Rating: 
Summary: piece of junk!!!
Review: The first unit I got a couple of weeks ago had a serious problem: it left my phone line in an undefined state and picked up every voice call before my phones could ring. I ordered the second unit a week ago, and it was even worse. It has the same problem plus the unit randomly crashes, often hangs up while downloading and can tie my phone line for hours (after it has crashed while downloading). The unit has lost color for several times, and even rebooting may not get the color back. The customer support is absolutely the worst I have ever experienced. I called them many times, and everytime (except once) I got a heavily indian accented person who had no idea what I was talking about. S/he had to ask me to hold for several times during the call in order to consult with his colleage/boss. The line was very unclear, so my calls must have been routed to India.
I had TiVo before and switched to ReplayTV because of its auto commercial advance feature. Unfortunately, it doesn't work most of the time. Well, I will have to return both units and go back to TiVo.
Rating:
Summary: Not Ready For Prime Time piece of Junk!
Review: This is my second review. It deserves a second pass since I've owned it for about three months and it has had an opporunity to show how bad a piece of equipment it is.We missed one of our favorite shows because it hadn't been downloading show information but neglected to tell me via messages as it used to and as our Showstopper always did. I had to clear the channel guide which forces a reboot and then force a net connect which took a looooong time. It is slower at everything than our old Panasonic Showstopper 2000 was! Still no USB port even though there's a jack on the back of the machine. No cheap ethernet bridge from Netgear that they promised weeks ago. Their technical support has obviously been outsourced to New Delhi. Very, very disappointed in this device. I can't believe they thought it was ready for market. I read one review where the guy really panned the device and I thought he was being a whiney baby. He was right. This thing is bad.
Rating:
Summary: Skip This Product
Review: This is the worst consumer electronics product that I have ever bought. After reading a review in the NY Times, I picked Replay over Tivo. Here is my experience to date: The first unit shipped to me broke within 24 hours, but not before I had signed up for their listings service. I had to ship the product back at my expense in the original box (with the UPC code attached - see later). Once I got the new box, I literally spent over one week with numerous reps at Replay in order to move my service from my original unit to the one they shipped back to me. I then decided to cash in the $50 rebate that Replay was promoting. No way. I no longer had the bar code from the package - it was shipped back with the broken unit and the box they sent back had no bar code. Add $50 to the cost! Then there is the experience of downloading the channel guide...
I get a success rate under 5% - that means I have to try over 20 times before their service will download the updated channel guide information. (I use a cable modem connection - not a problem on my end as I am able to surf the Net via the same connection.) All in all, a great disappointment. I strongly recommend that you stay away from this company and its products.
Rating: 
Summary: Did everything it said it would do!
Review: I am enjoying my Replay a lot. I prefer watching my recordings to live television now and get mad when I can't jump over the commercials on live TV. There are some extremely misleading bad reviews below and I wanted to clear some misconceptions up about what this item is capable of. 1. Commercial skipping - no this feature doesn't work all the time. It's not Replay's fault. TV networks have gotten smart enough to smash the commercials right to the edge of the show, so that recorders like this can't discern where the show ends and the commercial begins. 2. Channel flipping - yes, it is slow if you want to flip channels. I personally don't find channel flipping necessary, since replay will show me a list of all the movies currently on, or sitcoms, or anything else. But, if you want to flip channels, your old remote will still work. It doesn't implode or anything. 3. Watching one show while recording another - you can watch one of your recorded shows while it records from TV - isn't that enough? I didn't have any problems hooking it up to my cable modem and it updated and was ready to run in like 10 minutes. You just have to tell it your location and it downloads the program guide. The replaytv.com website is useful for troubleshooting. I am really enjoying myreplaytv.com for picking out shows. When I'm bored at work, I can go and see what is showing and it will send it to my Replay (on the next nightly update) and record those shows. Pretty fun! Tivo wasn't an option since I don't have a phone line, and I'm very happy with Replay!
