4 ms·

TiVo exiting legacy DVR business

85 points by TMWNN 1y ago

zdw 1y ago
TiVos used to be great and unique, but ever since the core DVR functionality was obvious after the fact and everyone copied the feature, and then streaming came in, there was little unique, especially on the hardware side. For OTA recording, I've used Windows Media Center but it went out of support, and more recently the HDHomerun DVR, which both worked decently.
yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
An odd progression. What's next? Disney getting out of movies? Google giving up on search? AWS pushing for on-prem? Microsoft shipping quality software?
- whalesalad 1y ago
  More like Enron or Circuit City announcing they’re closing corporate headquarters.
- modeless 1y ago
  Netflix stopping DVDs by mail?
  - yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
    Yes, actually, very much like that. Good thought, I'd forgotten about that:)
  - phire 1y ago
    IBM selling off their PC/laptop arm? Intel exiting the memory business? AMD spinning off their Fabs? Commodore scraping their calculator line?
- mdasen 1y ago
  In some ways, it's more like Disney getting out of silent movies or Microsoft stopping shipping software on floppy disks - or cell phone makers giving up on dumb phones or Apple discontinuing iPods. The market for DVRs has shifted a lot and while TiVo's system was wonderful, it's hard to get people to pay you a monthly fee for a service that's included for free with your cable package. Companies are often offering networked DVR service with unlimited storage - they record it in their data center and you just stream it later. TiVo really needed to pivot and simply didn't. TiVo should have become another Roku, but they were probably worried about cannibalizing their DVR revenue. They had the operating system and hardware to beat Roku to the market - or even become the primary alternative to Roku for years after Roku had launched. Roku launched in 2008 and TiVo could have followed. FireTV and AndroidTV launched in 2014 so there was a huge window in there for TiVo (and Chromecast was 2013 so that doesn't change things much). TiVo was focused on getting individuals to pay them $X per month for service. Roku figured out that it would be a lot easier to get all the streaming companies to give them a cut rather than getting it from the end users as well as being a platform to serve ads to end users. If TiVo had looked at Roku and said "we can do that even better," they would have had a very different future. TiVo launched a Roku competitor in 2020 based on AndroidTV, but that was way too little and way too late. Back in the late 2000s and early 2010s, TiVo had an absolutely amazing OS. They needed to release a Roku competitor stripped of the DVR bit for the cord-cutting streamers. They needed to pivot their business model toward the service-revenue-cut and ad-revenue model that Roku went after. They needed to see that cable and satellite was a dead-end as those companies would try to cut them out of the loop with their internal DVR products (and even if TiVo were better, most customers wouldn't want to pay extra for it). TiVo should have pivoted 15 years ago and become one of a couple dominant streaming box players. Instead, Amazon and Google followed Roku into the market even though TiVo had 6 years to enter that market and had a polished OS and great reputation at the time. TiVo feels a bit like Nokia. Nokia ignored smartphones long enough that they kinda faded away - and then their effort was too little, too late.
- unsnap_biceps 1y ago
  > AWS pushing for on-prem? They have! https://aws.amazon.com/outposts/ https://aws.amazon.com/outposts/
- adrianmonk 1y ago
  AT&T getting out of telegraphs.
  - maratc 1y ago
    ... and telephones!
- freetime2 1y ago
  Nintendo getting out of playing cards.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Nintendo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Nintendo
bfLives 1y ago
> TiVo has stopped selling Edge DVR hardware products,” the company said in an AI-based message. What does this actually mean? An AI-authored press release? A customer support bot message?
- weikju 1y ago
  It means “please we need some of that sweet AI VC money”
  - mort96 1y ago
    The "AI-based message" part was added by mediaplaynews, not TiVo. I, too, wonder what exactly mediaplaynews means by that.
diogenescynic 1y ago
TiVo was one of those clever incremental improvements that comes out and becomes ubiquitous. I remember a friend having it in 2001ish and it was so cool at the time.
- add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
  Another way of looking at it is that it's becoming not ubiquitous, but extinct. In streaming, an ad-skipping device is too customer friendly to be allowed to exist. Everything the tech industry recreates is more user-hostile and privacy-invading than its pre-existing counterpart. Cable didn't innovate unskippable commercials.
