Rating: 
Summary: Amazon service makes it safe to try
Review: I bought a ReplayTV before Christmas but found that my old TV and video didn't have the right connectors to go with it. The ReplayTV manual told me how I could work around this problem, but it looked like the workaround would give me poorer picture and sound quality, so I sadly decided to return the ReplayTV and wait until I get a new TV. If you own an ancient TV and video, think twice about trying out the Replay. And, if you're about to buy a new TV, make sure you get one with s-video to ensure best performance with new gadgets like the Replay.Having said that, Amazon's service was so good and its returns department so helpful, that it was no hassle to try the machine out and then return it. If you're unsure about buying one, the 30-day return policy certainly makes it painless to check the system out. Even though I didn't get to use the Replay, I was impressed by the manual (I'm a documentation writer myself) and the easy setup guide.
Rating:
Summary: Here's what you need to know about the Replay TV
Review: First, the good news: * No question: this is the future. I'm not a TV guy (watch maybe 4 hours/month), yet already I've found myself skipping through commercials, creating a Telletubbies theme for my daughter, and discovering (good) shows that I'd have missd otherwise. * The company is clearly committed to its customers. I've had to call customer support; the folks were friendly and helpful. The set-up and user interface are clearly improving, and the program guide is easy to use. * As always, ...is a great place to buy this-- great price, and super-fast delivery. Now for the rest of the story. * Set-up is simple enough... if you're comfortable with, say, setting up a fax machine. * Usability is very good, but not quite excellent. I frequently find myself trying to remember the difference between "Guide" and "Menu," or "Input" and (or just buy a wireless jack here.) In all, this is a great "version 2" product, where version 3 will be truly excellent. I highly, highly recommend it... but know that the next generation will smooth out those last few rough edges. Live a little and buy it now (really!)... it's fun to be a bit ahead of the curve.
Rating:
Summary: A Glimpse of the Future
Review: I've only had mine for a couple of days, but since I got it, I haven't used my TV tuner for anything. In those two days I've had no serious glitches. I do notice the noise sometimes, but only in those rare moments when my apartment is totally quiet. When I'm using it the noise is undetectable. I expected (when I ordered it) to mostly use the pause and commercial skip features, so I could watch TV on my own time table. Once I got a good feel for how it worked, my vision changed. Now I see it as a filter: I browse the program guide, pick shows I want, and let the Replay unit record them. When I have time to watch TV, instead of having to worry about what's on right then, I just look at what the ReplayTV has saved lately. It's cool. It's addictive. And this is only the second generation of the product available to consumers. I can easily envision a time- say, in three years- when the recording capacity and video quality have improved enough to make these units as ubiquitous as the VCR.
Rating:
Summary: almost perfect but noisy
Review: I have had this product for one month and am pleased overall. Here are a few observations 1)set up was simple and quick 2)I have had no software problems. interface is simple to use and reliable. 3)picture quality is very good on medium quality setting with a cable feed (leave the standard setting to the kids). very few artifacts. slight loss of picture quality in A/B comparison to the direct feed to the t.v. 4)the unit is always on and noisy. sounds like a dull hum. i use it in my bedroom and have to unplug it at night (remember this when it downloads program info for the following week). if you can safely enclose it in a ventilated space this may not be a problem. This is a major limiting factor and is the only reason for the loss of stars 5)i would be interested if others have this noise problem and any solutions e-mail robeanhead@yahoo.com
Rating: 
Summary: Fantastic Product Works Well and some thoughts on things
Review: I received my unit one week ago and it has changed all of my viewing habits. First thing to think about is quality. They do not lie when they state that their standard (20 hour) speed is as good as, if not better then standard VHS. There can be ocassional artifacting (lines etc.) but I get that on my digital feed sometimes too. It is convenient to use, the tech support is excelent and they were very helpful. I did manage to confuse the unit once, but just unpluged it and it worked well. I think that the free updates, the high quality of picture and the way that they have worked thing out make this a must. Now for a comment. They have only one competitor and I find it interesting to note that that product (which has been marketed here at Amazon longer) has WAY fewer comments and that almost all of them are positive. So My thought is that perhaps some folks are trying to stack the book against this product? Why not stick with a service that cost nothing extra, and does NOT permit the company to sell your viewing habits. I vote for this product and would recommend it to anyone.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent product with a few glitches.
