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The Sad History and (Possibly) Bright Future of TiVo
gjt writes "For the couch-potato geek, one name typically comes to mind: TiVo — the company that invented the DVR, and with it, timeshifting. TiVo has been around for more than 10 years now. And TiVo fans (like myself) tend to love TiVo. Yet, despite being well-loved and despite having been around longer than the Apple iPod, TiVo comes nowhere close to the iPod/iPhone's success. Apple sells more iPod and iPhone products in a single quarter than TiVo has sold in the entire lifetime of the company. At its peak, TiVo had only 4.4 million active users — that was over three years ago. Now TiVo the number is about 2.7 million. So I wanted to find out why TiVo hasn't been more successful — especially with a seeming lack of competition on store shelves. I did some research and posted my finding about TiVo's past, present, and future. The key takeaway seems to be that TiVo is a victim of cable industry collusion, loopholes in FCC regulations, and, of course, plenty of their own mistakes."
I never bought one because of the monthly fee. I would buy one immediately if there was no monthly fee. I assume there is still a monthly fee, correct?
There is absolutely no reason to have a monthly fee on this piece of hardware. I understand there is a minor "service" they provide in getting schedules and being able to set up recording through an internet page, but in no way does that constitute the size of the monthly fee I remember seeing.
Also, I believe the device stopped working after you stopped paying the monthly fee. What? Why can't it work like an old-school VCR at that point where you have to manually program when it should record?
Please correct me if my history is off, or things have changed. I'd take a serious look at a TiVo if things are now different.
Yet, despite being well-loved and despite having been around longer than the Apple iPod, TiVo comes nowhere close to the iPod/iPhone's success. Apple sells more iPod and iPhone products in a single quarter than TiVo has sold in the entire lifetime of the company.
Why are you even comparing TiVo to the iPod. Why should it come close to the iPod/iPhone's success? They aren't competing products...Are you saying that a product is only successful if it sells the same number of units as an iPod or is as popular as an iPhone?