Replay Networks 2001 Digital Video Recorder
Changes the way you view TV.. Changes how you THINK about TV
I purchased the 28 hour version of this unit when it was essentially hot off the assembly line.  I got it home and got it hooked up and configured with about 10 minutes worth of wiring, and about half an hour of watching  it download configuration info.  It comes pre-loaded with a little video  that walks you through the basic features; which is probably good, because  the manual is in desperate need of a tech writer.<br />That very night I found  myself taking advantage of the new features.  I paused a show I wasn't  recording when the phone rang; laughing hysterically when it warned me that  I only had 14 hours of pause time left.  After the phone call I decided I  wanted some dessert, so drove to the local ice-cream place, picked up some  stuff, came home, rewound a little to refresh my memory, and picked up the  show.  The great thing was that at this point I could use the  &quot;quick-skip&quot; feature, which jumps 30 seconds forward, to quickly  flash by the commercials.  By 5 minutes into the next program I had caught  up with &quot;live&quot; tv.  Which was actually kind of sad; I was already  addicted to commercial skipping.  I've now developed a habit of not  starting to watch a show until 10 minutes in, so I don't have to watch the  commercials.<br />Programming is trivial; you just pick the shows you want,  and whether you want all of them or not, if it's a series.  Or you can put  in keywords describing things.  I've used this for not only finding people  or themes I'm interested in, but also listing specials or shows I know will  be on, but have no clue when; it lets the replay find it for me.  The  replay's very good about catching that an episode has a two hour special,  or is going to air an hour early or late, or on a different day.  You can't  get *too* off though; airing at 6pm when it's supposed to air at 11pm is  too far.<br />Two serious drawbacks of this, unfortunately, is that you can't  allow for overrun.  Shows on MTV, for instance, regularly start 2-3 minutes  late, or early.  I know that it'll run over, but I can't tell the replaytv  that, so unless I also record the next show, I'm almost guaranteed to miss  the ending or begining every time.  Replay says they're aware of this  problem, and are looking at solutions.  The other problem is that it has no  way of knowing that something's been delayed, say by sports running over.  You can't program in times, just select programs.  This means if you're  *sitting* there, and hit record at the right time, because, say, football  is over, it'll stop recording when it *should* have, if things weren't  delayed.<br />There are also bugs in the keyword programming right now, things  like &quot;:&quot; or &quot;;&quot; in a title prevent it from finding a  show.<br />Still, the features make up for the problems in long run; it's far  more useful than the vcr in general; I only use the vcr now to save a  program that I really want to keep, or if I know I'll have a problem  recording it with the replay (like it follows basketball...)<br />It's  insidious.  I watch at least 3-4 hours more of TV a week now (which means  I'm spending 3-4 hours a week watching TV I wasn't before), because it's so  simple to acquire shows I was at least vaugely interested in before, but  not willing to go to the effort of finding and programming a VCR to find,  getting a blank tape, etc.  With the replay, even if it's recording  something, you can just pick something in your library and watch it; switch  to something else, and come back to the show where you left off if you  like.<br />Once they release a new version of the software that fixes some of  the bugs and maybe offers some extras like editing or slow-motion, it'll  earn that last star.