ReplayTV 2020 Digital Video Recorder
ReplayTV vs. Tivo
I have spent the past 30 days evaluating both a ReplayTV and a Tivo personal digital recorder and this is a brief review of my experience.<br />If Tivo did not exist, I would probably tell you  that ReplayTV was the coolest gadget that I have ever used. However, Tivo has done such a  superior job designing their user interface and their remote control that  there is no comparison between the two, Tivo is the hands down  winner.<br />ReplayTV's major problem is that they have no sorting system to  help you pick the shows that you might want to record. To find the shows  that you want to record you must painfully sift through an on screen  channel guide one time slot at a time.<br />Tivo in comparison gives you  numerous ways to choose shows that you might want to record. You can view  the upcomming two weeks of programming in catagories such as Movies,  Sports, by channel, or by show name. Tivo will even automatically record  shows that it thinks you might like based on shows that you have rated with  their thumbs up or thumbs down rating system. At first I was skeptical that  I would like this feature, but after a week I found that I loved it. I  would get home from work and get a whole list of programs that Tivo went  out and recored by itself while I was sleeping and while I was at  work.<br />With Tivo I can scan through hundreds of Movies on my premium  channels and in minutes tell it to record all the ones that I want to  record for the next two weeks. With ReplayTV it took me so long to do this  that after the first few days I found myself only recording shows that were  on a regular schedule, like Seinfeld or the X-Files.<br />ReplayTV basically  has a frustrating user interface that forces you to constantly look at the  remote control to do every simple task. With Tivo almost all of your  options are on screen, so if your sitting in the dark while you are  watching TV you don't have to strain your eyes on what button you need to  push.<br />My ReplayTV seemed to often (at least once a day) have a playback  glitch. The fast forward or rewind would get stuck and I would have to  power the unit on and off to get it to stop.<br />One last thing, a major one  for me, ReplayTV gives you no indication of where you are when you are  watching a show. You can't tell if there is 10 minutes or an hour left. I  was watching Shindler's List a few days ago and I found this extremely  frustrating. With Tivo you get a very helpfull progress bar that appears on  the bottom of the screen whenever you fast forward, rewind or press slow  motion. (ReplayTV has no slow motion or single frame advance.)<br />I  just returned my ReplayTV and Tivo 14 hour unit, I ordered a TIVO 30 hour  unit. My advise is to buy a 30 hour unit, you will probably record  everything in a higher quality setting resulting in about half the  recording time of either units advertised recording capacity.