Customer Reviews

Panasonic PV-HS2000 ReplayTV ShowStopper 30-Hour Digital Video Recorder

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

After hearing mixed reviews of Tivo and Replay TV, I took the plunge and purchased a Panasonic Showstopper PVHS-2000. (It uses Replay TV's free program service.)

It's a great product and changed the way I watch TV.

Pluses: 1) Replay lets you watch a program, while it's recording something else. You can't do this with a VCR. You can even watch the beginning of a program, while still recording it. In the mornings I get up and watch Good Morning America from the start (7am) even though I get up at 8am. I fast forward skipping commercials and the repeating news segments and catch up to it live around 8:45 when I get to work. 2) I've set the box to find the last three Star Trek episodes. So, if nothings on TV I always have a few Star Trek episodes to watch. 3) Recorded programs show up in a menu with a full description of the program. You pick the program to play with a few clicks of the remote. Sure beats finding a program on a VCR tape. 4) 30 hours is a lot better than 6 hours of VHS tape. 5) Showstopper does a great job of controlling my cable box. It changes the channels without a problem, something my VCR had problems doing well. 6) Setup is easy and take about 20 minutes.

Minuses: 1) The unit has locked up twice in a month. Like a PC, you just unplug it or hold the on button down for 10 seconds 2) You can't program in specific times. You must use the times in the online schedule. It would be great if they would add a flexible timing schedule feature. Especially when a late game screws up a networks schedule. 3) The extended record mode shows more MPEG pixelation that I would like. You see blocks when there is rapid movement. This goes away if you use the normal record mode, but then you only get 15 hours of record time.

These however are minor problems. Showstopper is what a VCR always should have been.

I am very happy with the Panasonic PVHS2000 but wished I had bought the Replay unit instead. I will not try to describe all of the delights of having a personal digital recorder...

I do want to note that Panasonic's version of the Replay unit is different from the similar unit available from Replay. The Panasonic unit will not let you play copy-protected DVDs and video tapes. It appears that they don't want anyone to copy DVDs and video tapes to the hard drive for later viewing. This restriction was not prominently noted and at first it didn't bother me very much. I didn't intend to copy DVDs and tapes to hard drive anyway. It wasn't until much later that I realized what a real contraint that was.

I have only have ONE S-video connector at the back of the my TV. The Panasonic unit is connected to the TV using the S-video connector. When I went to attach my DVD player, I found I could not connect it to the S-video input of the PVHS2000 as it would not play DVDs. So I had to connect the DVD player to a composite input on the TV. This meant that I could not take full advantage of the enhanced picture quality of the DVD player. I had a similar problem with the VCR. It could not be connected to the PVHS2000 because some tapes are protected.

So, just be aware that the Panasonic version of the Replay system is NOT the same as the original. How many other differences there are I can only guess at.

Truly will change the way you watch TV. Think of this as what you wished your VCR would grow up to be. We have just regular cable, so these comments geared towards that setup.

Pros:
*Record around 15 hours of programming
*Free on-screen programming guide (of recorded shows too)
*Watch recorded show while taping another (or same) one
*On-line management of your unit's memory
*Universal remote controls TV/Showstopper/VCR

Cons:
*15 hours of programming not enough (read below to let me explain)
*Cannot record two shows at once
*Volume is too low if not using a S-video input
*Need phone hook-up
*Another electronics lesson to the wife regarding remote
*Set-up took longer than anticipated

30 Hours of Programming (well, not really)
Three speeds/levels of recording - low, medium, and high quality pictures which reduce your recording capacity to 30, 15, and 7.5, respectively. The medium recording yields what I was use to seeing on the VCR, maybe even a little better.

It's only been a week, but I wish I had a "60 hour" unit (in my mind, really 30). We don't watch that much TV, we really don't. Our son is limited to about 1.5 hours every other day, and we watch about 1.5 hours every night after the kids go to bed. If you think about it, below is how much capacity I would like based on weekly consumption:

Shows the wife and I like to watch 7 hrs
Last week's shows 7
Movies for us 4
Mindless TV for us (OK, it's all mindless) 3
Shows for the kids 2
Movie for kids 2
Total 24 hrs

That would leave 6 hours of impromptu recording (or 3 hours of high grade recording for the football game). Only drawback - and it hasn't proven to be that big of one - is the inability to record two shows at the same time. Perfect example is "Survivor" vs. "Friends". You can work around this using the VCR, but in a perfect world I wouldn't have a VCR.

