Current and former TiVo insiders on how the first DVR came to be, going up against cable companies, how IP licensing has kept the company relevant, and more
‘They Thought It Was Black Magic’: An Oral History of TiVo — How the original DVR paved the way for Netflix and the cord-cutter movement Tweets: @film_girl , @medium , @medium , @markbrokeit , and @harrymccracken Tweets: Christina Warren / @film_girl : I still contend that nothing — not even X1 — comes close to what TiVo was doing 15 years ago. Consider, I had networked TiVos in my college apartment that recorded and streamed content to one another. In 2004. http://onezero.medium.com/... @medium : “You should never have to stay home to watch Friends.” An oral history of TiVo, 20 years after it upended how we watch TV and heralded the age of streaming. http://read.medium.com/WEp2N3h @medium : On @TiVo's 20th anniversary, its creators discuss how they came up with the original DVR, the first show ever recorded, and how the company became a verb and a household name http://read.medium.com/WbfhQRl @markbrokeit : Great history of Tivo here. Definitely one of my all time favorite devices. Kids today have no idea how much of a struggle the VCR was. http://twitter.com/... Harry McCracken / @harrymccracken : In some alternate universe, it was TiVo, not Netflix, that radically reinvented itself into an epoch-shifting aggregator and creator of content. (Also: It's Replay TV, not TiVo, that I will look back on as having changed my entertainment-consuming life.) http://onezero.medium.com/...