TiVo

[pauldavies83]

Originally Posted by Stuart

I can't see the likes of ITV and Channel 4 liking that. It's going to increase their bandwidth costs when VM already cache copies of the programming locally on their own od servers.

When it works

Or they "have the rights" for it

[muppetman11]

http://www.marketwire.com/press-rele...VO-1376603.htm

[denise119]

Originally Posted by zantarous

Heck even prices for existing customer has yet to be announced.

Been trying to find out the existing customer prices myself recently as i'm out of contract 1st week in Feb and this TiVo box is the only thing that has prevented me switching to sky.

I asked @virginmedia on twitter for any info and got the following reply....

"No release date yet. Its £3 a month and there is a £40 install charge and £149 activation with it being a 1TB hard drive. PM"

So as good as £200 outlay to get started, i have to admit that i'm not prepared to pay such an amount after already paying out the same for a V+ box less than 12 months ago.

But before jumping over to sky i really would like to see confirmed pricing for us existing customers as i'm pretty sure the info posted on twitter could well be as reliable as the info given by customer services when you phone them (just pick a number and hope the customer is happy with it).

But until they announce when TiVo will be rolled out were not going to hear anything, and please don't claim roll out has started because that is simply not true as you cant roll out a product without releasing pricing information to the people you want to purchase it.

Yes some staff it appears do have the box up and running but at the end of the day your pretty much just beta testing it until their sure its good enough for us masses to get our hands on it.

Why can't virgin be straight with their customers and officially announce pricing instead of many people feeding us differing info?

If i end up leaving it will be a shame after all these years but i don't feel the need to show any loyalty to a company who are seemingly not prepared to do the same in return.

[Stephen]

The pricing given by the twitter team is right.

The 500 staff are paying customers and they are the first to get it, and by doing that it's the start of the roll out. I can assure you they are not beta testers, there is a separate group of people that are in a testing team and will have had the boxes for a few months already. So that it was ready for the roll out to start.

[Digital Fanatic]

Originally Posted by denise119

Been trying to find out the existing customer prices myself recently as i'm out of contract 1st week in Feb and this TiVo box is the only thing that has prevented me switching to sky.

I asked @virginmedia on twitter for any info and got the following reply....

"No release date yet. Its £3 a month and there is a £40 install charge and £149 activation with it being a 1TB hard drive. PM"

So as good as £200 outlay to get started, i have to admit that i'm not prepared to pay such an amount after already paying out the same for a V+ box less than 12 months ago.

But before jumping over to sky i really would like to see confirmed pricing for us existing customers as i'm pretty sure the info posted on twitter could well be as reliable as the info given by customer services when you phone them (just pick a number and hope the customer is happy with it).

But until they announce when TiVo will be rolled out were not going to hear anything, and please don't claim roll out has started because that is simply not true as you cant roll out a product without releasing pricing information to the people you want to purchase it.

Yes some staff it appears do have the box up and running but at the end of the day your pretty much just beta testing it until their sure its good enough for us masses to get our hands on it.

Why can't virgin be straight with their customers and officially announce pricing instead of many people feeding us differing info?

If i end up leaving it will be a shame after all these years but i don't feel the need to show any loyalty to a company who are seemingly not prepared to do the same in return.

A pricing announcemnt is imminent, hang fire my friend.... The staff TiVos are also making sure the metadata is nice and mature, something you can't do with without a small rollout.

[roger skillin]

Originally Posted by denise119

I asked @virginmedia on twitter for any info and got the following reply....

"No release date yet. Its £3 a month and there is a £40 install charge and £149 activation with it being a 1TB hard drive. PM"

.

What an odd bit of rubbish to put at the end of that twitter comment,
With it being a 1Tb drive, er that means nothing, the price of drives are cheap as chips, you can buy a 1TB drive for £40 and that's a ridiculous price £149 to activate it? you what? that's mental, now if they'd said £149 to purchase the box then that would make sense

[Digital Fanatic]

Originally Posted by roger skillin

What an odd bit of rubbish to put at the end of that twitter comment,
With it being a 1Tb drive, er that means nothing, the price of drives are cheap as chips, you can buy a 1TB drive for £40 and that's a ridiculous price £149 to activate it? you what? that's mental, now if they'd said £149 to purchase the box then that would make sense

The wording will be changed for that soon, I believe. It will be an "Upfront Rental Charge".

