Thursday, March 27, 2003

The Mystery of Tivo

Now that I have Tivo, I love it, but I am starting to understand the main barrier to wider adoption: it is hard to explain what makes it so worth having. I admit, when friends told me what a great thing Tivo was, I did not rush out to get one -- it took me nearly a year, and that is an awfully slow word-of-mouth sales cycle. I thought, sure, it sounds cool, but it just does what I can already do with a VCR.
Here is a way to explain it: Tivo is the Google of television. If Tivo is Google, then a VCR is some really bad, slow search engine from 1994. Yes, it sort of does the job. But once you upgrade, you'll never want to go back.

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