Not entirely true. If the box comes with a remote, then it’s worth at least $15 or so. I’ve seen them going for $25 to $40, and have considered buying one (instead of just another remote) and adding it to my existing account.

Of course, that was my plan based on the assumption that it would still be only $6.95/month — though I honestly haven’t have the patience to read through all this new pricing chatter to find out…

It’s nice to see I still have the option of the $6.95 MSD once my free year is up. I’ll revisit the issue then. If I had to renew it under the new policy, it would have been a boat anchor for sure.

“the used market for S2s has been dead for a while now. If the box doesn?t have lifetime, it is worthless.”

I fully realize this. With the proper pricing policies, I could give away my box to a friend or relative. I’m not so sure they will want to subscribe under the new plans.

The only real value is in lifetime boxes or DVD units, since those are no longer produced and harder to come by.

Dave – The S2 will no longer be sold once the FCC rule is in effect, but the S2DT will. I expect them to do some shuffling when that happens too.

And SD isn’t going away any time soon. While OTA NTSC goes away in 2009, replaced with OTA ATSC, not all ATSC is HD, and only a small percentage of users use antenna anyway. The crushing majority of TVs in homes will remain SD for many years to come, even with the increasing HD sales rates, simply because of the staggering installed base. Analog cable will also remain, in many areas it is still the only cable option with no digital at all, so there will be a market for the S2DT for a while.

In the meantime, the S3’s cost will come down. By the time the analog market has shrunk substantially, the S3 will be more affordable.

For years now TiVo has been saying that lowering, or eliminating, up-front costs has been their goal with the S2. Every time they’ve been able to drop the entry costs, they see more consumer adoption. And now they’ve not only lowered that up-front cost, but they’ve lowered the overall cost in most cases. They just made TiVo more affordable in general.

I still don’t know what terms I will be able to get from Tivo for the S2 box once it ends its free year of service from the VIP trade.

The current Tivo pricing policy is more complicated than the IRS tax code, and FAQs like this one do little to make it more comprehensible.

I highly suspect my Series 2 will be a nice boat anchor or doorstop in a year. I know for sure I won’t commit to three years of any service for it.