Greetings from northern Virginia, where a local version of winter is graying skies and keeping temperatures in the 35-50 F band. It’s not cold enough for snow or ice, although my decades of living in states with serious winter still …

For a while, it seemed like everyone had a TiVo. It was a plot point on major TV shows; it had A-list Hollywood fans; it became a verb as ubiquitous as Google or Xerox. The love was well-earned, since TiVo had created a product that felt