Word: tivos
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...devil?" That was the opening zinger posed to panelist Mike Ramsay, CEO of TiVo, as he appeared before a group of TV-ad executives last September. It was the question everyone wanted answered. TiVo's personal video recorders (PVRs) let users download their favorite shows and zip past commercials--and traditional marketers are running scared. By 2007, half of all American TV viewers will own PVRs--and 20% intend to skip...
...even if TiVo has been devilishly effective at giving viewers what they want--or eliminating what they don't--the firm has gone through tough times. Last year Ramsay, 53, radically changed the business model to address new market realities. "We built this company when capital was virtually free," recalls board member Randy Komisar. With less money to spend on marketing, Ramsay helped TiVo refocus its strategy on reaching profitability faster while closely managing growth. TiVo broke even in January and is now near profitability...
...With TiVo, the hacking process is simpler than you might think. This is because TiVo is not so much a stereo component as a computer that runs on the free operating system called Linux. It uses IDE hard drives that you can purchase at any computer store for about a dollar per gigabyte. You need to hook up the hard drive to your PC or Mac, install a free piece of software called BlessTivo, open the TiVo box and attach its new brain. (Reverse the process, and you can make a backup of precious TV recordings on your computer.) Most...
...this sounds too perplexing, you can take the easy way out. The drives at WeaKnees.com--although pricey at $159 for 80 gigabytes, all the way up to $449 for 320 gigabytes--come with the software installed, all the equipment you'll need to wrench open your TiVo, and blessedly lucid instructions. I took longer than the estimated half an hour to finish the job but only because I have a hard time remembering which way you turn a screw to loosen it (lefty-loosey, righty-tighty, just in case you're wondering). If you're similarly home-improvement challenged, WeaKnees...
Result: my TiVo can now record 80 hours of TV at the best-quality rate or 145 hours at the lowest quality. That isn't anything like the limit--you can get up to 344 hours on the 320-gigabyte drive--but it's enough to record every single West Wing ever broadcast. And maybe I'll have space left for a nice long Russian movie...