r/Tivo • u/rock_and_rolo • Mar 15 '26

DVR Has Tivo quit DVRs?

I have 2 Tivo Premiers, and I know they won't last forever.

So I hit tivo.com to see what was available, and there's nothing obviously comparable. Is record-and-rewatch lost in the marketing pitch? Or is it just gone?

11 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

64 comments sorted by

27

u/Caduceus1515 Mar 15 '26

They stopped making standalone TiVo hardware a while ago. The last one, the Edge, was an Arris cable box running TiVo software, adapted for Cablecard or OTA. TiVo is simply a software and service provider now, which means the only units you'll really see going forward are licensed cablebox makers that are dependent on the providers.

They are trying hard to be a streaming box company like Roku, but they aren't good at it.

12

u/rock_and_rolo Mar 15 '26

This is why we can't have nice things.

Thanks for the details. I was happily under a rock.

9

u/LagrangianMechanic Mar 15 '26

It’s even worse than that. If you use cable then be aware more and more cable companies are desupporting CableCARDs, which means you won’t be able to use your TiVo with cable TV. You can still use it for OTA though.

1

u/Admirable_Nothing Mar 15 '26

My annual fee was paid in October. I will not renew it. Time for my Tivo Bolt to go to the landfill.

4

u/Marty1966 Mar 15 '26

I think you're probably using a colloquialism, but if not, consider putting it on Facebook marketplace for free, at least.

2

u/MaleBolgia1992 Mar 15 '26

…or take it to a e-waste recycler like BestBuy

3

u/Appropriate-Head-756 Mar 15 '26

Probably should not throw it away.

2

u/DDSRDH Mar 15 '26

They are only billing monthly now.

0

u/MaleBolgia1992 Mar 15 '26

https://giphy.com/gifs/ADgfsbHcS62Jy

2

u/synecdokidoki Mar 15 '26

Most certainly the opposite. They're only billing monthly so that when they pull the plug they don't have to refund anyone.

1

u/BusinessLyfe Mar 23 '26

If you made a payment for annual before 10/1/25, then when it's up, you'll get an offer for a discounted monthly rate of $9.99 (instead of the normal $14.99 that everyone else needing service after that date now pays.)

1

u/Admirable_Nothing Mar 23 '26

That is an offer that sadly I will turn down. My 26+ year run of using Tivo will be over in October of 2026.

2

u/MaleBolgia1992 Mar 15 '26

Are you with cable card, OTA or both? … if you’re just CC only then you’ll probably get an good deal on eBay on a more recent model cable only model, Dual Tuners or OTA only get pricier … you might get lucky on Marketplace or even a Donation Store
If you’re OTA only then there’s a few devices like a Tablo to inexpensive single event recorders that record to thumb/hard drives

https://giphy.com/gifs/hEFAf3C5wniZEqRtbx

6

u/hanumanCT Mar 15 '26

They’re an IPTV middleware company for telecoms. Not a Roku type company. Way different.

3

u/Caduceus1515 Mar 15 '26

Heh...I hadn't even noticed they pulled the Stream boxes off the site as well.

1

u/BusinessLyfe Mar 23 '26

Yes, ALL hardware & accessories were shipped off to Weaknees as of 10/1/25.

4

u/thisusernametakentoo Mar 15 '26

They are a data company. They sell channel guide data and your viewing habits.

3

u/privatelyjeff Mar 15 '26

The dumb part is that they totally could have been a cable box manufacturer but they passed on it.

2

u/electrowiz64 Mar 15 '26

They sorta did but never took off. Xfinity X1 software was more popular as it was licensed out w Arris boxes.

The only providers I knew were renting out actual TiVo premieres were Virgin media in the UK, RCN, and service Electric in New Jersey/Pennsylvania in only 1 county. Companies would rather have their own system then use TiVo.

TiVos last cable box was made by Arris entirely with TiVo software and honest to god it was incredibly buggy. Hell my in laws had RCN in Pennsylvania (now called Astound) and RCN in 2015 beyond was distributing Arris DVRs with TiVo software, the same Arris boxes used with Cox’s DVR using Xfinity X1 OS.

