The boys of Engadget put together a great column on all that Tivo has hasn’t accomplished. If you own a Tivo you will find yourself not only nodding but laughing with thier assessment of the situation:
We’ll be totally honest here: we love TiVo. TiVo DVRs of every vintage are scattered throughout the Engadget editorial ranks, and Series3 units are our preferred hardware for HD Netflix streaming and Amazon’s nascent HD Video on Demand service. And, well, using a TiVo is just fun in a way that no other DVR ever is — those booping noises still provoke smiles all around.
But here’s the thing: it’s been ten years since TiVo first introduced the Philips-built HDR110 at NAB, and while the company’s name has since become synonymous with time-shifted digital video recording, it’s not because its products have achieved runaway success. In fact, it’s the exact opposite: most consumers choose to get by with awful cable- or satellite-company DVRs, and TiVo’s only just barely pulled a full year of profitability, two factors that have kept it firmly on deathwatch since 2005. Not only that, but while TiVo might have pushed the DVR into the mainstream, it hasn’t meaningfully innovated since — apart from HD output and the aforementioned streaming services, you’d be hard-pressed to tell a brand-new TiVo HD from an original unit by using it for five minutes…