ReplayTV RTV5040 40-Hour Digital Video Recorder
only reason not five stars is bankruptcy and not "perfect"
I have never owned a tivo. This box is awesome. Commercial skip works about 85% for me, and is the best feature. After reading in the manual that it will not work on shows you are recording and watching at the same time... apparently the software is updated and bam, i set a blanket record for all 3 hrs of nbc thurs night and i watch commercial free.  Swapping content? yeah right, too long and to much legal hassle.  Does changing channels take too long, sure.  Can you watch one channel and record another, sure if you have a tv with two antenna inputs.<BR>As you watch is apparently spins shows to hard drive, when i turn on tv after a day of work the box skips and snags, all you do is change channel to apparently reset record on the fly and all is well. I cant run my router as a dhcp so i set static and have to change replay ip every week or so and manually connect bummer.  <br />As for bankruptcy, even if the guide was no longer provided, assuming the box still works with manual programming like a vcr so what?  I dont use the replay zones anyway. Only big loss is the find shows feature and record all episodes. Big bummer.  <br />Whats your option, is tivo guaranteed to survive? seen their balance sheet lately? Now you've got graphics cards which when they mature in a few years with the ... cost of hard drive space with certainly spell trouble for the set top market.  <br />This device rocks overall, no technology is perfect.  The commercial advance in my mind is the best reason to buy this.