The lil’ woman and I are considering getting a DVR. On one side is TiVo. On the other is ReplayTV. I’ve gotten the impression that ReplayTV is the slightly cheaper Chevrolet to TiVo’s Cadillac. But is there a major difference? Enough to justify spending the $50 extra or so for the TiVo?
Lots of people are pretty pissed off at Replay TV right now - apparently they claimed that if you bought a Replay TV the service would be included, and then went back on the offer and shut off everyone’s service.
I would have said get a TiVo anyway - easier to use and IMO a better device. But after this - I would definitely avoid Replay.
Yea, I read a lot on that, but that’s been the only objection I’ve found.
Well, for a long time Replay TV was clearly better than TiVo.
Replay TV had the feature where pushing one button blocks 95% of ads. The more corporate friendly tivo only lets you skip forward 30 seconds at a time so you are still forced to watch lots of ads.
However, recently advertisers have fought back. The tracking codes that the device uses to tell what is an ad and what is tv have been tweaked. From what I understand it is less effective now at automatically blocking ads. I still give Replay tv credit for trying, though. They got sued by all the television stations for this feature.
Also, for a long time Replay tv had a network jack in it and Tivo did not. I for one am not interested at all in a TV recorder if it cannot talk to my PC.
However, the newer Tivo’s do have a network jack included.
So, Replay TV used to be much better, but Tivo seems to be catching up.
Also, Tivo has the feature of learning your patterns of watching and trying to guess what you would like. Some people like this and some hate it. This has led to the whole “My Tivo thinks I’m gay!” joke that has been done a few times.
I think for the average consumer, tivo is a much easier product to become familiar with and use on a regular basis. Also, I don’t know how much the regular tv watcher wants to hook up his tv to his computer- that seems like a techno-geek feature (and that is not supposed to be offensive)
My mom - who was a chronic 12:00 VCR flasher, manages to navigate the tivo pretty well. It just seems more user friendly
You may want to check this out
Since I’ve only owned a Tivo I have no idea how much better or worse Replay-TV is.
I have had a ReplayTV for about a month, and I’m quite pleased with it. I bought it before the “price drop”, so I paid the higher price but got the 3 years of directory service.
I can’t compare with TiVo, though I have to admit that I was a bit wierded out by the idea of TiVo’s “learning” my viewing habits and extrapolating from that to guess at other shows that I might want to watch. On the other hand, ReplayTV’s “zones” and search feature did alter me to some interesting choices I was not aware were available.
The only thing that seems at all complicated about using the ReplayTV is understanding the rules for how many episodes of a show will be kept and when they might be deleted.
I do wish that there was an option to say “record all episodes of this show that have different episode descriptions from one another”. As it is, if you use the “record any episodes” features, yu may get 2-3 copies of the same episode that aired at different times.
The ability to interface to my home computer network was quite convenient mainly because I had network access near the TV but no phone jack.
After all the controversy with ReplayTV dropping the “skip commercials” function in response to industry pressure, the feature appears to have been quietly added back. After an automatic software update, there’s now a feature to skip forward and backwards by one “program segment” at a time. As far as I can tell, a program segment is marked at the beginning and end of each commercial break. I’ve also noticed that the “skip-ahead-30-seconds” button will actually stop short of 30 seconds if it encounters a commercial break boundary.
You are not forced to watch any ads with TiVo. It has a very convenient button called “fast forward” which can be used to zip past a two minute ad break in about four seconds.
The Series 2 TiVos do not have an Ethernet port, but have a USB port in which a USB-Ethernet adaptor (not included) can be used. The TiVo software comes set up already to use the network, though. It’s totally worth it just for the Home Media Option, which allows you to stream MP3s from your PC, and share recorded shows between multiple TiVo boxes connected to your network.
If you don’t like it, you can of course turn it off.
I have used my friend’s ReplayTV box, and while it’s nice, I wouldn’t give up my TiVo for the world. I might give it up for the whole Galaxy, though.
