Despite attempts by competitors and the cable companies in particular, the TiVo DVR devices are leaps and bounds better than the competition. Two reasons: the features their DVR provides and the user interface. The only negative against TiVo — it’s a big one though — is that the cable companies DVRs have no upfront cost (or a negligible one). The monthly cost is usually slightly higher than the TiVo monthly cost but it’s the initial sticker shock of the TiVo that gives the cable companies some success with the DVRs. This unfortunately has led many people to call any DVR a TiVo which discredits the brilliant device TiVo created. TiVo has also done their own part in reducing the need for a non-cable company-branded DVR as they have shown great incompetence in marketing and providing real, distinguishing features of their DVR.

A lot has changed in the past year or so. TiVo has made great moves toward providing some real features that people are interested in. Namely, the Rhapsody and Amazon Unbox integration is very interesting — I personally have little interest in either but I think many other customers would find those worthwhile. The TiVoCast (video podcasts downloaded to the TiVo) is also a nice bonus feature which I actually do use. Soon TiVo will be providing integration with YouTube which can only be a plus.

TiVo also finally got their act together to start marketing their DVR to the cable companies themselves — Comcast is supposedly going to start using the TiVos as a DVR unit soon. Distribution via the cable companies would instantly turn TiVo into a true success.

For me, the most important missing component is a truly seemless method of pushing my videos to be displayed via the TiVo interface. There is limited supported but it definitely requires too many hoops for it to be a realistically used feature. The lack of continued Mac support is disheartening as well.

All that being said, TiVo still faces a relevance issue. The cable companies DVRs will continue to improve slowly and TiVos rate of change, despite their recent moves, isn’t likely to maintain them. In addition, numerous other contenders are attempting to create media-center related devices, many of which will add competition when TiVo probably can’t stand much more.

Notably, rumors have been swirling every since the release of the AppleTV that Apple would develop a DVR. That would be devastating news for a company like TiVo — Apple has the same brilliant ideas when it comes to user interface that TiVo has done so well… and at this point in the game, it’s very likely the features would be quite extensive.