ReplayTV RTV5040 40-Hour Digital Video Recorder

Price: With two $50 mail-in rebates my final cost was $199. This is a lot of technology for $199!

Quality: The box is well built and solid. There's a big fan to keep it cool. The choices of inputs and outputs is complete. You can fit this device into any home threater system any way you want. I have a 36" HDTV and have this connected using S-video. I tried composite video and it was slightly worse. I didn't try the component video outputs.

Setup: Setup was easy but did take a while over a cable modem connection. During the setup it seemed to update the operating system which took about 25 minutes. Total setup was about 40 minutes. I don't know how long it would take over the built-in modem.

Recording: The programming guide is easy to use and setting things to record is straight forward. I only record at high quality so I only get about 10 hours of recording time.

Picture Quality: The picture is acceptable but not as good as the direct feed to the TV. When you watch a show throught the ReplayTV you are ALWAYS watching the recorded version. There is about a 1 second delay between the "live" picture throught the ReplayTV and the "live" feed from the cable company. This is what allows you to pause and rewind a live TV show. Because you're watching a recorded version of the show and the recording is digitized and compressed the picture quality is slightly worse than the original. I find the colors to be a little washed out.

Customer Support: EXCELLENT! I was worried about calling tech support when the IR Blaster couldn't change the single digit channels on my cable box but was pleasantly surprised when my hold time was less than 2 minutes both times I had to call. The fix was simple but undocumented in the manual or on their web site. To get to the advanced settings for the IR Blaster you have to press the "Zones" button when the list of codes for your cable box appears on the screen. This lets you set certain properties of the IR Blaster like the minimum number of digits to send to the cable box. It was sending a "2" for channel 2 and I needed it to send an "02". Bumping the minimum digits to 2 fixed the problem. I also got a tip from their tech to put all zeros in the delay boxes to speed up channel changing which is fairly slow. Changing the delays to "0000" helps slightly.

I like this better than Tivo. This thing is light years ahead of an old VCR!

First, the ability to pause live TV is amazing. When the phone rings, we pause the show, answer the call, and then resume. Nothing missed! An interesting point to discuss with my wife? Pause and talk. You'll wonder how you lived without it.

The ability to schedule automatic recording of all the TV shows I watch, and to have them actually recorded reliably (which is more than I can say for my VCR) has given me complete freedom to enjoy TV on my own terms.

Let me say that my wife and I watch a lot of TV, we just plain have a lot of shows that we enjoy watching. And Replay allows me to watch my shows when I want them, how I want them, no matter what the network schedules may throw at me. Like the Simpsons? Schedule your Replay to keep the last five syndicated episodes at the ready whenever you feel like a laugh. Enjoy the late night shows but can't stay up? Program it to record the shows while you're asleep and watch them in the morning. You can even set up a manual recording that will just record the monologues! And of course it will record all your favorite daily and weekly shows, even if they're on a special day or change time slots. Even set up categories in order to keep your shows organized. Even if you don't spend a lot of time watching TV, wouldn't it be nice to have something recorded that you actually want to watch when you have time? Don't be a slave to the TV Guide again! (BTW- The program guide on the Replay is a huge improvement if you are used to the cable TV box electronic guide).

One of the best things about the Replay over your VCR is that you can watch a show that's already been recorded while it's recording something else. That means that you're no longer stuck waiting for something to finish recording in order to watch something. You can even watch a show that's recording from the beginning! You can come home halfway into recording "Friends", and watch it from the beginning while it records the rest of the show!

And that's where the ReplayTV excels: When you watch a recorded show (or even live TV that you've paused for at least 5 minutes), the Replay will automatically skip the commercials! Sure, you can turn off the skip if you want to see them. But it's just a thing of beauty when screen goes blank going to commercial, and then all of a sudden the program continues where it left off! When someone asks "did you see the commercial where....", you can smugly say "nope" :*)

If you watch TV in more than one room, you can get a second unit and connect them together. You can actually watch a show on one Replay that was recorded on another. And if your friends or family have a ReplayTV, you can actually send a show or even your home videos from your unit to theirs over the internet. All you need is their Replay ID and hit "Send" and off it goes. It's not instantaneous though, even a half-hour show can take hours to transfer. But it's a lot faster and easier than mailing a videotape.

The other choices in this market are good don't get me wrong, I own a TiVo as well. But like I said: Once you've seen Commercial Skip, In-Home Video Sharing, MyReplayTV.com, and Internet Video Sharing in operation, you'll never go back. The TiVo is now in the guest bedroom...

And Sonicblue is continuously working on improving the software, adding new features and functions. It just keeps getting better.

This thing is worth every penny.