Apparently Naples Electronics stores have sold a whole lot of these little boxes. It was something of a phenomenon when it first arrived on the scene over 10 years ago when the company first announced its Digital Video Recorder, or DVR.

They revolutionized the way we watch TV and paved the way for other manufacturers to join in and provide DVR machines to compete. It also changed the way TV advertising works because we can now fast-forward through commercial breaks and miss out all the adverts. This has led to a dip in advertising revenue for the networks, but that’s not a problem for this article. We’re more concerned with how our beloved TiVo works and what magic it uses to let us watch TV how WE want to watch it.

Essentially it works like a cable TV box. It has a tuner that takes the signal from the cable provider and an MPEG2 encoder to turn it digital if it isn’t already. Some TiVo models have two tuners, meaning you can either record two sources at once or record one and watch another.

Once the signal is encoded it’s send to the hard drive via the motherboard. This part works just like a computer. The motherboard oversees everything that goes on. It uses a CPU, memory and an operating system just like a computer. It takes the MPEG2 signal and stores it on the hard drive. To this signal it adds identification bits to each part so it knows where each program is stored and in what sequence to play them back. The program information is also written to the record so it will appear on the menu.

When you play back a recording the software streams the video from the hard drive exactly like it does when you watch a video on your computer. The data is read from the hard drive, pulled through the motherboard, sent through an MPEG2 decoder and out to the TV. The decoder is only used if the TV it’s connected to is an analog one, otherwise it’s passive.

The output part of the process is exactly the same as with a satellite or cable box. The digital signal is either decoded to analog or sent directly to the TV as is. The main difference between TiVo and satellite or cable boxes is the hard drive. Many companies offer a branded version of the DVR to work with their own networks. These will work in much the same way, and might even be a licensed version of a TiVo as they make them for many networks.

As any Naples electronic specialist will tell you, there are many cheaper alternatives to TiVo, but none so popular. The subscription model is on top of what you already pay for your TV so is only really suitable for those with busy lifestyles and who really don’t want to miss their programs.