Like commented above, I only have one unit – a TiVo-- and am not able to comment on other platforms. TiVo has a greater share of the market and, hopefully, will survive as a viable product. Tivo has more of a devoted following of geeks who tinker with their product. Although I haven’t done it yet, I hope to install a second harddrive to my tivo unit to increase my storage by 120GB. Total cost ~ 100$. This is an advantage, but shouldn’t be a selling point. I’d advise going with the more domanant product and hope that the DVR as a concept survives.
Replay has FF (which you almost never use), plus a 30 second skip button, and as described above a segment skip button. Plus, the 5000 series have automatic commercial skip, which works about 80 to 99% of the time depending on the show.
There are lots of comparisons out there, fundamentally, they both allow pausing live TV and time shifting. I never watch anything live, just at 9 or 10 I sit down and watch what I have told it to record. Either system will do that and do it well.
I for one like Replay’s technology better, with the network streaming, broadband connection to the mothership, better guide display and navigation, and especially the commercial skip and internet show sharing - which is why they are always getting their asses sued.
As for the latest Replay screwup, they decided to eat the cost of the mislabeled systems and give those people free service for three years, which is pretty generous IMHO.
IMO, ReplayTV simply cannot compare with TiVo because it lacks the most important feature. As long as there’s room on the hard drive, TiVo will record stuff it thinks you’ll like. This is invaluable – I’ve discovered several programs that I now adore (Buffy, Game Show Network’s Cram, Family Guy, etc.) because TiVo recorded a couple episodes. Now that I’m used to it, I wouldn’t pay for a DVR that didn’t have this feature.
–Cliffy
Like I said Tivo has the superior interface IMO. And the Season Pass is definitely better on the Tivo than the comparable feautre on the Replay TV (As someone mentioned- you get a couple copies of the same episode)
Anyway, I guess people have different preferences so whatever. But I should point out that anybody who has DirecTV should definitely get the DirecTivo. It is a no brainer - only 99 bucks and 5 a month!
I recently bought a TiVo. I love it. A few comments:
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If you want to be able to extract video from your TiVo to your PC, I believe this is possible only with the series 1 TiVo’s + a third party ethernet adapter ($70). The current models (series 2) come with built-in network interface, but encrypt the video so that you can’t just copy it directly from the TiVo to the PC for burning to DVD. I bought a used series 1 with a lifetime subscription for $300.
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Replacing the hard drive is incredibly easy. I upgraded my 30 gig hard to a 160 gig hard drive, and did the same for a coworker. Each upgrade took about 20 minutes, start to finish, and went seamlessly. As long as you know enough to install hard drives in your pc (and know how to set them to be master vs. slave), you can do it yourself with no problem. I recommend the O’Reilly book “100 TiVo Hacks” (or something like that) if you want a detailed walk-through (along with a bunch of other cool stuff you can do).
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I personally don’t like TiVo recommending programs, but it’s easy to turn off that feature.
All in all, I think TiVo’s interface is incredibly slick and intuitive. Very easy to use, and once you use it, you’ll be ruined for regular live tv.
If the initial purchase price is a barrier to purchasing TiVo, they do have a deal going on factory refurbished units, for as low as $149 after a $50 rebate . I just bought one under those terms, and it even included free shipping.
I’ve had Tivo for a week. I love it. Love it love it love it.
A friend of mine has ReplayTV. He also loves it.
He’s showed me how it works. I think Tivo is somewhat easier. He has not seen my Tivo, so he has no opinion.
This is one of my favorite features so far. My Tivo is still a puppy, so to speak, so it’s a little overeager about collecting weird stuff, but it’s grabbed a few really interesting things for me. Big thumbs up.
But remember if you have satellite television like DirecTV you have to get an integrated Tivo DirecTV box, otherwise your Tivo will send signals to change channels to your DirecTV decoder through a Infrared Beamer into the remote sensor, so it is very inaccurate. Plus Tivo and DirecTV combined records directly onto the harddisk what comes in from the sattelite, not reencoded. If you have cable it doesn’t matter, but Tivo and DirecTV combined is great.
I’ve had Tivo and DirecTV for several years, and have never had the Tivo make a mistake… The IR Blaster or whatever it’s called works just fine… I set it up a LONG time ago, and have never had to even think about it since…
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