LAS VEGAS — TiVo Inc. is more famous than it is rich.

The Alviso, Calif., company is best known for its pioneering device that lets television viewers record, pause and rewind live TV shows.

But despite its watershed technology and near household-name recognition, TiVo has struggled to make money, posting only two profitable quarters since its founding in 1997. Its subscriber base has slipped to 4.1 million from 4.5 million in 2006.

Since Chief Executive Thomas S. Rogers took the reins from TiVo co-founder Mike Ramsay in 2005, the company has forged partnerships to help it survive and thrive.

TiVo shares have risen 27 percent in the last year, giving the company a market valuation of $683 million.

The Los Angeles Times caught up with Rogers at the Consumer Electronics Show this month. This is a condensed version of the conversation:

Q. How have TV viewing habits changed since TiVo made its debut at CES in 1999?

A. The world of video is going to go the way of music. In the music world, you can get any song you want, any time you want it, on any device you want it. That's what's happened in the last five, six years. It's become a la carte, on demand.

We think the same thing is going to happen with television. That changes the whole notion of television convenience and ease — to mean being able to go out and find any piece of content you want through your television set and being able to watch it.

Q. How does your agreement with RealNetworks to provide the Rhapsody online music subscription fit into all this?

A. We said, if you could get every song ever written on your television and customize your own approach to how you want to listen, that would be a major improvement. And we went out and did that.

Q. What's TiVo's ultimate goal?

A. What we're aiming to do is build a dream that going back 20 years ago people in cable and television have been talking about — being able to get anything you want, when you want to see it on your television set. Now, there's a lot of complications to that. There are different video formats. Some things on TV are sent directly to TiVo. Other things we have to grab off the Internet. Other things involve rights deals with studios.

Q. There have been many efforts to persuade people to connect their TVs to the Internet. Most have failed. Is this something people want to do?

A. People have said to us, "Well, OK, the content is distributed by broadband, but how are you going to get people to connect their broadband wires to their television sets? It's an unnatural act. People are just not going to do that." We said that's just not the case. We have 800,000 TiVo users who have already directly connected their broadband through TiVo to their television sets.

Q. Why get Internet on your TV?

A. It makes it really easy to basically get all this content right to your TiVo. What we're doing is expanding the universe of choice available.

Now I can record things I want. I can get things off the Internet. I can get things via Amazon. I can get Rhapsody music. I can customize and personalize my own television viewing experience. That's the evolution. It's gone from a recording only, to creating the underpinnings for advertising and audience research as television consumption changes, to opening up the world of infinite choice in video. Not all of that is available. That's the dream. We're building toward that dream.

Q. What's the likelihood of TiVo merging with another company or selling this year?

A. Our view is that we're just on the beginning edge of a whole new way to think about television. We have a great brand name and millions of people who swear by us to watch television. And there seems to be just an awful lot of upside to drive as an independent company.