Written by James Fohl

When the popular television recording service known as Tivo was originally released in the year 1997, it met a lot of popularity a few years down the line due to the fact that it was a new technology and had no direct competitor. I mean, you could record your programs onto a VHS tape with your VCR, but you still had to program your VCR, and we all know how hard it is to program a VCR. Not only that, but the Tivo software allows you to pause live television, and even records programs that it thinks you might enjoy.

Even though the Tivo units were expensive, and they carried along with them a monthly charge, the device had a lot of people interested in it, mainly because of the fact that Tivo really had no direct competition.

Then a few years ago, cable companies, as well as satellite television companies started giving users free PVR units. PVR stands for personal video recorder, and pretty much did everything that Tivo did, but much cheaper. With the new competition of PVR (personal video recorders) and DVD recorders, Business started crumbling, and Tivo removed the device from the United Kingdom in 2002. From 2002 on, Tivo saw itself go from having a large fan base to a much smaller fan base.

Then in 2005, almost near the brink of defeat, Tivo decided that it was time to get back in to the market and make itself a popular brand again. The first thing Tivo did was the company made deals with several cable television providers such as Comcast, in which the cable companies would use the Tivo hardware instead of some other brand of personal video recorder.

With this, Tivo made a lot of new customers, but they still needed to appeal to users of other personal video recorders. Therefore, Tivo started releasing a bunch of new features on their service. The biggest of which was the ability to put recorded material on a DVD, or transfer the video directly to your laptop computer. Another great feature Tivo put into their service was the ability to log onto the Tivo website from anywhere in the world, and tell your specific Tivo unit what to record.

The list of new features, and the long list of new customers helped out, but Tivo wanted more market share. Therefore, as component prices dropped, Tivo started manufacturing new Tivo units for much less than what they used to cost. Instead of paying several hundred dollars for a Tivo unit, an interested customer can now purchase one for a mere fifty dollars, after a mail in rebate, and a commitment to one year of service.

So, Tivo a company that flourished in the late nineteen nineties and almost went belly up in the early part of this decade is back with more features, better pricing, and with the main intent of getting its market share back. If you have yet to ever hear of these wonderful things, and Tivo keeps going with its business strategies, then chances are you will be hearing about Tivo, and you might even be getting a Tivo soon enough.