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The Sad History and (Possibly) Bright Future of TiVo

Posted by timothy on from the better-to-be-verbed-than-knighted dept.

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."

31 of 490 comments (clear)

  1. TiVo invented timeshifting? by lambent · · Score: 5, Insightful

    perhaps this is a quibbling point, but TiVo didn't invent timeshifting. the invention of the VCR was responsible for that. one should learn about history a bit more before attempting to romanticize it unnecessarily.

    1. Re:TiVo invented timeshifting? by daveime · · Score: 5, Funny

      I'll have you know my mother invented timeshifting way before the VCR was even thought of. Every TIME a commercial came on the TV she would SHIFT herself into the kitchen and make a cuppa.

    2. Re:TiVo invented timeshifting? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Oh yeah! Well, my mother invented the creation of time by turning off the TV and demanding that we don't watch so much of that shit.

      Now, only if she we're here to keep me off of internet discussion sites. I'd have all that time back.

    3. Re:TiVo invented timeshifting? by IBBoard · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Surely that depends on what type of "time shifting" you mean. If you're talking about "recording to watch later" then VCRs do it, but "live TV pausing" time-shifts are presumably new to newer technology like the TiVo.

    4. Re:TiVo invented timeshifting? by Robin+newberry · · Score: 4, Informative

      Actually, my Dad says that in the Days before TV they'd often set up a Reel-to-Reel tape recorder to record a radio show they'd otherwise miss, and then listen to it later. So "time shifting" is at least as old as reel-to-reel...

    5. Re:TiVo invented timeshifting? by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 3, Funny

      My mom is The Doctor's mother. So she gave birth to time, sorta.

      And she's a time traveler.

      And she's bigger than your Dad and can beat him up.

      So There.

    6. Re:TiVo invented timeshifting? by j00r0m4nc3r · · Score: 3, Interesting

      one should learn about history

      History doesn't begin at the VCR, and I think your definition of timershifter is off. I would argue that if you're going to consider a VCR a timeshifter, then you should also consider the phonograph and the human memory cortex timeshifters as well. I'm pretty sure that "recording device" is not the same thing as "timeshifter". A timeshifter allows you to view a stream of data at a point in time other than what it is also simultaneously chronicling. View and Chronicle are separate timelines. This is impossible with a VCR. It could probably be achieved with a complicated array of VCRs, but that invention does not exist.

    7. Re:TiVo invented timeshifting? by commodore64_love · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah time-shifting is nothing new. It has existed ever since the Sony Umatic VCR released circa 1969. That VCR was too expensive, so Sony went back and created the Betamax (anc JVC copied it to create VHS) in 1975. DVR is not even the first digital recording method - that was miniDV and Digital VHS in the early 1990s. ----- People have been time-shifting for decades. All the DVR did was replace the magnetic tape storage with magnetic disk storage. Nothing revolutionary... it was an evolutionary change.

      As for why Tivo is not more popular? Because there are tons of other options. I have a Panasonic ReplayTV that has no subscription fees whatsoever. Ditto my Dish DTVpal which cost $250 flat and no subscription fees. It seemed a no-brainer to buy these DVRs rather than buy a Tivo with a monthly rental.

      Perhaps if Tivo eliminated the monthly fee, then they'd takeoff like iPod, but most people simply don't see the need to throw-away money like that. They have to budget their spending, which means they choose options without the fees (like I did).

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
    8. Re:TiVo invented timeshifting? by Stele · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Perhaps if Tivo eliminated the monthly fee, then they'd takeoff like iPod, but most people simply don't see the need to throw-away money like that. They have to budget their spending, which means they choose options without the fees (like I did).

      Yet people have no problems spending $80+/month so they can text and check sports scores on their phones, when 15 years ago nobody ever wanted, let alone needed to do those things.

      I always thought the monthly Tivo fee was a bargain. It SAVED me tons of time, automatically recording my favorite shows, even if the time slot changed. Knowing that I could go away for a few days, come home, turn on the TV, and have my shows were there waiting for me is worth a lot more to me than being able to stay connected 24/7.

    9. Re:TiVo invented timeshifting? by Fareq · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The service that they are providing is agreeing not to send the command that will brick your device so long as you keep paying.

      That's why I will never buy one.

  2. Simple reason by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Tivo: $250 up-front + $7 / mo CableCard rental + $15 / mo Tivo Subscription fee
    vs.
    Cable: $15 / mo for something that works for most people.

    (...and if your Tivo breaks, you get to buy another one.)

    1. Re:Simple reason by Enry · · Score: 3, Informative

      With Comcast, the CableCard was free, and I'm paying $4.95 for my CC with FIOS. As for the monthly fees, they're about $8/mo if you pre pay for 3 years. In addition, there's built in access to Netflix, Amazon, Youtube, etc.