Rating:
Summary: fast useless help and not for dish network
Review: I bought the replaytv and I called the tech support 6 times. The wait for the support is the best I have seen the longest wait is like 1 minute. The information that they provide is the most worthless. Each time I called I got a different answer to my problem. One said it was the replaytv unit fault, another said it was my network, another said it was the server and the other three didn't know. The problem was the same error 93a6000b. No one fixed my problem. They didn't listen to what was happening. I wouldn't recommend to anyone with dish. I have dish network but couldn't download the programming for it. I could download Directtv without any problem and if you use cable or a antena the you are in good shape. Did not work with dish. Always get to 92% download and unexcepted error. []was excellent on shipping to me and getting me another one. I would strongly recommend using something else for dish customers. The biggest waste of my time I have spent.
Rating:
Summary: I'm hooked!
Review: If you think you watch too much TV now you do not want to buy this unit. I am hooked. I have to confess I really agonized over buying this thing. I actually put in the order, canceled it and then reordered. The reason I agonized so much is the wide divergence of opinions here on Amazon (and other review sites). I've never seen a product with so many reviews clustered around the one and the five. As I read the 'good' or 5 reviews I read about everything I wanted this unit to do for me. Allow me to watch TV on my schedule, skip commercials, download shows to my laptop to watch on the road (a hack not a supported feature) and so forth. The bad or 1 reviews where mostly people who had bad experience with the reliability of the unit or customer support. So I thought if I bought this thing I was playing the lottery to some extent. Well I have only had the unit for a few days but I have to tell you I LOVE IT. The picture is great (one of my main concerns). Set up took 20 minutes. When I did set it up the picture was not a great as I would like and I called tech support. In one minute I had an extremely knowledgeable person on the line (my 2nd greatest concern). He suggested I replace the RCA cables I was using with the Coax and we quickly discovered the problem was the cheap RCA cables (bought in a flea market in Brazil). If the unit does not last over a year I'll be back with a more negative report. ... One precaution I took is I hooked it up to a UPS. It does seem that some of the reliability problems where cause by power problems. Hey this is a little computer dedicated to recording your shows. Computers do not like power problems. Got a UPS ... at a local place (after rebates), so it seemed a prudent precaution. One of the greatest pleasures in this unit is starting to watch your shows a little later and skipping all the commercials. How often have you rushed dinner, rushed home or rushed something else to catch a show. Now you want to be late. Start your show at 20 minutes after the hour, skip the commercials and be finished watching at the same time. If you watch 2 hour long dramas in a night, that saves you 40 minutes. Of course you will probably invest that 40 minutes in watching another show, but still it is more productive then watching commercials. I also love that my son is no longer bombarded with all the marketing messages during his shows. Commercial skip does not work 100%, but when it misses one the 30 seconds skip button works great. If you overshoot the beginning of the next scene, there is a 7 second 'instant replay' that takes you back. If you want the commercial skip (imperfect as it is), you better buy a unit now. The new version coming out in August will not have it. Live pause is wonderful if you have children. I can't wait for football season. I'll probably start to watch the game an hour late, skipping commercials and half time shows will give me back over an hour every Sunday (thought I might use some of that with instant replays). The UI (user interface) is good. I have no problem finding and setting the thing to record my shows. A new feature (just added) is a conflict alert system that tells you if the show you are going to set to record conflicts with something you already told it to capture. I do have a degree in computer science and work all day with computer systems so my view of usability might not hold for a more technically challenged individual. I wish there was a space management feature that let me see how much space everything is taking up and allows me to remove stuff from the disk. It is easy to delete old shows either after you watch them or from a menu. And you can set it to auto-delete old shows for space (if you like), but the replay channel (where you can delete old shows) does not show how much space a show is taking up. Now my dilemma is should I get one in the bedroom?? ... fees would be a bit steep for me. I wish the company would have a discount for multiple units in one house (like Cable TV). Until they do, everyone in my family is going to be fighting to watch the one TV with the replay hooked up. BTW, I got the 60 hour model, but since all the reviews seem to be here with the 40 hour model, I'm placing it here.
