# tivoland delivery times



## Phil_Hoggins (Oct 3, 2002)

Hi,

I'm looking to get a tivo from tivoland for the folks, anyone know what the delivery times are like, they ideally want it for Thursday this week.

Cheers,


Phil


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## chrisd (Oct 24, 2003)

send a PM to healeydave, he is tivoland.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

I don't think that buying a Tivo from www.tivoland.com is very good value compared to buying one on Ebay given that the Tivos Tivoland is selling don't come with a Lifetime Subscription or a Cachecard and RAM. A Lifetime Sub will then set you back a further £199 or otherwise there is a £10 monthly sub to pay.

If you keep an eye open on Ebay you ought to be able to pick up a Tivo with a big hard drive, a Cachecard and 512MB of RAM and a Lifetime Sub for around £300. The Tivoland units will set you back close to that with a Lifetime Sub plus the Cachecard and 512MB of RAM costs at least £103 to buy, even if you get the Cachecard from the cheapest supplier on ebay and the RAM from www.ebuyer.co.uk.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

But do the ones on eBay come with a warranty? 

Of course not, and many people are more than prepared to pay a bit extra for peace of mind. Otherwise, why would anybody ever buy a used car from a main dealer?


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## iankb (Oct 9, 2000)

One should assume that any TiVo bought on eBay has a drive that is about to fail, or already is failing, unless it is guaranteed to have recently had a new drive fitted. Even if the seller is perfectly honest, he probably has no idea how long his drive will last for. In my mind, I would probably add on the cost of an upgrade drive to any eBay-purchased TiVo before making cost comparisons.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

iankb said:


> Even if the seller is perfectly honest, he probably has no idea how long his drive will last for.


Indeed, and how could he?

As we all know here (or should by now!) drives can fail at any time, especially when subjected to the rigours of life in a TiVo 

That's why Dave charges extra for his machines which include a warranty on both the box and the drive, and why I charge more than Pete77 thinks I should for pairs of pre-configured drives


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Fair enough points by all of you.

However I am just concerned that a Newbie green to the Tivo experience might think all they have to pay is the £199 Tivoland is charging. They also need to factor in the £199 Lifetime Sub or say £600 for monthly subs over the next 5 years if they foolishly think £10 per month is saving them money.  

Also if they want to get the most out of Tivo they need to factor in at least £104 for a Cachecard and 512MB of RAM or about another £30 more than this if they were to acquire their Cachecard from one of the Tivo specialists.  

As to drives if the machine has a 250Gb drive plus then the drive will not be more than a year or two old and so probably has another two or three years life left in it unless you are unlucky. Only if the machine has especially the original 40Gb or 15Gb +30Gb drives or also an 80Gb , 120Gb or 160Gb upgrade hard drive should one factor in disk failure in the next 12 to 15 months as a better than 50% possibility.

Just before xmas there were several machines with 200Gb and 250Gb hard drives, Cachecard, 512Mb of RAM and a Lifetime sub sold on Ebay for only around £300. And given that the sellers are selling not because they think their machine is knackered and about to kick the bucket but simply because they have been enticed by the siren voices of frequently missed but HD based recordings at Sky I think all of those boxes were actually a pretty good deal.

You have to consider that Tivoland are not selling brand new boxes but several year old ones with a new hard drive that they are just betting on not failing in the next few months. So as long as you buy from someone with good Ebay feedback and who seems to have owned the Tivo personally there is no reason to think that a box sold on Ebay wiill be in especially bad condition compared to one bought from Tivoland.


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## Phil_Hoggins (Oct 3, 2002)

I'm buying a Tivo for my wife's parents, they do not like the idea of Ebay and have sufficent funds to not be bothered paying a little over ebay prices for piece of mind and a trustworthy source. It it were me I would probably go the Ebay route as funds are not so fluid  

Phil


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## NickB (Jun 29, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> If you keep an eye open on Ebay you ought to be able to pick up a Tivo with a big hard drive, a Cachecard and 512MB of RAM and a Lifetime Sub for around £300.


eBay prices seem to be drifting upwards recently, which is odd considering the regularity with which they keep appearing.

