ReplayTV RTV5516 160-Hour Digital Video Recorder
A Faint Shadow of TiVo
The ReplayTV unit promises a lot but fails to deliver. A rich feature set does not provide much benefit when the basic functions do not work well. Here are some of the problems I ran into:<br />1. When watching a recorded show, a ugly screen full of digital error noise was visible for a second or two. This happened on average about once a minute. Their solution was to use the progressive outputs instead of the s-video. While this did appear to clear up the issue (I only tested it for about ten minutes), it was not a solution for me. All my progressive component inputs were used by other devices. Thus, the normal TV viewing and viewing of recorded shows features are rendered useless.<br />2. When changing channels, not only is it slow (much slower than TiVo; about 5-7 seconds to change to a new channel), but it would occasionally lose the channel tuning. For instance, you move to a new channel, it would tell you it could not get a signal and showed a blank screen. If I move up to the next channel and back down to the previous, it would then tune the channel properly. While this solved the immediate problem, it will not work when trying to record shows. Hence, the show recording feature is rendered useless.<br />3. Their technical support has been outsourced to India, so the representatives can be hard to understand, and it can be hard for them to understand you. They also appear to only read a premade script on a computer screen, rather than actually having technical knowledge of the device. This is conjecture, based on my two calls I made to them, but they are only partially useful.<br />ReplayTV has some nice features over TiVo, including the progressive scan outputs, the built-in Ethernet for home network connectivity, and some of the home media options that TiVo charges for are included with the package in ReplayTV. However, TiVo has put a lot of effort into usability and reliability, and their package just plain works. ReplayTV is less stable, does not have as many guide or recording options, is more confusing to use, and as mentioned, has serious problems with their basic functionality. I returned the unit the same night I bought it. Get a TiVo instead, and enjoy the simplicity of solid, reliable technology.