On-Screen Programming Guide
It's pretty handy to press a button to see what show are playing and details about those shows (e.g., new/rerun, plot, actor names). It's even more handy to see on-screen what I've recorded. Have you ever hunted on 2 or 3 VCR tapes for the second half of "Jack and the Beanstalk" with your 5 year old waiting impatiently?

"Watch TV when you want to watch TV"
The commercial where the family is eating franticly to catch the beginning of their favorite show has a ring a truth to it. However, in your Showstopper household you eat at a civil pace, load up the dishwasher, THEN sit down to watch TV. Since you can skip commercials, you end up "catching up" to live TV before the end of the hour - with a clean kitchen.

On-line management of your unit's memory
Since I only have 15 hours of memory, I have to be a little more active in managing the hard drive. Sort of neat to be able to go on the internet to my account at ReplayTV.com and delete shows. Also easier to scan for various shows with their on-line programming schedule and ask to have it recorded. My on-line database syncs up with the database on my hard drive every morning (2 a.m. - 5 a.m.), so the only limitation there is you can't go into the office and ask for something to be recorded tonight.

Remote Control
It's another universal remote control. This one does a good job of controlling our TV, VCR, and of course the Showstopper. Only cumbersome thing is to you have to remember to press the "TV" button before pressing "power" to turn the TV on. Same thing in controlling the Showstopper - press "showstopper" button then "power" to turn on Showstopper. Cumbersome to learn at first, rote after a little while.

Set-up took longer than I anticipated
What I though would take me 15 minutes took about an hour the first time, then 15 minutes to change some things the next day. With regular cable, here's how I have everything configured:

Incoming Cable
Split to run to Showstopper and to VCR

Showstopper Output
S-video and RCA's to TV
RCA's to VCR

VCR Output
Coaxial cable to TV

With this configuration, I turn TV to channel "00" for Showstopper, channel 3 for VCR, and when the VCR is off then you can still go up and down the TV channel if desired. This also allows me to dump shows on the Showstopper to the VCR. Finally, originally was not using the S-video input from the Showstopper to the TV (using the yellow plug instead), and the cut the TV volume in half. Don't know why. Using the S-video input solved this problem.

Phone hook-up
The dreaded phone hook-up! We have one by the TV (actually spliced the line running to our alarm system, not that big of a deal) so this isn't an issue with us. The unit does "phone home" every night in order to give you a week's worth of programing, so you're going to need this. I've seen - but not used - the phone connections utilizing your house's wiring. I guess that would work. Had some initial problems with the unit doing it's initial dial-up to the ReplayTV servers, however, I just picked another number for my area (we had three number from which to choose) and it worked fine. I've seen complaints about this though.

ReplayTV vs. Tivo
Thought long and hard on this one. If I had a satellite dish I probably would have gone for Tivo since they are offering the all-in-one packages. However, since I'm on regular cable Tivo's ...didn't look that appealing for the marginal service of catching the special time a show appeared (i.e., Tivo would record the full 2 hours of a season-ending show, while Replay will record on the first hour). I'm glad I went the ReplayTV route.

This product is an excellent example of a product that was made 90% of the way, and the remainder of the details were ignored. In general, the product works well, but with some very significant quirks. (This review assumes you already know of all the benefits of the machine, and you are looking for the problem areas NOT on Panasonic or ReplayTV's web sites.)

