No subscription but you can still pause rewind etc live television which makes this a handy gadget to have connected to your TV.
When you're watching a long movie or sporting event and the phone or door bell rings, etc or you need a BR break, these are great, just pause the TiVo and come back to where you were on the event.
You may need an HDMI cable, audio video cables and or TV antenna cable depending upon how you receive your signal to connect to your television and 2 AA batteries for the remote.
Power cable and remote are included as seen in the pics.
Please ask any questions you might have and I will be glad to answer subject to my ability.
If you're not familiar with Tivos you may be familiar with DVRs which is a digital video recorder.
We've used various other models of these for years and wouldn't know what to do without them.