In the 2000s, TiVo reached heights that few companies reach. Like Google and Xerox, its name has become a verb. People had to “TiVo” watch the new episode Battlestar Galactica or Game 4 of the Red Sox against the Cardinals, rather than “recording” it. While TiVo didn't invent the DVR, it did popularize it and many of the features we've eventually come to take for granted, like the ability to pause or rewind a live TV program and watch one program while recording another.
These features were described in the now infamous US Patent 6,233,389. – better known as the Time Warp patent. TiVo spent much of the 2000s and early 2010s protecting its intellectual property through a series of high-profile lawsuits, most notably against EchoStar. This particular saga has spanned the better part of a decade, with TiVo initially filing its lawsuit in January 2004 and the latest $500 million settlement awarded in April 2011.
But TiVo spent much of its heyday in legal battles with main players in the field of television and digital video. Motorola, Time Warner Cable, AT&TDish Network, Cisco and Verizon all of them were the subject of a patent infringement lawsuit from TiVo. TiVo won in almost every one of them. The US Patent Office even agreed to re-examine the patent twice. confirmed his claims.
If the company were to focus on revenue sources outside the courtroom, it could be at the forefront of smart TV adoption.
Licensing its technology became TiVo's main way of making money in the 2010s. The problem was that by then the writing was already on the wall. Netflix launched its streaming service in January 2007. Hulu entered beta later that year and launched publicly in March 2008. This year also saw the release of the first Roku device and the earliest models of modern smart TVs, such as the Samsung PAVV Bordeaux TV 750.
DVRs have become a standard issue with most cable packages. Of course, TiVo's interface was nicer and had advanced features like scheduling recordings remotely via TiVo Central Online or transferring them to your computer using TiVoToGo. But spending $200 or more on a standalone DVR in 2008 (at least if you wanted HD tuners) plus the additional subscription cost on top of your cable bill became an increasingly difficult sell when Time Warner offered you a good enough DVR.
Roku offered easy-to-use streaming boxes at impulse buy prices – just $49.99 by 2011. Google has cut prices even further Chromecast in 2013. Smart TV operating systems have become more and more functional. TiVo was adding support for Netflix, Hulu and other streaming services, but as it entered the new decade, it seemed like it was constantly playing catch-up.
TiVo hardware stalled. It was a waste of time for features such as the ability order Domino's from your TV. And its biggest source of income, a patent aimed at manipulating broadcast television, was becoming increasingly obsolete as cord-cutting began to grow in popularity.
According to nScreenMedia, traditional pay TV subscriptions in the United States peaked at about 103 millionor approximately 89 percent of households. In 2025, this number will drop to just 49.6 millionor 37.6 percent of households. The most popular streaming services are now easily ahead of linear pay TV as they copy some of its moves, relying on live content based on sports and other spectacle that draw attention to ads that are now unskippable. At the end of 2024, Netflix had 89.6 million subscribers and Disney Plus 56.8 million in the USA and Canada. (Companies only report subscriptions by region, not by country.) As TiVo continued to struggle with companies like Google and Time Warner in court, its customer base was drying up.
TiVo was after all bought by Rovia company whose main activity is the accumulation of patents and license them other companies or sue companies to force them to license their technology. Unfortunately, this was TiVo's fate going forward. When Xperi acquired the technology licensing company in 2020, the press release announcing the merger did not tout best-in-class hardware or innovative set-top box software. Instead it's boasted about having “one of the largest and most diverse intellectual property (IP) licensing platforms in the industry.”
After merging with Xperi, TiVo will not release another set-top box. His latest model TiVo Edgewas released in 2019. And this month the company confirmed that it had quietly sold the last of its shares on September 30 and would exit from the hardware business.
TiVo says it plans to focus on its new project Smart TV OS — a move that is probably 15 years too late. Perhaps if the company focused on revenue sources outside the courtroom, it could be at the forefront of smart TV adoption. Perhaps they could design their own streaming-focused device that would be more than a little lazy (and an afterthought) reskin Android TV. TiVo's user interface and iconic peanut-shaped remote control were much loved. Her brand was a household name. But instead of creating a platform for the next generation of TVs, the company seems focused on milking every dollar from companies that are clearly approaching obsolescence.