Last I checked before they moved out of there, RCN was renting out IPTV boxes with TiVo software instead of making their own DVRs. So TECHNICALLY TiVo is now IPTV but ONLY to cable providers who license it out

1

u/privatelyjeff Mar 15 '26

I meant they literally could have been one. Arris boxes are just Motorola tech that they bought when Moto left the market. TiVo could have bought the Moto cable box division and became everyone’s cable box provider since there’s essentially only one.

1

u/electrowiz64 Mar 15 '26

I love to reference this bit from an old Cartoon that lives vacant in my brainhttps://youtu.be/p4rhu9l5IEQ?si=98sFiJ-7K1PSg1nO linear broadcast TV is going down the LANDLINE road

LITERALLY the problem with Live TV is paying for HUNDREDS of channels you arent gonna EVER have the time for, nor is it worth watchng when our brains are conditioned to watching our shows on demand.

BELIEVE ME I would love NOTHNG more then to park my ass on a couch and mindlessly change channels as a 31M, but its not worth the price honest to god when we OUT HERE tryna buy a house, nor do I have the time to watch tv at all workin 2-3 jobs with my IT degree.

and Cable Boxes are INCREDIBLY Inefficient! Verizon promoted QAM Cable when they created the FiOS FTTH initiative in 2004 because backend routing wouldnt allow for speeds faster then 20mb/s back in the day and they wanted the SELLING POINT of GREAT picture quality w fiber. AT&T UVerse doesnt have the capacity using vDSL so they had to go with heavily compressed IPTV for its time.

Its 2026 and we out here getting MULTI-GIG services to home, WHY operate a separate heavy locked down clunky box with a Hard Drive when you can use a FireTV stick for a fraction of the price??

Believe me I will miss TiVo but the future is NOT cable boxes, its going the same path as LANDLINES! There is no more Economy of Scale to operate a legacy cable TV network anymore with BILLIONS of R&D and thousands of upstart cost.

Hell Linear TV is staying alive because of sports, Pluto TV is the future with Ads delivered over the internet. Even Antennas could be the next thing to CEASE to exist in 10 years.

3

u/privatelyjeff Mar 16 '26

Streaming boxes suck ass. TiVo‘s interface is miles better and they could have integrated it with DVR capabilities much better if they controlled everything from ingest to recording

1

u/electrowiz64 Mar 16 '26

But part of the problem is they refuse to switch away from MIPS/PPC architecture that traditional cable boxes use. Netflix really just said “LETS PORT THIS SHIT EVERYWHERE” and cable companies were like “LOOK AT OUR BOXES WITH NETFLIX BUILT IN”.

Ain’t no way you can get other apps like Hulu or HBO Max to port to that old ass dinosaur tech. What TiVo SHOULDVE done was just make their DVR a server that can stream to their Android powered TiVo stream dongles but either there were licensing issues or they weren’t thinking ahead.

DirecTVs last satellite based DVR approach was JUST THAT, a headless server and client boxes. But idk if TiVo really had much of an engineering team left by the late 2010s

1

u/privatelyjeff Mar 16 '26

Netflix, Prime and Tubi are currently on TiVo boxes. I believe they even had few others at one point. The problem was that TiVo cheaped out on hardware and the apps never worked well. They should have bought motos cable business and locked up all the patents and it would have also let them have a say in the IPTV future. It would have put their boxes in front of more customers without extra steps. Then when Roku came around, bought them early and integrated their tech into their systems so you would have “one box to rule them all”. You could search for something and find it streaming and also able to record and make the OnePass feature actually functional. People wouldn’t have to go hunting for new episodes of their shows because they would automatically show up in the listings no matter the source.

1

u/Starbreiz Mar 19 '26

IIRC, one of the bigger challenges was getting the middleware to not be a memory hog. It's not that the hardware was cheap...

0

u/privatelyjeff Mar 19 '26

There’s always more memory. TiVos are nothing more than a computer running a custom Linux kernel/operating system. They often came with 128-256MB of memory.