Review: I got my Replay TV 20/20 a month ago and would not want to watch TV without it now. I have never tried TiVo so can't directly compare them, the reason I went with Replay was that I don't like the ideas of paying a monthly fee, having my TV watching habits tracked and possibly linked to my name, and having a device that tries to guess what I want to see. I prefer the Replay's idea of giving it keywords to look for. While I thought the live pause would be the most attactive feature, I find I like the on-screen program guide and the extreme ease of scheduling and watching a recording even more. While I've seen several complaints about picture quality, the picture looks fine to me in standard mode, although not quite as good as a direct connection. My biggest complaint is that the picture is not as bright when going through Replay, but adjusting the TV fixes this. I had no significant problems setting it up or using it. The on-screen menus and remote are fine. With all that said, I do have problems with it: Most bothersome, the picture sometimes blacks out for a second or so. I understand this is a common problem. It would be REALLY nice to have a progress indicator for recorded and paused shows. It would be equally nice to be able to search the program listings for a show or actor, without having to set up a "theme channel" and wait to see what gets recorded. It doesn't turn on my cable box if it's off when a recording begins. The Replay knows if there's no signal, so there's no reason it couldn't do this. So far, it's crashed once, mysteriously deleted a recorded show once, and lost all the program listings once. All were quickly and easily corrected (except the lost show), but that's still a high failure rate. I'd highly recommend this product to techno and/or TV addicts like myself. Others might want to wait a year or so until more of the bugs have been worked out. Either way I think it's such a great idea, in a few years personal video recorders will be "must-have" items, like a VCR.
Rating: 
Summary: Gift I decided to keep
Review: Viewing TV through Replay is addicting. I am relatively comfortable with technology and have decided to put up with RePlay's shortcomings. The technology is not plug and play. You need to spend some time learning the quirks of this system. Like a MSFT program, major fixes are best done by turning the unit off and restarting it. I almost sent the unit back when the Replay tech support people told me I would need a cable box(fees)to remedy problems(no picture) that began when my cable provider upgraded to a fiber optic system. I tried various methods to get it working to no avail. The problems disappeared on their own after a few days. I am unsure whether it was a software or hardware problem. The system works fine now. Picture quality is lower when watching live TV through the RePlay unit. I use high quality gold hookups, but still cannot obtain the video quality of direct cable into my Sony tv. There is a cable signal boster unit at Eagle that I am going to try. If you demand DVD or a Sony quality video you will not be happy with the picture. My kids do not seem to mind the quality. I have started recording programs for them and they now are comfortable using the unit themselves. I only use the highest quality recording mode which is 6 hours. The kids do not seem to mind the mid-quality recording mode (10 hours) I will update this review if the cable signal boster improves quality. I would never pay for the channel updates like the TiVo system requires. I do not mind if they keep Replay free by using advertising.
Rating: 
Summary: Good first generation product, but...
Review: It's a very useful product, but it's got some rough edges and lacks some features that the TiVo offering has. I ordered a ReplayTV before I knew about TiVo and was generally pretty happy with it, but once I was able to play with a friend's TiVo, I returned my Replay. Since these "digital recorders" are new products, by very young companies I'm sure they will both improve over time, but right now TiVo appears to be a nicer design. Plus I was a little disappointed when I received my first "message" on my ReplayTV that said we could expect ads to be displayed on the selection grid. I get enough banner ads on web pages, thank you very much!
