4 ms·

TiVo was introduced in 1999 and was definitely around in 2003. I had a DirecTV version then (if I recall correctly, it was made by Sony.)

dogma1138 10y ago
Looks like you are correct, for some reason I felt it was introduced in the mid 2000's. I'm actually surprised that they managed to produce a cost effective and functional DVR in 1999. How was the quality? the earliest DVR's I can remember are the Samsung DirectTV ones from the mid 2000's. But then again it seems that the 90's and early 2000's are a blur to me, I was surprised to "discover" today that The Mask of Zoro came out in 2005 the same year as Serenity I had surely pegged it to be considerably older.
- mikestew 10y ago
  I'm actually surprised that they managed to produce a cost effective and functional DVR in 1999. Even in 1999 I was thinking, "why didn't someone do this sooner?" It was a VCR with a hard drive instead of tape. Not to trivialize Tivo'S accomplishment, there's a lot more to it than that, but the know-how was there as well as the hardware. Granted, hard drives back then were pretty tiny, but so were the shows in standard def. As for "cost-effective", well, the MSRP wasn't cheap, that's for sure, and there was a monthly fee (one of the earliest examples I know of "stuff that doesn't need a subscription to work that requires a subscription"). Quality? As good as what came down that coax wire, IIRC. In other words, compared to today's high-def stuff, it sucked. But that wasn't Tivo'S fault.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    It would have been hard to do a TiVo or ReplayTV much before those companies did it. You don't have to go much further back in time before sufficiently large hard disks would probably have been too pricey. In addition, I don't think consumer computer-based tuner boards came about all that much earlier. And, like the early TiVos, you'd have had to support plugging it into a phone line to get the subscription service. The bottom line is that I could imagine an expensive, low capacity DVR a couple years before they actually appeared but I'm not sure there would have been a viable commercial market for such.
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    It wasn't a VCR with a hard drive, VCR's for the most part used an analogue format unless you had some of the few digital ones that were super expensive and used for productions. In 1999 making a cost effective DVR couldn't have been that easy, the hardware was pretty puny and storage was expensive. A ~16 GB hard drive alone in 1999 would cost 250-350$ [0] A TV tuner card capable of MPEG-2 encoding on chip would cost around 300-400$, at least that was the price in around 2000-2001 when I got a hercules DVR card. The software ones required an Intel MMX CPU to do encoding and those were both cutting edge and expensive, so the fact that TiVO managed to release a viable consumer product at a reasonable price was pretty f-ning amazing. [0] http://www.mkomo.com/cost-per-gigabyte http://www.mkomo.com/cost-per-gigabyte | http://www.jcmit.com/diskprice.htm http://www.jcmit.com/diskprice.htm | http://edition.cnn.com/1999/TECH/computing/12/30/harddrives.2000.idg/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/1999/TECH/computing/12/30/harddrives.... | http://www.storagereview.com/articles/9907/990719ataroundup1999.html http://www.storagereview.com/articles/9907/990719ataroundup1... I think people don't realize that in 1999 Pentium II just came out and intel was still producing non-embedded versions of the 486.
  - chucksmash 10y ago
    IIRC there was also an optional pay-once lifetime subscription available.
    - ghaff 10y ago
      There was. And I'm actually still using mine, having paid a transfer fee, on the TiVo I'm still using. It wasn't cheap though. I think I paid $300-400 dollars and that was quite a few years ago.

dogma1138 10y ago

Looks like you are correct, for some reason I felt it was introduced in the mid 2000's. I'm actually surprised that they managed to produce a cost effective and functional DVR in 1999. How was the quality? the earliest DVR's I can remember are the Samsung DirectTV ones from the mid 2000's. But then again it seems that the 90's and early 2000's are a blur to me, I was surprised to "discover" today that The Mask of Zoro came out in 2005 the same year as Serenity I had surely pegged it to be considerably older.

mikestew 10y ago
I'm actually surprised that they managed to produce a cost effective and functional DVR in 1999. Even in 1999 I was thinking, "why didn't someone do this sooner?" It was a VCR with a hard drive instead of tape. Not to trivialize Tivo'S accomplishment, there's a lot more to it than that, but the know-how was there as well as the hardware. Granted, hard drives back then were pretty tiny, but so were the shows in standard def. As for "cost-effective", well, the MSRP wasn't cheap, that's for sure, and there was a monthly fee (one of the earliest examples I know of "stuff that doesn't need a subscription to work that requires a subscription"). Quality? As good as what came down that coax wire, IIRC. In other words, compared to today's high-def stuff, it sucked. But that wasn't Tivo'S fault.
- ghaff 10y ago
  It would have been hard to do a TiVo or ReplayTV much before those companies did it. You don't have to go much further back in time before sufficiently large hard disks would probably have been too pricey. In addition, I don't think consumer computer-based tuner boards came about all that much earlier. And, like the early TiVos, you'd have had to support plugging it into a phone line to get the subscription service. The bottom line is that I could imagine an expensive, low capacity DVR a couple years before they actually appeared but I'm not sure there would have been a viable commercial market for such.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  It wasn't a VCR with a hard drive, VCR's for the most part used an analogue format unless you had some of the few digital ones that were super expensive and used for productions. In 1999 making a cost effective DVR couldn't have been that easy, the hardware was pretty puny and storage was expensive. A ~16 GB hard drive alone in 1999 would cost 250-350$ [0] A TV tuner card capable of MPEG-2 encoding on chip would cost around 300-400$, at least that was the price in around 2000-2001 when I got a hercules DVR card. The software ones required an Intel MMX CPU to do encoding and those were both cutting edge and expensive, so the fact that TiVO managed to release a viable consumer product at a reasonable price was pretty f-ning amazing. [0] http://www.mkomo.com/cost-per-gigabyte http://www.mkomo.com/cost-per-gigabyte | http://www.jcmit.com/diskprice.htm http://www.jcmit.com/diskprice.htm | http://edition.cnn.com/1999/TECH/computing/12/30/harddrives.2000.idg/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/1999/TECH/computing/12/30/harddrives.... | http://www.storagereview.com/articles/9907/990719ataroundup1999.html http://www.storagereview.com/articles/9907/990719ataroundup1... I think people don't realize that in 1999 Pentium II just came out and intel was still producing non-embedded versions of the 486.
- chucksmash 10y ago
  IIRC there was also an optional pay-once lifetime subscription available.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    There was. And I'm actually still using mine, having paid a transfer fee, on the TiVo I'm still using. It wasn't cheap though. I think I paid $300-400 dollars and that was quite a few years ago.