Customer Reviews

ReplayTV RTV5160 160-Hour Digital Video Recorder

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

Two negative reviews of this product (by "Greg from Avon" and "Red Byer") strike me as unfair because either (or both) misinformed about the features of Replay TV recorders or their primary purpose.

Hard disk video recorders are primarily intended to be short- to medium-term storage devices for time-shifting of shows and for enhancing the viewing experience through convenience feature such as pausing, rewinding and freezing "live" shows. Added features such as automatic commercial skip during replay and instant 7-second backwards jumps also greatly improve the viewing experience for recorded shows in comparison with what you get from a VCR.

Replay TV 5160 offers tremendous flexibility in those departments, if you care to read the manual and use the host of options available for selecting material for recording, deciding what should have priority if there is a timing conflict, deciding how many episodes of a show should be retained, as well as organizing and managing recorded content. In addition, easy networkability of several units does make it possible to use Replay TV recorders as long-term storage devices if so desired.

To counter a few of the complaints of negative reviewers:

1. Automatic commercial skipping (which works in about 80% of cases) is not a useless gimmick, but rather a great time-saver when you want to save a show to tape or DVD-R. With a Tivo, the only way to skip commercials is to manually trigger 30-second forward jumps.

2. In several weeks of constant use, I never experienced freezing of the operating system. I had to call Tech Support once to confirm my cable box's IR code and got through very fast.

3. The 7-second backwards jump feature is included with Replay TV 5000 series machine, and is not a Tivo exclusive.

4. I don't know about Sonic Blue/Repaly TV being on the verge of bankruptcy. What I know is that their video recorders are in short supply, which seems to indicate healthy sales.

A few words of caution: Replay TV (as well as other hard disk video recorders) is not for users who never read manuals and are barely able to use the most basic functions of a VCR. The buffering of video signals causes a significant delay when switching channels, so it is best to have a cable box or satellite receiver with dual tuners, allowing viewing one channel while recording another; such an arrangement gives you a choice between quick channel-surfing and viewing and/or recording wth the convenience features of the HD video recorder. Image quality is selectable, and the lowest setting is about par with standard VHS (without the video noise). However, the highest quality setting, reducing total recording capacity to some 50 hours, is best for serious viewing or archiving to DVD or S-VHS. Finally, the very shgort warranty period (90 days parts and loabor) suggests a lack of confidence from Sonic Blue in the long-term reliability of their products. Should do better than that.

This is the first time I have been inclined to share my opinion of a product. My 5000 series replay TV is great in concept, but......

The main problem is with the lack of customer service. The first time I had to call was in the evening. After staying on hold over 15 minutes I checked the website which informed me that customer service was closed after five. You would think the recording could mention that. The other times, my unit, which is run through our computer network would display messages claiming it was not activated. When I would go online to activate it again, it would say the unit is activated. I then was on hold two different times for over an hour and finally give up. The machine fixed itself the next day. This happened again today, we had been out of town. Replay TV was suppose to record a bunch of movies. We have been back 24 hours and cannot get the darn thing to work. It claims it cannot confirm it is activated. I called the activation number and after staying on hold for 1/2 hour, the gentlemen informed me that my unit was activated and that it was a technical problem and he could not transfer me. I asked if perhaps their server was down and he didn't know. I have no idea if it recorded anything or not.

For something that claims to make your life easier it has taken over in a very negative way. I have spent hours trying to track down the source of its problems.

When it is working it is great. The remote functions are very slow, but I was getting used to it. I understand that they may be very busy activating new customers after the holidays, but if there are problems they should post it on the website.

This product will forever change the way you watch TV. Suddenly, you are in complete control of what you watch and when. I don't watch less TV, but I do watch the TV that I want to watch.

I wouldn't recommend this for someone who isn't somewhat comfortable with technology. And yes, it does crash at times, but the benefits far outweigh the inconvenience.

Purchase at least 80 hours of storage time if you plan to record on medium quality which I recommend.

The commercial skip feature is great. Ok...it isn't perfect, but it is by far the best available. This feature will be GOING AWAY with the introduction of the 5500 series due to pressure from the entertainment industry. Take a look at the article below.

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ReplayTV has agreed to remove two features from its product that infuriated the ad and broadcasting industries even more than they delighted consumers.

ReplayTV's new 5500 model, on sale next month, has been re-engineered so that it cannot automatically skip entire commercial breaks without recording them. Nor will it be able to send recorded programming over the internet to other ReplayTV users outside a home network.

