“This is the end. My only friend, the end.” – Jim Morrison, The Doors
According to a story in Variety, as of October 1, 2025 Tivo has finally stopped selling their hardware DVRs.
“TiVo no longer manufactures hardware, and our remaining inventory is now depleted, though we will continue to offer support for the products going forward,” the company told Variety.
We still have a Roamio Pro and three Tivo Mini’s hereabouts. We’re had these a good long while. They’re not in use at present, but I’m not planning to get rid of them.
A few months ago I bought a used Tivo Roamio OTA specifically to address receiving our local network affiliates. The OTA models have an antenna connection and do not require a Cable Card.
The Roamio OTA will make its tuners and cache of recorded shows available to all the other Tivo units elsewhere in the household.
Notionally, I want to have access to our local network affiliates without being dependent upon our internet connection. This would be most useful in a post-hurricane situation, when we might lose our AT&T fiber service.
I know that I’m going to need a decent antenna mounted to the house. I’m just waiting for the time to address that part of the project. It might be a little complicated by the fact that our house is a single story building, situated amongst a lot of mature trees and some two-story homes.
In theory, if the antenna works well enough, we should be able to drop our YouTube TV service. That would save us around $85/mo.
To be blunt, Tivo is no longer a hardware company. Their entire focus is on software for smart TVs which they license to other manufacturers. Apparently, “Powered by TiVo™” models from Panasonic, Sharp and Bush have been available in Europe for a while. There’s still limited availability in the US.
At least in the case of Panasonic and Sharp, the Tivo OS is just one option. Both companies make several different ranges of TVs, including models based upon Android TV, Google TV and Roku software.
We have Vizio TVs around here. They were once the sole American TV maker. They were initially known as a bargain TV brand, but eventually offered higher-end models as well. They were the first TV maker to publicly admit that they made more money selling data on viewer habits than selling the hardware. It was such a good business that Wal-Mart bought them.
Tivo is similarly making bank selling user data. A revenue split on that income stream is part of the appeal to the big manufacturers. Also, the ability to offload the software development effort to a specialist partner.
It’s almost a year since we cut the cord. We’re not unhappy with the combination of an Android TV stick, YouTube TV and various streaming apps running over AT&T Fiber. I will say that the user experience is nowhere near as good as a Tivo hardware DVR.
For more than 20 years we loved our Tivo DVRs. Enough that we stuck with a cable provider that we despised. Even so, I’m not quite ready to give upon our existing investment in Tivo gear. Not while they can still be useful for OTA signals.