TiVo
The design of the new TiVo Bolt seems pretty silly. I can't see any good reason for it to be shaped the way it is.
A/V components (and most things, really) should be flat, so they stack nicely. But TiVo used to be great at design. Two little things they did in the past stand out to me:
- I had a TiVo and I replaced its hard drive with a larger one. Later, I added a second drive. But the second time I had it open, I forgot to reconnect the fan. I woke up the next morning, and when I turned on my TV, I saw a message from my TiVo saying it had shut itself down due to heat. TiVo's engineers saved me from my own carelessness, and after reconnecting the fan, everything was fine, and that box worked for years. If they weren't so good, I would have woken up to an expensive, melted, non-functioning paperweight.
- I had another TiVo that I kept for many years. In 2007, Daylight Saving Time was changed in the U.S. My TiVo did not update itself to show the correct time but it never had problems recording things. They'd display at the wrong time, but everything still worked. A show that should be on at 8pm would show up in the menu at 7pm, I'd set it to record, and it'd record. I don't know how they kept the backend working, despite the frontend not, but I never missed a show.