After exhibiting at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 1997, Mike Ramsay announced to the company that the first version of the TiVo digital video recorder would be released "in Q1" (the last day of which is March 31) despite an estimated 4 to 5 months of work remaining to complete the device.

[2] The original TiVo DVR digitized and compressed analog video from any source (antenna, cable or direct broadcast satellite).

This partnership resulted in the Thomson PVR10UK, a stand-alone receiver released in October 2000 that was based on the original reference design used in the United States by both Philips and Sony.

The baring of one of Jackson's breasts at the end of her duet with Justin Timberlake, which caused a flood of outraged phone calls to CBS, was replayed a record number of times by TiVo users.

Unlike a videocassette recorder, which uses removable magnetic tape cartridges, a TiVo DVR stores TV programs on an internal hard drive, much like a computer.

These include: Integration with Amazon Video on Demand, Jaman.com[14] and Netflix Watch Instantly,[15] offering users access to thousands of movie titles and television shows right from the comfort of their couch.

Another popular feature is access to Rhapsody music through TiVo, allowing users to listen to virtually any song from their living room.

TiVo also teamed up with One True Media to give subscribers a private channel for sharing photos and video with family and friends.

TiVo KidZone (later removed in the Premiere and Roamio devices) was designed to give parents greater control over what their children see on television.

TiVo KidZone provides a customized Now Playing List for children that displays only pre-approved shows, keeping television as safe as possible.

In the past TiVo has offered multiple "Trade Up" programs where you could transfer the Product Lifetime Subscription from an old unit to a newer model with a fee.

Over the years since its initial release in the United States, TiVo Series1 and Series2 DVRs have also been modified by end users to work in Australia, Brazil, Canada, New Zealand, the Netherlands, and South Africa.

[3] Under the mutually exclusive agreement, TiVo developed a converged television and broadband interactive interface to power Virgin Media's next generation, high definition set top boxes.

TiVo will become the exclusive provider of middleware and user interface software for Virgin Media's next generation set top boxes.

All standalone TiVo DVRs have coax/RF-in and an internal cable-ready tuner, as well as analog video input — composite/RCA and S-Video, for use with an external cable box or satellite receiver.

DirecTiVo units (HR10-250) can record HDTV to a 250 GB hard drive, both from the DirecTV stream and over-the-air via a standard UHF- or VHF-capable antenna.

In 2005, DirecTV stopped marketing recorders powered by TiVo and focused on its own DVR line developed by its business units.

In 2008, some cable companies started to deploy switched digital video (SDV) technology, which initially was incompatible with the Series3 and TiVo HD units.

Others have designed and built Ethernet cards[31] and a Web interface (TiVoWeb), and figured out how to extract, insert and transfer video among their TiVo boxes.

Other hacks include adding time to the start and end of recording intelligently[32] and sending daily e-mails of the TiVo's activity.

TiVo expects its user interface could provide an advantage over competitors such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Video "in a world where cord-cutting is increasingly popular.

[34][35] While its former main competitor in the United States, ReplayTV, had adopted a commercial-skip feature, TiVo decided to avoid automatic implementation fearing such a move might provoke backlash from the television industry.

ReplayTV was sued over this feature as well as the ability to share shows over the Internet, and these lawsuits contributed to the bankruptcy of SONICblue,[36] its owner at the time.

After demonstrating the WebTV capability at the same 1999 CES with TiVo and ReplayTV demonstrating their products, Dish (then named Dish Network) a few months later added DVR functionality to their DishPlayer 7100 (and later its 7200) with its Echostar unit producing the hardware while Microsoft provided the software that included WebTV, the same software Microsoft would later use for its UltimateTV DVR for DirecTV.

By default, the user is in "opt-out" status, where all usage data is aggregated by ZIP Code, and individual viewing habits are not tracked.

[44] TiVo holds several patents regarding digital video recorder technology, including one for its "Time Warp" feature, which have been asserted against cable TV operators and competing DVR box makers.

During early 2005, TiVo began test marketing "pop-up" advertisements to select subscribers, to explore it as an alternative source of revenue.

[48] The idea was that as users fast-forward through certain commercials of TiVo advertisers, they would also see a static image ad more suitable and effective than the broken video stream.

This new license provision was acknowledged by TiVo in its April 2007 SEC filing: "we may be unable to incorporate future enhancements to the GNU/Linux operating system into our software, which could adversely affect our business".

[54] In September 2020, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) changed its rules so that cable television providers no longer must support CableCard.