ReplayTV RTV5516 160-Hour Digital Video Recorder
29 Days
29 Days.. that is how long our 80 hour replay tv unit lasted.  Set it up on April 9 and on May 8th we came home to find it stuck on the 'Please wait one moment' screen.  Since the 8th was a Saturday, ReplayTv's customer support was not open.  After extensive research on the internet we believed the problem to be hard drive failure, and apparently fairly common.  On Monday a call to ReplayTv's support group confirmed it was HD failure and we were told to return it to the point of purchase (Amazon.com in our case) <br /> We had already signed up for the lifetime subscription.  In order to get a refund you must submit to Replay proof that the item was sent back.  Amazon's return system is automated, and since it was 1 day out of the 30 day return time (from waiting the weekend) I couldn't print the shipping label from the Amazon website.  A call to amazon fixed that.. but the whole refund process took several weeks for both companies, numerous phone calls and was a huge hassle.  <br />  After having the unit for a month we were really hooked, and I can honestly say it changed the way we watched tv.  It was great to be able to sit down and watch the things we enjoyed, without being subject to what was on at the moment.  So when it broke, it was very frustrating to not only be without the unit, but to have lost all of the shows that were on the drive.<br />  Outside of this problem we had some difficulties setting the unit up, that to this day we still don't know what the problem was.  Calling customer support was of no help.  They were clearly  going through a script, that had no relationship to the problem we were having. <br />  Once up and running, we found it very easy to use and reliable, although the search function was limited.  The best example I can think of is that a search for 'Law and Order' did not turn up all or even most instances - and there is no '&amp;' on the onscreen keyboard.  Searches must exactly match the title in the listing and keyword or partial matches are not possible.<br />  We spent alot of time reviewing and comparing different units prior to making this purchase.  Picture quality was very important - the picture on even the low and middle settings is very good.  Also important too us was that Replay units have component video (and composite and S-video) where Tivo only has S-video and composite.  Replay's have built in ethernet (you need to buy an adapter for Tivo), and until recently Tivo charged for the 'Home media option' which has always been free on Replay.<br />  Personally, I was upset that the unit didn't even last 30 days and that this was a common problem.  One that you can cure yourself by hacking it, but it voids the warranty, which I couldn't justify because the warranty wasn't up.  Add to that the lousy customer service and their lousy hours.  So we are going to try a Tivo unit.. the selling point for us being that for $150 they will replace the unit if it breaks after the warranty period, they have better support hours and the some of the user features are better.  We will miss the component video though :)