Rating: 
Summary: No Problems - Very Happy
Review: I haven't had to call their customer support but I have had zero problems. Everything worked right out of the box. I am recieving my first tv show from someone on the other side of the country right now! The Ethernet port is the difference!If you own a Macintosh because it's easier or you like to call tech support instead of figuring it our yourself your probably better off buying a TIVO. If you are a bit techy then the Replay is the only way to go.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Ready for Prime Time
Review: Well, I bought one of these for someone else, and after a lengthy install, got it to work as it should. Then I bought one for myself and it would not change channels on my satellite TV receiver, so I could not record anything except for the channel my satellite receiver was set to at the time. The tech support department (outsourced to India) took many hours of simple-minded guessing to finally tell me it was defective. If I had any experience with the product, I would have known much sooner that they had next to no idea what they were doing. I have rarely, if ever, experienced worse tech support. I ended up returning the item for a refund. If you can get yours to work, it is a great product. If you need to rely on Sonic Blue tech support, you should forget it and return the item unless your time is worth nothing and you have hours of it to waste.
Rating:
Summary: Great if you use it for what it is intended for
Review: Two negative reviews of this product (by "Greg from Avon" and "Red Byer") strike me as unfair because either (or both) misinformed about the features of Replay TV recorders or their primary purpose. Hard disk video recorders are primarily intended to be short- to medium-term storage devices for time-shifting of shows and for enhancing the viewing experience through convenience feature such as pausing, rewinding and freezing "live" shows. Added features such as automatic commercial skip during replay and instant 7-second backwards jumps also greatly improve the viewing experience for recorded shows in comparison with what you get from a VCR. Replay TV 5160 offers tremendous flexibility in those departments, if you care to read the manual and use the host of options available for selecting material for recording, deciding what should have priority if there is a timing conflict, deciding how many episodes of a show should be retained, as well as organizing and managing recorded content. In addition, easy networkability of several units does make it possible to use Replay TV recorders as long-term storage devices if so desired. To counter a few of the complaints of negative reviewers: 1. Automatic commercial skipping (which works in about 80% of cases) is not a useless gimmick, but rather a great time-saver when you want to save a show to tape or DVD-R. With a Tivo, the only way to skip commercials is to manually trigger 30-second forward jumps. 2. In several weeks of constant use, I never experienced freezing of the operating system. I had to call Tech Support once to confirm my cable box's IR code and got through very fast. 3. The 7-second backwards jump feature is included with Replay TV 5000 series machine, and is not a Tivo exclusive. 4. I don't know about Sonic Blue/Repaly TV being on the verge of bankruptcy. What I know is that their video recorders are in short supply, which seems to indicate healthy sales. A few words of caution: Replay TV (as well as other hard disk video recorders) is not for users who never read manuals and are barely able to use the most basic functions of a VCR. The buffering of video signals causes a significant delay when switching channels, so it is best to have a cable box or satellite receiver with dual tuners, allowing viewing one channel while recording another; such an arrangement gives you a choice between quick channel-surfing and viewing and/or recording wth the convenience features of the HD video recorder. Image quality is selectable, and the lowest setting is about par with standard VHS (without the video noise). However, the highest quality setting, reducing total recording capacity to some 50 hours, is best for serious viewing or archiving to DVD or S-VHS. Finally, the very shgort warranty period (90 days parts and loabor) suggests a lack of confidence from Sonic Blue in the long-term reliability of their products. Should do better than that.
Rating: 
Summary: Great concept, Beta (maybe alpha) version, abysmal service
Review: Received for Christmas, and connected it without any difficulty. Went through set-up process okay, then problems started. Biggest issue is 7-9 second delay when switching channels via digital cable box. I understand the unit buffers some signal, but it would make a lot more sense to show signal as soon as possible. Also experienced regular freezings and need to reboot. Calls to customer service required minimum of 55 minute wait on hold. I once got hung up on after two-hour wait (closing time). CSR's vary widely in quality and most are not even familiar with the included manual. Each CSR had a different story: "Fix available now and will be downloaded automatically" "will be fixed 1st quarter" and "will be fixed 2nd quarter". e-mail was even worse - 3 weeks! Received several replies today, two weeks after I returned the unit. I did get a chance to play with this a little bit in the three days that I had to test (four day trial period is calendar days so if you turn it on in the evening, you lose a day). This product holds great promise, I am debating whether or not to try TIVO.
Rating: 
Summary: Think Twice Before you go Replay
Review: I'll admit, I'm a TIVO enthusiast....I've been lured by some of the features that ReplayTV boasts (program sharing, commercial skip). However, look closely at the day-to-day features and the user interface and you'll soon see that Tivo comes out on top of Replay, UltimateTV(bankrupt) and other knock-offs.
Look for features like "Season Passes" (finds your shows, regardless of time, and records all of them, or first run only). Look to see if your box can prioritize your season passes (what if shows conflict, which one do you really want to record?). Look to see if your box allows you to save recorded shows for certain amounts of time, or save until you chose to delete (a feature distinctly lacking on UltimateTV, it just woul FIFO delete items). Commercial skip? Forget it....triple speed forward gets you through a commercial break in about 10 seconds. It's the "7 second back" button (found only on TIVO) that is ultimately cool. Miss a joke, or a mumbled line, or wanna see a quick replay...hit the 7-second back button once or twice and see it over and over.