[denise119]

Originally Posted by Stephen

The pricing given by the twitter team is right.

So why are virgin not publicly announcing this and putting an end to all the speculation so that we customers can make our decisions based on facts rather than guess work.

I don't mean any offence by this, but just because you say its right doesn't mean that by the time its officially confirmed it might not have gone up or down.

People don't have disposable income like they previously have had so plenty of prior notice would allow the customers who want TiVo and are prepared to pay the final price would have time to set aside the amount needed and would possibly help increase initial take up of the product.

Originally Posted by Stephen

The 500 staff are paying customers and they are the first to get it, and by doing that it's the start of the roll out. I can assure you they are not beta testers, there is a separate group of people that are in a testing team and will have had the boxes for a few months already. So that it was ready for the roll out to start.

Ok so beta testers was the wrong way to describe them as i know it would have been fully tested earlier.

But as much as staff are paying customers they don't pay anywhere near the amounts that we regular customers pay, its a position which comes with perks such as getting services faster than the rest of us.

But to claim something has already started to roll out just because staff members are able to get access to it is just misleading and completely wrong in my view (i only speak for myself though, others may well be happy to accept it).

For me the claims of the roll out already having started is on a level with all those broadband claims of upto a to speed. Its just virgin seemingly hiding behind small print the same as all major companies do.

I guess what i'm trying to say is that they should not be able to publicly claim roll out has started until it is actually available to the public.

But it can't currently be available to the public otherwise they would have confirmed the prices for all customers.

EDIT:

Just saw Digital Fanatic's post which appeared whilst i was writing my original reply, do you have any idea as to when this announcement is likely?

The reason for asking is that at the moment i am in a position where i can can my virgin services and have sky installed and the change would be pretty much seemless with no major loss of services for me. But if i continue to wait and hold out i'm going to end up with either a loss of services during a switch over or even worse from my point of view an overlap where i'll be paying both sky and virgin at the same time.

I'm not really worried about the actual price because at the end of the day i can either afford it or not, getting upset or trying to justify it by saying the price of hdd's are so cheap its a rip off etc will not get me anywhere. Its ultimately VM's product and they can charge whatever they like, i'd just be happy if i could make an informed decision.

[gondalio]

My opinion is i think this is a stage of testing as there are functions currently on the box that arent working. I dont think it will be ready for a few months yet as the current box only has 2 tuners and i dont think they will be offering it to customers like that. Far from ready to be rolled out in my opinion The 3tuner version of the box wont be ready for abit yet. So to me i gather it could be a couple months and £199 for the box is about right as when they released the v+ it was the same price. So you might be better off waiting patiently. I have bee offered the box but i dont think im even going to get. Ive played around with the tivo and in all honesty i dont like it. Hate the design too as no display on front and also only 2 tuners.

[Digital Fanatic]

Originally Posted by denise119

So why are virgin not publicly announcing this and putting an end to all the speculation so that we customers can make our decisions based on facts rather than guess work.

I don't mean any offence by this, but just because you say its right doesn't mean that by the time its officially confirmed it might not have gone up or down.

People don't have disposable income like they previously have had so plenty of prior notice would allow the customers who want TiVo and are prepared to pay the final price would have time to set aside the amount needed and would possibly help increase initial take up of the product.



Ok so beta testers was the wrong way to describe them as i know it would have been fully tested earlier.

But as much as staff are paying customers they don't pay anywhere near the amounts that we regular customers pay, its a position which comes with perks such as getting services faster than the rest of us.

But to claim something has already started to roll out just because staff members are able to get access to it is just misleading and completely wrong in my view (i only speak for myself though, others may well be happy to accept it).

For me the claims of the roll out already having started is on a level with all those broadband claims of upto a to speed. Its just virgin seemingly hiding behind small print the same as all major companies do.

I guess what i'm trying to say is that they should not be able to publicly claim roll out has started until it is actually available to the public.

But it can't currently be available to the public otherwise they would have confirmed the prices for all customers.

EDIT:

Just saw Digital Fanatic's post which appeared whilst i was writing my original reply, do you have any idea as to when this announcement is likely?

