure over 200 of them in total. I have had a few returned recently from the same batch that I've yet to test though (I just sent out replacments as I'm often too busy to find the time). Will be interesting to see if they are or not, even if both are though its a pretty low fault rate.


I think the other well known (on this forum) UK based Cachecard seller who charges a rather higher price for his Cachecards previously admitted that the fault rate was only about 1 in 50 or so. On the whole I think the Ebuyer value memory seems to have a rather higher failure rate.

And obviously comprehensive testing before the product is sent out to the consumer seems to carry with it quite a substantial price premium that only some buyers may consider is worth it. 

Sorry to hear you made the wrong choice on the Monthly Sub but at least you and the other Montly Subbers can take comfort in being the main people responsible for Tivo deciding to keep the UK Tivo EPG service going. If everyone was Lifetime I bet there would have been a lot more pressure back in the USA to just close the service down...................


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## andrew502 (Jan 29, 2003)

Very true, I wonder how many are left now on a monthy sub with the number of Tivos that must have died or been replaced. Other than the devoted few on here I'm sure very few.

It does still surprise me that what must be three or four years after the Tivo stopped being sold that so many do still upgrade them. Still, its worth the money and I wouldn't swap my Tivo for anything that's currently around. Its such a shame that Tivo never found a partner in the UK, they had a ready made market for a new model and the understanding of the technology is there now (unlike 5 years ago).


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

andrew502 said:


> Very true, I wonder how many are left now on a monthy sub with the number of Tivos that must have died or been replaced. Other than the devoted few on here I'm sure very few.


Some numbers floating around a while ago seemed to suggest around 40% or so of the 27,000+ UK customers were on a Monthly sub originally. Of course the only trouble is that if their machines develop a problem they must have the most financial incentive to throw in the towel and get Sky HD, Sky+ or Freeview Playback or whatever as they see a clear saving of £120 per annum. The Tivo Lifetimers on the other hand have every incentive to keep them going as long as they possibly can. Also those only paying Monthly must always have had the mindset that something better was coming along soon that they wanted to get into. The Lifetime subbers clearly took the view that here was a product they would be happy with for up to 10 years. The Quantum drives are perhaps more reliable than you imagine. I reckon that of those who had no interest in upgrading the drives probably well over 50% of the machines are still running today.



> It does still surprise me that what must be three or four years after the Tivo stopped being sold that so many do still upgrade them. Still, its worth the money and I wouldn't swap my Tivo for anything that's currently around. Its such a shame that Tivo never found a partner in the UK, they had a ready made market for a new model and the understanding of the technology is there now (unlike 5 years ago).


Not so surprising really when you consider how poor the alternatives still are and how many unhappy Sky+ customers have put their Tivos back in to service after a few weeks. May be things will look different if and when Freeview Playback starts to offer Series Link etc in a few months time and depending on how many channels offer the Series Link facility.

Am still hoping that Virgin Media (new name for NTL and Telewest) will surprise the market with a Tivo box that can do cable and broadband television.

By the way when you allow for what 9thTee charge for shipping a single Cachecard your prices still look fairly competitive, especially when anyone getting 9th Tee to ship direct to them always has that fear the card may be detained by customs and VAT and Parcelforce's ripoff customs duty handling fee charged. Of course if that happens to you I suppose that for say 20 Cachecards you only have one Parcelforce handling fee to pay, even if VAT is charged on the whole shipping value.


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## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> Of course the only trouble is that if their machines develop a problem they must have the most financial incentive to throw in the towel and get Sky HD, Sky+ or Freeview Playback or whatever as they see a clear saving of £120 per annum.


Not me. I'll just stick a new drive or PSU in my Tivo 



> Also those only paying Monthly must always have had the mindset that something better was coming along soon that they wanted to get into.


Personally it was purely a financial decision. Having scraped the money together for a Tivo (£200 in 2002) I couldn't afford the LT Sub.



> Am still hoping that Virgin Media (new name for NTL and Telewest) will surprise the market with a Tivo box that can do cable and broadband television.


Now _that_ would be something but I'm not holding my breath


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

cwaring said:


> Not me. I'll just stick a new drive or PSU in my Tivo


I was talking about normal Tivo users rather than Tivo evangelists such as ourselves.  



> Personally it was purely a financial decision. Having scraped the money together for a Tivo (£200 in 2002) I couldn't afford the LT Sub.