The first, and most significant, is that it is incapable of controlling cable boxes via a serial port, even though the serial port is on both the Showstopper and the cable box! It can control satellite dishes via a serial line, but not a cable box. The ramifications of this are huge; the first being that if your TV does not have two tuners, then you can never watch something else while recording another program. The second is that the IR blaster, by ReplayTV's own admission, is quirky, at best. The product makes the claim that multiple antenna sources can be hooked up to the machine, and it will create one consolidated channel guide. What they don't tell you is that the channel guide is not capable of differentiating inputs. So, let's say that you have a cable line going into the unit, and then another line in from the cable box. (Remember that Showstopper has it's own tuner, so it can tune the coax line in, but it uses RCA plugs and an IR blaster for the cable box.) When you setup the unit, and it downloads the programming directory from all your inputs, and creates a channel guide. Unfortunately, the system only uses the cable box to tune your channels. This means that if you want to watch something else, while recording something on the Showstopper, you cannot do that. If, on the other hand, the system recorded off its own tuner, and didn't use the cable box, you would be okay, because you could split the line out of the cable box, and have it go into your TV. I have called the folks at ReplayTV, and while only a few of them actually understand the problem, even fewer actually care. In point of fact, when you call technical support, they don't even know how the system chooses which antenna it will use to record! The worst part of this is that their IR blaster codes are poorly programmed. For example, it currently takes about 4 seconds for me to get to the next channel when I hit channel up! Why? Because the programming of the blaster codes was done at a very rudimentary level. Specifically, when you go to change the channel, it first goes to its own channel guide, which creates a "blue screen" for about a second or two. Then, when it completes that search, it sends a code to the cable box, but it only sends half the necessary code. If you had entered "201" and then hit the enter key, it would send the code "201" to the cable box, but it wouldn't hit enter. So, if you are lucky and you have a cable box that goes to a channel after a lengthy pause, then you will see about 1 second of programming from the prior channel, and then another second of blue screen, and then the new channel, if the IR blaster worked correctly. If not, you may have a problem. This makes channel surfing an absolute nightmare. Unfortunately, the folks at ReplayTV and Panasonic have no fix for this problem.

Which brings me to another serious concern, which is technical support. The folks at both Panasonic and ReplayTV either have not been trained well on this product, or are just not very interested in our problems. In addition to the problem above, they also have a difficult time understanding concepts, such as wanting to watch one program, while recording another. It took me 15 minutes to explain to one lady that if I wanted to record a movie from Showtime 2 (a cable box channel), while watching 60 minutes (a channel using the unit's tuner), I would not be able to do it. Her solution after research: I should record 60 minutes, and watch Showtime 2. (If my sarcasm isn't getting through properly, it was an unacceptable answer)

I would warn you that if you are planning on having anything other than a very simple, plain "vanilla" set-up, then this product may cause you more pain then you might think. The product is not very flexible in dealing with other components, and I have mine working in a way that is sub-optimum. I have spent over an hour talking to both Panasonic and ReplayTV about these problems. Their message back is that they acknowledge these problems, but since Tivo has the same problems, they are not in a hurry to address them.

I could go on about some of the other issues, but this is limited to less then 1,000 words.

Overall, I've gotten used to having it, and while I still miss a few shows because IR blaster technology is unreliable, but it is nice to be able to watch what I like, instead of whatever may be on. My recommendation to anyone who is considering buying this is that you shouldn't think you are buying a high-tech cutting edge product. This is not cutting edge; it uses old technology with a new name; at best it's late '80s technology combined with newer MPEG-II technology. You might want to wait for Replay and Tivo to get their acts together, and create more reliable systems before buying.

I read A LOT of reviews before purchasing this product and knew most of it's shortcomings before I opened the box. One shortcoming that I was not aware of was that with my current setup (stereo being hooked up to VCR) I can no longer watch TV and listen through my stereo the two are out of sync by less than a second but very distracting to watch. It is also troublesome if you decide to use your cable box remote and not to go through showstopper (to avoid the lag time when channel surfing which I do admit I do A LOT less now) if you do not "reset" the IR blaster (had no idea what this was till I got the thing--you hook it up to your cable box and it changes the channels) by switching the channels a few times it--it gets all confused and thinks that it is on one channel while it's on another--for instance it thinks it's on 551 but it's really on 51--the only way I've notice to fix this is to flip around the channels for awhile. A little trouble downloading the guide--physical set up took only about 15 minutes but setting it up and using the phone line took about an additional 40 and had some problems figuring out if I needed to enter something to cancel call waiting. Had to change #'s to one that I don't know if it is local because the one number that was local was giving me all kind of trouble downloading which Replay TV blamed on Panasonic. Also the guide for Court TV is not accurate and therefore you basically cannot tape a single thing on that channel accurately. It is a problem missing the end of shows esp. sports--they need a "tack on 20 minutes" option. The unit does make noises at times--but more often than not this is not noticeable. All in all I'm very happy with my purchase and now always have something that I like to watch on. Oh and PS don't know why ANYONE would buy a TIVO that doesn't have Quick Skip--with QuickSkip an entire commercial break is skipped in 5-15 seconds. I did not understand until I got the unit that Quick Skip skips over 30 seconds at the touch of a button, much like skipping over a song you don't like on a CD--which is TOTALLY different from fast-forwarding through it which takes about 3X as long. Also not too wild about Replay Zones--like I wanted to set one up for True Crime and tell it not to tape COPS and some other shows it chose to include--no can do. Mostly I set up showbased channels and single record. That has worked out best for me. Really like the guide that Replay provides it very accurate and user friendly--much better than the one provided by digital cable and guide+ if you are familiar with those. Oh one more IR blaster glitch for some reason every once in awhile it decides instead of changing the channel to pull up the digital music guide that my digital cable provides--which you then have to exit out of. No idea why it does this. SO GREAT NOT HAVING TO WATCH COMMERCIALS IF YOU HAVE THE MONEY IT IS SOOO WORTH IT I would like to clear up something another reviewer said about this product-he said that you shouldn't get it because you can't route your DVD player through it or your VCR. This is true of just about any A/V device these days especially true of DVD's almost ALL OF WHICH are copyright protected and therefore have to be routed directly into the TV. So this product does work best if you have AT LEAST two A/V inputs on your TV-and you can really only set it up to watch one channel and tape another if you have a satellite and cable or digital and analog cable (I don't have an analog line in the same room so couldn't set it up to watch one channel and tape another-which does suck)

