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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."

15 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 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
    6. 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.

  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.)

  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. 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?

  6. 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.

  7. 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!?
  8. 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.

  9. 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.

    --
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