  - diogenescynic 1y ago
    There’s a word for this but it escapes me that describes how a lot of modern tech is actually a step back for consumers but it’s more beneficial/profitable.
    - amacbride 1y ago
      Cory Doctorow said it best: "Enshittification" https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2024-04-04-teach-me-how-to-shruggie-kagi-caaa88c221f2 https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2024-04-04...
    - mrguyorama 1y ago
      It's called capitalism. User hostile will always be more profitable. It used to be impossible to be this user hostile. You could not build a VCR that was unable to record the Superbowl. Tech fixed only that. Enshittification is just what capitalism means Preventing capitalism from doing exactly what it wants to do requires regulation and enforcing competition. Competition does not happen naturally. Competition is expensive and low profit and kills businesses, so they try to avoid it. Gas stations next door to each other don't do price wars anymore, because it demonstrably did not improve profits. Sure, you could lower your price slightly and maybe get a few more customers than you do now, but they will just lower their prices and at the end of the day you both end up making less money. So you just don't compete. Instead of lowering your price, you match their price.
bigtunacan 1y ago
I loved TiVo 20 years ago when it was relevant, but honestly I had no idea they were still around
- amccollum 1y ago
  They're not, at least not really. From Wikipedia: In April 2016, Rovi acquired TiVo for $1.1 billion.[8] In December 2019, it was announced that TiVo would merge with Xperi Corporation. The merger completed in May 2020.[9] Xperi itself also split apart in 2022, so it's effectively 3 companies removed from its original roots. Basically at this point it is only valuable for the vague nostalgia consumers have for the brand.
heavyset_go 1y ago
It's interesting/sad how we've gone from media that allowed for home recording, where it was both possible and legal, to what we have now. You can't even make a backup of the shows and movies you "buy", which just means "license", today.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- smsm42 1y ago
  I mean, you can, but not allowed to, legally...
- mastazi 1y ago
  I've gone back to physical media. Vinyl, CDs, Blu Rays and DVDs. I just buy what I like. I don't need a huge library, that actually gives me "choice paralysis" and I end up not watching/listening to anything. I still use Internet based services, for example I might find a new band because someone on Instagram posted about them. Or maybe I listen to an album on streaming before deciding if I'm buying it. Oh and some live music venues have Youtube live streaming (e.g. Smalls jazz club). With movies, of course I might watch a movie trailer or a review on YouTube. Speaking of movies, the situation is different because unlike music, I can't actually find most of my favourites on streaming services. However more often than not, you can rent them online, so I might rent (but never buy!) a movie through Apple, YouTube etc., then if I like it and think I want to watch it again, I will buy a Blu-ray. But I kinda gave up on pure streaming services such as Netflix etc. since their catalogue is so shallow. This obviously doesn't work for everyone, if your way of listening to music is just "Hey Alexa play a smooth jazz playlist while I cook" then of course streaming is the right thing for you. Same if you just like to watch movies casually and you're not a film buff, in that case Netflix & co. are OK.
  - cyberax 1y ago
    I'm buying BluRays and then just ripping them. This also is the only real way to get 3D videos. None of the streaming services support them.
zymhan 1y ago
I always wanted a TiVo, but by the time I could actually afford (and use) one, Hulu was at it's prime.
- gscott 1y ago
  Now Hulu is being shuttered
  - javawizard 1y ago
    It's being folded into Disney Plus. That's a huge difference.
mrcwinn 1y ago
First RealPlayer, now this!
LVB 1y ago
TiVo OTA was great. Our unit eventually croaked, and we've gone full old-school: use the antenna, and what is on is on. Sure, we do have streaming services too, but for specific hours during the day, it's just OTA.
mkhalil 1y ago
