I opted to put this in TV Talk as opposed to Hardware, because no one reads that forum and two, this was probably for many of you how you got into watching so much television.

Too bad. They were excellent, while we had them.

Our cable company switched to IPTV boxes, and they're absolutely shit, compared to TiVo. At least in their particular implementation.

My brother had one of these around 1999 and I figured flying cars were next.

I had a TIVO when I first got DirecTV about 20 something years ago.

Yes, I still have DirecTV and still use a DVR. But, I recall that DirecTV eventually severed ties with TIVO. It was much more user-friendly than the DirecTV DVRs. However, they had very limited hard drive. I recall during the peak of TV watching, before streaming took off and made things completely out of control, I would literally run out of space after 2 weeks of records if I didn't watch my stuff fast enough.

Now with streaming, VOD, SVOD, there seems to be much less pressure to "keep up" and people are just like "Meh, I'll get to it someday" and you end up hundreds of hours and years behind.

These should’ve come out at least 15 years before they did. When they did come out, most of TV was unwatchable and I had no use for one. Nowadays if I wanted to record TV, I would at least want some way to save it to a permanent format rather than take up space on a built in hard drive. (In the late 80s when my family had 2 VCRs, we had a T-160 for each of them meant only for taping over. Something we were going to record while out, watch and then tape over went on those tapes, stuff we knew we wanted to keep went on others. If we ended up wanting to keep something on the reusable tapes, we copied them over. I saved some of the more interesting commercials that way which I spared from the fast-forward button.)

Here’s a DVD you could get for free from them, trying to sell you one- Still not TV MY way:

So sad. Their interface is still superior to any other I've found from a cable company. I started with the Directv version as well and still use them in my home today. I bought a few with lifetime subscriptions in the past year or so off Facebook Market because I knew this would happen eventually.

Hopefully someone buys their user interface and implements it. They will get my dollars at that point. Until then the units I bought should last another 10 years or so.

That's why you upgraded the drives yourself (or went through a company like WeakKnees). Absolutely loved my tivo, but other options that replaced it were "good enough" I guess even if all had flaws. Heck my spectrum DVR still lacks features I miss from my original Tivo.

TV was the shit during its time. RIP legend.

TiVo was the first time I introduced a piece of technology that my wife actually appreciated having (instead of the kludged-together projects I had brought into the house before that). I held on as long as I could - it got us close to a commercial-free, on-demand utopia.

RIP, little soldier. You did well.

RIP, old friend, I'll always remember your "bloop, bloop" sound in my head.

When I "cut the cord" several years ago, I bought a TiVo Roamio OTA DVR to record over-the-air network shows that I watch. I'm still using it today, though there are fewer and fewer broadcast shows that I watch anymore. I also have a Roamio "mini" that I use to watch the DVR recordings on a TV in another room.

I wonder how long they will continue to provide data for the program guide.

I never used a Tivo, but the hardware I hated to see go was the DVR that could also burn discs. I still have some of those discs but don't know if they'll play.

I had a couple of those type recorders over the years, made hundreds of discs. All have been in binders for I guess decades now. Rarely watched them, now with streaming so easy and mostly free. Wish I could have that $ and hours spent back.

I used mine up until about 3-4 years ago when I finally dumped cable for streaming.

I don't regret that kinda stuff. Discs was how we collected media in those days so it made sense for building a collection. And I probably would've just wasted my time in a different way.

I still use my Directv DVRs and could not imagine life without them or the Panasonic DVD recorders I sill have and use.

Now they got lots of people paying for TV and stuck watching ads (unless they pay extra of course.)

I've had some form of Tivo for nearly 25 years. I still use the Roamio Pro Tivo for cable on a daily basis. I think everyone saw the writing on the wall when cable providers started dropping cable cards (TIVOs need a cable card to work). A shame their OTA DVRs didn't get much traction.

Their interface and software were way ahead of others. It's so much easier juggling multiple simultaneous channels on a TIVO than any other service, including any streaming option you can name. Always came in handy for live sports such as the NCAA tournament.

I never had TiVos but I had a few ReplayTV units. It seemed like a better product at the time. They had automatic commercial skip and the ability to send/receive shows between other people's ReplayTVs. They never had an HD version of it though.

So for the past 15 years I've been rocking Windows Media Center on a Windows 7 machine. It's definitely been a bumpy road at times. I had a total of 7 cable tuners, but one of my cable cards went bad which dropped me to 3 tuners. Comcast won't replace them anymore, but I bought another 3 tuner unit from someone on Facebook that came with a Comcast cable card and I'm able to get all the broadcast channels and some other basic cable channels with it which is good enough for now.

I'm dreading the day that Comcast completely drops support for cable cards or switches everything to all IP channels. I can always use an over the air tuner but I'd have to get an antenna installed. By then ATSC 1.0 might be dead too which would make Media Center useless.

The good thing about a PC based DVR is that I essentially have unlimited recording capacity. I just add a bigger drive or transfer shows to an external drive. I've got many TBs of shows saved that I'll probably never get around to watching in my lifetime.

I dunno, I had both Tivos and ReplayTVs. Yes the automatic skip function was cool but IIRC the Tivo's interface was way, way better.

When they both first came out, I demo'd both Tivo and ReplayTV, because we sold them at 800.com (another blast from the past). I went with the ReplayTV because I liked the interface better, and used it until Comcast offered a DVR with more storage. While I still use the Comcast, now X1, DVR, it has bugs that have been there since that thing came out. Sad to see the end of Tivo though. DVRs are what got me to watch TV again, time-shifting and commercial skip.

My brother learned how to hack Tivos to add a much larger hard drive and there was even a brief window of time where he had success selling a modified Tivo on eBay. This was many years back before they really kicked it up a notch and started to offer models with much larger storage capcity and multiple tuners.

Honestly, my Xfinity DVR is actually pretty solid with an easy to use user interface (maybe they licensed some of this from Tivo, I have no clue) so several years back I switched from Tivo to Xfinity.

There was a point in which I just would buy Tivos because the reputation of cable companies like Comcast/Xfinity DVRs was absolutely wretched.

I loved my TiVo back in the day! I think I got my first one around 2000 or 2001. It totally changed the way I watched TV for the better. RIP ole friend.

So did I (though my experience with Tivo was w/ DTV - and, yes, great interface). I loved ReplayTV (before I got DTV) but I think the cable move to HD killed them (I remember using the IR-blasters). The auto-commercial skip was great.