Philips HDR612 TiVo 60 Hour Digital Video Recorder
Tivo is expensive, but it works
A Replay 60 hr unit was replaced with Tivo 60 hr unit. Both units are noisy -- during quiet moments in tv passage, you can hear the hard disk spin. So you have to turn up the volume accordingly. <br />An earlier version of Replay the hard disk runs when recording. For Tivo the hard disk is always spinning. In this day and age there is no reason why Tivo, Phillips couldn't command the hard disk go to sleep mode when not recording. That's why I opted for a 5 year warranty. Hard disks die eventually, and so it's a question of when.<br />The man-machine interface for Replay is superior to the Tivo -- it's more intuitive and easier to master. I decided to not subscribe to Tivo since at the time I got the unit there was a price change (...) for lifetime membership. As a consequence I manually setup to record programs of interest by entering channel, times, and frequency. It's a hassle, but I refuse to pay Tivo anymore money.<br />Whoever designed the Tivo man-machine interface oughta be hung by his/her toe nails. Tivo should take a lesson from Replay. On Tivo, if you pick the wrong recording to replay it's very difficult to stop it. And you can't label a recording so there is just generic info -- being able to label program name would be great. With Replay there is no additional cost for service so you do not have this problem.<br />I would have kept the replay, but after having to turn in the unit 3 times for repair (hard disk noise) I got a Tivo (noisy). However, I didn't know that Tivo had the same problem. It should be a no brainer to use quieter hard drives or to sound isolate the hard drive -- it's not rocket science. The problem is that with Replay you get a refurbished unit not a new one. So you know that Replay unit had problems. Perhaps Tivo has the same policy -- you get refurbished unit. Maybe I should go back to VCRs and have DSS programmed to record on VCR?