A few facts to correct here:
2. In some areas having Tivo is cheaper; agreed there is an upfront cost but if you can get a lifetime subscription on an S3 you are ahead of the game. For me I transferred a lifetime subscription, it cost $200 to transfer. So looking at 3 years the Tivo is $5.55 a month for the service and $7.50 for the cable card. or $13.05 a month. The DVR unit here in my area is $13.94 a month. Total cost for 3 years of Tivo is $470, $501 + Tax for the Comcast Box. 4 years and Tivo will run me $560, versues $669 + tax. Of course these estimates are barring no rate increases on the dvr or cable card rentals!
Hey you left out the cost of the Tivo hardware in your calculation! You're also assuming that your Tivo lasts 3 years (see below). In addition it's a bit of a stretch to assume someone would be transferring a lifetime subscription. Try refiguring that based on the normal Tivo rates and including the costs of the boxes -oh wait, there isn't one for the Comcast box... Let's not forget either about replacement costs should something break, there isn't any with a Comcast box. I have two of them, one is included in my base rate and I pay $11.95 for the second. I heavily considered the S3 because of the ability to add storage, however the cost and upcoming obsolescence swayed me away from it. Though the recent rebates and price drops have made it more attractive, until it's much cheaper I don't think it's a good deal.
3. Correct, Tivo does not support OnDemand. Personally I find OnDemand useless for our household. Instead Tivo offers video rentals via Amazon Unbox for $2.99, a bunch of other free over internet subscription services, podcasting, Live365.com radio, weather, traffic, movie times, photo view via Yahoo pictures, itunes integration and rumor has it the entire Netflix library coming at somepoint. I never use OnDemand, so for me it is useless but others may like it.
Obviously it's been a while since you've looked at On Demand. Comcast has grown the content quite a bit and it continues to expand. All of that other stuff is just fluff.
4. Incorrect that a Tivo S3 will be useless when SDV comes out. Tivo and the cable companies and the people who set standards for cable cards are working to get this sorted out. On top if it, why would Comcast want to hurt a relationship that they just spent 3 years devoping with Tivo in order to get the Tivo software on the Motorola boxes?
Tivo needs Comcast more, not the other way around. Tivo is hurting for the revenue that Comcast's subscribers can provide them. Comcast is not in control of what CableLabs develops. Unless Tivo can miracously update the firmware in S3 boxes to support upcoming two-way communication standards you're going to be severely limited to the channels that you can receive (only those transmitted 24/7 through SDV).
5. I do not have the Comcast DVRs mixed up. In fact I am in an all SA area and the SA8300 is the ONLY dvr you can get around here. My neighbors have it and I think the video quality on it bites the big one. Which leads me to #6
So many factors can affect this (e.g. video cable quality, type of connection etc) that I'm not even going to touch it. I've seen installers that still use coax to hook up HD boxes because they're idiots and the customer doesn't know better (geee.. what are all these other inputs for?).
6. Video Quality - I'm a stickler for clean crisp video; the S3 is light years ahead of the SA3800 in terms of video quality for recording, and live TV. Macroblocking is quite apparent when watching live HD feeds on the SA3800 at my neighbors 2 houses down. On my Tivo S3, none, nada. The SA3800 may compress the video, I know the Tivo S3 records digital streams bit for bit, no loss.
The SA records exactly what it's fed (same as the Moto). Oh yeah, a live feed is the same as a recorded feed - so no need to distinguish between the two. No additional compression done when recording. Same as your S3. See above answer for possible issues. Also could be affected by signal strength, number of splitters upstream etc.
7. Transfer your shows to other Tivos, share videos, transfer to your computer, ipod, etc... May not interest you but those features exist for the Tivo S2 and are rumored to be avail for S3 shortly.
I'll believe that when I see it. There's a reason Tivo didn't put that into the S3 when it shipped. Do you really think it will happen in the future? LOL BTW: you can transfer recordings to a computer from the SA and Moto boxes as well.
Am I brand loyal? Yes. Am I a stickler for good quality and ease of use and no crashes? Yes. Did I pay a premium for my S3? Yes and it is worth every penny.
-t