I always felt TiVo really did a great job at identifying how important good UX and UI are for consumer products. Partially, the monopolies/cable companies knew/know they were able to get away with poor UI since consumers didn't really have a choice when it came to cable providers/cable boxes so it wasn't hard to beat them, but TiVo did actually do a good job. I felt like they had consumer awareness at one point. Maybe if they went with there own premium streaming service, as oppose to only trying ad-based streaming services (like Pluto) OR continuing to try to make money charging people monthly for a subscription to use a device they first have to purchase.** Instead they kept the old business model and went to more of a business-to-business service oriented offerings. Selling metadata, APIs, TV Guides, Car infotainment, all oddities IMO as most IPTV providers like to use turn key solutions. I actually use the Tivo Stream 4K as my smart device. Works great, gives me 4K, can download Android TV apps, and is cheap $35. Not a fan of ad-based TV (which is the Tivo+ thing, like Pluto, etc...), but I use it mostly for YouTube, Plex, etc. -- *: My Plex server uses my HDHomerun for live tv; TiVo could have been both if it was more open. A TiVo competitor to Plex's Pass + Live TV service could of been there subscription revenue, and a TiVo competitor to HDHomeRun's devices could of replaced their DVR revenue. They could take the Tivo Edge, open it way up (as the HDHomeRun takes cable and give you actual m3u8's; this lets you decide where you view or record TV, and makes the device actually useful for commercial deployments as well (offices, restaurants, dorms, hotels, etc...). Pretty much: add features similar to Plex (i.e. combining my OTA/Cable recordings with my local media) + Plex's Live TV (Tivo already has the richest data and a sleeker guide) and combine the Tivo Edge CableCard and OTA in one device. This would appeal to many users, bring the hardware price down as it's one model, and provide them with both revenue streams like they are used to.
- irjustin 1y ago
  > Maybe if they went with there own premium streaming service If you don't own the content, you get squeezed. Hulu, Spotify all of these guys get nickle-dimed into oblivion. Netflix understood this deeply creating one of the biggest, successful pivots in startup-dom
  - pverheggen 1y ago
moffkalast 1y ago
TIL TiVo is actually a real thing and not just something made up for Tropic Thunder
- Apocryphon 1y ago
  The new Naked Gun mentioned it too
scrps 1y ago
I once had a NAS entirely comprised of salvaged TiVo drives that ran for a surprisingly long time. For some reason around '04 I kept finding them in curb trash walking down the street, a lot were direct tv branded iirc. Never really found out why but also didn't look very hard. Ironically never once actually used a TiVo but still RIP was a cool idea and I got free drives out of it.
- cardiffspaceman 1y ago
  DIRECTV had a box that had integrated satellite tuning and EPG. I don’t know what happened to that service, but my guess is the service ended around the time you found the HDDs available? TiVo had a few experimental features and NBC helped test them. You could press the TiVo button to record the show that was being advertised by a commercial for Friends, if the TiVo logo prompted you.
teekert 1y ago
As a non-American I only know TiVo from the term Tivoization [0]. So the company had its use for me as well I guess. ("Tivoization is the practice of designing hardware that incorporates software under the terms of a copyleft software license like the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL), but uses hardware restrictions or digital rights management (DRM) to prevent users from running modified versions of the software on that hardware." [0]) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization
- pabs3 1y ago
  Interestingly, TiVo didn't do Tivoization, instead they let you run modified GPL software but broke the proprietary software when run on top of modified GPL software. Basically an early form of attestation. https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/mar/25/install-gplv2/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/mar/25/install-gplv2/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jul/23/tivoization-and-the-gpl-right-to-install/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jul/23/tivoization-and-t... https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Safely-Copylefted-Cars-Reexamining-GPLv3-Installation-Information-Requirements-ALS-Bradley-Kuhn-Behan-Webster-1.pdf https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017...
  - amiga386 1y ago
    That's something of a bold assertion repeated as fact. Stallman coined the term "Tivozation". The word was literally created to describe how TiVo acted. Without TiVo doing what TiVo did, and Stallman calling it out, the word would not exist. Stallman then went on to use the neologism to promote the need for a GPLv3 to combat such practises. Bradley Kuhn -- the director of the Software Freedom Conservancy and writer of 2/3 of those links you're linking to -- has a public dispute with Stallman, disagrees about the need for GPLv3, and disagrees about Stallman's characterisation of TiVo's behaviour. But it's disingenuous to claim Stallman's own coinage doesn't mean what he intended it to mean. Edit to add: Stallman is quite correct to call out TiVo's behaviour, even if it's "just" the proprietary software that intentionally breaks itself when you exercise your software freedoms. TiVo's intent is to smack you good and hard if you dare exercise your GPL freedoms even a little bit. They benefitted from GPL'd software that got them to market faster, but you can't benefit by e.g. installing a better kernel, they intentionally brick the functional system. That's not acceptable.
