ReplayTV 2020 Digital Video Recorder
Replay is the Best!
I personally, looked into both ReplayTV and Tivo.  Replaytv is far more &quot;me&quot; than Tivo.  I have quite a few reasons for this, as well as some problems I see with Replay and things that I have found to work around  these problems.<br />1) Replay doesn't try to guess my viewing habits.  I  watch a lot of different things (i.e. Buffy the Vampire Slayer to a  documentary on whales) that I don't know how something would guess my  viewing habits.  With Replay I can set up _my_ own channels and have Replay  find the shows _I_ want to watch, not the ones _they_ think I want to  watch.   2) No monthly or lifetime fees!  This is great b/c I have a bad  habit of forgetting about bills and not paying them on time.  With Replay,  I never have to worry about missing a monthly payment. 3) The QuickSkip  feature.  I don't have to press the fastforward button to get through two  minutes worth of programming that I don't want to see (this is great for  storylines on soap operas that you may find boring), I can just skip ahead  30 seconds as many times as I need. 4) I am very nontechnical, so Replay is  great for me.  With just a couple of buttons I can set up recordings in a  matter of seconds.  I have neverlearned how to program a VCR, it took me  about 10 minutes to learn Replay.  I also can save anything to VCR tape  quite easily.  This is great :)!  5) I've had to call the technical  support people at Replay a couple of times (again, refer to #4 about my  nontechnical aspect of my nature *grin*) and they have always been  extremely helpful.  I've never called Tivo, but I definitely count this as  a bonus for me.  It's bad to feel stupid about something already and have  someone else make you feel dumber than you already do. 6) I love the huge  amount of pause time you get with Replay.  Sometimes one of my roommates  will want to talk to me or something and it will last for hours, or I  decide I need to run to the gas station or store.  This pause for a long  time worksbeautifully for me.  <br />Problems: 1) I know a lot of people have  complained that 20 hours was not enough...and were afraid of using all  their space on their replay. Workaround:  Schedule each weekly show you're  recording to only keep one episode.  That way you don't have 5 episodes of  Friends cluttering your hard drive.  Also set things you don't really mind  missing if you need to as nonguaranteed.  This will help a lot.<br />2) Toll  calls for the nightly dial up. Workaround:  You don't need the update every  night.  Simply unplug the Replay every night, then leave it plugged in on  the 4th or 5th night.  Or leave it unplugged every night (the phone jack of  course) and plug it in once a week or twice a week to do a hard boot.   The  calls will be longer...but in the long run it saves b/c the total amount of  time of nightly calls was more expensive than the total amt of calls every  5 nights or so.<br />These are just my thoughts and ideas on the Replay.  Let  me tell you though, once you have it, you'll never want to go back to  watching tv without it.  You'll be other places and be bummed that you  can't pause the tv!