This morning someone on Twitter mentioned how he is moving and will be losing all of the shows he recorded on his DVR. This made me think about how crappy the DVR experience really is, despite the fact that DVRs are wonderful devices because of how useful they are.
The only reason that DVRs are wonderful is that they made an awful situation better. Due to the powers that control the TV industry, access to their content has been limited to how they want to give it to you, rather than how you want to get it. DVRs eased this pain a little by giving you control over some of how you get it, within limitations.
But DVRs are an interim solution. Having the content you want to watch available when you want it is viewers’ end goal and we are getting close to that happening. At that point, an interim technology like DVRs will just be crappy.
Look at what you’re building – is it an interim technology or the end goal? Are you OK with that? If it is an interim technology, do you have a path to take you to the end goal when the time is right, or will you fade into obsolescence at that point?