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TiVo Rides Into the Sunset
TiVo’s simple magic changed TV forever — now the iconic DVR is fading into history.
After 26 years and countless designs, TiVo announced it is ceasing the manufacturing of its iconic DVRs. It’s one of those announcements that is hard to believe at first, given the immeasurable impact TiVo had on the TV industry and the general public.
TiVo didn’t invent the DVR, but it perfected it with a dead-simple design both with its software and remote control. TiVo was technology for everyone and took complex ideas and made them so simple to use. Back in the early 2000’s, there wasn’t a way to simply record shows on TV outside of a VCR. TiVo’s rise because of its simplicity changed all that. You searched for your desired program instead of endlessly scrolling through a TV guide. Once you found your show, you set it to record. The genius was you could also create a “season pass” that recorded every airing (just new episodes or reruns too) regardless of timeslot, channel, or anything else. Ideas like this were game-changing. You didn’t need to know what time or channel, or day your show was on. TiVo had your back.
Another innovation was the “wish list” that let you create searches and automatically recorded items that matched that criteria. This was very handy for me because I’d want to record anything…
