Om Malik on how to save TiVo | PVRblog Om Malik suggests that TiVo quickly give out 2 million units and bump their numbers up to 5 million. I couldn’t agree more. Although the economics probably can’t exactly sustain an outright gift of 2 million units, certainly a cell phone model where you lock someone in for 2 years of service could produce a revenue stream that would allow TiVo to finance such an iniative. TiVo should have three choices. 1. Pay a lot of money for a box but get lifetime service with no additional monthly charges ever. This should be an all in one price, not one price for the box and another for lifetime service. Just call a spade a spade and say it’s $500 for the box including service (heck Microsoft does this and gets people to pay $1,500 for a new Media Center PC). 2. Buy the box and pay a subsidized monthly rate, 3. Pay nothing today and pay a higher monthly rate.
TiVo should have adopted the cell phone model as an option a long, long, time ago.