ReplayTV RTV5040 40-Hour Digital Video Recorder
Excellent Device!
I've been thinking about getting a Tivo or ReplayTV for about a year and finally got a ReplayTV 5040.  Here's my opinion:<br />Price: With two $50 mail-in rebates my final cost was $199.  This is a lot of technology for $199!<br />Quality:  The box is well built and solid.  There's a big fan to keep it cool.  The choices of inputs and outputs is complete.  You can fit this device into any home threater system any way you want.  I have a 36\\" HDTV and have this connected using S-video.  I tried composite video and it was slightly worse.  I didn't try the component video outputs.<br />Setup: Setup was easy but did take a while over a cable modem connection.  During the setup it seemed to update the operating system which took about 25 minutes.  Total setup was about 40 minutes.  I don't know how long it would take over the built-in modem.<br />Recording: The programming guide is easy to use and setting things to record is straight forward. I only record at high quality so I only get about 10 hours of recording time.<br />Picture Quality: The picture is acceptable but not as good as the direct feed to the TV.  When you watch a show throught the ReplayTV you are ALWAYS watching the recorded version.  There is about a 1 second delay between the \\"live\\" picture throught the ReplayTV and the \\"live\\" feed from the cable company.  This is what allows you to pause and rewind a live TV show.  Because you're watching a recorded version of the show and the recording is digitized and compressed the picture quality is slightly worse than the original.  I find the colors to be a little washed out. <br />Customer Support: EXCELLENT!  I was worried about calling tech support when the IR Blaster couldn't change the single digit channels on my cable box but was pleasantly surprised when my hold time was less than 2 minutes both times I had to call.  The fix was simple but undocumented in the manual or on their web site.  To get to the advanced settings for the IR Blaster you have to pressthe \\"Zones\\" button when the list of codes for your cable box appears on the screen.  This lets you set certain properties of the IR Blaster like the minimum number of digits to send to the cable box.  It was sending a \\"2\\" for channel 2 and I needed it to send an \\"02\\".  Bumping the minimum digits to 2 fixed the problem.  I also got a tip from their tech to put all zeros in the delay boxes to speed up channel changing which is fairly slow.  Changing the delays to \\"0000\\" helps slightly.<br />I like this better than Tivo.  This thing is light years ahead of an old VCR!