The reason for asking is that at the moment i am in a position where i can can my virgin services and have sky installed and the change would be pretty much seemless with no major loss of services for me. But if i continue to wait and hold out i'm going to end up with either a loss of services during a switch over or even worse from my point of view an overlap where i'll be paying both sky and virgin at the same time.

I'm not really worried about the actual price because at the end of the day i can either afford it or not, getting upset or trying to justify it by saying the price of hdd's are so cheap its a rip off etc will not get me anywhere. Its ultimately VM's product and they can charge whatever they like, i'd just be happy if i could make an informed decision.

Expect to pay £150, plus £40 install and then anything less is a bonus!

to the forum by the way

[denise119]

Originally Posted by Digital Fanatic

Expect to pay £150, plus £40 install and then anything less is a bonus!

to the forum by the way

Thanks for the reply and welcome

This is the problem for my personal case, i'm stuck at the moment with a SA V+ box which i absolutely hate due to it being extremely slow and intermittently buggy when accessing the on demand content.

Sadly i paid just short of £200 for this glorified door stop, and despite 2 engineers visits nothing has been found to be wrong with the box itself so apparently i'm stuck with it.

I asked to switch to a Samsung box as the engineer said they ran a little faster then my current one but was quoted another £150 to do so because they couldn't find fault with the current one.

So right now i'm not prepared to pay out another £190 + £3 per month for a TiVo service when i've recently paid a similar amount not to mention a monthly bill of around £120

I know i can get a sky+ box for free and the services will be about the same amount per month, but i've also hear that while the sky+ box is better than my current SA V+ the TiVo will be so much better than the sky+

So at the moment while you say think of anything under £190 to be a bonus, for me it could be that bonus that keeps me with VM.

I know typing here won't actually provide me with any answers by the way, its just nice to be able to vent some frustration once in a while

[carbon60]

Originally Posted by gondalio

My opinion is i think this is a stage of testing as there are functions currently on the box that arent working. I dont think it will be ready for a few months yet as the current box only has 2 tuners and i dont think they will be offering it to customers like that. Far from ready to be rolled out in my opinion The 3tuner version of the box wont be ready for abit yet. So to me i gather it could be a couple months and £199 for the box is about right as when they released the v+ it was the same price. So you might be better off waiting patiently. I have bee offered the box but i dont think im even going to get. Ive played around with the tivo and in all honesty i dont like it. Hate the design too as no display on front and also only 2 tuners.

The third tuner will be fixed by a software update since the hardware is already there so there won't be two versions of the box.

I agree with you about having no display on the front - it's a feature I like about my SA box that Sky boxes don't seem to have.

[Mr Fell]

Originally Posted by gondalio

My opinion is i think this is a stage of testing as there are functions currently on the box that arent working. I dont think it will be ready for a few months yet as the current box only has 2 tuners and i dont think they will be offering it to customers like that. Far from ready to be rolled out in my opinion The 3tuner version of the box wont be ready for abit yet. So to me i gather it could be a couple months and £199 for the box is about right as when they released the v+ it was the same price. So you might be better off waiting patiently. I have bee offered the box but i dont think im even going to get. Ive played around with the tivo and in all honesty i dont like it. Hate the design too as no display on front and also only 2 tuners.

Am looking foward to the new box being released but I dont want it to arrive not fully functional. I would rather wait and have all the bells and whistles in full working order !

[zantarous]

Originally Posted by Stephen

The pricing given by the twitter team is right.

The 500 staff are paying customers and they are the first to get it, and by doing that it's the start of the roll out. I can assure you they are not beta testers, there is a separate group of people that are in a testing team and will have had the boxes for a few months already. So that it was ready for the roll out to start.

A product that has been rolled out but is still protected by a NDA?

[howardmicks]

Starting to get bored with all this talk about tivo prices and how great it gonna be and when it will be released,Iam a a tv subscriber for vm because of the channels they show not because how good a set top box is.My main concern is what channels we are getting or losing or why are we not getting new ones(sky atlantic for example),Yes i will hopefully get tivo eventually but the prices being spread are totally overpriced and its looking more like sky are now going to be controlling what we watch more than vm i aint gonna spend silly money on a box that aint got the channels to back it and as for vod never watch and dont really care about it.Lets face it if you had to pay for it who would bother with it? I wouldnt,Think the next few months are going to be interesting,Just hope vm dont think that tivo is going to keep there customers and gain new ones its channels we want and new tech at the right price