ReplayTV RTV5040 40-Hour Digital Video Recorder
They couldn't go on like this forever
SonicBLUE's focus on buzz-generating features like show sharing and commercial skip that don't work well or are useless to a majority of users and their inattention to stability, customer service, and simple ease of use has finally caught up with them.  After spending millions fighting lawsuits over show sharing, a feature that's too slow to be practical for most people and seeing a steep volume of their 5000 series recorders returned with problems that their foreign customer service couldn't, or wouldn't help with, they filed for bankruptcy at the end of March 2003.  Their business units including ReplayTV will be auctioned off by the court in mid-April.<br />Despite entering the market at about the same time as rival Tivo they have barely 1/6 as many customers and since SonicBLUE didn't offer a monthly payment option until late last year, only a small fraction of those customers would be an ongoing revenue source for a new owner.  Who will end up with ReplayTV and what they'll do with it isn't known, but with the burden of running a service that only a few customers are paying for and the damage SonicBLUE has done to the ReplayTV name, right now it would be foolish to bank on a new buyer continuing ReplayTV service, which is required to get the advertised functionality.  If the customer base isn't profitable it's likely the winning bidder will just pick ReplayTVs bones for whatever intellectual property and patents are useful to them and throw the rest away.  All SonicBLUE will say is the service will continue unaffected \\"through at least the end of April\\".  It doesn't sound promising.<br />Sometimes taking on Goliath is brave and noble.  Other times it's just collosally, suicidally stupid.  This time was stupid.