Well when I had the replay if I told it to record a show everytime it was one it would only record it when it was on at the time and channel I picked when I set up the recording.
This is because you didn't set up the record as a Theme.

If I did a theme then I wouldn't be guaranteed that the show would get recorded.
Themes are not guaranteed because episodes of shows that a Theme would record could easily conflict with other recordings you have scheduled. This could make it too easy to miss a first-run episode of a show in favor of the Theme recording a repeat of something else you've already seen.

The point I'm trying to make is that stand alone ReplayTV and stand alone TiVo are essentially equal; they simply have different names for features and different looks. The only one-up TiVo has on ReplayTV is with DirecTV.