spullara 1y ago
ReplayTV was the TiVo before TiVo and its commercial skip was the best bar-none. I was sad when it basically died and had to get a TiVo which was a good product made by folks I knew but at the end of the day, nothing could beat ReplayTV's skip not even the secret way to turn on 30-sec skip on the TiVo. Kind of crazy how antiquated all this stuff is now.
- timschmidt 1y ago
  I felt similarly about my MythTV setup at the time. It was quite a pain to set up, having to acquire a TV decoder with hardware compression to make reasonable use of disk space without losing frames on the 400mhz boxes of the day. MySQL database, TV programming service subscription, IR remote receiver, etc. But the commercial skipping used a set of a dozen filters for things like black screens, volume changes, logos in the corner, and bayesian analysis to nail every single commercial transition. It was flawless.
- agent86 1y ago
  > even the secret way to turn on 30-sec skip on the TiVo Select-Play-Select-3-0-Select ;-) Also can't forget the ,#401 dialing prefix to enable the device to call home over the Internet using a USB Ethernet adapter instead of the phone in the early days. TiVo's whole approach to commercials in recordings was largely informed by ReplayTV though. ReplayTV took a lot of heat and lawsuits for their automatic commercial skip functionality, which is why TiVo never implemented it and buried 30 second skip behind the code.
seanieb 1y ago
Tablo TV is perfectly positioned to become TiVo’s successor.
breadwinner 1y ago
I am a current TiVo customer, and this is sad news. I use TiVo to record over-the-air TV transmission. TiVo software is great, it is the only usable UI these days. Compare it to Google TV for example. TiVo's UI is mostly text and some images, while Google TV is mostly images and some text which I find unusable.
thom 1y ago
One of the most delightful products I've ever owned. Almost perfect UX (to this day my wife and I refer to fast forwarding as 'bi-bipping' in reference to TiVo's sound effects), and there was a time when coming home to a random episode of Star Trek it had sought out was exciting and felt satisfyingly personal. Now everything is available on demand and all of the temporal problems that TiVo solved don't exist anymore, but it's rare to see a device so well designed in its niche.
- kilroy123 1y ago
  I agree. TiVo was awesome back in the day. I wish they had made a chromecast device earlier on. I think they could have been a much better Roku.
  - twoodfin 1y ago
    Yeah. With the benefit of perfect hindsight, that was probably the best possible strategy. Go end-to-end in the low- and mid-range market, branding increasingly cheap panels with your UX & services. Continue to offer standalone boxes targeted at the “prosumer” who wants a Sony OLED. No idea if TiVo ever had access to the capital to pull this off. Certainly you’d need to eat thin or negative margins on billions in hardware.
yard2010 1y ago
Mandatory naked gun reference: https://youtu.be/ZNU5b-iI8v0 https://youtu.be/ZNU5b-iI8v0
greenbit 1y ago
"Now the company wants users to watch ads before viewing their time-shifted content. TiVo plans to roll out so-called "pre-roll" ads on all recorded content…" Nope. It was nice while it lasted, but just look where it ended up.
KevinMS 1y ago
Best TV remote ever made. The peanut remote. So comfortable and easy to hold. Because of its shape you could tell where you were holding it along its length and it could never slip from your hand. You could even tell if you picked it up backwards because it was heaver in the back from the batteries. I used it for at least 20 years and I'll always miss it.
- ChuckMcM 1y ago
  Agreed it was great ergonomics. It should not be too difficult to replicate with existing offerings. I wonder if anyone has one that could be scanned for replication by 3D printing.
pathartl 1y ago
I seem to be the only one here that didn't have a good experience with TiVo. My parents cut the cord in 2013 and got a Roamio with a couple of the smaller streaming boxes. It was fairly easy to set up, but the UI was slow and not being able to transfer the recordings was a huge pain. Those stream boxes though, God those were terrible. If you had to reboot them it would take at least 20 minutes, if they didn't hang in the process. I had a much better experience integrating a PC with a couple of PCIe Hauppauge tuners running Windows Media Center with a couple of Xbox 360s as streaming devices.
- nobody9999 1y ago
  >and not being able to transfer the recordings was a huge pain. Except you can[0], and I have for decades. [0] https://github.com/lart2150/kmttg https://github.com/lart2150/kmttg

