ReplayTV 5160 Digital Video Recorder
Great Player, but go for the 160 hour version if you can
There are absoultely some bugs to work out in this critter, but hard disk recorders are still in their infancy if you ask me. Remember that the 80 hour version is 80 at the lowest quality about 60 at med and roughly 27 hours at the highest quality. I found it easy to use and set up. You can program it from the web if you like (nice feature). Yes the channel changing is slow because it is getting ready to record (it always records in a buffer every time you change channels). Great picture quality, by the way the USB connection for future wireless implementation is inactive now, but you can get a linksys wireless ethernet bridge from amazon for [a price]that will let you plug the replayTV right into your wireless system now with no special drivers! The search features are fantastic, making it very easy to find what you want in programming. I suggest you go to the replaytv.com website and download the manual in .pdf format so you can see what it does...I have the 80 hour version and find that it holds plenty of shows even at the highest resolution. If there is a show you really like you can \\"offload\\" it to video tape for long term storage. Hopefully they will eventually make an outboard drive that will let you transfer shows you like back and forth. Of course you can do this now by getting two units and hooking them up to your home network. Oh yeah, cool feature  YOU CAN VIEW A PREVIOUSLY RECORDED SHOW AND RECORD A NEW SHOW AT THE SAME TIME!!! This is because the unit can read and write on the hard disk simultaneously. Is it pefect? No. Is it foolproof? NO. In that regard i've heard Tivo is more like a Mac and Replay more like Windows....But the features [are awesome] and they work the way they are supposed to for the most part (commercial skip is about 80% accurate and if it isn't a couple of presses of the jump button get you past the commercial. I will say this though, their tag line rings true...\\"There's always something on\\"