Just spoken to the tivo salesgirl by phone...
Looks like you can only buy a NZ Tivo over the net by phone if you are a Telecom customer. Everyone else must go into a store.
The 1TB expansion box is available here for purchase now, and $300 (I forgot to make an exact note of the price)
The Tivo sale pitch and web site doesnt exactly make it clear the all the main features still work fine if you're not with telecom. Seems a bit anticompetitive if you ask me.
A bit of delving later reveals the explanation for this. The video rental/pay per view stuff in the NZ Tivo is owned and operated by Hybrid (the TivoNZ people). Therefore, they want everyone to use it as it makes them ongoing money. However, you wouldnt use it unless you have zero-rated broadband for the content download. Telecom made a deal with them to do this but only if it is only available via Telecom. Win for telcom, win for Hybrid. A bit of a lose for customers who dont intend to use the pay-content services. Hybrid just want to do everything legally possibly to ensure that people are as likely as possible to use these services, which means pushing them to get an ISP which gives zero-rating for the content.
Ive also heard annoying news that Prime and MaoriTV have refused to allow Tivo to publish guide data. Maoritv is no loss but Prime sometimes has good stuff, although I rarely see it since the listings arent available on teletext. I'm wondering if theres going to be any way to hack the tivo to take multiple guide data inputs (so someone can set up an independent feed of Prime listings)
Id be in the shop buying one now except I broke my leg last week and can't walk or drive for 6 weeks...
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