85 points by TMWNN 1y ago

zdw 1y ago

TiVos used to be great and unique, but ever since the core DVR functionality was obvious after the fact and everyone copied the feature, and then streaming came in, there was little unique, especially on the hardware side. For OTA recording, I've used Windows Media Center but it went out of support, and more recently the HDHomerun DVR, which both worked decently.

yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago

An odd progression. What's next? Disney getting out of movies? Google giving up on search? AWS pushing for on-prem? Microsoft shipping quality software?

whalesalad 1y ago
More like Enron or Circuit City announcing they’re closing corporate headquarters.
modeless 1y ago
Netflix stopping DVDs by mail?
- yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
  Yes, actually, very much like that. Good thought, I'd forgotten about that:)
- phire 1y ago
  IBM selling off their PC/laptop arm? Intel exiting the memory business? AMD spinning off their Fabs? Commodore scraping their calculator line?
mdasen 1y ago
In some ways, it's more like Disney getting out of silent movies or Microsoft stopping shipping software on floppy disks - or cell phone makers giving up on dumb phones or Apple discontinuing iPods. The market for DVRs has shifted a lot and while TiVo's system was wonderful, it's hard to get people to pay you a monthly fee for a service that's included for free with your cable package. Companies are often offering networked DVR service with unlimited storage - they record it in their data center and you just stream it later. TiVo really needed to pivot and simply didn't. TiVo should have become another Roku, but they were probably worried about cannibalizing their DVR revenue. They had the operating system and hardware to beat Roku to the market - or even become the primary alternative to Roku for years after Roku had launched. Roku launched in 2008 and TiVo could have followed. FireTV and AndroidTV launched in 2014 so there was a huge window in there for TiVo (and Chromecast was 2013 so that doesn't change things much). TiVo was focused on getting individuals to pay them $X per month for service. Roku figured out that it would be a lot easier to get all the streaming companies to give them a cut rather than getting it from the end users as well as being a platform to serve ads to end users. If TiVo had looked at Roku and said "we can do that even better," they would have had a very different future. TiVo launched a Roku competitor in 2020 based on AndroidTV, but that was way too little and way too late. Back in the late 2000s and early 2010s, TiVo had an absolutely amazing OS. They needed to release a Roku competitor stripped of the DVR bit for the cord-cutting streamers. They needed to pivot their business model toward the service-revenue-cut and ad-revenue model that Roku went after. They needed to see that cable and satellite was a dead-end as those companies would try to cut them out of the loop with their internal DVR products (and even if TiVo were better, most customers wouldn't want to pay extra for it). TiVo should have pivoted 15 years ago and become one of a couple dominant streaming box players. Instead, Amazon and Google followed Roku into the market even though TiVo had 6 years to enter that market and had a polished OS and great reputation at the time. TiVo feels a bit like Nokia. Nokia ignored smartphones long enough that they kinda faded away - and then their effort was too little, too late.
unsnap_biceps 1y ago
> AWS pushing for on-prem? They have! https://aws.amazon.com/outposts/ https://aws.amazon.com/outposts/
adrianmonk 1y ago
AT&T getting out of telegraphs.
- maratc 1y ago
  ... and telephones!
freetime2 1y ago
Nintendo getting out of playing cards.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Nintendo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Nintendo

bfLives 1y ago

> TiVo has stopped selling Edge DVR hardware products,” the company said in an AI-based message. What does this actually mean? An AI-authored press release? A customer support bot message?

weikju 1y ago
It means “please we need some of that sweet AI VC money”
- mort96 1y ago
  The "AI-based message" part was added by mediaplaynews, not TiVo. I, too, wonder what exactly mediaplaynews means by that.

diogenescynic 1y ago

TiVo was one of those clever incremental improvements that comes out and becomes ubiquitous. I remember a friend having it in 2001ish and it was so cool at the time.

