The 11th Commandment: Thou Shalt Own ReplayTV!

[Nick Dangerous]

I recently finished playing around with something that arrived in the mail... a ReplayTV 5060. It allows you to:

* pause live TV
* fast forward/rewind TV programs
* record anything
* schedule recordings over the internet
* share TV shows a la Napster
* and SKIP COMMERCIALS

After the $50 rebate, it's only $179... with free shipping and no sales tax. YEAH!

I LOVE THIS THING. L O V E IT. THERE IS NO GOING BACK. I AM A CHANGED MAN.

REMEMBER HOW WONDERFUL IT FELT TO SURF THE INTERNET AT HIGH SPEED FOR THE FIRST TIME? YEAH, IT FEELS EXACTLY LIKE THAT. TV AT THE SPEED OF *YOUR* MIND. BRILLIANT!!

Amazon.com has a few left. The new models supposedly lack the commercial skipping/Napster features... so if you were thinking about getting a PVR (Personal Video Recorder), do it now. Hell, I'd go back to boiling water on the stove and give up my microwave oven for this!

 

[Nick Dangerous]

I woke up to find Minority Report (haven't seen), Star Wars: Episode II, Ice Pirates (HAH!), and three episodes of the Ben Stiller Show waiting in my ReplayTV unit.

Best. Gizmo. Ever. Every day is December 25th.

 

[uoods]

I was looking at that, until I realized I would be having no cable in my dorm room next year.

 

[D-EJ915]

how much storage does it have??

 

[MusicLover]

ReplayTV is awesome. I've had it for quite a few months and I honestly feel I can't live without it.

 

[Uncledan]

Is it easy to use?

 

[SBomm]

Do you have to pay monthy fee for Replay TV service?

 

[Dusty Chalk]

Yeah. What's freaky is, back when I was addicted to TV, I actually found myself watching less TV with it. Why? Because I never watched crap, saving the good stuff 'til later. There was always good stuff on TV, because I got to watch it through that.

One question though -- that was several years ago. Is it possible to program different shows at different speeds? I found shows like Cleopatra 2525 and Jack of All Trades needed to be recorded at high-res, due to all the action sequences, though most shows could get away with the lower res compression rates. There was a way to do it even back then, but it was a P.I.T.A...
Quote:

Originally posted by SBomm Do you have to pay monthy fee for Replay TV service?

Yeah, but I forget how much.

Uncledan -- extremely easy. Point and click. If you know how to serf the web, you already know how to use this thing.

Oh, and PS I just wish it would get to the point where it would just record the entire datastream and let you decode the channels later. Ha-ha!

EDIT: My comments are not necessarily accurate -- I was thinking of Tivo, not ReplayTV. Someone with actual experience should respond to the specific questions of monthly fee, etc.

 

[jpelg]

Does this require a POTS phoneline to access programming info, like TIVO does? Or can it work just with a cable connection?

 

[DarkAngel]

These units do seem easier more advanced vs VHS tape recorder, but you failed to provide some crucial info:

-How many hours can be recorded? What resolution level?

-I will assume from DUSTY comments that it is easy to use

-Does it really skip commercials (or is this sales hype)

-Do you have to pay monthly fee? How much?

(seems very uncool to have to buy unit and also pay monthly fee)

My cable company has similar service they want to sell me for $10 a month but I don't have to buy recorder, along with broadband, digital cable, movie on demand etc. Might as well get it over with and get the complete "digital home" package for $120 month

DUSTY
have you made full recovery from TV addiction............or are there
periodic relapses, he he. (I used to love Cleo 2525)

 

[Russ Arcuri]

I've been using a TiVo (actually, more than one) since 2000. TiVo rocks. ReplayTV is similar, but has a much smaller market share. Used to be that TiVo had better features, but that may be changed now, as I haven't been keeping up with the bleeding edge.

It's also relatively easy to "hack" TiVo to add greater recording capacity, etc. I've done that to mine.

 

[kelly]

ReplayTV is likely going to lose some rather large lawsuits.

Tivo can do anything ReplayTV can do -- IF you're willing to poke around in Linux a bit.

The biggest advantage of Tivo to me (other than the large community and available hacks) is that you can buy a DirecTivo which stores the original bitstream on the harddrive without need for recompression.

I paid $160 shipped for my DirecTivo (Hughes HDVR2 - 35 hour model), but you can get a better deal than that now if you look. I paid another $100 each for 2 160-gig hard drives to bump the recording capacity up to 243 hours.

 

[acs236]

Replay is great. It has some gimmicy features, but there are those that I use all the time, such as commercial advance and its streaming capabilities. I can download shows to my computer through the ethernet connection and archive them as I see fit. Commercial advance, while not flawless works well most of the time. Too bad the new Replays won't have commercial advance -- part of Dennon/Marantz's strategy to get rid of the lawsuits. I can understand getting rid of internet streaming, but dammit, comemcial advance is LEGAL!

 

[kelly]

I have a "30 second skip" feature enabled on my Tivo and use the "9 second replay" when I overshoot.

The streaming stuff for Tivo is a little more complicated, but doable--and higher quality since it never converts to analog.

 

[Chinchy]

I too have been using TiVo for a while now (since 2001? when I won a 30 hour one for free from TiVo). It's changed my life. I don't watch much TV anyway, but the rest of my family does, and it's great because my programs record and sit there waiting for me.

As to ease of use: If my mom can use the TiVo, anyone can. Although she still has problems working through all the options of recording a show, she can do playback just fine. The problem though is that she has it record all the shows she likes. Murder she wrote, crime shows, forensics shows, etc.

The great thing is that at least with the older TiVo's, they are so readily hackable that you can take a 15 hour TiVo and make it 200+ hours simply by booting up the hard disk into your TV and running utilities and swapping out hard disks. And the cool thing is that TiVo turns a blind eye to it and aren't really bothered by it.

It's changed my life as well, and I could never go back to life without it just as I could never live without my broadband.