Oh...Tivo actually does have a commercial skip, they just don't brag bout it (30-second forward button can be set on the remote).
Last, but not least, Replay has always been flirting with bankruptcy. I live in Mt View (home of Replay) and have watched their building gradually go towards empty. UltimateTV has already "pulled the plug" and moved the group back up to Redmond. Tivo is backed by Phillips, Sony, Panasonic, and others.
Think twice...look closely at the user interface and the day to day features and you'll probably pick the cheaper, more useful Tivo box.
Rating:
Summary: I Love This Piece of Equipment
Review: I had gotten this thing for christmas a month ago. Without a doubt this one of this best things i ever recieved. I set it up with my network and cable box in all of 15-20 min. The set-up was a breeze. It was no harder to set-up than a VCR. The remote is very comfortable to use and the button placement was very easy to learn. The quality of playback is superior to anything out there. The Replaytv gives about 15 hours at high quality, about 25 hours at medium quality and 40 hours at low quality. High quality is fantastic, Medium is good and low is acceptable. If you are watching from about 15 feet (like me) Medium as your best bet, as you can not notice the difference between medium and high. The interface is quite nice, though not very colorful with a few shades of blue. It has alot of useful features, such as the photo transfer software which worked flawlessly on my Windows XP system. The Internet file sharing as excrutingly slow, but handy if you missed a favorite show. One of the better features is Myreplaytv which lets people program there replaytv to record, anywhere in the world, however navigation is a little slow. Accessing the setup menu is slightly delayed, but this barely becomes annoying. Rrecording shows is extermely simple. Just select a show in the guide and set it to record with all your prefrences. You can also set it to record every episode. There are also things called "replay zones", which lets you record all of the shows in a specific genre. The rewind and instant replay features work well. The best feature, however, is commercial skip which does that in recorded shows. It is about 80-85 percent successful. The only thing that i dislike is that i have to use the included IR Blaster, in which the box automatically changes the channels on my cable box. It is extremly slow, even after fine tuning, which did help. Overall an excellent product, and if you buy it and have to use the IR blaster, search the web to find out how to fine tune the IR blaster.
Rating:
Summary: Works Well - But YOU Need Patience
Review: Now that I have been using my Replay TV for several months - it kicks .... I go online to setup my recordings and it takes care of the rest. The initial set-up does take a bit of time. The menus are a bit messy. The unit also needs a few minutes to boot & reboot - I thought at first my unit was broken. .... You will probably have to trouble shoot any problems on your own. However, I do love this thing. I record all my shows. Watch them whenever I want - commercial free! I save time!! I also sometimes record DVD's too. Saves me on late fees! Only suggestion I would make is to buy a bigger hard drive - at least the 80hr. peace & love
Rating:
Summary: Replay - TV the way it SHOULD be!
Review: Wow! I'm most impressed with DTR technology in general. I avoided the Tivo since I didn't have a phone line in the family room. But add a broadband connection (which I did wireless using a Linksys WET11 802.11b Wireless Ethernet Workgroup Bridge), web-based program selection, digital photo viewer, and automatic commercial skip and you've got the BEST DTR available! I was able to get the Replay 5040 up in minutes. It started by downloading a fresh set of application software. The photo viewer supports drag and drop of your favorite digital images from your PC to Replay's HD (1 Gig for photos is PLENTY). I was surprised how good they looked on a big (32") TV. The MyReplayTV website is easy to use (though you have to wait until the nightly "synch" for selections to be downloaded - unless you use the hidden hack of pressing 243 they the Replay Zone button - you'll find all kinds of power user features). How fun to have your favorite shows available when YOU want them, without commercial interuption!
Rating:
Summary: Took it back!
Review: We had a terrible experience with this product and with Sonicblue's customer service. The player was hard to set up, never connected reliabily to the local number to download information, and finally simply stopped working. Customer service calls required long waits (45 minutes was the shortest -- when we called just as the customer service line opened -- 90 minutes for two other calls) and customer service personnel tried hard but couldn't offer definitive advice. We were finally told just to mail the unit back and get a new one. Instead, we returned RePlay and got TiVo -- set up in 15 minutes, flawless performance to date, and no need to call Customer service. We are still fighting with SonicBlue to get them to cancel our account so they don't keep charging us the monthly fee.
Rating:
Summary: I love this device!
Review: This product has radically changed the way we watch TV in our house. It puts broadcasting to work for you, instead of the other way around. No more channel surfing - what I like to see on TV is already waiting for me when I sit down for some viewing. Note that, while you can't watch another live show through ReplayTV while it is recording, during that time you can 1) watch another show the device has already recorded, or 2) set up your TV with a signal independent of ReplayTV, and watch any channel you wish through that separate feed. I usually choose the former. Since I don't like my time wasted by commercials, it looks like I might be watching very little live TV from now on, just prerecorded shows. Also note that you don't have to wait for a show to finish recording before you start watching it. You could, for example, set the unit to record a football game, wait a half hour or more, then start watching the game from the beginning and jump all the commercials. I have not tried to use SonicBlue customer service yet, and it does not sound promising from other reviews. Our unit works great, thus far. In retrospect, were I to do it again I would go ahead and invest in the 80 or 160 hour unit. 40 hours should be enough, but a little more room would allow us to archive favorite shows for an extended period of time. If you are ready to make TV cater directly to your tastes, take the plunge!
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