Announced this morning, DirecTV has completed an agreement with TiVo to continue to provide service to combo DirecTV/TiVo DVRs for at least three years beyond the current agreement’s end date at the end of 2007. This means that DirecTV will continue to support (although not necessarily to sell) TiVo DVRs until 2010.

Yahoo/Reuters Article

This isn’t too much of a surprise - DirecTV still supports UltimateTV boxes that haven’t been made for many years. But this will allay concerns that anyone should have in purchasing a TiVo over the home-grown R15 that DirecTV has released.

In any event, it’s nice to have a firm commitment in place, and some guarantee of a revenue stream for TiVo.

OK folks, this is really it. After April 15, 2006, TiVo won’t sell lifetime subscriptions for their standalone DVRs. (The only exception is the Humax DVD combo TiVo DVRs - those will still be able to get lifetime.)

It’s truly a great deal - TiVo even claims that the reason they are discontinuing it is that it provides too much value for too little money.

Here are some of the advantages of acting now:

• $299 lifetime value stays with the unit - even if you sell the box
• $299 equates to 23 months of service - after that, your service is essentially free!
• Never pay another monthly TiVo service fee
• Monthly service prices could even increase (they have before)
• We will email your TiVo Service Number to ensure that you can purchase the Lifetime Service before April 15th - we also email instructions on how to get Lifetime

We’re making it even better with two coupon codes through April 15, 2006:

TIVO25 will take $25 off the 90 or 190 hour TiVo DVRs

TIVO50 will take $50 off the 290 hour and larger TiVo DVRs