Reply to Comment

In short, blame the FCC. 

CableCARDs came out and the providers did all they could to make them fail. By the time the FCC did anything to try and improve the situation, 2011, TV manufacturers had already abandoned CableCARD. The only other third party who made DVRs stopped selling them leaving you with rent from your cable company or buy a TiVo. There is also MEdia Center with Windows, but Microsoft stopped development. 

You know how you pay a subscription fee to your cable provider. This covers the on demand content and guide data license so they can present you with a list of what is on so you can record. Well according to the cable companies even though you pay for it, it only covers use on their devices. As a result TiVo has to license the same guide data you are already paying for so you can have access on their hardware. The FCC had a chance to fix this when they issued their CableCARD mandate, but like always sided with the cable companies. 

On 12/1/12 we were supposed to start the transtition to an IP solution which would open it up to even more devices without the need for CableCARDs, but the FCC gave the cable companies 18 more months to implement it. 

Keep in mind this all dates back to the Telecommunications Act of 1996 which was supposed to bring innovation and competition to TV similar to how we saw the innovation once we were able to buy a home phone rather than rent it from the phone company.