But the devices will still indefinitely store many hours of programming, while enabling users to skip manually in 30-second segments through recorded commercials.

Two years ago, a consortium of movie and TV studios sued Sonicblue  the former owner of ReplayTV and now in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection  for abetting copyright infringement with the devices commercial-skipping feature. The company and its technology was subsequently acquired by D&M Holdings of Japan.

D&M executives insist that the dropping of these features was voluntary, although critics see the move as capitulation rather than an accommodation. Jim Hollingsworth, president of D&Ms ReplayTV division, denies this. We did this on our own. There was no coercion. We will take features out because we want to be a positive force in the industry.

But Jeff Joseph, vp and spokesman for the Consumer Electronics Association, is not convinced: Companies are under considerable pressure to bow to the wishes of the entertainment industry. This is unfair and anticompetitive. If advertisers and broadcasters are seeing their traditional business model threatened, then it would behoove them to consider alternative business models.

I have a Tivo and 2 Replays. Tivo is a touch easier to use (our 4 year old can operate the basic playback features), but for all but the technophobe, Replay is slightly superior in terms of flexibility. It takes a few extra key strokes but you have greater control of record options, sorting and grouping of recorded shows, etc. The commercial skip is AWESOME -- but doesn't work right on all shows. When it doesn't work shift to regular play and you're fine. Recent units are much speedier than older ones (I assume a processor upgrade). Both either TIVO or Replay are 100x improvements over vcrs, so you can't go wrong.

In the 3 days I owned this, I had the following problems:

1.Screen would suddenly go blank with erroneous error message "program not available"

2. when trying to record abc, unit recorded nbc but indicated it was recording abc

3. not compatible with sports package such as directv center ice

4. I spent one hour on hold but never got to talk to customer support to get help clearing these problems up

some things are just not ment to be- I think an integrated unit of satelite- digital recording might be better- beware if you buy this product and it does not go perfectly- you probably won't get help troubleshooting from the company and the retail outlets seem to be bewildered too.

There are absoultely some bugs to work out in this critter, but hard disk recorders are still in their infancy if you ask me. Remember that the 80 hour version is 80 at the lowest quality about 60 at med and roughly 27 hours at the highest quality. I found it easy to use and set up. You can program it from the web if you like (nice feature). Yes the channel changing is slow because it is getting ready to record (it always records in a buffer every time you change channels). Great picture quality, by the way the USB connection for future wireless implementation is inactive now, but you can get a linksys wireless ethernet bridge from amazon for [a price]that will let you plug the replayTV right into your wireless system now with no special drivers! The search features are fantastic, making it very easy to find what you want in programming. I suggest you go to the replaytv.com website and download the manual in .pdf format so you can see what it does...I have the 80 hour version and find that it holds plenty of shows even at the highest resolution. If there is a show you really like you can "offload" it to video tape for long term storage. Hopefully they will eventually make an outboard drive that will let you transfer shows you like back and forth. Of course you can do this now by getting two units and hooking them up to your home network. Oh yeah, cool feature YOU CAN VIEW A PREVIOUSLY RECORDED SHOW AND RECORD A NEW SHOW AT THE SAME TIME!!! This is because the unit can read and write on the hard disk simultaneously. Is it pefect? No. Is it foolproof? NO. In that regard i've heard Tivo is more like a Mac and Replay more like Windows....But the features [are awesome] and they work the way they are supposed to for the most part (commercial skip is about 80% accurate and if it isn't a couple of presses of the jump button get you past the commercial. I will say this though, their tag line rings true..."There's always something on"

The concept is awesome. Digital recorders will change your TV experience forever. They remove the notions of time and channel from your TV. Your kids will get an endless supply of free on-demand good programs. You will gain 30% of time watching shows without commercials.

But we regret buying the ReplayTV; if we had to do this again we would pick an integrated digital recorder / satellite receiver based on TiVo.

I am disappointed by:

You can NOT watch one show while recording another one. Now how ridiculous is that ! Even my VCR does it.

Commercial skip: very cool ... when it works. On slow paced shows (think Little House in the Prairie) it works well. But it is completely freaked by shows like "24", where the fast paced sequences are mis-identified as commercials.

Channel surf: it takes a good 5 seconds (yes, 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, etc ...) between the push of the remote button, and the appearance of the new channel you selected on the screen. This makes channel surfing IMPOSSIBLE - now that should be illegal !