      As for the Cable-provided set top boxes, yuck. None have the flexibility of what the Tivo can do, including the ability to transfer some shows to your PC. Not much access to anything outside what the Cable provider decides you should have, which is usually the on demand stuff and..uhm..that's it.

      My Tivo HD is almost 3 years old and it's working well so far (well enough I'm considering upgrading the internal disk). I'm looking forward to the next box to see what its capabilities are.

    2. Re:Simple reason by Anonymous+Struct · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The cost is the primary reason I don't have a Tivo anymore. When we bumped up to HD, the HD Tivo was something like $800, so we just went with TWC's DVR. I'm on the verge of going back to Tivo, though, because the box from TW is probably about the most useless pile of electronics you can possibly assemble and still legally refer to as a DVR. It sometimes just fails to record, and probably 4 out of 5 times, fast-forwarding or rewinding will desync the audio. Tivo was expensive, but it never had rookie problems like that.

    3. Re:Simple reason by DougWebb · · Score: 3, Informative

      As for the Cable-provided set top boxes, yuck. None have the flexibility of what the Tivo can do, including the ability to transfer some shows to your PC. Not much access to anything outside what the Cable provider decides you should have, which is usually the on demand stuff and..uhm..that's it.

      I've got one more, which was the final straw for me before I switched to TiVo: the Comcast-provided box had such poor quality Comcast-provided software that it crashed all of the time, wiping out both my existing recordings and all of my schedules. A DVR is really not worth very much if it can only be reliably used to pause live TV.

  3. Cost and portability by Slippery+Pete · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For me, I never got a Tivo because of the cost. You need to purchase the equipment and then pay a monthly fee. I believe it is $12.95/month now. I already pay $80/month for cable and Internet access, $50/month for phone, add on heat, electricity and rent and I'm already down a paycheck. I have a DVR at home built with leftover parts and a $40 tuner card that works just fine. I can also move those files between my laptop and any other computer, so I can take my recorded shows anywhere.

  4. Monthly Fee by JD-1027 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  5. Lousy marketing? by petes_PoV · · Score: 3, Interesting
    The world of gadgets is full of technically superior products that failed. Tivo's just another example. Some had a good idea and bad implementation. Others had poor reliability or couldn't deliver product to the customer. From where I see it, Tivo's just another DVR (though to be fair, I've never actually seen a tivo in the flesh - maybe that says' something about their reach outside the world of geeky-dom) and has to complete with all the new products that are better / faster / cheaper / prettier.

    File away with 8-track, betamax and video disks

    --
    politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
    1. Re:Lousy marketing? by SQLGuru · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I had DirecTiVo for a while (DirecTV and TiVo had a joint product) and now I have Dish Network's product. Comparing the two, TiVo is really the much better DVR software. They have features that the others don't (and can't until patents expire in probably 10 more years). One of the ones that I miss is the Suggestions (aka keep my harddrive full) that will record shows during "down" time that match types and styles of shows you already record -- it's great when your normal shows aren't recording because of special events like The Winter Olympics. I never had an issue with shows recording multiple times (only record new, but the satellite picks up locals and shows them on 3 feeds [HD, local channel number, and 8000 channel number] so the DVR records the new episode on all three feeds because it's my highest ranked show). The TiVo interface is easier and better with groupings of shows into folders instead of just a list of everything recorded. All-in-all, the TiVo *IS* the best DVR available.

      Other than DirecTiVo, there hasn't really been a single device that allowed you to have satellite and TiVo at the same time. Sure, the newer TiVo's have cablecard support, but it's not easy to get cablecards. The TiVo trying to operate the other box isn't the greatest solution either. Especially when your DVR is capable of recording multiple feeds (mine will record two satellite feeds plus OTA digital). The early TiVo's with analog cable were an easy implementation, but now that cable has gone digital, it's harder to have a TiVo.....but you wind up paying extra for the priviledge and in today's economy, the DVR from the provider is "good enough" that the TiVo becomes and expense that you live without. It's better, but is it "better enough" to justify the extra expense?

    2. Re:Lousy marketing? by Binestar · · Score: 4, Informative

      I'm not sure there is any DVR that is better than a Tivo. I say this as someone who has used MythTV, Tivo, and 3 different cable company's DVRs. When it comes right down to it, anyone can use Tivo. The cable company DVR's are not smart enough, MythTV (admittedly a long ass time ago) was hard to use and difficult to setup.

      As for faster, a Series 2 Tivo that is upgraded and starts to have a lot of things on the drive can be a bit slot responding to the remote. This is no longer true with my series 3 HD XL. The speed is great no matter if the drive has 300 items recorded.

