Oh, wait, we already have that technology. Too bad we have people who have worked for twenty years to kill it.
I don't give a damn about NBC shows.
Netflix's annual revenue is 4.3 BN (i.e. over 10x higher), and the company is worth 21bn. (https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ANFLX)
Why? Sure, a relatively few people will use Tivo, but many more won't. Empirically, the convenience / lack of planning necessary to watch streaming video is worth approximately 10x more.
This illustrates the importance of using data rather than anecdotes to draw conclusions. As a HN poster, our personal experience tends to be heavily biased towards our self-selected associations with more technically oriented people rather than "normal," average people.
I expect the number of people who use DVRs is close to that of premium television subscribers. People who don't are cord-cutters or only receive a low-cost basic package.
Parent was not using an anecdote to illustrate that streaming is better/worse than downloading.
Parent was using an anecdote to prove the fact that UIs exist that allow people to store media, rather than constantly streaming it.
Consumers might not want to have to deal with HDD storage, but I would bet you dollars to donuts that they want 4K without buffering issues.
EDIT: Also, I just wanted to mention that maybe our companies should be inventing new ways of storing things (like TiVo did with remarkable success), instead of spending all of their resources aquiring the rights to hit movies and extorting each other.
It's really more for the providers and cintent owners: keeps customers tethered and paying for the privilege of suckling from server teats whenever they consume content.
Because, really, storage could be made just as easy for consumers as streaming if providers had the will.
Instead, it's "put everything in the cloud, then pay us over and over again to access it".