Word: tivo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
With the possible exception of the electric nose- and ear-hair clippers, there is no device in my gadget-heavy house more consistently and surprisingly good at its job than the TiVo box. As you really should know by now, TiVo is the personal video recorder (PVR) that learns the kind of shows you like, saves them on its internal hard drive, zips through commercials and pauses live...
...many ways, TiVo is kind of an uber computer. It's supremely high-tech, built on the ultra-stable Linux operating system, the genius of which is you never notice it's there. The box is doing things the Internet revolution has so far failed to manage, like distributing independent movie shorts submitted to websites on a screen larger than a postage stamp (after signing a deal last week with Atom Films whereby TiVo customers will get Atom's stuff for free...
...weeks ago, San Jose-based TiVo Inc. won the patent for Personal Video Recording. Wall Street approved and the stock shot up 72% in a day. That might have been because TiVo could now theoretically ask Microsoft, owners of Ultimate TV, and Philips, owners of Replay TV, to take out licenses. Or it may just be because the system was formally described in the patent as "multimedia timewarping." C'mon, how cool is that...
...Unabashed TiVo evangelism aside, it is a source of constant surprise to me that the company is not actually doing as well as the press releases suggest. Less than 400,000 units have been sold over the last four years. It's a nice figure, but nowhere near the amount projected or the amount needed to crack the 21 million-unit cable-box market, which is prime TiVo territory...
...even the networks' new role isn't guaranteed forever. Already, viewers who use digital recorders like TiVo can record programs and choose from a list of suggestions supplied by their recorders, all without knowing what network a show airs on. Granted, today these are fledgling gizmos used by a handful of technophiles. But in the future, this technology may be standard in your cable box - and the software on it could be so sophisticatedly attuned to your tastes that you will watch not ABC but your smart box's own custom-made grouping of shows: say, the 32-Year...