Tivo was cool and still is, it's just too expensive when tacked onto the already excessive cable/satellite bill. It also suffers in that most people equate tivo with a standard dvr, which is wrong, but many just do not understand the benefits of tive. They think that the beat up dvr given to them from the cable company is the same thing and don't realize that tivo has a superior GUI, remote, listings, uptime. Even with all these features it should only be a few dollars per month, not $15 or whatever it is now.
We still have a tivo running the "lifetime" service, which has turned out to be a great deal, now that its been running for about 6 years now. I've already replaced the hard drive once, but as long as the motherboard is okay its still supported. They might have more customers if they brought this back (I'd own another).
In a more general sense, I think TV and cable have priced themselves out of the game. If it wasn't $80 per month +/- to get digital cable (dish, whatever) then more people would probably watch.
You also have to admit that it's much easier to jump on the couch and channel surf something at the end of a long day than to always use netflix or internet.
