Rating: 
Summary: TERRIBLE customer service
Review: The 5040 might be okay, if I could ever get it to work. I paid this lousy company my [$$] to activate the service and my box refuses to register the payment. Just try calling support to get the problem fixed. I waited on hold for over TWO hours and finally was disconnected. DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY WITH A COMPANY LIKE THIS THAT DOESN'T HAVE ITS ACT TOGETHER, unless you just enjoy being frustrated. Activating the service should have been seamless. This company obviously didn't bother to test any of their systems. But you'll love being told "how important your call is to them". In fact, you'll get to hear that message about 10,000 times if you buy a ReplayTV unit.
Rating:
Summary: Not if you need Customer Service
Review: The swooshing air and sci-fi sound of their on-hold music is very familiar to me. I purchased this system as a gift. The first time it had been returned and the system would not allow setup. That was returned. The second time there was a modem problem. I sat on hold for a minimum of 8 hours during the course of 4-5 phone calls. This is not an exagerration. The customer service representatives could not answer the questions, had trouble communicating effictively, and were, at times, rude. Ultimately, they promised to call us back in 24 hours with an answer. This was 2 weeks ago. No phone call yet. Numerous emails to their customer support staff also have gone unanswered. Customer service representatives acknowledge that a complaint department exists but refused to give a phone number, email address or mailing address.Does the system work? Perhaps, but I will never know because I will never again purchase any device manufactured by the SONICBlue company. Very rarely do you need customer service with the availability of online help services, but sometimes that occasion rears its ugly head. If this happens to you, don't expect any support from these people. Ultimately, it all boiled down to a yes/no question. They never answered it. Emails remain unanswered, phone calls remain unreturned. These people are unprofessional and ill-prepared. Purchase something else. -William Kline
Rating: 
Summary: Happy with my Replay 5040
Review: I only received my 5040 last month (had 3060 before) but I'm loving it so far. The ethernet port is great! I'll be using that for burning shows to CD/DVD as well as using the ReplayTV as a general video capture device. Show sharing is so cool. Commerical Advance is so great I just can not believe how well it works. No more Commericals for us.
You can not go wrong buying a Replaytv DVR. And the 5040 is priced to move. And the monthly service fee is cheaper then Tivo.
Rating:
Summary: Cool Box!
Review: I am using just about every function on the box and have been VERY happy with the product. The versatility of the audio/video connectivity is great. I use the ethernet port primarily for viewing digital photos and downloading program information. Some day if I get another replay box or if my cable company integrates the technology, I hope to be able send programs to another TV in my house. I use a wireless hub to connect to my wireless router which connects to my WiFi equipped notebook as well as to my cable modem. The network configuration is quite simple. Contrary to what a lot of people have dinged replay for, the user interface is intuitive and given the Ethernet capability highlighted above and the automated commercial skip feature, IMHO this box is superior to TiVo. You won't be disappointed!
Rating:
Summary: buy tivo
Review: Have had the unit for 3 weeks. could not get the unit to connect to "the replay system". I was ready to ship unit back, and the unit finally connected. Now I tried to register for service. Called service activation line (they answer- they want money) 2 separate times, neither person was able to activate my system. Tried online activation, would not activate my account either. I still have my UPS return label, and will probably use it.
Rating:
Summary: Where's Customer Service?
Review: Received my 5160 today with much glee but so far I am sorely disappointed. I connected all the right cables and lines and started the setup process only to be shut out before I could begin. The telephone connection could not be completed! I got some isoteric error number and no other explanation. Do I need the area code? I tried that, no luck. Try another beginning phone number for them to search, no luck. The line is fine, I have no idea why it won't connect. I tried customer "service" 4 times now and have been put on hold for over 20 minutes twice (I couldn't wait any longer) and now I can not even get though. Very Poor! I will update this message if I get any satisfaction. MJR
Rating: 
Summary: Early impressions -- We Love it!
Review: I bought our ReplayTV unit after the Christmas rush.
Turns out I didn't need technical assistance (knock on plastic).
I had no problems installing it and getting it to work.
(Radioshack guys can be Sooo helpful with questions about
cables, internet routers, etc. !)
We're just using the phone line connection for now.
The scary router stuff is still in a box (gulp). We love ReplayTV (though their name is not nearly as catchy as Tivo).
It has changed the way we waste time.
I hate hate hate commercials--don't want to watch them,
don't want my kids to watch them.
I realize that such dangerously radical thoughts threaten the
very foundation of our economy--but ReplayTV understands me. My brother-in-law has had Tivo since it first came out.
The way he described it to me, it sounded like black magic--
watching live (almost) tv and fast-forwarding through the commercials.
