Rating: 
Summary: So much potential, but did not deliver
Review: The concept is awesome. Digital recorders will change your TV experience forever. They remove the notions of time and channel from your TV. Your kids will get an endless supply of free on-demand good programs. You will gain 30% of time watching shows without commercials.But we regret buying the ReplayTV; if we had to do this again we would pick an integrated digital recorder / satellite receiver based on TiVo. I am disappointed by: You can NOT watch one show while recording another one. Now how ridiculous is that ! Even my VCR does it. Commercial skip: very cool ... when it works. On slow paced shows (think Little House in the Prairie) it works well. But it is completely freaked by shows like "24", where the fast paced sequences are mis-identified as commercials. Channel surf: it takes a good 5 seconds (yes, 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, etc ...) between the push of the remote button, and the appearance of the new channel you selected on the screen. This makes channel surfing IMPOSSIBLE - now that should be illegal ! Computer crash: about 3 mornings per week, we have to reboot the unit because it froze during the software update during the night. So if you don't remember to check the unit in the morning before you leave the house, it will not record the evening shows until you reboot it. Recording priorities: that needs serious work. When you start having several profiles / channels (or whatever stupid names their marketing people made up) recording things for you, you run into recording conflicts ... and that is OK, as long as you are given a chance to know about it and manage the conflict. We find out after the fact, when Saturday Night Live did not get recorded because some obscure 1930s movie rated 3.5 stars happened to start 30 minutes before ... The navigation: probably my biggest beef, because this would be easy to fix if they spent the time. The escape button for example: in most menus, it takes you back up one level. But not always ... there are some menus (end of viewing recorded show, want to go back to live TV?) where escape just does not work; you then have to learn the funky workarounds.
Rating:
Summary: Store this in the back of your Edsel!
Review: Not a bad product, but nobody knows who makes or supports these things any more! Look at whatever PVR your Cable or Sat company has, or just get a TiVo.
Rating: 
Summary: Very sensitive to power outages, otherwise nice to have
Review: In 2001 we bought a Tivo 30hr unit and love it, though eventually wished for more capacity. It's never given any trouble, is user friendly and easy to use. In 2002 we got a Replay 5160, and have had it for 7 months. We got Replay specifically for it's networking abilities, not to mention the 160hr capacity. Our first impression was that the interface was cumbersome, but figured it was just a learning process. Months later it's still a bit cumbersome, but we got the hang of it. The networking is an excellent feature.. I use DV-Archive (freeware) to copy shows to my PC, and the Replay can play them from there as well! Plus I save some shows and burn them to CD/DVD. We haven't found Replay's web based utility to be useful however. A BIG PROBLEM has been the stability of the unit. After a few months it began to skip while playing and response to the remote control slowed down to a crawl. We might wait a full minute before a button press was acknowledged by the system. It became nearly unusable, but we found a secret menu (thanks to the web) and reset the unit to factory defaults. We lost ALL of our programs, but at least the unit worked well again. (BTW, as of May's software update, the secret menu no longer exists) Over the course of the next few months the skipping and slowdowns occured again, so we kept resetting to factory defaults to fix it, losing our programs every time. Pretty disappointing. The only thing that stopped us from sending it in was (a) horror stories about Sonic Blue's warranty support, and (b) we hoped a software upgrade might cure the problems. This never happened.. instead the unit eventually started rebooting infinitely. It became totally unusable, so we figured it might finally be time to send it in. At this point we were extremely disgusted and sought for help on the web. I found a PC utility that let me re-create the hard drive contents from scratch. After moving the disk to my PC, reformatting then replacing it in the Replay, all was well again, though of course we lost all our programs again. Fortunately, reformatting didn't affect our liftime subscription status since it isn't stored on the disk. Later we made an observation that our Replay failures may have been associated with occasional but repeated power losses we have had in our neighborhood (Boston suburb). As a result we picked up a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) and connected it to both the Replay and the cable box. After more than two months of using the UPS, the Replay has been operating flawlessly. No remote control slowdowns, no rebooting problems. I truly believe that the unit would fail again of we expose it to plain AC power and another power failure occurs. My opinion is that it is a great and flexible machine, but the user interface needs a little work, and it should be able to withstand a power loss without eventually losing it's mind. Replay gets a 3, Tivo gets a 5!
Rating: 
Summary: DVR without monthly service fees?
Review: I won't buy a DVR that has monthly service fees and needs a telephone or ethernet connection just to work. That's ridiculous! How about just a freakin' simple hard drive recorder that replaces my VCR?
Or for manufacturers out there, here's my ideal DVR:
no monthly service fees, 80 GB (or hard drive hot swappable), progressive-scan DVD video recorder with time slip, records and plays on all DVD formats (DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW), DTS optical audio, many event timer program (more than just 8-event VCR), everthing a VCR does but more, bonus: PCMCIA slot with plug-in modules for compactflash and sd memory cards for viewing digital camera pictures, and a DV firewire port for plugging in digital video camera.
Rating: 
Summary: very solid, and cheaper than tivo
Review: pros:
* I can program it via the web
* Easy to use setup and interface, I didn't have to read any instructions to set up all my shows
* cheaper monthly price than tivo cons:
* commerical advance doesn't work correctly on a lot of new shows, for instance in alias it randomly skips 4 to 5 minutes in the middle of the show. I normally just turn it off during these shows and use the quick-skip button. HOWEVER it works great for cartoons and the stuff I watch on the learning channel.