add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
Another way of looking at it is that it's becoming not ubiquitous, but extinct. In streaming, an ad-skipping device is too customer friendly to be allowed to exist. Everything the tech industry recreates is more user-hostile and privacy-invading than its pre-existing counterpart. Cable didn't innovate unskippable commercials.
- diogenescynic 1y ago
  There’s a word for this but it escapes me that describes how a lot of modern tech is actually a step back for consumers but it’s more beneficial/profitable.
  - amacbride 1y ago
    Cory Doctorow said it best: "Enshittification" https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2024-04-04-teach-me-how-to-shruggie-kagi-caaa88c221f2 https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2024-04-04...
  - mrguyorama 1y ago
    It's called capitalism. User hostile will always be more profitable. It used to be impossible to be this user hostile. You could not build a VCR that was unable to record the Superbowl. Tech fixed only that. Enshittification is just what capitalism means Preventing capitalism from doing exactly what it wants to do requires regulation and enforcing competition. Competition does not happen naturally. Competition is expensive and low profit and kills businesses, so they try to avoid it. Gas stations next door to each other don't do price wars anymore, because it demonstrably did not improve profits. Sure, you could lower your price slightly and maybe get a few more customers than you do now, but they will just lower their prices and at the end of the day you both end up making less money. So you just don't compete. Instead of lowering your price, you match their price.

bigtunacan 1y ago

I loved TiVo 20 years ago when it was relevant, but honestly I had no idea they were still around

amccollum 1y ago
They're not, at least not really. From Wikipedia: In April 2016, Rovi acquired TiVo for $1.1 billion.[8] In December 2019, it was announced that TiVo would merge with Xperi Corporation. The merger completed in May 2020.[9] Xperi itself also split apart in 2022, so it's effectively 3 companies removed from its original roots. Basically at this point it is only valuable for the vague nostalgia consumers have for the brand.

heavyset_go 1y ago

It's interesting/sad how we've gone from media that allowed for home recording, where it was both possible and legal, to what we have now. You can't even make a backup of the shows and movies you "buy", which just means "license", today.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
smsm42 1y ago
I mean, you can, but not allowed to, legally...
mastazi 1y ago
I've gone back to physical media. Vinyl, CDs, Blu Rays and DVDs. I just buy what I like. I don't need a huge library, that actually gives me "choice paralysis" and I end up not watching/listening to anything. I still use Internet based services, for example I might find a new band because someone on Instagram posted about them. Or maybe I listen to an album on streaming before deciding if I'm buying it. Oh and some live music venues have Youtube live streaming (e.g. Smalls jazz club). With movies, of course I might watch a movie trailer or a review on YouTube. Speaking of movies, the situation is different because unlike music, I can't actually find most of my favourites on streaming services. However more often than not, you can rent them online, so I might rent (but never buy!) a movie through Apple, YouTube etc., then if I like it and think I want to watch it again, I will buy a Blu-ray. But I kinda gave up on pure streaming services such as Netflix etc. since their catalogue is so shallow. This obviously doesn't work for everyone, if your way of listening to music is just "Hey Alexa play a smooth jazz playlist while I cook" then of course streaming is the right thing for you. Same if you just like to watch movies casually and you're not a film buff, in that case Netflix & co. are OK.
- cyberax 1y ago
  I'm buying BluRays and then just ripping them. This also is the only real way to get 3D videos. None of the streaming services support them.

zymhan 1y ago

I always wanted a TiVo, but by the time I could actually afford (and use) one, Hulu was at it's prime.

gscott 1y ago
Now Hulu is being shuttered
- javawizard 1y ago
  It's being folded into Disney Plus. That's a huge difference.

mrcwinn 1y ago

First RealPlayer, now this!

LVB 1y ago

TiVo OTA was great. Our unit eventually croaked, and we've gone full old-school: use the antenna, and what is on is on. Sure, we do have streaming services too, but for specific hours during the day, it's just OTA.