Rating:
Summary: Replay on track, but still has glitches
Review: I've been a ReplayTV owner for several months. That said, I am only somewhat satisfied with the overall quality of the system's software. I am satisfied with the ReplayTV hardware, with one caveat. I am not satisfied with Replay customer support. With each new software release it seems that the same bugs linger and no new features appear. Of course it's hard to tell what bugs ReplayTV is actually fixing, because they won't tell you. Even when you ask. Nicely. They won't tell you what improvements they're planning either. Of course you can guess that they don't want to tip off any competition, but considering the product marketing blitz coming from TiVo, replay needs to be forthcoming to survive. Replay is missing some very nice TiVo features. I have 15 years of experience writing software for high-performance embedded systems (which is what ReplayTV is-- a sophisticated computer) and I can't seem to understand why ReplayTV doesn't have a handle on some serious bugs still present in the software. While it's true, my unit doesn't flat out hang anymore, it still has some frustratingly random problems. Specifically: * Sometimes it forgets to record a program even when disk space is available and no recording conflicts appear in the recording schedule. * Sometimes is forgets which channels I have told it to ignore and not display, and sometimes it ignores channels I ask it to display. * Sometimes the software is so busy doing something (who knows what) that it can't keep up with the video data being written to disk, and I get a show filled with 2 second drop-outs. (This is one manifestation of the much talked about flashing black screen) * Sometimes the box forgets how to display a picture and displays a black screen instead. * Sometimes the channel guide is wrong, or when the channel line-up, it may take several days to work the kinks out. (Recently DirecTV started offering local service, and duplicated some channels--including a special PBS channel for some customers. It took two days for ReplayTV to fix their channel guide. Meanwhile, I was without PBS.) * Sometimes the audio is not synchronized with the picture. This happens often when skipping commercials, or when using fast-forward or rewind. * The "recorded shows" listing is so slow (several seconds per line when scrolling), that I dread having to use it. You cannot use the page-up/down feature here. Ok, what do I like? * Multiple video inputs allow you to hook up cable-tv, an antenna, and satellite service at the same time. The program information is merged into a unified program guide. That's a neat trick. * Knowing a few words in a title of a movie is enough for the ReplayTV unit to record a show. I use this as a recording "to-do" list. If I hear of a movie I'm interested in viewing, I just add it to the list and if it's ever on-the-air, it gets recorded. * The commercial skip button is neat. And even though I over-shoot the program sometimes, the instant replay button takes me back a few seconds and I'm back in sync. * The ReplayTV box controls my DirecTV satellite receiver through a direct wired hookup between the two. In my experience, this is much more reliable than using an infrared "blaster" that emulates remote control key presses. * The user interface is somewhat spartan. Frankly, I love the simplicity of it all. The channel guide is well suited to my "surfing" habits because it emulates the Sony DSS Receiver listing format I am quite familiar with. What needs improvement: * Page-up/down in recorded shows listing * Progress indicator when moving around within a recording * Sorted list of recordings * Frame-by-frame control * List of upcoming scheduled recordings * When viewing a recorded program, status messages about upcoming recorded programs appear on the screen. This is bothersome when you're actually copying something important off the system--perhaps to a VCR. You need a way to turn the messages OFF. From a hardware standpoint, their system seems reasonable. My only complaint is that the unit runs very hot and thus may shorten its lifespan, or cause unpredictable problems when enclosed in a cabinet with an AV receiver and other heat generating components Perhaps my most frustrating complaint is the "canned" reply you receive when sending e-mail to customer support, and the lack of content when they do finally reply. Yes, I *know* that it's a problem in your software. Duh. That's why I complained. How about telling me when it's going to be fixed, or what's causing it, or the tracking number you use so I can ask about it a month from now? In summary, I give ReplayTV a 3 star rating. It mostly works. It has software problems. But I continue to rely on it, though sometimes it can be frustrating.
Rating:
Summary: ReplayTV vs. TiVo Review in detail
Review: For a detailed, feature-by-feature comparison and review of the ReplayTV and TiVo products, perform a Go2Net.com search on the phrase "ReplayTV vs. TiVo Review" and click on the resulting website. This website provides by far the most comprehensive, up-to-date review of these two exciting products that I've seen. Gaining an appreciation of the feature distinctions will make your buying decision much easier.
| 
