You just go to the TiVo website, enter the number of the unit, and pay for service. It's just as if you had purchased the unit at any other non-TiVo vendor like BestBuy.

How to verify lifetime service? Philips HDR 312 aka PTV300

Dear WK-Mike,

I recently purchased a very old Philips HDR312 from the local Goodwill store, and...yes there is a 7 day return policy...lol. Anyways, and to make a very long S1 tivo story short...the modem is not functioning, and I am wondering how do I verify that it in fact has a valid lifetime service plan before I begin spending on it. The first purchase would be an external modem with the serial cable which can run at least $50 from what I can gather. I called tivo and and after 40 minutes of searching their records they said it was a direct tv tino box, and they transferred me to direct tv. direct tv has no idea either. I do not think it is direct tv, again from what I can gather. Namely, it has not slot for any cards that DTV keeps asking about, and it has the MPEG-2 encoder which would not be necessary w/ DTV. Additionally, and obviously, it is made by Philips - not direct tv! Tivo seems to have conveniently lost all info on this unit. The TSN they keep asking for is listed as a serial number that begins with 000...which is a characteristic of all early Philips boxes, no?
Help - I have until Wednsday to return it. FYI- paid $20 and came with remote.

Lifetime Service is a joke

I have gone through three tivo's at my home, they don't generally last long in my experience. Have two right now, both with lifetime services. I was informed today that the one that is currently broken is not eligable for anything, as after 3 years TIVO has no obligatiuon to do anything for you. Having already paid for each of the three failures (transfer fees of $150) you would think they would be willing to do something for me on the new TIVO I purchased, especially since they send me an e-mail about upgrading every two weeks, they told me that since the TIVO I purchased, new, from a distributor, did not come directly from them, they won't do anything for me. Told me to return the unit even though it came from an authorized distributor!

We have a flat-fee TiVo repair service for most models.

Tivo Lifetime transferable to DirecTV?

Apologies if this is answered elsewhere but I could not find the answer.

A year or so ago I bailed on DirecTV in favor of Comcast, bought two TivoHD boxes from WK and got lifetime service on both. When DirecTV comes out with a Tivo box again, I would consider switching back (because doing business with Comcast always seems like playing one of those "which shell has the pea" games - DTV made a mistake with their hardware strategy but month-to-month quality and service was always great and I always trusted them).

Question: can I transfer the lifetime service to use with DirecTV? I am not wild about abandoning my hardware investment (especially the one with the big disk), but I realize they will eventually break or the feature set on the new boxes will be too attractive. Would be nice to know if I can switch providers and not have to walk away from two lifetime subscriptions.

Roger

Unfortunately, you cannot transfer TiVo's lifetime service at all...not to a DIRECTV box nor to any other TiVo.

If they are still offering a lifetime on this unit I would be very interested. Any other details as to why and how would be appreciated. We're really pretty sure that the lifetime is part of your account now, but you should be able to call DirecTV and get a good explanation of the situation. TiVo has been intermittently agreeing to honor the offer for transfer applications that arrive after the expiration.

Regards,
Cleanwithpure

You are thinking some how right!