mkhalil 1y ago

I always felt TiVo really did a great job at identifying how important good UX and UI are for consumer products. Partially, the monopolies/cable companies knew/know they were able to get away with poor UI since consumers didn't really have a choice when it came to cable providers/cable boxes so it wasn't hard to beat them, but TiVo did actually do a good job. I felt like they had consumer awareness at one point. Maybe if they went with there own premium streaming service, as oppose to only trying ad-based streaming services (like Pluto) OR continuing to try to make money charging people monthly for a subscription to use a device they first have to purchase.** Instead they kept the old business model and went to more of a business-to-business service oriented offerings. Selling metadata, APIs, TV Guides, Car infotainment, all oddities IMO as most IPTV providers like to use turn key solutions. I actually use the Tivo Stream 4K as my smart device. Works great, gives me 4K, can download Android TV apps, and is cheap $35. Not a fan of ad-based TV (which is the Tivo+ thing, like Pluto, etc...), but I use it mostly for YouTube, Plex, etc. -- *: My Plex server uses my HDHomerun for live tv; TiVo could have been both if it was more open. A TiVo competitor to Plex's Pass + Live TV service could of been there subscription revenue, and a TiVo competitor to HDHomeRun's devices could of replaced their DVR revenue. They could take the Tivo Edge, open it way up (as the HDHomeRun takes cable and give you actual m3u8's; this lets you decide where you view or record TV, and makes the device actually useful for commercial deployments as well (offices, restaurants, dorms, hotels, etc...). Pretty much: add features similar to Plex (i.e. combining my OTA/Cable recordings with my local media) + Plex's Live TV (Tivo already has the richest data and a sleeker guide) and combine the Tivo Edge CableCard and OTA in one device. This would appeal to many users, bring the hardware price down as it's one model, and provide them with both revenue streams like they are used to.

irjustin 1y ago
> Maybe if they went with there own premium streaming service If you don't own the content, you get squeezed. Hulu, Spotify all of these guys get nickle-dimed into oblivion. Netflix understood this deeply creating one of the biggest, successful pivots in startup-dom
- pverheggen 1y ago

moffkalast 1y ago

TIL TiVo is actually a real thing and not just something made up for Tropic Thunder

Apocryphon 1y ago
The new Naked Gun mentioned it too

scrps 1y ago

I once had a NAS entirely comprised of salvaged TiVo drives that ran for a surprisingly long time. For some reason around '04 I kept finding them in curb trash walking down the street, a lot were direct tv branded iirc. Never really found out why but also didn't look very hard. Ironically never once actually used a TiVo but still RIP was a cool idea and I got free drives out of it.

cardiffspaceman 1y ago
DIRECTV had a box that had integrated satellite tuning and EPG. I don’t know what happened to that service, but my guess is the service ended around the time you found the HDDs available? TiVo had a few experimental features and NBC helped test them. You could press the TiVo button to record the show that was being advertised by a commercial for Friends, if the TiVo logo prompted you.

teekert 1y ago

As a non-American I only know TiVo from the term Tivoization [0]. So the company had its use for me as well I guess. ("Tivoization is the practice of designing hardware that incorporates software under the terms of a copyleft software license like the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL), but uses hardware restrictions or digital rights management (DRM) to prevent users from running modified versions of the software on that hardware." [0]) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization

pabs3 1y ago
Interestingly, TiVo didn't do Tivoization, instead they let you run modified GPL software but broke the proprietary software when run on top of modified GPL software. Basically an early form of attestation. https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/mar/25/install-gplv2/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/mar/25/install-gplv2/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jul/23/tivoization-and-the-gpl-right-to-install/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jul/23/tivoization-and-t... https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Safely-Copylefted-Cars-Reexamining-GPLv3-Installation-Information-Requirements-ALS-Bradley-Kuhn-Behan-Webster-1.pdf https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017...
- amiga386 1y ago
  That's something of a bold assertion repeated as fact. Stallman coined the term "Tivozation". The word was literally created to describe how TiVo acted. Without TiVo doing what TiVo did, and Stallman calling it out, the word would not exist. Stallman then went on to use the neologism to promote the need for a GPLv3 to combat such practises. Bradley Kuhn -- the director of the Software Freedom Conservancy and writer of 2/3 of those links you're linking to -- has a public dispute with Stallman, disagrees about the need for GPLv3, and disagrees about Stallman's characterisation of TiVo's behaviour. But it's disingenuous to claim Stallman's own coinage doesn't mean what he intended it to mean. Edit to add: Stallman is quite correct to call out TiVo's behaviour, even if it's "just" the proprietary software that intentionally breaks itself when you exercise your software freedoms. TiVo's intent is to smack you good and hard if you dare exercise your GPL freedoms even a little bit. They benefitted from GPL'd software that got them to market faster, but you can't benefit by e.g. installing a better kernel, they intentionally brick the functional system. That's not acceptable.

