TiVo’s simple magic changed TV forever—now the iconic DVR is fading into history.
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I will never forgive TiVo for opening the door on Linux DRM (“Tivoization”).
As someone who paid $500 USD for the lifetime pass and went through 3 TiVo units over 20 years: So long and thanks for all the ad-free moments.
I abandoned my TiVo in 2021 when I went to update my box that had been in storage for too long. There was no incremental update available, I would have had to send the box to TiVo for them to update it for me.
I connected my Roku that had been in storage even longer and it updated itself without any issues. It took me longer to contact TiVo customer support than it did for my Roku to update itself.
While we loved our TiVo boxes while we had them, and they were ground breaking technology, they stagnated. TiVo never kept up technically.
Bleep bloop bye
Seems like they were always behind on things like that. I had a friend that would come over to my house to update his TiVo because I still had a landline and it required a dial-up connection. This was in 2005, well after the decline of dial-up.
I remember buying a new TiVo in 2008ish and having to download the schedule manually and import it until I was able to hack it to use a wireless adapter.
It reminds of boomers who were part of the computer science world in the 70s and 80s and thinking we still use punch cards and 8" floppies. They were ahead of their peers, but got stuck there.
TiVo was the “VCR code in the TV Guide” for the early digital age.
I had a VCR and remember tv guide. What did these codes do.
Later model VCRs had a thing where they kept a list of shortcuts for time/channel/length. The eight (ten?) digit code, you’d just plug that into the VCR and you didn’t have to program all the details.
It was a standard system for setting up a VCR to record your selected program, because every VCR was different. I believe you connected the VCR to a phone line and it would dial out to get new codes? It was sort of like DNS (really like a distributed HOSTS file), but for media recording instead of websites.
You just unlocked a buried memory of the VCR with the barcode-reader-in-the-remote method of setting record-times.
They out here trying everything in the 90s.
NV-F65 and NV-FS88
Cool thanks!
🫡
I never had one, I always thought the subscription fee was a ripoff. High speed internet and bittorrent pretty much eliminated the need for one anyways.
End of a legend. They were my first digital converter box when antenna TV converted in the mid 2000s. Worked for 10+ years with 0 issues
If you like to tinker some of those set top boxes are just right for gutting and replacing with a roll your own DVR. You don’t even need to change remotes.
