TiVo is great. Now it’s even better. It is now possible to purchase a TiVo Mini extender box. Just as it sounds the TiVo Mini grabs content from your main TiVo box, so that you can watch all of that good stuff from any room in your home.

The TiVo Mini is just $99.99, which is roughly the same price as an Apple TV (for comparative reasons). Once connected, sharing content in any room in your home is simple. Only, you do still have to pay an additional monthly membership fee.

For some reason, TiVo offers the Mini at that $99 price in addition to a $6 monthly membership fee (on top of your existing TiVo membership). So, watching your TiVo content anywhere in your home is not free or cheap by any means. But, it is now possible. Let’s break down this pricing a bit further, so that you can compare TiVo to other systems.

Pricing Breakdown

At $6 per month, the cost to own a TiVo Mini per year is roughly $72. Combined with the actual hardware, that’s $171 total. You have to have the original TiVo console in order to use the TiVo Mini, of course, so that console will cost $99. You will also have to pay the regular TiVo monthly fee, which is $15 per month ($180 per year).

The grand total, then, for a TiVo Mini, Mini subscription, TiVo console, and console subscription is $450 per year. This cost is priced at one TiVo Mini per household – if you want to purchase another Mini, you will have to pay another $6 per month fee. Yep, that’s a good amount of money to spend.

In case you are tempted to go further and can’t live without a TiVo Mini, you should also be aware that the TiVo Mini does not work with any early TiVo, Premiere XL, or Premiere.

That means that you will have to purchase the latest TiVo console in order to use the TiVo Mini. Right now, TiVo is offering a bunch of bundle discounts to new TiVo customers, so make sure to check those out on the TiVo website if you want a TiVo Mini. Otherwise, you will wind up spending a lot of money for TiVo.

Other Details

The TiVo Mini requires a wired Ethernet connection too. Keeping all of this in mind, it might not be worth it to purchase a TiVo Mini for every room in your home. Not only will the cost be high, but you’ll have to find somewhere in each room to plug in your new Mini. And, really, is it that important to watch recorded movies and television shows everywhere you go? Give your brain a break!

The interesting thing about TiVo is that this company can largely charge what it wants to. Why? There’s very little competition out there. The only other DVRs that are available are through cable and Internet companies. Those DVRs do the trick, but they do not provide quite the same access that TiVo does.

So, really, TiVo has the market cornered. Is it too much to ask for consumers to spend $6 per month per each Mini console? Yes; but TiVo can get away with it. If you want a Mini bad enough, chances are that you will pay that price. My advice to you is this: add up all of those costs before you purchase the Mini!