Suhit Gupta
04-26-2004, 01:00 AM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,63208,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_5' target='_blank'>http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,63208,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_5</a><br /><br /></div>"Debra Baker tells people she has TiVo. But she really doesn't. The 33-year-old New York tax consultant has a variant -- a digital video recorder offered through her cable company. She didn't know what "DVR" stood for until then. 'I thought DVR was Time Warner's name for TiVo,' she said. So, like many others, Baker simply uses the leading DVR brand as the catchall term for the new love in her lounging life: a machine that lets her easily record her favorite TV shows and watch them whenever she wants."<br /><br />"It's a flattering curse for TiVo, whose revolutionary technology records TV programs without the hassles of videotape, letting users pause live TV, do instant replays and begin watching programs even before the recording has finished." Just like Xerox became synonymous with copying and Google has recently become synonymous with searching, it appears that Tivo is set to be the name blanketing all DVRs.<br /><br />This is a great article from Wired that gives statistics on the DVR usage, current and future, and claims that "at the end of 2003, more than a third of the 3.5 million U.S. households with DVRs had TiVo's software and services, according to Forrester Research. More than half of that comes though TiVo's partnership with DirecTV, which has been offering DVR services with its satellite offerings for years. But as DVRs gain in popularity -- Forrester predicts nearly half of American households will have a DVR by 2009 -- TiVo may be hard-pressed to hold on to its leading market share."