ReplayTV 3030 Digital Video Recorder
Almost too good to be true!
I've had my ReplayTV for 9 months now. As a longtime time-shifter with a VCR, it's great to be able to watch a program while it is still recording. <br />The quick-skip button is wonderful. Instantly zapping forward in 30-second intervals makes it a snap to avoid commercials. In fact, my family and I have taken to intentionally starting to watch programs with the Replay 5-10 minutes after their scheduled start time expressly to AVOID the ubiquitous commercials for programs I would never let my preschool and elementary school-age kids watch. Instead of watching commercials, we spend those 10 minutes talking to each other. Imagine that... technology that lets you spend more time with your family, instead of taking away from it!<br />In all these months, I've only come across 2 downsides to ReplayTV ownership. If they cured these issues, I'd give the product 5 stars.<br />- The interface doesn't do enough to warn about conflicting recordings. When the networks put two of my favorite shows on at the same time, unless I notice it myself beforehand and set the VCR, I miss the show that is lowest in alphabetical order.<br />- When I bought my unit last summer, the good folks at ReplayTV thoughtfully put up several custom &quot;channels&quot; each month which would automatically record selected seasonal programs. When the new fall season started, this enabled us to easily sample the new shows! Around November, the company had a round of layoffs. Apparently, the folks who programmed the seasonal channels were among the casualties because the seasonal channels disappeared. Since those channels went away, the burden has shifted to us users to search more interactively. Had I not been a user before the layoffs, this might not matter as much.<br />To get around the issue another reviewer mentioned of not being able to watch one program while the box is recording another, I would highly recommend installing it only on TVs that have A/V inputs. That permits watching shows with theTV's tuner while the Replay box is recording. A TV with S-Video inputs would be an even better choice for the best picture quality.<br />In a nutshell, ReplayTV works great! I'd love to put one on every TV I own.