I went and bought this looking for the option to record shows that I always miss when I am at work (I really like Anime, for example) and I can give the box certian settings, be that Cartoons, or a specific Show and It can find every time the show is on and record it for me and I can watch it ANYTIME I want to, not having to worry about remembering to watch the show and set the VCR to record the next time I want to see a show (which I had missed just because I forgot to push a button). I don't have to worry about this anymore, I can tell the Showstopper to look for "Music Videos" and I can come home and have a Music Video Channel anytime I want (without having to pay extra for a channel like that). The Replay Zones sometimes come in handy when you would like suggestions for Movies or Shows to watch, but I have not found myself using it that much. But the option to record any shows/movies with a certian actor/actress in it has really come in handy! I love being able to find a program I just saw a commercial for and browse the guide (up to a week) and set the box to record it and get to watch it whenever I want. I have found the 'Extended' Mode is fine for pretty much anything you want to watch, but sometimes Fast Animation can get a little 'blocky'. Most of the time, you can use 'Extended', but you can set it for 'Medium' and it looks a little better. It is best to test with the different recording settings since everyone has their own tastes, I personally haven't ever used 'high' (it takes up too much space).

Following the Instructions, I was up and running within 10-15 min. The Clock is Very precise, which can be annoying since some stations have different time and shows can be a little off, but 97% of the time, the show will get recorded in its entirity.

Replay (the backbone of this unit) will be addding more features this fall such as adding a 'buffer' (extra recording time) for sports, etc, options to record more specific portions of a program, (weather forcast in a newscast) and the option to set your box to record using your internet connection (realize you want to see "Monday night football" but you have to work late, etc).

If you can spend the Money, it is a great Device to get since it HELPS you find shows you want to see and not having to Mess with anymore tapes. I would HIGHLY reccommend this to ANYONE who has missed shows since they forgot to press the record button! (I would reccommend to get the version with the largest recording time possible, you will find yourself using it ALOT!)

(One Note: If you are using an RF/Coax for your cable, you will need to get a splitter if you want to be able to watch a different show than you are recording, but it's no big deal (about $5 at any local electronics store).

I have been a huge fan of ReplayTV since I bought my 20-hour unit a
couple of years ago. Before I list off pros and cons, I want to
stress just how much this changes TV for you and your family.
Essentially, you no longer need to know what time the shows you like
are on. You don't have to be home, you don't have to program a VCR
and make sure the tape is at the right spot, nothing like that. Just
tell the Showstopper what shows you like (by show name, or by keyword
in the title, description, or actor list), and it records it for you.
In fact, even if you happen to be home when a show you like is on,
you'll more than likely not start watching right away. I usually find
some bills that need to be paid or start some laundry. Once the show
is 15 minutes in, then I start watching (which it's still recording
the live broadcast.) When I get to the first set of commercials, I
"QuickSkip" past them with the 30 second skip button (you
can press it multiple times, or hit a number and the skip button to
skip n minutes forward.) I usually catch up at about the time the
show is over. That, folks, is super-cool!