Rating:
Summary: only reason not five stars is bankruptcy and not "perfect"
Review: I have never owned a tivo. This box is awesome. Commercial skip works about 85% for me, and is the best feature. After reading in the manual that it will not work on shows you are recording and watching at the same time... apparently the software is updated and bam, i set a blanket record for all 3 hrs of nbc thurs night and i watch commercial free. Swapping content? yeah right, too long and to much legal hassle. Does changing channels take too long, sure. Can you watch one channel and record another, sure if you have a tv with two antenna inputs.
As you watch is apparently spins shows to hard drive, when i turn on tv after a day of work the box skips and snags, all you do is change channel to apparently reset record on the fly and all is well. I cant run my router as a dhcp so i set static and have to change replay ip every week or so and manually connect bummer. As for bankruptcy, even if the guide was no longer provided, assuming the box still works with manual programming like a vcr so what? I dont use the replay zones anyway. Only big loss is the find shows feature and record all episodes. Big bummer. Whats your option, is tivo guaranteed to survive? seen their balance sheet lately? Now you've got graphics cards which when they mature in a few years with the ... cost of hard drive space with certainly spell trouble for the set top market. This device rocks overall, no technology is perfect. The commercial advance in my mind is the best reason to buy this.
Rating: 
Summary: Five stars with held breath
Review: I brought the box home, unpacked it and was happy to see the simplified directions for hooking the machine up. Unlike TiVo, the ReplayTV 5000 series has both a phone hookup as well as broadband ethernet. I have read many reviews that criticize the modems in the machines so if you have an ethernet connection that is the route that you want to take. Connections to the cable box, TV and audio system were easy. Once the ethernet cable was set I turned on the machine and watched it go through initial set-ups which included downloading new software (guess it could see through the router!). After choosing the correct cable box I was set to go. The ReplayTV has worked flawlessly since I started using it. Two of the features that set it apart from TiVo are Commerical Advance and Internet sharing. I have not used Internet Sharing yet and really don't know if I will but I have used Commerical Advance while watching replays of various shows I've recorded. I would agree that this feature works correctly about 80% of the time, but even when it's not right on the money it's close enough so it's not a pain. The ReplayTV is easy to program. Searching for your favorite shows or movies can be done from your TV as well as the internet site... The system connects with the servers nightly to update channel listings as well as downloading software updates and receive programming ... This unit has been a joy. But that said I've read horror stories where the unit has stopped working after a few weeks or months. I think that's a risk you take with any electronic/computer equipment. As for the future of the ReplayTV I think it looks bright with Denon & Marantz. Buy it, plug it in and watch TV like you never have before.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding product, and even a touch better than TIVO
Review: I have a Tivo and 2 Replays. Tivo is a touch easier to use (our 4 year old can operate the basic playback features), but for all but the technophobe, Replay is slightly superior in terms of flexibility. It takes a few extra key strokes but you have greater control of record options, sorting and grouping of recorded shows, etc. The commercial skip is AWESOME -- but doesn't work right on all shows. When it doesn't work shift to regular play and you're fine. Recent units are much speedier than older ones (I assume a processor upgrade). Both either TIVO or Replay are 100x improvements over vcrs, so you can't go wrong.
Rating:
Summary: ReplayTV is Addictive, but the Hardware lacks
Review: Received the 160 hr ReplayTV. Got it up and running in about 45 minutes (with my surround system). Within about 2 to 3 hours I felt comfortable with the remote and how to program the recordings and what not. However, from the beginning there were little things that didn't work. I recorded a series of shows, but some of them wouldn't play. The record time sometimes started early or late, causing me to miss part of the show. And then about 3 weeks after purchase, I came home to find that the unit was in a repetitive loop of rebooting. SonicBlue support said the hard drive was bad and to send it back in. I am now waiting on the next one to be delivered. If it's not here soon, I'm going with TiVo.
Rating:
Summary: They couldn't go on like this forever
Review: SonicBLUE's focus on buzz-generating features like show sharing and commercial skip that don't work well or are useless to a majority of users and their inattention to stability, customer service, and simple ease of use has finally caught up with them. After spending millions fighting lawsuits over show sharing, a feature that's too slow to be practical for most people and seeing a steep volume of their 5000 series recorders returned with problems that their foreign customer service couldn't, or wouldn't help with, they filed for bankruptcy at the end of March 2003. Their business units including ReplayTV will be auctioned off by the court in mid-April. Despite entering the market at about the same time as rival Tivo they have barely 1/6 as many customers and since SonicBLUE didn't offer a monthly payment option until late last year, only a small fraction of those customers would be an ongoing revenue source for a new owner. Who will end up with ReplayTV and what they'll do with it isn't known, but with the burden of running a service that only a few customers are paying for and the damage SonicBLUE has done to the ReplayTV name, right now it would be foolish to bank on a new buyer continuing ReplayTV service, which is required to get the advertised functionality. If the customer base isn't profitable it's likely the winning bidder will just pick ReplayTVs bones for whatever intellectual property and patents are useful to them and throw the rest away. All SonicBLUE will say is the service will continue unaffected "through at least the end of April". It doesn't sound promising. Sometimes taking on Goliath is brave and noble. Other times it's just collosally, suicidally stupid. This time was stupid.
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