Well, apparently as a current TiVo owner, I can send any of you all a "help-a-friend" electronic postcard, which allows you to get a 40-hour TiVo for $199. (Regularly $249) (through 7/31) (I don't get anything out of this offer) A 40-hour TiVo is a fine thing all by itself, but with the instructions on
this page, a few tools, and a $100 hard drive from
New Egg, you can turn it into a 160-hour TiVo.
Then the monthly fee to TiVo is $12.95.
TiVo doesn't want it to screw up their warranty service, so they insist that warranty service only comes with original unmodified equipment. But series 2 TiVos don't have anything like a "warranty void if sticker removed" sticker. And TiVo has allowed its engineers to give out technical information. And TiVo doesn't sic its lawyers after third-party sellers who upgrade their boxes and re-sell.
The folks at tivocommunity.com seem to feel that TiVo has a decent relationship with their hacker community. I haven't seen a lot of righteous bitching. I think TiVo just wants to restrict certain types of hacking. They don't want people to get around their subscription service.
The other thing is that TiVo is engineered to be a consumer device, and so it has a nice quiet low-power approach with a pleasant-looking case and a sexy remote control.