Panasonic PV-HS2000 ShowStopper 30-Hour Digital Video Recorder
Good but not perfect
I read A LOT of reviews before purchasing this product and knew most of it's shortcomings before I opened the box.   One shortcoming that I was not aware of was that with my current setup (stereo being hooked up to VCR) I can no longer watch TV and listen through my stereo the two are out of sync by less than a second but very distracting to watch.  It is also troublesome if you decide to use your cable box remote and not to go through showstopper (to avoid the lag time when channel surfing which I do admit I do A LOT less now) if you do not &quot;reset&quot; the IR blaster (had no idea what this was till I got the thing--you hook it up to your cable box and it changes the channels) by switching the channels a few times it--it gets all confused and thinks that it is on one channel while it's on another--for instance it thinks it's on 551 but it's really on 51--the only way I've notice to fix this is to flip around the channels for awhile.   A little trouble downloading the guide--physical set up took only about 15 minutes but setting it up and using the phone line took about an additional 40 and had some problems figuring out if I needed to enter something to cancel call waiting. Had to change #'s to one that I don't know if it is local because the one number that was local was giving me all kind of trouble downloading which Replay TV blamed on Panasonic.  Also the guide for Court TV is not accurate and therefore you basically cannot tape a single thing on that channel accurately.  It is a problem missing the end of shows esp. sports--they need a &quot;tack on 20 minutes&quot; option.  The unit does make noises at times--but more often than not this is not noticeable.  All in all I'm very happy with my purchase and now always have something that I like to watch on.   Oh and PS don't know why ANYONE would buy a TIVO that doesn't have Quick Skip--with QuickSkip an entire commercial break is skipped in 5-15 seconds.  I did not understand until I got the unit that QuickSkip skips over 30 seconds at the touch of a button, much like skipping over a song you don't like on a CD--which is TOTALLY different from fast-forwarding through it which takes about 3X as long.   Also not too wild about Replay Zones--like I wanted to set one up for True Crime and tell it not to tape COPS and some other shows it chose to include--no can do.   Mostly I set up showbased channels and single record.  That has worked out best for me.   Really like the guide that Replay provides it very accurate and user friendly--much better than the one provided by digital cable and guide+ if you are familiar with those. Oh one more IR blaster glitch for some reason every once in awhile it decides instead of changing the channel to pull up the digital music guide that my digital cable provides--which you then have to exit out of.  No idea why it does this. SO GREAT NOT HAVING TO WATCH COMMERCIALS IF YOU HAVE THE MONEY IT IS SOOO WORTH IT I would like to clear up something another reviewer said about this product-he said that you shouldn't get it because you can't route your DVD player through it or your VCR.  This is true of just about any A/V device these days especially true of DVD's almost ALL OF WHICH are copyright protected and therefore have to be routed directly into the TV.  So this product does work best if you have AT LEAST two A/V inputs on your TV-and you can really only set it up to watch one channel and tape another if you have a satellite and cable or digital and analog cable (I don't have an analog line in the same room so couldn't set it up to watch one channel and tape another-which does suck)