Panasonic PV-HS2000 ShowStopper 30-Hour Digital Video Recorder
Fantastic product -- with a few very small caveats
I have been a huge fan of ReplayTV since I bought my 20-hour unit a couple of years ago.  Before I list off pros and cons, I want to stress just how much this changes TV for you and your family. Essentially, you no longer need to know what time the shows you like are on.  You don't have to be home, you don't have to program a VCR and make sure the tape is at the right spot, nothing like that.  Just tell the Showstopper what shows you like (by show name, or by keyword in the title, description, or actor list), and it records it for you. In fact, even if you happen to be home when a show you like is on, you'll more than likely not start watching right away.  I usually find some bills that need to be paid or start some laundry.  Once the show is 15 minutes in, then I start watching (which it's still recording the live broadcast.)  When I get to the first set of commercials, I &quot;QuickSkip&quot; past them with the 30 second skip button (you can press it multiple times, or hit a number and the skip button to skip n minutes forward.)  I usually catch up at about the time the show is over.  That, folks, is super-cool!<br />What's even cooler is that it truely changes the way you watch television.  I watch TV whenever I want.  If I hang out with friends Monday-Friday evenings in a given week, but I can't sleep on Sunday at 4:00am -- guess what? &quot;NYPD Blue&quot; is on.  And so is &quot;The Practice&quot;.  And so are the last 2 episodes of &quot;The Sopranos&quot;!<br />The three complaints I see most often in other reviews are:<br />1) It doesn't have 2 tuners, so I can't watch 1 show while I record another.<br />2) The sound sometimes gets out-of-sync with the video.<br />3) There's no local dial-in number, so I pay big phone bills to keep the program guide up-to-date.<br />Here is my take on those concerns:<br />1) It does not have two tuners.  This is true.  However, your Audio/Video setup probably has more than 1 tuner.  There's 1 or 2 in every TV, one every VCR, and one every cable box / DSS receiver.  The limitations here are real, but many can be worked around.  The one thing that you cannot easily do is record something while watching something else that is scrambled (i.e. by your cable company or over a DSS dish.)  If you want to do that, you need an additional cable box or DSS receiver.  But otherwise, you can watch one show while recording another with no problems.  Just tune through another device.  Replay tech support has been very well trained in my limited experience with them.<br />2) There are two possibilities here: There was a bug in an old release of the software (called Replay 2.0) in which this could happen.  You could have resolved the problem by pressing the pause button on the remote. But that bug was fixed a long time ago, so if it's still happening, then you probably have your receiver playing the audio from your cable box or vcr instead of the Showstopper.  There is a 2-3 second delay from the live broadcast during which the Showstopper is buffering and recording.  That's a user error.  If you listen to the audio from the Showstopper, it does not get out-of-sync.<br />3) Odds are that you will have a local number, but it's certainly not guaranteed.  In my opinion, you'd be foolish to lay out this kind of cash without verifying that a local number is available.<br />Other notes I'd add: -- There is a new feature called that allows you to schedule recordings via the web.  Those recording requests get downloaded to your machine the next evening, so if you're on vacation and forget to record something, hop onto the web.