I have a tivohd and an ipod touch. I like them both but my tivo comes first. The interface is dated but it just works well and has many features outside of recording television programs.

These things came on the market 15 years too late- TV has been unwatchable for the past decade thanks to the network logos that stay onscreen all the time.  I REFUSE to watch shows this way- they are more annoying than commercial interruptions.  Since this trend started I have stopped watching broadcast TV altogether, I now only watch DVDs and other pre-recorded formats.  Anyone who accepts onscreen logos is an idiot, and those who advocate them deserve a very violent and painful death.

I don’t have ether of the two devices.  I am not a fan of apple software on my pc.  The i phone has changed things so much that I will for ever use apple software that is always updating.  Now for Christmas presents I get i tunes gift cards.  Apple helped popularize DRM. 
The i pod is what brought apple back from what was almost dead.  The i pod/i phone is most def the product of the decade. 

P.S. bug killer you are the first person that I have ever heard complain about network logos that didn’t mention plasma TVs.  I am willing to bet you have one, am I right?

As to your comparison, I agree, the DVR is more impactfull than the iPod. It may not be a fair comparison though. Although you refer to the Tivo, the comparison is between a category (DVR) and a device (iPhone). If you were to compare DVRs to the smartphone (including iPhones, Blackberries and Windows CE) you might have to come to a different conclusion. Or how about texting phones in general? How much have they impacted communications?

I used a DVR for several years but it just didn’t work on serialized tv shows because the network or, more often, the local stations shifted the time or interrupted the show for amber alerts, breaking news, weather alerts, presidential speeches etc.
Once I missed an episode it was hard to see it again because there are fewer reruns than there used to be. Then there is the proliferation of things displayed on the screen like network logo, previews of coming shows, weather alerts and news at 11pm previews. It became harder to even find shows to record because they would start at 9:01pm instead of 9:00pm. More and more shows ran overtime, especially reality shows and sports so I misssed more and more recordings or got partial recordings. Also I liked the captions for some shows with a lot of technical terms like House medical jargon but the captions were often missing (bandwidth compression problem?). This is just a partial list of complaints. I canceled cable and satellite and plan to rent nearly everything I watch from Netflix so I can get blu-ray (when available) quality video without interruption or screen clutter. So don’t tell me the DVR is the product of the decade.

I love my iphone! I think it is the coolest gadget. Every bill I get from my provider makes me mad at my iphone even though I love it. My TiVo on the otherhand makes managing TV easy and I never get mad at any of the fees TiVo Charges me. TiVo itself not the DVR it self is product of the year. As for other PVR’s other than TiVo they are just VCR’s without tape and the iphone Wins hands down.

There are other products than Tivo that offer the same type of service, Moxi is an example of a great DVR service and is not a tapeless VCR as EHM put (Although all DVR services are basically glorified VCRs). Comparing a type of service vs a product is really not the best comparison. I agree had you compared smartphones in general to DVR it brings a whole new way to measure impact. I know viewing documents, web browsing, messaging service, etc has had way more impact in peoples lives than a glorify VCR. It wasnt too long ago we all had a large collection of video cassettes and with VCR+ could record our favorite shows with ease. DVR made it simpler and put it in digital format, but as far as impacting lives more than a smartphone, I think not.

DVRs and iThings are both great product lines. I use and enjoy both on a daily basis.

But (IMHO) the most influential product (or rather a technology) of the past decade was the rise of media streaming (as in YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, iTunes, Amazon OnDemand and many others). That’s one thing that completely changed the media landscape for years to come. This is what will drive a new generation of products (media tablets, TVs with Internet connections, etc) and technologies (optical fiber networks for end users) in the coming decade.

By the way if we talk about DVRs I think that Microsoft’s Media Center is the best DVR hands down. One reason is that you can easily extend its capabilities with third party products like Dragon Global’s ShowAnalyzer (which would automatically skip all the commercials for you).

I can see how not everyone would agree with the Tivo being the product of the decade. Tivo has been around a long time. How do I know this, because I have owned a Tivo for a very long time. I had series one, series II and not HD Tivo. Anyone who wants to say that Tivo isn’t the only dvr game that’s worth a darn, keep in mind how many law suits Tivo has won from companies who tried to rip off their technology. Tivo is not a word that I use freely, I do not take every mention of DVR, or PVR to mean Tivo. I have had many other DVR’s and non were as well designed and easy to use as Tivo.. Any DVR that has come out after the invention of Tivo, should not be able to take the tile of Product of the Decade away from Tivo. if you never really spent time using a Tivo, you have no room to talk. Iphone, is just another flavor of cell phone / PDA . It’s really nice, but they didn’t do anything except pump a load of money into a better design. That isn’t exactly ground breaking.  Spend some time on a Tivo to see why Tivo owners are known as Tivo lovers. It’s not about watching TV, it’s about storing it and controlling it. I can watch HD Tv from a WDTV Live, but it crashes every time I try to fast forward, or do anything besides warch it. Tivo is so much more.

Phillip Stacy, you have not tried Tivo, you tried a DVR that wants t obe Tivo. Tivo sends updated air times to the Tivo via the internetor phone connection. they also let you extend lrecording times in both directions as long as it does not conflict with any other recording you have. It also lets you set programs in an order of priority so the rules regarding the higher priority over rule the lower priority conflict. There is a lot to how Tivo works that sets it apart from all other DVR’s. It truely deserves to be called Tivo. Don’t judge Tivo by how any other DVR works. They win law suits for a reason, they have very smart ways to do things that we think are simple, and making us keep believing they are simple.