spullara 1y ago

ReplayTV was the TiVo before TiVo and its commercial skip was the best bar-none. I was sad when it basically died and had to get a TiVo which was a good product made by folks I knew but at the end of the day, nothing could beat ReplayTV's skip not even the secret way to turn on 30-sec skip on the TiVo. Kind of crazy how antiquated all this stuff is now.

timschmidt 1y ago
I felt similarly about my MythTV setup at the time. It was quite a pain to set up, having to acquire a TV decoder with hardware compression to make reasonable use of disk space without losing frames on the 400mhz boxes of the day. MySQL database, TV programming service subscription, IR remote receiver, etc. But the commercial skipping used a set of a dozen filters for things like black screens, volume changes, logos in the corner, and bayesian analysis to nail every single commercial transition. It was flawless.
agent86 1y ago
> even the secret way to turn on 30-sec skip on the TiVo Select-Play-Select-3-0-Select ;-) Also can't forget the ,#401 dialing prefix to enable the device to call home over the Internet using a USB Ethernet adapter instead of the phone in the early days. TiVo's whole approach to commercials in recordings was largely informed by ReplayTV though. ReplayTV took a lot of heat and lawsuits for their automatic commercial skip functionality, which is why TiVo never implemented it and buried 30 second skip behind the code.

seanieb 1y ago

Tablo TV is perfectly positioned to become TiVo’s successor.

breadwinner 1y ago

I am a current TiVo customer, and this is sad news. I use TiVo to record over-the-air TV transmission. TiVo software is great, it is the only usable UI these days. Compare it to Google TV for example. TiVo's UI is mostly text and some images, while Google TV is mostly images and some text which I find unusable.

thom 1y ago

One of the most delightful products I've ever owned. Almost perfect UX (to this day my wife and I refer to fast forwarding as 'bi-bipping' in reference to TiVo's sound effects), and there was a time when coming home to a random episode of Star Trek it had sought out was exciting and felt satisfyingly personal. Now everything is available on demand and all of the temporal problems that TiVo solved don't exist anymore, but it's rare to see a device so well designed in its niche.

kilroy123 1y ago
I agree. TiVo was awesome back in the day. I wish they had made a chromecast device earlier on. I think they could have been a much better Roku.
- twoodfin 1y ago
  Yeah. With the benefit of perfect hindsight, that was probably the best possible strategy. Go end-to-end in the low- and mid-range market, branding increasingly cheap panels with your UX & services. Continue to offer standalone boxes targeted at the “prosumer” who wants a Sony OLED. No idea if TiVo ever had access to the capital to pull this off. Certainly you’d need to eat thin or negative margins on billions in hardware.

yard2010 1y ago

Mandatory naked gun reference: https://youtu.be/ZNU5b-iI8v0 https://youtu.be/ZNU5b-iI8v0

greenbit 1y ago

"Now the company wants users to watch ads before viewing their time-shifted content. TiVo plans to roll out so-called "pre-roll" ads on all recorded content…" Nope. It was nice while it lasted, but just look where it ended up.

KevinMS 1y ago

Best TV remote ever made. The peanut remote. So comfortable and easy to hold. Because of its shape you could tell where you were holding it along its length and it could never slip from your hand. You could even tell if you picked it up backwards because it was heaver in the back from the batteries. I used it for at least 20 years and I'll always miss it.

ChuckMcM 1y ago
Agreed it was great ergonomics. It should not be too difficult to replicate with existing offerings. I wonder if anyone has one that could be scanned for replication by 3D printing.

pathartl 1y ago

I seem to be the only one here that didn't have a good experience with TiVo. My parents cut the cord in 2013 and got a Roamio with a couple of the smaller streaming boxes. It was fairly easy to set up, but the UI was slow and not being able to transfer the recordings was a huge pain. Those stream boxes though, God those were terrible. If you had to reboot them it would take at least 20 minutes, if they didn't hang in the process. I had a much better experience integrating a PC with a couple of PCIe Hauppauge tuners running Windows Media Center with a couple of Xbox 360s as streaming devices.

nobody9999 1y ago
>and not being able to transfer the recordings was a huge pain. Except you can[0], and I have for decades. [0] https://github.com/lart2150/kmttg https://github.com/lart2150/kmttg