So, we're economizing a bit and I committed to getting rid of TiVo for 2006 - also this was my one way to bargain with my wife about upgrading to the Video iPod ;-)

Anyway, I finally got in touch with TiVo today. I was half expecting them to offer the service for $6/month instead of the full price of $12.99 I've been paying since this happened to me with an earlier TiVo that I got and then returned within a week. But they just offered a couple of months of free service and that wasn't enough to keep me going.

So, now I no longer have the service, but I thought of a possible way of getting it back without the added cost and I wanted to know what you guys thought - if this makes any sense.

The TiVo unit I have is a Humax DRT-800. It's a combo TiVo (80-hour) and DVD recorder. My thought is that I could either trade this to someone for a non-DVD recorder TiVo that already has lifetime service, or I could sell it on eBay and buy one with lifetime service. The prices that the DRT800 have gone for range from $100 to $100, and the lifetime TiVo's are maybe $175 and up, so I guess this would work...

The other thing is that I've given up satellite as well and so I would be recording broadcast. Is it even worth it at that level? My sattelite receiver is also a digital TV receiver so theoretically I could record that prestine version over the analog signal - I've tested it and it seems to work fine. The only problem is that for terrestrial channels, you need to specify a dash and a number after the channel number. So, the digital version of the local NBC affiliate is at channel 4-1. But as far as I know, no TiVo's (save maybe for the really expensive HD ones?) understand dashes in chanel listings. So, I would have to manually change the channel from the analog to digital one, but of course I wouldn't be able to do that when away from the house. Is there any workaround or hack that would allow you to do this?

I'm just wondering whether it's even worth all this or if I should just sell the Humax and just watch live TV, or use a VCR, or possibly buy content via iTunes if don't even manage to tape it... Still not really sure what to do...

Find a good book. TV sucks for the most part anyway (this from someone with 2 TiVos).

Trust me, I have enough podcasts and audiobooks to last me at least a year if all I did during my waking hours was listen. That doesn't even include all the DVD's I haven't watched, etc., etc. Having stuff to read/listen to/watch isn't the problem. But it would be nice to keep using a TiVo for recording stuff I can't see live and maybe transferring it to my iPod...