Aswath Rao posted an interesting comment in response to the TiVo entry —

TiVo model of under charging for the hardware, but recovering by charging a monthly fee is faulty. I still beleive so. Subsequently I bought HW/SW costing about $200 to do the same thing. The cable companies have done one better by charging almost the same amount (assuming 2 year lifetime for a consumer product), but distributing over the period. This holds a lesson for VoIP service providers in that apart from PSTN connectivity the only service they offer is directory service, which can not inherently generate much revenue. So do not rejoice that PSTN is dying/dead; along with it VoIP service business is also gone.