Rating:
Summary: Great Product
Review: This is a good unit and easy to set up.If I had to change something I would have bought a larger hard drive maybe the 50160.
Rating: 
Summary: What you should know about this unit
Review: I am disappointed with the unit. It has several glaring problems. The most notable is that the fan on the unit runs all the time. And it is not quiet. We have it in our bedroom and even inside an amoire with the doors closed I can hear it. It is really loud with the doors open. This is with the unit off and hard drive spun down! I fail to see the wisdom in this. Second, there is a USB 1.1 port specified on the specs on the web site. This is a lie. There is no USB port on the machine. There is a USB jack that is dead. Their excuse is that it is basically a future port. I wasted fifty bucks on a USB wireless adapter to connect the machine wirelessly to my home network. Finally, it is slower than my old Panasonic Showstopper 2000 at loading channels. Otherwise I am pleased with the features. But these are GLARING PROBLEMS. Be advised. Do your research
Rating:
Summary: Refurb Unit = Miserable Experience
Review: Just wanted to chime in with my ongoing experience with ReplayTV. I purchased a refurbished 5040 off of their website at a considerable discount and the end result has been you get less than what you pay for. Keep in mind this is a refurbished unit however I can't imagine you get better service if you have a new unit. To begin with there was a two week wait to get the unit. When the unit arrived that was a large empty space where the remote and accessories should have been. After a month and approximately 10 phone calls the accessories finally arrived. Keep in mind the 10 phone calls were from me to ReplayTV. Even though I was told that I would recieve a phone call or email with an update neither ever happened. Now that I have the remote I expected to dive right into recording however the ReplayTV doesn't seem to like my cable signal so I only get 20 - 30 seconds of video before the ReplayTV reports that I have no video signal and displays a blue screen. I even was told to buy a signal amplifier and this hasn't helped. It has been over a month and the ReplayTV has been nothing more than a paper weight. I buy tons of stuff off of the internet and this is by far the worst experience I've ever had with a company. At this point I plan on returning the unit and I'm not sure if I want to try Tivo. I just don't have time to troubleshoot ReplayTv's product for them. In the end buyer beware.
Rating:
Summary: Only for a "tinkerer" NOT FOR the AVERAGE USER!
Review: I bought one before Thanksgiving last year for my wife. It's been a constant source of annoyance and some weeks I've spent several hours trying to revive it. It was rushed to market apparently in an attempt to head off bankruptcy and was never properly tested. If you are willing to be a BETA TESTER then go ahead and buy it. IF you are going to put it on ETHERNET and update via the Internet you may find it works MOSTLY OK though you will find some possible problems like "stuttering" at times. If you are going to use the PHONE MODEM and have it call in as it is supposed to nightly you are in for nothing but trouble. I should have bought a TIVO and then maybe my wife could use it without my checking every morning to see if the unit is locked up and if it was successful in updating the guide and then using the hidden menus and manual reboots to try to make it start working again. The new owner after the bankruptcy of SonicBlue is trying to fix the numerous problems in the unit but so far has only made it so that if the call in is unsuccessful the unit will not lock up as it did before. However it then won't be successful with any other attempts to do the nightly call in until the unit reboots (once a week automatically) and in our case that call in will also be unsuccessful and after two weeks no guide information will be there. Unfortunately the Replay TV which I consider to be superior to the TIVO --- **IF** it worked as it was represented to work -- would be a great product. But it's NOT READY FOR CONSUMER USE. Unless you want a daily hassle and challenge to tinker with every day .... SAVE YOURSELF THE HASSLE and BUY SOMETHING ELSE until the new company is successful in fixing the software of the 5000 series Replay....if every!
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