TiVo, once so popular it was a verb in the US, is bringing its Australian run to an end.
A decade ago it was commonplace to hear our North American friends talk about "tivoing" something, much like "Xerox" and "Hoover" had become ordinary parlance in times past, before the service finally made its way to Australian soil.
The act of "tivoing", of course, meant to record TV broadcasts on a personal video recorder, or PVR, of which TiVo was, for a time, king.
TiVo made recording scheduled programming so much easier, so simple, and possible via the Internet if you were away from home. It also had smarts which offered recommendations based on movies or shows that you'd rated positively while hiding others based on your expressed dislikes.
{loadposition david08}Yet, just as Nokia fell from the its position as king of smartphones, and BlackBerry from being the king of business-grade messaging, so too TiVo has fallen to the side as TV broadcasting has been increasingly replaced by NetFlix and other streaming services.
There's no need to have a hard-drive based recorder which requires a physical connection and is accessible in only one location when you can now seamlessly consume media from a vast library across any device you own at any location at any time.
Pleasantly, TiVo in Australia did not require an ongoing subscription, unlike its US forebears.
Nevertheless, today, TiVo Australia announced its service is coming to an end on 31st October 2017.
The TV guide will no longer populate. There will be no more season pass or wishlist. There will be no more suggestions or genie recording.
In fact, your TiVo device will become simply a digital TV tuner with no smarts. You can record shows manually if you enter the start and stop times yourself, but without an electronic guide that becomes an ordeal in itself.
You won't be able to erase and re-setup your TiVo if problems arise because it will fail the network setup — where it attempts to reach the TiVo service — during the first launch.
Ultimately, TiVo recommends you simply stop using its device from 31 October 2017 entirely.
TiVo has lined up $100 off a FetchTV box from Harvey Norman, but only for those who have used their TiVo in the previous six months.
TiVo officially recommends disposing of your TiVo hardware at a local e-cycling facility.