star trek and blu-ray

posted on September 25th, 2012, 7:42 pm

There are plenty of brands of DVR here, but TiVo has become one of those brand names that has started to be used generically.

Kinda like when we say 'google something' when we just mean to look it up. It may be on yahoo, or wikipedia, but the phrase has stuck. To 'TiVo somehting' simply means to record it on a DVR.

posted on September 25th, 2012, 7:57 pm

There are plenty of brands of DVR here, but TiVo has become one of those brand names that has started to be used generically.

that's a common practice in the US isn't it? taking one brand and using it to refer to the product. examples that spring to mind are qtip for cotton buds, tivo, and tylenol for paracetamol/acetaminophen. i wonder why that practice is more common on your side of the pond than mine, it's an interesting difference.

we say google for all search engines as well, but that's probably because the only people that actually use bing are those too stupid to change the default search bar provider on IE. when we say google, 9 times out of 10, google is the exact search engine we intend to use.

personally i dont use the verb google to refer to looking up on wikipedia. i have a smart search for searching wikipedia directly.

posted on September 25th, 2012, 8:05 pm

Maybe it is. We also use Kleenex for tissues, and I'm sure plenty of others I don't think about. Medicine is common though. Band-aid, Sudafed, Advil, benadryl, etc all used nomatter what brand the medicine actually is.

posted on September 25th, 2012, 8:43 pm

There are plenty of brands of DVR here, but TiVo has become one of those brand names that has started to be used generically.

that's a common practice in the US isn't it? taking one brand and using it to refer to the product. examples that spring to mind are qtip for cotton buds, tivo, and tylenol for paracetamol/acetaminophen. i wonder why that practice is more common on your side of the pond than mine, it's an interesting difference.

we say google for all search engines as well, but that's probably because the only people that actually use bing are those too stupid to change the default search bar provider on IE. when we say google, 9 times out of 10, google is the exact search engine we intend to use.

personally i dont use the verb google to refer to looking up on wikipedia. i have a smart search for searching wikipedia directly.

I've noticed it a fair bit on both sides of the Atlantic (I'm a British expat), although I will concur that it is more common amongst the former colonials