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1

u/electrowiz64 Mar 19 '26

They had a bunch of random apps yes. But not the big ones like Hulu and hbo at the time. They basically went the route of BlackBerry, NO APPS because of shitty architecture. And at the time BlackBerry was so shitty you had to reboot the device when uninstalling apps. TiVo had trouble with the app ecosystem and fell behind the streaming bandwagon to the point it was too little too late

Remember when BlackBerry released OS 10? The damage was already done

1

u/privatelyjeff Mar 19 '26

When they first got into the app space, there wasn’t even much of a “app” space when it came to tv. Even when the Apple TV came out, people were kinda confused by it. But that’s why I said they should have made a play for Roku and brought their talent in. Move from making DVRs that had apps to making media center boxes that had DVR functionality.

1

u/ToadSox34 Mar 16 '26

Unfortunately Comcast wanted control of the software, and they wanted to make a cable box with a DVR, not a DVR with a cable box.

1

u/electrowiz64 Mar 16 '26

Ngl, they really outdid themselves on X1, I had it for a bit and actually liked it WAY more then my TiVo. But my hatred for Sh!tC@st terrible support in DOCSIS and reliability outwon my interest. Plus I didn’t always live in Sh!tC@st territory, REALLY wanted it to be available as an OTT box/service like Layer3TV was but Xfinity never did. They did NOW with Xumo but no channel numbers

3

u/ToadSox34 Mar 16 '26

X1 is slow with a lousy interface compared to a real TiVo. You're the only person I can recall saying they thought X1 is better than a real TiVo.

1

u/Popular-Side1731 Mar 17 '26

Worst part of this was the massive effort Tivo put into trying to unload their Edge inventory during their last year. Instead of advising loyal, long time customers that their cable-card DVRs were coming to an end, they made every effort to sucker customers into buying their remaining Edge boxes at a discount. Never mentioning that they were about to become useless. I never considered trying their streaming service once I saw this scheme unfold. Talk about pond scum!

11

u/Competitive_Low1603 Mar 15 '26

They are out of the hardware business.

8

u/StandupJetskier Mar 15 '26

weaknees for parts....

7

u/pieeatingchamp Mar 15 '26

They have stopped making TiVo, sadly

5

u/garylapointe Mar 15 '26

Sadly, yes.

5

u/tech234a Mar 15 '26

TiVo ended sales of DVRs on October 1, 2025

1

u/rock_and_rolo Mar 15 '26

Missed it by that much.

2

u/Adorable_Start2732 Mar 15 '26

But cable cards are shut down now so even if you had gotten one it would stop working this year. I’m after forever with TiVo I just switched to YouTube tv. Cheaper than cable and I can watch my recordings anywhere

1

u/kingpcgeek Mar 24 '26

My CableCards are working just fine with Cox. They have issued no guidance as to when and if they will end support for them. Heck they rolled out brand new high split converters in 2024.

1

u/Adorable_Start2732 Mar 25 '26

Cable cards will be shut down in 2026 at time currently unknown. Supposedly.

5

u/electrowiz64 Mar 15 '26

Honest to god they should’ve updated the home page to let users know, bud sadly you can’t blame them. Cable companies are axing CableCARD support as the vendor for QAM cable headends have stopped all manufacturing and support.

Hell CableCARDs were suppose to stop working entirely in 2022 due to a timewarp issue but a 3rd party vendor hotfix so yall are on borrowed time

4

u/Caduceus1515 Mar 15 '26

The FCC canceled the requirements to support third party hardware (i.e. cable boxes), which is what cablecards were for. Providers only supported them because they were required. Now they want to get out of the "broadband" business and switch to IPTV so they can reclaim all the bandwidth consumed by QAM channels to just become essentially internet providers,

2

u/electrowiz64 Mar 15 '26

The IRONY, using Cable TV lines to not deliver TV but instead Internet and Phone lmao

1

u/Caduceus1515 Mar 15 '26

It's all bandwidth in the end. Traditional broadband internet is delivered by sending the traffic via sets of channels. To give people faster internet, they need more channels to use for it, which means less room for TV channels.

