TiVo’s simple magic changed TV forever—now the iconic DVR is fading into history.

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    16 hours ago

    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.