ReplayTV RTV5040 40-Hour Digital Video Recorder

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Product Details

Product Manual [2.44mb PDF]

• Product Dimensions: 14 x 16.9 x 3 inches ; 12 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 16 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B00006J3IV
• Item model number: 5040
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (103 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank

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  Electronics > Televisions & Video > Digital Video Recorders

• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes
• Date first available at Amazon.com: May 14, 2003

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

A step up in broadband and home network-ready DVRs, ReplayTV's 5000 series digital video recorders let you distribute recorded programs within your home and share personal recordings of nonprotected video content with 15 friends and family members who also own 5000 series DVRs.

The ReplayTV 5040 stores 40 hours of programming while letting you pause, replay, and slow down live television--all with no tapes, no timers, and no trouble. The handy Commercial Advance feature plays recordings without advertising. This allows you to watch television on your own schedule, free from the constraints of network scheduling, which often pits multiple cool programs head-to-head.

With a cable modem or DSL, the 5040 hooks up for fast and easy broadband video transfers with other broadband-connected 5000 series users. It also lets you share video throughout the house using a built-in Ethernet port and existing home-networking equipment, and it stores digital photos and home movies, letting you see your favorite digital photos on TV. This ReplayTV provides iChannels (which lets you download video content from the Internet) and the Reply Channel Guide, downloaded daily through the broadband connection, which offers a convenient, grid-based list of shows that can be recorded at the touch of a button. It comes with an easy-to-use remote control. ReplayTV subscribers can pay $12.95 pe r month or a one-time product service activation fee of $299.

Product Description

With ReplayTV, there's always something good on, and you don't ever need to be bothered by commercial interruptions again! Topping the charts of user-friendly features, Commercial Advance lets you choose to skip commercial breaks all-together when you playback recorded shows. No fast forward, no remote control interaction at all. Just a split-second "blip" and you're right back into the action. Not bad for starters... and how about all those advanced features for the connected home, like Internet Video Sharing and Room-to-Room Video Streaming? It's all possible, and a whole lot easier than you think.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

91 of 103 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Device!, January 24, 2003

By	[e-mail] (Long Island, NY) - See all my reviews

I've been thinking about getting a Tivo or ReplayTV for about a year and finally got a ReplayTV 5040. Here's my opinion:

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!

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good Unit/Big Service Issue, March 11, 2003

By A Customer

Hi everyone. I had hoped that when I bought my ReplayTV 5040 that it would work fine. BUZZZ-wrong answer. It died on me about 6 weeks after I bought it. (Infinite reboot problem) Alright, no big deal, I'll just send it back. On January 27th I called technical support and after some troubleshooting and it was determined that I had to send it in. I was told that I would have a new unit 10 days after they got my unit. I sent it in and UPS delivered it to ReplayTV on January 31st. It was delivered at 10:09 AM and signed for by "Cooper."

Two weeks later I sent an email to technical support asking for a status report. No response. Two more days went by and I sent another email to which they replied with this cryptic quote: "Your RMA is in process and will be fulfilled as soon as possible." Not very helpful.

After patiently waiting for nearly a month, on or around February 27th I decided that I should try to give someone a call, so I called in and they had no record of my unit or even me! The guy finally said he would have to put me on hold. I held for over 30 minutes and then got sent into his voice mail. I immediately called back and had to tell my story all over again. The new person I talked to was very polite, found my information and said she would "escalate my case." Great, I thought, finally! After more discussion she said I should have my unit very soon. I told her that I would like a confirmation email when the unit was shipped.

March 6th rolls around and I still have not heard anything from anyone at SonicBlue so I called in again. This time I got a man who was sorry to hear about my case after I told him the story. This time he gave me a case number and told me the he would "escalate" my case to the supervisory level. I told him that I though that had already been done! He told me that it should now get some high level action. I ask him to send me an email when the unit has been shipped.

Today is March 11th and I since I haven't received an email, I decide to call tech support and see if they can give me a status report. I happen to talk to the same woman that I spoke to on February 27th. She apologizes to me and says that my case has been "escalated to a higher level" and that she will check with her supervisor for the status. After about 10 minutes she gets back on the phone and tells me that her supervisor told her that the unit should have been shipped, but that they don't know for sure. (At this point I am taking everything they say with a grain of salt!) She suggests that I call back in two days and they should be able to tell me for sure if the unit has shipped.

That is where things stand right now. I can't say that I can give any advice based on this report, but I thought people should be aware of the situation.
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Epilogue: The day after I posted the above review I had an email exchange with other people at SonicBlue and they sent me a new unit 2nd day FedEx. Once I got to the right people they were very responsive.

28 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You'll never go back..., November 22, 2002

By	Justin Leavens (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

It may sound dramatic, but my ReplayTV has changed my relationship with television completely.

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.