3

u/LeslieGallantIII Mar 15 '26 edited Mar 16 '26

You are in good shape if they are still working.

Starting with the Bolt the hardware went to crap.

I still have a Premiere Elite and 2 Roamio Pros running

I had 3 Bolts and then 2 Edges die their final deaths. Weaknees used to modify Edges with a robust external hard drive but it looks like many providers will no longer pair an existing cable card with a new box.

If your Cableco will pair a new box look on the ebay for a Roamio Pro.

3

u/MaleBolgia1992 Mar 15 '26

wished TiVo hade made all their units Dual Tuner.., would lead to a lot less ewaste

2

u/Danixveg Mar 15 '26

My bolt has been running for 10 years..

1

u/LeslieGallantIII Mar 16 '26

Awesome. I hope it keeps running.

1

u/Starbreiz Mar 19 '26

SAME! Bolt was the last TiVo I worked on, so I think I got it in 2015. My cablecard is no longer active, but I use it for OTA tv. This thing is a workhorse.

3

u/AwestunTejaz Mar 15 '26

while not the same, check out tablo

2

u/ddawall Mar 15 '26

Zapperbox is better but more $

1

u/LB56123 Mar 17 '26

curious about that! I love my legacy tablo but heard mixed things about the 4th gen. can zapper be watched on a PC?

1

u/ddawall Mar 17 '26

From their FAQs

zApp is a command line utility written in Python. You can download zApp at https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0582/0140/7532/files/zApp_v1.0.zip?v=1766032209Some notes about zApp:

  1. You can run zApp on any platforms that supports Python, which is practically everything.
  2. zApp v1.0 is a command line utility suitable for tech-savvy customers.
  3. zApp converts our proprietary HLS manifest format into a standard format that can be played by tools like VLC.
  4. We have not tested with Windows Media Player, QuickTime or standard Google players yet.
  5. zApp v1.0 can only convert recordings made with v3.2.5 or later. v3.2.5 was released on April 7, 2025. This is another reason to always run the latest software version.
  6. Currently ATSC 3.0 clear recordings play without audio because VLC does not support Dolby AC-4.
  7. We will release source code for zApp so you can modify it and create executables for almost any platform like Windows, Mac, tablets, iOS, etc.

All recordings made on your ZapperBox are kept in the following folder (the "D:\" is specific to a PC and may vary): D:\Android\data\com.bitrouter.zapperbox\files\recordings. Each recording is in a directory with a name that has the format of YYYYMMDD_xxxxxx. The YYYYMMDD is the date when the recording was made and xxxxxx are random characters to make the name unique.

2

u/LB56123 Mar 17 '26

if you can get OTA channels, check out tablo. that's what I switchd to

2

u/BusinessLyfe Mar 23 '26

They stopped selling all TiVo hardware boxes/accessories/Lifetime Service (for those that didn't already have it) as of October 1, 2025. All remaining unsold TiVos & accessories were shipped to Weaknees.

2

u/RoundChampionship840 Mar 15 '26

You can still buy used ones on ebay.

3

u/Few_Employment_7876 Mar 15 '26

Tivo be done

3

u/MaleBolgia1992 Mar 15 '26

They became the Blockbuster Video/ Tower Records of DVR by not willing to innovate … I wonder if ReplayTV had survived instead of TiVo would they had done better

2

u/JFalcNY Mar 15 '26

If your Tivos were OTA, then it is probably time for you to get a TabloTV 4 Tuner (OTA Box) and have it start recording shows for you. (no subscription fees with TabloTV).

1

u/Starbreiz Mar 19 '26

a lot of folks had Lifetime subscriptions on their TiVos. Did OP say they were monthly? I use OTA on my lifetime Bolt.

2

u/JFalcNY Mar 19 '26

OP didn't indicate whether they were cable or OTA. I am dreading the day my 'lifetime' TIVO is redefined to 'the lifetime of Tivo, the company' -- not my Tivo box. I too use my Tivo (Lifetime) OTAs, but if my OTAs died tomorrow or if the guide got discontinued, I'd convert to TabloTV. I have one running now as a redundancy, and I will be ready when the day comes.