[mikester]

I've had Tivo for about 4 years now I guess and we purchased the lifetime service for it about 3 years ago. It's freakin awesome. I did have ours fail due to some power issues we had about a year ago but I was able to restore it with a new hard drive and a compatible image through the community forums.

I bought a second one about the time our original failed and with the rebate it was more or less free except for the 6.95 monthly fee. At that time they did not offer the lifetime service any longer - I'm not sure they still do I will have to check. Anyway, the only problem I have is that the HD Tivo is extremely expensive. Damn near as much as my HD TV cost so I'm not willing to upgrade it. Direct TV doesn't seem to have a lot of HD channels anyway. We us the Tivo for everything and when we have the chance we watch the HD channels straight to the TV through the HD Direct TV box. It's lame in that respect but the HD Tivo is just tooooooo damn expensive.