By Ian Hollidae, 2025/10/05

I remember getting a TiVo back in the mid aughts while looking into buying satellite TV service. DirectTV offered a TiVo package and a friend, who already had the service, let me play around with his. I was fairly impressed so I decided to give it a try. That for me was the start of my “digital TV” journey. So the news that TiVo is exiting the DVR business has a mildly sad and nostalgic feeling.

But the end was inevitable long before this announcement.

A few years after my purchase, the iPhone was released and the concept of streaming to all devices took off. TiVo never made the necessary adjustments, which was unfortunate, because so many changes could have been made at that point in time. The whole streaming field was still wide open and the market hadn't been overrun with service and hardware choices. I always thought a TiVo/Blockbuster pairing would have done well.

Nowadays, DVR is just a minor feature in the streaming/TV landscape. But I still have to wonder what-if.

Tags: Streaming