Computer crash: about 3 mornings per week, we have to reboot the unit because it froze during the software update during the night. So if you don't remember to check the unit in the morning before you leave the house, it will not record the evening shows until you reboot it.

Recording priorities: that needs serious work. When you start having several profiles / channels (or whatever stupid names their marketing people made up) recording things for you, you run into recording conflicts ... and that is OK, as long as you are given a chance to know about it and manage the conflict. We find out after the fact, when Saturday Night Live did not get recorded because some obscure 1930s movie rated 3.5 stars happened to start 30 minutes before ...

The navigation: probably my biggest beef, because this would be easy to fix if they spent the time. The escape button for example: in most menus, it takes you back up one level. But not always ... there are some menus (end of viewing recorded show, want to go back to live TV?) where escape just does not work; you then have to learn the funky workarounds.

Setup was easy. There is plenty of hard drive space to hold the shows I record. Interface is easy to use. This product works as advertised! Commercial skip works automatically most of the time. ReplayTV will change the way you watch television. I am a completely satisfied customer.

Negatives:
-You cannot really channel surf with the ReplayTV because there is a multi-second recording delay to buffer the content coming in.
-Steep lifetime activation fee

Received the 160 hr ReplayTV. Got it up and running in about 45 minutes (with my surround system). Within about 2 to 3 hours I felt comfortable with the remote and how to program the recordings and what not. However, from the beginning there were little things that didn't work. I recorded a series of shows, but some of them wouldn't play. The record time sometimes started early or late, causing me to miss part of the show. And then about 3 weeks after purchase, I came home to find that the unit was in a repetitive loop of rebooting. SonicBlue support said the hard drive was bad and to send it back in. I am now waiting on the next one to be delivered. If it's not here soon, I'm going with TiVo.

I purchased the ReplayTV 5160 when it first came out and was pleasantly surprised at how quickly I received it. So far we are very happy with it. I chose the ReplayTV over the Tivo because of the broadband support. I had previously made the decision to not buy any DVR until it had broadband support. I already had a cable modem connection in my house with a Linksys Etherfast Cable Router. I also work in the computer field and have connected many different computers to the internet via both static and dynamic IP addresses. It took me about 30 minutes to get the ReplayTV all connected. I didn't time it, but with broadband support it took around 10 minutes to get the operating system update and download the latest guide and channels. I would imagine with a regular phone dial-up connection it would take a very long time to get the updates. If a person is not very computer literate they may get very frustrated trying to set up the ReplayTV if it doesn't work right the first time. My suggestion is to find a friend who understands modems, routers and IP addresses. The fact is that ReplayTV is just a computer with a large hard disk that compresses broadcasts real-time and stores them on the disk.

So here are the good, the bad and the so-so.

The good is what everyone else raves about: watch shows when you want without commercials. I was just getting into the N.E.versus Miami football game when I had to leave for a lunch meeting. I just hit the record button and watched the overtime when I got home. I also watched a Laker game in just over an hour that would have been 2-plus hours if I had been sitting thru the game live. We've also used it to record favorite shows. I had no problems purchasing the activation.

The bad is that the channel changing is very slow, as others have mentioned. Someone suggested it was the IR blaster. I'm not sure that is right. An interesting test is to change the channel of the cable (or dish) box with your cable remote while the ReplayTV is on. The channel changes just as slow. This tells me that the cable box is changing quickly and there must be some kind of setup time (delay) in the ReplayTV when the channel changes. I think it starts recording right away or something. Not sure exactly what is wrong but it is annoying. I end up turning the ReplayTV off if I'm channel hopping. The other bad is that it seems like you have to agree to their very long licensing agreement about a zillion times (okay only a few times but it does seem repetitive). Once you set up the box, do the on-line registration and do the activation you will know what I'm talking about.

The so-so is the channel guide and the web sites. The channel guide shows all the programs and has a good amount of information about the shows. However, it takes up most of the screen so you can't check out the guide while watching a show and it is a bit sluggish moving from show to show. The cable guide that we get with Time Warner feels much more responsive. As for the replaytv.com web site I didn't need support so I'm not sure how good (or bad) it is. However, their FAQs are very limited. I would have expected more. The MyReplayTV.com is a good idea but it appears to download the information to the box at night and not right away. Which means you can't tell it to record a show that will be on that same evening. MyReplayTV.com is also kind of a sluggish site.

Even with the bad and the so-so, ReplayTV does what I expected and wanted it to do which is why I gave it 4 stars.