Outside the box

Vodafone TV is closing down, and finding a good replacement may be costly.

- Peter Griffin 

History is littered with beloved gadgets that were nevertheless cancelled.

Remember the sleek Motorola Razr flip phone of the early 2000s? Or the Philips V2000 video recorder, which appeared briefly in the 1980s as a flashy rival to VHS and Betamax video?

Then there's TiVo, the TV set-top box that lets people record shows and skip the adverts. It was massive in the US and briefly went on sale here. But it fizzled out with the rise of streaming video services. These were all great devices that came into my life and left me bereft when they were discontinued.

There are shades of TiVo's demise in the closure of Vodafone TV, one of the best gadgets to emerge locally in the last decade. The streaming video service allows you to access premium Sky channels, Free-view channels and video apps such as Netflix and Amazon Prime via one compact box that plugs into your telly. There's a nifty electronic programming guide included, too. It won rave reviews everywhere.