Thomas Hawk picks up on the news that TiVo offered a special “journalists only” promo for its hardware:
I can see where TiVo would probably be frustrated and use this to try and push their message. They probably have the best PVR on the market. When you poll consumers everyone loves their TiVo but it’s a chicken and an egg thing. In order to know that you love it you need to try it. And you can’t try it until you buy it. By pushing these units out to the media TiVo probably hopes to better communicate their marketing message. Still a questionable strategy but probably done in a serious way to build awareness of their products with influencers.
For what it’s worth, no one at TiVo offered me any special deals. I wouldn’t accept a discount on a piece of hardware for my personal use, although I would gladly accept a loaner unit that I could use for review purposes. It’s unreasonable to expect a blogger to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for evaluation equipment. If I did, of course, it would be fully disclosed here.
These are basic journalistic standards. You shouldn’t get a special deal that isn’t available to the public. If you get an accommodation from a company to facilitate a story, disclose it, and don’t accept anything that would create even an appearance of a conflict of interest.
Ed Bott 
This actually was not a “free” deal; and it wasn’t even limited to journalist. The rebate off an 80GB Humax-branded Tivo is available all over the place — including to existing Tivo owners. I got an offer for this not because I’m a journalist, but because I have only a 40GB model.
For more see this CNet blog item:
So why did TiVo send out an e-mail entitled “TiVo Media Accommodation Program”? That was dumb on their part, because it creates the appearance of special treatment for journalists.
It still looks like this was intended to be an extra $100 discount (on top of the $100 rebate) not available to the general public.
I completely agree. Readers will accept that it’s a freebie to the reviewer as long as its disclosed and the reviewer is critically honest. I won’t recommend an application on my site unless I’ve also purchased a license for it (unless it’s freeware, of course). I’ve bought twice as many apps that I don’t recommend. I’ve even had offers (lifetime licenses) to list some expensive apps on the site, but if I like it well enough to use it, then it’s worth paying for and support its continued development.