ReplayTV - great gadget (1 Viewer)

Well I have now joined the ReplayTV clan and just love it. The control over live TV is great. Last night we went about our busy lives and got home about 15 minutes after CSI started (I had set up recording for a few shows for the wife last night) and proceeded to backtrack and watch it from the beginning. Well as it got closer to 10pm, I was bit concerned I would have to stop watching CSI and then let ReplayTV take over so it could switch to record ER on a different channel. The wife didn't want to stop watching CSI so we just hoped for the best. And wouldn't you know it, the best happened...ReplayTV told us that ER would start recording shortly. We continued watching CSI and ReplayTV picked right on up and recorded the ER episode! I looked at her and said, "Let's see a VCR do that!" We are in the 30day trial phase - trying to get the wife to move on with technology and give up on VHS tapes. So far I think she's impressed. She can comeback at any time she wants and watch her shows. She can pause her stuff when the phone rings and it's for her (98% of the time it usually is).

Of course if all goes well, then this will justify my buying another one for the home theater.

I agree PVRs are great gadgets. I bought one solely on a friend's recommendation in October 2000. It wasn't going to be any better than a VCR which I can reliably set up to record timer events and use without problem. Boy was I wrong. I am using a DirecTV Receiver Powered by TiVo and a Panasonic Showstopper ReplayTV for local OTA channels. Both work great although I prefer the TiVo software.

Chris

I'm considering a 3rd Replay (Showstopper) after living with 2 of them for only a month now.

Pat - ok, now 3 is just overkill. But if you have plenty of shows that come on at the same time and you want to catch them all, more is the way to go.

So far I've got it hooked up wirelessly using a Linksys WAP11.

Alright fockers ;-) I'm jumping in.
Gotta go Replay Tv due to the lack of landline.
What models do you all suggest, price..
I'm thinking of the 5080. Best Buy has it for $399, plus the $50 rebate. I think I've got a 10% off in the house somewhere as well.
Is there a better model? Features?
Thanks again.
michael c.

No all the 5000 series have the same features the difference in them is the hard drive size.

Mike,

I bought a 5040 a week ago at BB. It was on sale for 284.99 (normally 299.99) Plus 50 MIB. Don't know if it's still on sale, but I would recommend saving the 100 bucks and going with the 5040 for starters. If you like it, and decide you need more space, you can use that 100 bucks you saved to buy a 120GB HD and replace the 40 GB drive. Love my Replay. I've used it more in the last week than I've used my VCR in 5 years.

Chad

I was just wondering if any of you are using the replaytv 5000 with an HD tv. And if so how is the 480p picture output?

James,

From one of the Replay FAQ sites:

...the digital video that is stored on the hard disk has been sampled from an interlaced signal and the ReplayTV does not further process this video. The result is that when the video is played through the Component Output to a digital TV, you see the original interlacing from the source MPEG movie file

It's not as good as I expected originally, but when you consider what the Replay is doing(or not doing as the FAQ points out)it's not bad. If your HDTV has a good line doubler, chances are it will look better using an S-Video out. I'd try it both ways to see which looks best.

When I called Sonic Blue about it, they confirmed what the FAQ site listed and said they would support line doubling for video in a future upgrade(hopefully they really will).

Freeze Frames, pictures, and the menu system do look much better through the component out, though.

DJ

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Hello all,
got my 5040 tonight (thanks Chad, I'll upgrade later ;-) ).
initial impressions...cool toy. I had a little frustration though...it wouldn't see just the coax connection to my cable box. extremely weird since it was changing the channel and playing through with the device powered off. Thankfully my box has composite out, or I think I'd be SOL.

I haven't signed up yet, still deciding which way to go with the service... I'm leaning toward the monthly charge.

More later. Thanks for the suggestions all.
michael c.

I just picked up my 3rd Showstopper off Ebay last night. I might need to be committed...

P@,

Let me be the first to nominate you for the ReplayTV anonymous club. How many lines do you have coming into your home for cable? I'm loving mine and will probably get a second one soon (wife stated you loved it yesterday and could she do the same thing on the TV upstairs - I told her not without another unit...)

So we may be getting a 2nd ReplayTV since she enjoys them so much.

Of all my HT toys, the only one I have ever heard my wife brag about are the PVR's.

Hey guys. When you get a PVR (Personal Video Recorder) that is part of a sat service, the recorder simply stores the bits from the satalite. Every replay is bit-for-bit identical to the original sat broadcast. No generational loss and these units all offer SVideo and digital outputs as well.

They WONT record from your cable, only the sat.

DirectTV offers the DirectTivo, and Dish network offers the PVR 501 and ... 721 (with dual tuners). I am on the West coast, but I have the "SuperStations" package so I start recording things at 5pm from east-coast stations. This really helps avoid conflicts. I can record things like Enterprise, Angel, Buffy, Gillmore Girls at 5/6/7 and 8 pm.

Also, Dish is working on a High Def PVR. They claim it will be out before end of the year, but ... they have been wrong about this before.

Leo,

My cable TV feed is split so many times, it ain't even funny.

I've got splits for:

Cable modem
PC-TV tuner
VCR #1
VCR #2
VCR #3
SS2000 #1
SS2000 #2

With SS2000 #3 I will retire one of the VCRs.

I'm convinced that I'm just not a Dish/SAT guy at the moment.

P@,

Yeah, retire a VCR. My other question is have you beefed up the power circuit you've got everything hooked up too. Also are you using DVArchive to archive off some of the mpegs? I found that to be a handy app to dump to my Mac hard drive and save digitally.

The SS's don't have ethernet capabilities, so DVArchive is of no use to me, plus I mainly just timeshift shows and delete them for the next week of shows.

As far as power goes, I think I'm okay for now (the lights don't dim once I fire up all the components in the HT setup).

2 VCR's and 3 Show Stoppers!!

Now...do you really need that much recording power to get through the week or do you have 3 separate systems you are trying to bring up to equal capabilities? (or are you an archivist?)

It just drives me nuts to have 3 shows I want to see being broadcast at the same time, and I want to move away from VCRs, so I hope 3 Showstoppers will do the trick.

I am not an archivist, watching the show is good enough for me.

Amazon has the Replay TV 5080 for $364 + free shipping. the $50 rebate is applicable as well.

Just picked one up myself.

The 3rd Showstopper showed up on Friday, and I even have the IR Blaster set up to work with a cable box so I can do unattended recordings of HBO shows (like Six Feet Under). Yay!

I'll probably upgrade the hard drive capacity this weekend with an older 5400 rpm 80GB hard drive that is being re-purposed as I have installed some larger 120GB hard drives in my home PC.