I finally decided to get on board the DVR (digital video recording) bandwagon when my children started to spend too much time in front of our tv and I read a NewsWeek article that said Tivo and ReplayTV could improve (revolutionize!) the viewing habits of children (and adults!). There is really no magic to it.
I had been taping my favorite shows (which is a big pain, especially if one travels) and fast-forwarding the commercials.
A DVR is like a VCR that's computerized, doesn't need tapes, and reads TV-Guide.
And ReplayTV can skip over commercials automatically so you don't even have to fast-forward--how's THAT for lazy! I have set up a ReplayTV category for each family member and we each record the shows we want to our own category (Dad has priority of course).
We don't watch TV channels anymore, we watch our own ReplayTV channels! It's a better world. I recommend getting the 160hr unit if you have kids.
We only record at high quality and need lots of room.
To connect the DVR to our TV, I experimented with almost all the Replaytv output-jacks and achieved near-perfect sound and video quality by simply using coax.
So, if you have analog cable service in your house, simply connect the wall cable to the DVR and connect the DVR to your
TV using the included coax. You then connect the DVR to your phone line and you're done fussing with cables (unless you want to mess with internet.) I share some of the gripes of other reviewers and I'm not familiar enough with Tivo to make detailed comparisons.
Overall, we are just delighted with our first DVR experience. Hope this helps you! *** update--I tried to get fancy by setting up an account at myreplaytv.com so I could program my DVR over the web and I think this is what caused my DVR to crash overnight during it's nightly download. I canceled the account and the problem went away. P.S. my hold-time with customer service was >1.5 hours!
Not sure they helped, although I now know a secret debugging code that forces the DVR to call its mothership! *** update (after 40 days and nights!) I could never go back to "live" TV, never. We stopped using the commercial pass feature because, too often, it skipped over show segments.
Called customer service recently to find out when USB wireless internet connectivity would be supported. This time they answered the phone almost immediately. They are sticking to their March 31 estimate. Don't know if it will be the newer 5x faster IEEE standard. The 30 second skip button is perfect for zooming over commercials and dead-time between football plays.
The only trouble is, if you skip too far past a commercial (and miss some show), you have to press the 7-second back-skip button several times. Would like to see a 15-second back-skip button. Sometimes (rarely) the system hangs if we confuse it by pushing too many buttons too quickly.
Sometimes the system fails to download the updated TV schedule overnight--apparently because it is busy recording a show when it tries to call the mothership (why can't it just work around that?!) If you absolutely don't want to miss recording a show, read the manual CAREFULLY to understand how the priority system works! If I had to do it again, I'd give TIVO a closer look. But I still might go with REPLAY.
Rating:
Summary: Not at all it's cracked up to be
Review: I love the concept of this device, but the truth is that it's got tons of faults. There are many things they don't tell you before you buy (or even in the included literature). Such as--you cannot watch a live program while recording another one. So, unless you've got multiple signal feeds into the device, you've got to watch what you're recording, which effectively negates the reason to record the show. Also, you can't record two programs at once, which doesn't seem to me would be so difficult--this thing is basically a hard drive, and I can write as many files as I want to the hard drive on my computer simultaneously. In addition, the quoted memory capacity is for recording at the lowest quality picture, the quality of which I can tell you is quite poor. At the lower quality recording level, shots are grainy, move in slow motion, and generally ruin the viewing experience, but if you record at the highest quality, you'll only take advantage of 60% of your storage capactiy. To top it all off, every time you change a channel, there's almost a 3 second delay, not to mention VERY slow navigation through the menus. Can I say enough bad things about this product? OK, here's another--while trying to answer some of the questions I eventually figured out myself and detailed above, I spent 45 minutes on hold on their tech support line, then gave up and wrote three emails, none of which have been replied to (twelve hours later). It's funny--I'd been watching another retailer offering lots of these units as "open box items", devices that had been returned and were available for resale. I was salivating at the low prices, ...--and now I'll be returning mine. Don't waste your time and money!
Rating:
Summary: Great PVR!!! Beats TIVO hands down!
Review: Best unit in this market. Internet connection and show sharing between units can't be beat!
Rating:
Summary: I LOVE my 5160!!!
Review: I have had a Replay 3060 for a few years. We decided to update our Replay to get the progressive scan. We have gotten a new Hitachi big screen and wanted to try to get the best picture we could. We got the 5160 and hooked it up w/the internet. I love it!! It is a big improvement to the 3060 (which was great!). It is faster and the picture is awesome!! Highly recommended! We will prob add another for the bedroom. We may go less hours, maybe a 5080 or 5040, but again, Replay is awesome!!
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