      Cheaper: yes and no. the $700 price tag I paid for my upgrade ($900 for someone without a previous Tivo to get a discount) is the top of the line Tivo with lifetime service. My last Tivo was $300 and $250 for the lifetime subscription (Yes, I got it that long ago). It is still going strong at my brothers house (I sold it to him for $200 to help me pay for my new Tivo). Even ignoring the $200 I got from selling it, I got it August of 2002. 90 months divided by $550 = $6/month. Well under the Cable company price for a DVR. I did upgrade the hard drive in the Tivo with 2 160GB drives part way through it's life. Both were taken out of service from PC upgrades, but figure an average hard drive price of $100 that gets you up to $750, or $8.33/month. I unfortunately do not know how they fare against each other in power usage, so I honestly can't add in the possible differences between those.

      In order for my new $700 Tivo to be more economical than the cable company offering (And assuming I will be tossing a 2GB external drive on it to expand it Figure $100 for the drive, $30 for the enclosure I already have that I plan on using and that makes it $830. 55 months to be same price as the cable DVR. Just over 4 and a half years.

      It is a gamble that it will last that long, but if I win that gamble it is just savings at that point.

      As for looks, I've not seen a DVR interface that is prettier than Tivo. Would love for someone to show me. It really *IS* as good as Tivo fans make it out to be.

      --
      Do you Gentoo!?
  6. Yes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Surely that depends on what type of "time shifting" you mean. If you're talking about "recording to watch later"

    Yup. That's what time-shifting has meant since the term was coined.

    In the '70s.

    With the introduction of the VCR.

  7. Why compare it to the iPod? by ThisIsAnonymous · · Score: 5, Interesting
    What?

    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?

  8. It's hard to see how TiVo could really survive. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The trouble is that, as a basic technical task, doing what a Tivo does isn't rocket surgery(particularly now that more broadcasts and cable transmissions are already being transmitted in a nice compressed digital format, and computing power gets ever cheaper. Tivo still wins over the competition in terms of having a UI and attention to quality that isn't utter crap, unlike most of the cable-bundled boxes; but, because of the technical workings of cable, that doesn't really help them enough.

    With computers, there is room for the "more expensive but better user experience/interface" option, because all a computer has to do to interact with the internet is speak a few common networking protocols. Even if your ISP has never heard of mac or linux or whatever, that just means that their phone drones won't help you configure.

    With cable, the cable companies rule with an iron fist, and have (largely successfully) resisted any efforts to change that. Cablecard is a clusterfuck. One can only assume that it was intended to fail(or, at least, those who wanted it to fail assigned it a task so difficult that no good faith implementation could possibly work properly). This gives first-party boxes a huge advantage over Tivos in all but cases of serious enthusiasts.

  9. HD TiVo review... by Michael+Kristopeit · · Score: 3, Interesting

    i have the HD tivo, and i move every 4 months... getting the cablecard from the cable company and getting it installed is always a GIANT headache, usually having to deal with comcast customer service that pretends they have never heard of a tivo or cablecard...BUT, after it's set up and working.... nothing beats it. dual HD tuners, that can record while you are downloading web content simultaneously, with high quality netflix streaming, a giant hard drive with eSATA to seamlessly attach any 3rd party hard drive for additional storage... it's a dream and 100% wife approved, but if she had to figure it all out and convince comcast that she really did know what she was talking about, she would never get it set up. it is most certainly a cable company conspiracy. i enjoy my chats with all the cable installer guys as i ask them to justify the cablecard which is just a glorified hardware password... eventually i can get them all to admit that it's just about renting you another piece of hardware. i'm always charged a monthly fee to rent my multistream cablecard... without the cablecard the digital service has no value, and subscribers can not use their own cablecards, so i don't understand how it's legal to sell the service and require the hardware rental as a separate fee... also, the channel lineups available are a giant mess requiring much effort to remove duplicates... can't really fault tivo for that... more conspiracy. i'm just wondering if the set top boxes distributed by comcast also contain 5 copies of most network channels.

  10. Unlike the TiVo, my PVR doesn't spy on me... by Telephone+Sanitizer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    My LiteOn PVR has a simple timer for recording like a VCR.

    It has user-replaceable parts.

    It doesn't require a paid subscription.

    LiteOn doesn't sell records of my viewing habits.

    It hasn't got a partition allocated for ads.

    It doesn't display ad-banners when I pause or fast forward.

    It has editing features.

    It has a built-in DVD burner.

    Yeah, TiVo offers a few neat features, but I'd have to give up a lot of utility and a great deal of privacy to get them. F-k that. My next PVR will be a computer with a Hauppauge tuner.

  11. Never Mind That; "Tivo Geek" ?? by RobotRunAmok · · Score: 4, Funny

    How's that stack up against being a "Toaster Oven Geek"? Or "iPhone Geek"? Or "Honda Civic Geek"? Hell, I'm hungry, I think I'm going to go be a Peanut-Butter-and-Jelly-on-White-Bread-Geek.

