TiVo gained the court docket battles, however misplaced the TV warfare

In the 2000s, TiVo reached heights few firms ever obtain. Like Google and Xerox, its identify turned a verb. People needed to “TiVo” the brand new episode of Battlestar Galactica or recreation 4 of the Red Sox vs. Cardinals, not “record” it. While it didn’t invent the DVR, TiVo popularized it and most of the options we might finally take as a right, like the flexibility to pause or rewind dwell TV, and watch one program whereas recording one other.

Those options had been coated within the now notorious US Patent 6,233,389 — higher generally known as the Time Warp patent. TiVo spent a very good chunk of the 2000s and early 2010s defending its mental property by way of a collection of high-profile lawsuits, most notably towards EchoStar. That explicit saga lasted for the higher a part of a decade, with TiVo initially submitting the go well with in January of 2004 and the ultimate $500 million settlement being awarded in April of 2011.

But TiVo spent a lot of its prime years locked in court docket battles with main gamers within the tv and digital video house. Motorola, Time Warner Cable, AT&T, Dish Network, Cisco, and Verizon all discovered themselves on the receiving finish of a patent infringement lawsuit from TiVo. TiVo got here out victorious in nearly each single one. The US Patent Office even agreed to reexamine the patent on two separate events and reaffirmed its claims.

Licensing its know-how turned the first approach TiVo made cash because it entered the 2010s. The drawback was, by then, the writing was on the wall. Netflix launched its streaming service in January 2007. Hulu entered beta later that yr and launched publicly in March of 2008. That yr additionally marked the launch of Roku’s first machine and the earliest fashions of contemporary sensible TVs, just like the Samsung PAVV Bordeaux TV 750.

DVRs turned customary subject with most cable TV packages. Sure, TiVo’s interface was slicker, and it had superior options, akin to remotely scheduling recordings through TiVo Central Online or transferring them to a pc with TiVoToGo. But spending $200 or extra on a separate DVR in 2008 (at the very least when you wished HD tuners), plus a further subscription value on prime of your cable invoice, was an more and more arduous promote when Time Warner would offer you a DVR that was ok.

Roku was providing simple-to-use streaming set-top containers at impulse buy costs — as little as $49.99 by 2011. Google pushed costs even decrease with the Chromecast in 2013. Smart TV working methods had been turning into more and more succesful. TiVo was including help for Netflix, Hulu, and different streaming providers, nevertheless it appeared to always be taking part in catch-up because it entered the brand new decade.

TiVo’s {hardware} had stagnated. It was losing time on options like the flexibility to order Domino’s from your TV. And its largest cash maker — a patent centered on manipulating broadcast tv — was more and more turning into out of date as cord-cutting started to develop in recognition.

According to nScreenMedia conventional pay TV subscriptions peaked within the US in 2010 at round 103 million, or roughly 89 % of households. In 2025, that quantity is down to simply 49.6 million, or 37.6 % of households. The hottest streaming providers are actually simply outpacing linear pay TV as they copy a few of its strikes by leaning into dwell content material anchored by sports activities and different spectacles that draw eyeballs to now-unskippable advertisements. At the top of 2024, Netflix had 89.6 million subscribers and Disney Plus 56.8 million within the US and Canada. (The firms report subscriptions by area solely, not nation.) As TiVo continued to battle firms like Google and Time Warner in court docket, its buyer base was drying up.

TiVo was finally bought by Rovi, an organization whose major enterprise is hoarding patents and both licensing them to different firms or suing companies with the intention to power them to license their know-how. This, sadly, was to be TiVo’s destiny going ahead. When it was bought by tech licensing agency Xperi in 2020, the press launch asserting the merger didn’t tout best-in-class {hardware} or progressive set-top field software program. Instead, it bragged about having “one of the industry’s largest and most diverse intellectual property (IP) licensing platforms.”

After its merger with Xperi, TiVo wouldn’t launch one other set-top field. Its final mannequin, the TiVo Edge, was launched in 2019. And this month, the corporate confirmed it had quietly bought the final of its inventory on September thirtieth and could be exiting the {hardware} enterprise.

TiVo says it plans to deal with its fledgling sensible TV OS — a transfer that’s in all probability 15 years too late. Perhaps if the corporate had been centered on income sources exterior the courtroom, it might have been on the forefront of the sensible TV rollout. Maybe it might have developed its personal streaming-first machine that was greater than a lazy (and late) reskin of Android TV. TiVo’s UI and iconic peanut distant had been beloved. Its model was a family identify. But, somewhat than construct a platform to energy the subsequent era of televisions, it appeared centered on milking each greenback out of firms clearly heading in the direction of obsolescence.