What's even cooler is
that it truely changes the way you watch television. I watch TV
whenever I want. If I hang out with friends Monday-Friday evenings in
a given week, but I can't sleep on Sunday at 4:00am -- guess what?
"NYPD Blue" is on. And so is "The Practice". And
so are the last 2 episodes of "The Sopranos"!

The three
complaints I see most often in other reviews are:

1) It doesn't have
2 tuners, so I can't watch 1 show while I record another.

2) The
sound sometimes gets out-of-sync with the video.

3) There's no local
dial-in number, so I pay big phone bills to keep the program guide
up-to-date.

Here is my take on those concerns:

1) It does not have
two tuners. This is true. However, your Audio/Video setup probably
has more than 1 tuner. There's 1 or 2 in every TV, one every VCR, and
one every cable box / DSS receiver. The limitations here are real,
but many can be worked around. The one thing that you cannot easily
do is record something while watching something else that is scrambled
(i.e. by your cable company or over a DSS dish.) If you want to do
that, you need an additional cable box or DSS receiver. But
otherwise, you can watch one show while recording another with no
problems. Just tune through another device. Replay tech support has
been very well trained in my limited experience with them.

2) There
are two possibilities here: There was a bug in an old release of the
software (called Replay 2.0) in which this could happen. You could
have resolved the problem by pressing the pause button on the remote.
But that bug was fixed a long time ago, so if it's still happening,
then you probably have your receiver playing the audio from your cable
box or vcr instead of the Showstopper. There is a 2-3 second delay
from the live broadcast during which the Showstopper is buffering and
recording. That's a user error. If you listen to the audio from the
Showstopper, it does not get out-of-sync.

3) Odds are that you will
have a local number, but it's certainly not guaranteed. In my
opinion, you'd be foolish to lay out this kind of cash without
verifying that a local number is available.

Other notes I'd add: --
There is a new feature called that allows you to
schedule recordings via the web. Those recording requests get
downloaded to your machine the next evening, so if you're on vacation
and forget to record something, hop onto the web.

Unlike 'current' Tivo systems on the market such as the ones from Sony and Philips, this sytem (from replay networks) has Macrovision which means that in the future certain networks will send out a signal preventing a digital recording of their programs using this sytem. Current Tivo systems now do not carry this, however next generation systems may. This could prevent recordings of ppv movies and specials and other shows. One network 'Fox' has stated they will stop digital recordings of their programs via hard disk recorders that are macrovision enabled.

The Panasonic PV-HS2000 unit works very well and lives up to the hype. The user interface is well thought out, and a pleasure to use. Installation is quite straightforward. Just make sure you have a local access telephone number first - not a problem in more densely populated areas. Be willing to try more than one number if several choices are available - my first choice didn't work for some reason.

Some very minor issues: 1. The unit dissipates 19 Watts when "off", so its a little wasteful of electricity.

2. When on, the unit makes a high-pitched hard-disk "whine" which may be audible if you listen to TV at low volume levels.

3. The unit takes 15 seconds to turn on.

As most people have a VCR already, then item 3 is not a problem in general, and it also makes it simple to watch one program and record another. You probably need a VCR for long term storage anyway, rather than keep favourite material on the recorder indefinately.

The unit certainly changes ones TV viewing experience - it's almost a strange feeling to "pause" live TV, but it certainly helps when my wife asks me to do the garbage in the middle of a favourite program!

I actually bought a demo model. To get out of the demo mode, I had to enter the rather obscure sequence: 7 7 7 Zones (4 key strokes on the remote). This is not in the manual!

DirecTV box...VCR...DVD player...TV. Too many sources, too few inputs. However, it's an incredible box. One star: if you're playing back a "stored" program and hit stop, the next time you come back to it, you're given the choice of starting where you left off, or start from the beginning. One star: no monthly fee. You pay more for the box, but the trade off is no monthly fee. One star: Zones. They search for the types of programs you want to record. The downsides: minus one star for the remote...it's a little much for the novice. Minus one star: controlling the satellite box. There's something to be said for an all-in-one box. It's more reliable than the DirecTV on-board scheduled recording program, but there's some features missing, like Favorites. Also, you have to manually de-select the channels you don't subscribe to. And with the channels labeled differently from the way the SAT box labels them, it will take some getting used to. Over all, I'd say it is a marvel of modern invention. Three levels of record quality, 30 hours of storage (at lowest level), and it can combine three remotes into one. If you're a TV-addict but can't see all the shows all the time, it's worth the money.