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Friday, March 19, 2004

TiVo inspires Apple users' cult-like feelings

The people who get it, can't live without it. But others don't seem to care. We bought TiVo last year but then returned it soon after because the picture quality on our plasma degraded even further when we added TiVo to the mix. Maybe once HDTV is available on all channels and TiVo has had a chance to further evolve its service? Or maybe once Comcast releases its TiVo-like services this Spring. And getting a refund for the monthly service from TiVo was a nightmare at first. According to this New York Times story (registration required):

While the recorders are also available from ReplayTV, Dish Network and some cable providers, it is the TiVo name that has become synonymous with the technology. TiVo has been paid perhaps the ultimate consumer compliment: it has become a verb. As in, "Did you TiVo the Oscar show? I missed it," or "I've TiVoed every episode of 'The Avengers' ever made."

Owners of digital video recorders are still a relatively small niche. Adi Kishore of the Yankee Group, a research firm, estimates that there are fewer than 3.5 million of the devices in the United States, scattered among about 108 million households with televisions. (That figure does not include a relatively small number of consumers who with special hardware and software have turned their PC's into video recorders.)

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