There was a time when TiVo meant DVR. It wasn’t that long ago that the company had a virtual monopoly on good solid DVRs that worked well. The first DVRs for DIRECTV ran TiVo software, and when DIRECTV started moving away from this technology in 2005, the response was pretty negative.
That’s why in 2008 DIRECTV partnered with TiVo and announced a new TiVo-powered DIRECTV DVR. It sat in “development hell” for three years while TiVo fought lawsuits with money that should have gone into engineering. Finally, in 2011, the THR22 TiVo was birthed.
And… the response was a resounding thud. This one wasn’t super popular in the marketplace. Even though it did feature the famous TiVo software, it was based on an earlier version so that it didn’t have the features of either the most current TiVo or the most current DIRECTV DVRs. People missed those features, and most of those brand-new THR22s sat in warehouses instead of customer homes.
Not only that, due to agreements with TiVo (the company) you paid an extra $5 a month for a DVR that didn’t do everything you wanted it to.
My mini-review of the THR22 was one of the first articles I wrote here on this blog, and you can find it here. I did a much richer review for another blog before starting at Solid Signal, and you’ll find it here.