TiFlix

Last night, I almost talked myself into getting a Tivo unit.

We've been off-and-on thinking about getting Netflix again. I just don't want to pay for it every month -- I'd rather be able to pay for it only in the months when I feel like having a movie source. With Netflix, I found that after about three months, the 'watched already' movies would just sit there -- we wouldn't get around to sending them back in, because it wasn't that big a deal to us to get the next shipment. But the idea that I was paying $17 a month to have a movie just sit there irritated me, and eventually we just cancelled.

Tivo sounded attractive, especially when I found out that a) their highest rate was about equal to Netflix, and b) you could reduce that by paying in advance, for a longer term, or both. I liked the idea of being able to easily tape a program I'd want to watch -- setting up taping with our VCR isn't that difficult, but its a little tedious. Tivo promised to remove that. Granted, we wouldn't be able to order-up from Netflix's list -- what the networks give you is what you get -- but even with that, there are a goodly number of movies that I'd like to see, if I knew they were coming, and had the time to watch. Well, Tivo does a good job of letting you know whats going to be on, and you can tell it to just go tape it -- I'll watch it later.

So, I was about ten minutes from ordering, when my wife asked the key question:

Do you have to pay extra for the Tivo box itself?

Well, gee, I thought, of course not -- you don't pay extra if you have a cable box, do you? (Which we don't: we have Basic Cable, no premium channels.) But I humored her, and looked.

Four hundred dollars?

Suddenly, Netflix is looking promising again.