Hmmm are you another of those people who always sees a monthly figure like £35 as small but a lump sum amount like £200 (which now translates to less than £3 per month over more than 6 years) as large even though it is a one off? How do you afford TvDrive's annual cost of over £400 to £500 then? 

And think how much your attempt to save money on the Tivo sub has now cost you in the long run.


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Pete77 said:


> Am still hoping that Virgin Media (new name for NTL and Telewest) will surprise the market with a Tivo box that can do cable and broadband television.


They seem to be content with a "skin deep" change.
A black box replacing an identical silver box.



> How do you afford TvDrive's annual cost of over £400 to £500 then?


TV drive is free on my package (All TV, 2 digiboxes, phone and 10Mb broadband)


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

mikerr said:


> TV drive is free on my package (All TV, 2 digiboxes, phone and 10Mb broadband)


I bet the whole package isn't free though. 

What's the total monthly cost you are paying?


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## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> Hmmm are you another of those people who always sees a monthly figure like £35 as small but a lump sum amount like £200 (which now translates to less than £3 per month over more than 6 years) as large even though it is a one off?


Nope. I'm long-term unemployed. £200 was a lot of money. £400 was impossible.



> How do you afford TvDrive's annual cost of over £400 to £500 then?


I don't. I had it on loan for six month so I could review it for my web site.



> And think how much your attempt to save money on the Tivo sub has now cost you in the long run.


Like I need reminding  



Pete77 said:


> I bet the whole package isn't free though.  What's the total monthly cost you are paying?


It think it's the new VIP package that was launched last week. Around £85 I _think_. It's not on their web-site (or mine, for that matter) yet.


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Pete77 said:


> I bet the whole package isn't free though.
> 
> What's the total monthly cost you are paying?


The point is, I was paying the same for 2x normal digiboxes.

When TV Drive came out, I got it to replace one of them.
No install fee, no extra monthly fee.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

cwaring said:


> Nope. I'm long-term unemployed. £200 was a lot of money. £400 was impossible.


I think sometimes though we take the irrational short term approach on these matters.

Have just been doing the same thing with a mortgage that has been costing me £40 per month more than it should have done for the last 9 months due to not sorting out a new deal when I came off the discount fixed rate.

My own current non employed status makes addressing the said issue something to bury one's head in the sand about as am stuck with my current mortgage lender for any further offers.

As it happens I'm now unexpectedly being made an offer for my previously unsaleable unquoted shares at my last employer so I will probably be paying the whole mortgage off soon, so perhaps it has all worked out for the best, especially as any new discount rate has up front fees of £300 that take 8 months of the three year term to recover.....................


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## yungee (Dec 29, 2002)

cwaring said:


> Nope. I'm long-term unemployed. £200 was a lot of money. £400 was impossible.


I only ever went down to Comet back in 2001 to buy a replacement VHS.

Should have spent £50 on a VHS, and I came back like Jack with some magic beans having spent £200 on a JVC S-VHS and £400 on a Tivo.

Another 200 sheets was out of the question.

Not sure if I ever did tell SWMBO quite how much I spent!


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

yungee said:


> Should have spent £50 on a VHS, and I came back like Jack with some magic beans having spent £200 on a JVC S-VHS and £400 on a Tivo.


I agree you shouldn't have bought the £200 S-VHS machine and only the £50 VHS one. You could then have used the £150 plus the £49 you then didn't spend beer or whatever to buy a Tivo Lifetime Sub. You would then have had a lot more money to spend on beer each month in the interim. 

I always regret not buying a Tivo at the start back in 2000 because as a then OnDigital user they didn't market it properly or explain how it would work with OnDigital.

Tivo would have cost me another £270 more than I finally paid for a Currys demonstrator Tivo in Dec 2002 but then I would have had basically all that back from another 27 months or so of Lifetime Sub value......................................


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## andrew502 (Jan 29, 2003)

andrew502 said:


> I have yet to test a faulty cachecard having sold over I'm sure over 200 of them in total. I have had a few returned recently from the same batch that I've yet to test though (I just sent out replacments as I'm often too busy to find the time). Will be interesting to see if they are or not, even if both are though its a pretty low fault rate.


Just for the record, tested all the returned cards, with all being fully working. Not a single faulty one yet, very impressed by 9th Tee, hey must test them all before sending.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

You've been lucky. 

I have 5 duff ones sitting on my windowsill right now waiting to go back to 9thTee. In my last batch of 20 there were 2 duff and one with a broken RAM socket


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