[mythtv-users] Data Direct Subscription Expires?

[Brad Templeton]

On Fri, Jan 07, 2005 at 11:13:11PM -0700, Richard Mixon (qwest) wrote:
> If the market size for hobbyist DVR gets big enough, I would not be
> surprised to see DataDirect start charging for it somehow. Maybe it will
> be $2 a month, instead of $10 a year - who knows. I just feel pretty
> sure that if they overprice it, someone else will step in and provide it
> at a lower cost.

Yes, though in fact even more likely is that somebody else would buy
it form them and then do it at a lower cost, if for some reason they
wanted out of it for business reasons and not for some philosophical
reason.   They sell to resellers as far as I know (though when I used
to buy Dave Barry from them for resale, they pulled it from me, claiming
that copies I sold were being pirated, but more probably just to do it
on their own for ad revenue.)

> "Some" of us would be doing Tivo or similar commercial product, but for
> their pricing. They feel their user interface and schedules are worth
> $13 a month. A lot of people agree, some don't (me for one).

Actually, Tivo's economics are not like that.  Tivo boxes are sold at
or below hardware cost, so the Tivo service fee is where all Tivo's
revenue for software development and service come from.   Listings are
a tiny part of that, but people get confused because with series 1 boxes,
it was possible to not buy the service, and all you lost was listings.
(You could still get software upgrades etc.)

Discussion of Tivo's costs suggest that the largest recurring cost in
providing the service is actually the time they pay the dial-up pops
for the daily calls, not what they pay for listing data.   At least a
couple of years ago, that's probbly changed over time.

The biggest costs are not the recurring costs though.

> PS: If you need a laugh. I've only about $100 and spare parts invested
> in my MythTV box so far. $50 Avermedia M179, $25 for IR Blaster parts
> (long cable needed), $30 for a MX 440 video card. Just happened to have
> a spare 1.2Ghz Athlon/MB, case and 200GB drive. Still after six months
> its not really completely usable (no good tv-out, see my other post).
> For Christmas, wife decided I had fooled around enough (she estimated
> 100 hours at $5/hour was easily $500) and plopped a $400 DVR with DVD
> burner under the tree (Replay TV style). My pride got the best of me and
> I had her take it back. I'm "this" close two weeks later. Oh well.

Yeah, a lot of us are in this boat.  Mythtv -- or perhaps more
importantly all the required components like lastest kernels, video card
drivers, capture card drivers, sound etc. -- is not yet mature enough
that you can consider it a money saver.

The attraction of using old PC hardware you have for "free" may also
have fooled more than a few of us.   There is of course the time spent
in making it all work with the old hardware, but some other factors
we don't consider like how old hardware tends to have noisier fans and
drives, and take more electricity.

However, all this is going to get more mature, and stable, and easier
to use.  But at the same time, new hardware is going to get so cheap
that it will be difficult to justify even the most basic time required
to rebuild machines and configure things even when it all works like
a dream.   One imagines that an EPIA type board, drive and capture
card  in a box will drop under $100, for example.