Home > Consumer Reviews > Replay Networks 2001 Digital Video Recorder

I have spent the past 30 days evaluating both a ReplayTV and a Tivo personal digital recorder and this is a brief review of my experience.

If Tivo did not exist, I would probably tell you that ReplayTV was the coolest gadget that I have ever used. However, Tivo has done such a superior job designing their user interface and their remote control that there is no comparison between the two, Tivo is the hands down winner.

ReplayTV's major problem is that they have no sorting system to help you pick the shows that you might want to record. To find the shows that you want to record you must painfully sift through an on screen channel guide one time slot at a time.

Tivo in comparison gives you numerous ways to choose shows that you might want to record. You can view the upcomming two weeks of programming in catagories such as Movies, Sports, by channel, or by show name. Tivo will even automatically record shows that it thinks you might like based on shows that you have rated with their thumbs up or thumbs down rating system. At first I was skeptical that I would like this feature, but after a week I found that I loved it. I would get home from work and get a whole list of programs that Tivo went out and recored by itself while I was sleeping and while I was at work.

With Tivo I can scan through hundreds of Movies on my premium channels and in minutes tell it to record all the ones that I want to record for the next two weeks. With ReplayTV it took me so long to do this that after the first few days I found myself only recording shows that were on a regular schedule, like Seinfeld or the X-Files.

ReplayTV basically has a frustrating user interface that forces you to constantly look at the remote control to do every simple task. With Tivo almost all of your options are on screen, so if your sitting in the dark while you are watching TV you don't have to strain your eyes on what button you need to push.

My ReplayTV seemed to often (at least once a day) have a playback glitch. The fast forward or rewind would get stuck and I would have to power the unit on and off to get it to stop.

One last thing, a major one for me, ReplayTV gives you no indication of where you are when you are watching a show. You can't tell if there is 10 minutes or an hour left. I was watching Shindler's List a few days ago and I found this extremely frustrating. With Tivo you get a very helpfull progress bar that appears on the bottom of the screen whenever you fast forward, rewind or press slow motion. (ReplayTV has no slow motion or single frame advance.)

I just returned my ReplayTV and Tivo 14 hour unit, I ordered a TIVO 30 hour unit. My advise is to buy a 30 hour unit, you will probably record everything in a higher quality setting resulting in about half the recording time of either units advertised recording capacity.

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.

I have had my Replay for about two months now, and I don't remember how I was able to survive without it.

I almost bought a TiVo, but didn't, because Best Buy had a 15% restocking fee policy on any returned unit, and I thought it was quite possible that the unit wouldn't work with my cable box, and I didn't want to take the risk.

Amazon gives you a 30 day return policy, no restocking fee, so that was enough for me to choose the Replay. The price was essentially the same.

I can watch a lot of TV now in much less time - because I can fast forward or skip through commercials or parts of the show I am not interested in.

It is not perfect - there are clearly some potential improvements to be made in the remote and the software, and I would like to get some extra storage, but the good news is: the unit is upgradable, and surely the changes we want will become available in the near future!

Things I like: - live pause

- easy to set shows to record using the channel guide, nearly idiotproof

- watching shows from the beginning, even while they're recording

- watching any show already recorded, while you're recording another

- the fast forward and skip capabilities

- the theme channels

- the standard recording quality is plenty good enough for me

Things that need improvement:

- disk space management (they don't tell you what their algorithm is, so sometimes you will find a show deleted that you didn't intend; would be nice if they gave you more control over this)

- channel guide could be more clever (some errors in it)

- doesn't have slow motion and frame advance capability

- no way to advance to a particular point in a show (say, 45 minutes in) - you just have to FF to the point (which is fast)

- can't trim shows - to keep the 10 minutes of a two hour show that you really want, say

- can't set it like a VCR to, say, record channel 15 for 15 minutes starting at 8pm - you have to go by the shows in the channel guide (although you CAN set it to record any length of time starting now if you toggle it over to the RF input...)

- would be nice to have a search capability for the channel guide - find the next occurence of a show with the the string 'lincoln' in the title - you can tell it to record shows like that but it doesn't give you any help actually finding them beforehand in the channel guide

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.

I'm on my third ReplayTV unit, the first two having been replaced under warranty. (the power supply in unit #1 failed shortly after purchase; the modem in unit #2 died not long after it was delivered.) The functionality and flexibility of this device is truly revolutionary...so much so that the faulty units are now forgotten. The machine's greatest feature is its abilty to "pause" live TV or repeat a line of dialogue. If you've ever said to yourself, "what did he say?" while watching 'The Sopranos', this machine is for you. Timed recordings are a snap, too...much easier than a VCR. One gripe: the machine degrades the signal coming from my cable. Not so, my satellite receiver. One more small gripe. It's impossible to retrieve an inadvertendly "deleted" program from the Replay Guide. I accidentally zapped a 'Sopranos's episode and was disappointed when I called tech support and was told there was no equivalent of "Control-Z" on the system.