    1. Re:Never Mind That; "Tivo Geek" ?? by slim · · Score: 3, Informative

      To be fair, there's quite a TiVo hacking community. I think these people qualify as TiVo geeks:
        - Whoever worked out how to fit an Ethernet card in a Series 1 TiVo
        - Whoever worked out which bytes to poke in the encoder chip driver to enable it to record in the undocumented higher res Mode 0, without the distracting offset.
        - The authors of TiVoWeb - an open source web interface to TiVo scheduling etc.
        - The creators of the cachecard - an ethernet card with some on-board RAM, plus drivers which cause the TiVo to cache its program DB on there, for speed.

  12. Confessions of a former TIvo owner by elrous0 · · Score: 3, Informative

    I used to have a Tivo. I had two in fact, including my personal favorite DVR of all-time, the Humax Tivo (to my knowledge, the only stand-alone DVR to date that allows you to burn your recordings to DVD). Tivo had great features, one-of-a-kind abilities (like the aforementioned burning to DVD option), and the best user interface in the DVR business. There were some downsides (a lousy 30 minute recording queue, sluggish menu performance on some of the models, etc.). But for the most part it was *the* superior DVR.

    So why did I give it up? Two reasons: digital cable and HD. Tivo lagged way behind my cableco's native DVR on implementing both. Cablecards took a while to come out, and were buggy and a pain in the ass to install. Their HD models were expensive and, again, lagged behind my cableco. And when my cableco went to Switched Digital Video (SDV) even the cablecard stopped working for many of the newer HD channels. It just got tiring having to constantly wrestle with my cableco over my rogue DVR. It was a lot easier for me to just pay the $9 a month and get the cableco's native DVR (which is actually pretty good, though certainly no Tivo). That's probably what the cableco intended all along, I'm sure--but I'm not going to spend a fortune and put up with missing channels just to tell them to go to hell.

    Tivo's collapse as DVR leader can basically be traced to one thing: their failure to license their technology to or reach an agreement with the cable companies. Without the official support of the Time-Warners and Comcasts of the world, they've essentially condemned themselves to forever being the outsider in the digital TV world. So they will always lag behind with kludgy solutions like buggy cablecards and hit-or-miss SDV adapters (don't get me started on those things). And, even for a pretty dedicated videophile and TV addict like myself, the native cableco DVR is just too tempting an alternative.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
  13. Re:No Tivo for me by itsdapead · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I love MythTV but, lets be honest, setting it up was a week's worth of intensive nerding...

    While its quite friendly in day-to-day use and has really cool features (e.g. MythWeb, multiple front ends...) it all goes a bit pear shaped when it comes to configuration.

    Tuning, in particular is a major hassle (thats in the UK with digital terrestrial - your mileage may vary). Partly, of course, that's because it supports so many standards and hardware alternatives.

    --
    In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
  14. Monthly Fee + Corporate Farkwads by LordKazan · · Score: 4, Informative

    listings for mythTv from SchedulesDirect: $20 PER YEAR
    listings for Tivo: $16 PER MONTH.

    No reason for guide data for tivo to cost so frakking much. And then there is the idea they think that if you hack your box - YOUR BOX, you bought it - to get listings somewhere else that you are stealing service from them.

    No, getting listings from them without paying would be theft of services. Getting your listings from somewhere else is not.

    TiVo is run by a bunch of corporate farkwads.

    --
    If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
  15. Some corrections on Tivo vs Cable and DVRs by doug141 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Tivo's monthly fee of about $10 is NOT saved by re-purposing an old computer into a DVR, because the old computer eats almost that much power every month (assuming 40 watts for a tivo and 200 watts for a computer, running 24/7).

    Some people are saying "vs $15 for cable" and confusing people... they may mean $15 per month for a cable company DVR. OR, depending on context, they may also mean BASIC cable, which is sometimes given a different name by the cable company so the cable company can name their $50/month package "Basic," and thus sell it to callers who assume "Basic" means "cheapest." Cable companies are regulated and have to offer a service (they don't have to call it "basic") that is just the broadcast stations and local access for a regulated rate, about $15.

  16. Re:Because its premise is flawed by slim · · Score: 3, Interesting

    TiVo, in my humble opinion, is based on a fairly flimsy premise: that television is so important to watch that you are willing to spend time and money to make sure you get to watch all of some part of it. Really? Seriously, what is on television that you couldn't miss?

    My answer to that it doesn't so much let you watch *more* TV, as improve the quality of what you do watch. Say I watch an hour of TV every day. I can use that time to watch whatever happens to be on, or I can use time shifting to watch something good.

    At the quality end of the TV drama spectrum, you're really missing out if you don't watch all the episodes, in the right order. There's no way I'd want to see The Wire or Lost out of order.