There's a lifetime sub box (item 110074596642) with a 120Gb drive (no network) currently bid up to £360! There is a freeview box thrown in too but that's probably worth a tenner tops.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

I suspect the low prices pre-Christmas were a result of people selling off unwanted kit for any price they could get to fund their Christmas spending


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Also I think the rise in Ebay prices may be due to certain forum members pointing out that £300 for a Tivo with Lifetime Sub, Cachecard and 512Mb RAM plus upgraded hard drive was a very good deal compared to the cost of getting all of those things separately.

Although there are some Tivos on Ebay at present they haven't been appearing as frequently as they did in the couple of months prior to Christmas.


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## bradleyem (May 23, 2002)

there are good deals though - picked one with lifetime sub foe £200 last week - bargain!


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

bradleyem said:


> there are good deals though - picked one with lifetime sub foe £200 last week - bargain!


About average really if it was a totally non upgraded unit. Unsubbed, unmodified units have been going for as little as £60 and unmodified subbed units for as little as £170.

People selling now after over 6 years of Lifetime Subbing are doing pretty well. Their Lifetime Sub has cost them only about £80 or about £1.10 per month. :up:


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## 6022tivo (Oct 29, 2002)

They do drift up and down, and occasionally someone will list and not do any checking.

I picked up one for £40 about two years ago off ebay, still in use now and is great.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

6022tivo said:


> They do drift up and down, and occasionally someone will list and not do any checking.


That only makes any difference if the auction is only a short one day one ending on say a weekday and/or best of all if they list it at a cheap price using Buy It Now. But if the latter it won't be there for long................


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Yes, thats how I got my £60 lifetime subbed tivo   

The guy was still editing/adding to the listing online...


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## Richnewlove (Dec 21, 2006)

I picked my standard 40Gb Tivo up for just under £100 before Christmas and immediately stuck a 320Gb Seagate Barracuda (5 Year warranty) drive in it. A few teething issues (what happened to Celeb BB on Friday pm?![I know not Tivo's fault]), but I'm well impressed. I'm even more impressed as the previous owner doesn't appear to have cancelled their monthly subscription yet . . .


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Richnewlove said:


> I picked my standard 40Gb Tivo up for just under £100 before Christmas and immediately stuck a 320Gb Seagate Barracuda (5 Year warranty) drive in it. A few teething issues (what happened to Celeb BB on Friday pm?![I know not Tivo's fault]), but I'm well impressed. I'm even more impressed as the previous owner doesn't appear to have cancelled their monthly subscription yet . . .


Perhaps you had better hope it is one of those Lifetime subbed boxes that says Monthly in the menus as otherwise its going to cost you a load of money over time compared to buying an unmodified box with a Lifetime sub for between £170 and £200.


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## Richnewlove (Dec 21, 2006)

But at the moment I'm not paying anything (other than the original £100 for the box & £50ish for the drive) so I think I'm still ahead of game. If and when the previous owner remembers to cancel the monthly sub, I can still ring cust services and pay the £200 one-off right? Or have they now stopped the lifetime subs?


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Richnewlove said:


> If and when the previous owner remembers to cancel the monthly sub, I can still ring cust services and pay the £200 one-off right? Or have they now stopped the lifetime subs?


No you can still ring cust services and pay the £200 for a lifetime sub. My only point was that a box with a lifetime sub on Ebay is cheaper than a box without one and then buying it afterwards for £200 on the whole.

Or perhaps you were thinking of paying the £10 per month which won't be nearly as expensive as for those who started paying Monthly back in 2000 and are still paying Monthly now.


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## Richnewlove (Dec 21, 2006)

It's still on "trial" as I bought it mainly for me with the hope I could persuade my better half that it was worthwhile. So far, she's impressed, so when I do have to pay, I will look to get the lifetime sub rather than monthly.


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