he doesn't seem to be adverse to hacking.

That's ``averse''. ``Adverse'' means unfavorable or harmful.

Just so you know the next time you want to use it in a job interview.

Well, has he been harmful to hacking at all? It would seem not, I am still able to do as much as before.

Just so you know the next time you want to use it in a job interview.

ROTFL!

I own two older RePlay units, and have co-workers that own Tivos. The Replay's price includes the lifetime subscription service, the Tivo's service costs another 200 dollars.

Of course, isn't the price of the Replay unit much higher than the initial tivo cost? The way you worded that particular point was a tad biased. Not to mention that Tivo gives you the option of a monthly subscription. So in the end they're about matched in price except that Tivo is a little more flexible.

Both units only have one tuner, and as such can only record one thing at a time. I believe MS has a combo
satellite unit/Tivo that can record two things at once, but only from the satellite service. (I may be slightly off but I do know there's some kind of limitation on the two recording thing that isn't advertised.)

Well, I believe the more popular unit was a Sony DirecTivo unit. My parents have this and I must say that it's a nice feature to have, and amazingly, when I got home and programed a few recordings, we still had conflicts! Yup, we had three shows we wanted to watch at the same time!

I admit, I'm going to be biased because my only experience is my year with Tivo.

I'll just say that I couldn't watch TV without this thing. I agree with what was stated earlier about how it changes your habits. As a big TV-watcher, I would say that it has also improved the quality of what I watch. Instead of just watching what's on, I watch what I want.

As for the units themselves, I'd have to say that Replay offers nothing I'm interested in. The commercial skip feature is okay, but I'll admit it, every once and a while, I stop fast-forwarding just to watch a commercial. Also, I can't stand the 30 second skip feature. It never works! The reality is that a commercial break is not always 4 30 second blocks of time. In fact, considering that 70% of what I watch is on Comedy Central, I'd say that their commercial breaks are NEVER divisible by 30 second increments.

Anyway, count me in for the Tivo. I'm not sure why you found it so lacking in features (and yes, ethernet is sooo easy), but I abolutely LOVE mine.


ps- one of my favorite features of Tivo is not the unit but the people who have been "affected" by it. I was at the beach with a bunch of friends one Saturday, and some guys were worried that we'd miss Sunday's football game. One guy said (of me) "don't worry, he's Tivoing it." When you first hear people use Tivo as a verb, it's a beautiful thing.

I had the amusing experience of seeing a movie at a theatre and wanting to use the "go back 10 seconds" button when some dialog wasn't clear.

Oops.

As an owner of both, I felt I needed to express my opinions:

The best comment I have heard recently is this:

"The Tivo is the Mac of the PVR world, and the Replay is the PC equivalent."

I think it's pretty accurate, really. I think the user interface of the Tivo is far better, the conflict resolution is VASTLY superior, and the Tivo remote is light years ahead of the Replay unit (although I hear the new 5xxx remote is good).

But, with all that said, I still prefer the Replay, and here's why:

1. Local/Global streaming of content. This is brilliant. Now that I have two Replay units in opposite ends of my home, I can watch content recorded on one from the other, and vice-versa. Not to mention the ability to send/receive content from other ReplayTV owners.

2. Commercial Skip: It isn't perfect, but it works for me. It's all about time management. I am in and out of an hour show in less than 45 minutes. Feels good to get that time back.

3. Extraction: The Replay architecture is FAR easier to work with in extracting content for later archival.

I had Tivo first, mostly due to mind share, but it's Replay from here on out for me. I suspect anyone interested in a PVR who also owns an Empeg that they have also hacked will agree. The Replay is far easier to "enhance".

Anyone want to buy a Tivo with 110 hours recording capability, a lifetime sub, and ethernet installed?

Hope this helps!

Rob

I think you're comments are pretty good ones, although I don't find Macs as easy to use as people say they are, so I'm not comparing my Tivo to no Mac!

Anyway, I think your points are valid, so it comes down to what you want from the unit. The way I see it, if you're only going to own one unit (like me), your first point is irrelevant. Your 2nd point is only marginal to me. If Replay's commercial skip gives you a 45 minute show, fast forwarding through the same commercials on Tivo gives you about a 45 minute and 20 second show. No big deal.

I would like to be able to store content from my Tivo a little easier. If I knew more of the tech in the proceedure, I'd attempt it, but I'm too scared to do it

Again, I can't comment on the Replay, other than the remote which sure looks over-complicated to me. The Tivo remote, to me, is so perfect it needs no changes. I like it so much, it's the only remote I don't have in my Pronto.

The Tivo remote, to me, is so perfect it needs no changes.

I've been looking around, but am a bit confused between the various TiVo models. The sony remote looks very different from the philips remote, and then there seem to be cable vs. satellite differences. Are there any hidden differences besides appearances between the various models?

Some of the ebay offerings look kind of fishy too. A person who is selling a sony svr-2000 was bidding in another auction on the identical model.

The Philips remote kicks ass. The Sony remote isn't nearly as nice. They remotes do not interoperate. You can probably borrow jhutz's Sony remote (which I think is in W3VC's shack, maybe?) and I can bring in a Philips remote, if you want to compare. The DirecTiVo has a slightly different Philips-style remote which looks acceptable. I haven't seen the Series 2 remotes to comment.

A person who is selling a sony svr-2000 was bidding in another auction on the identical model.

For less? The reselling shell game, probably.

Cool. From my little research I was already leaning towards the philips hdr312 model. I don't like sony all that much and black looks better
So now I just have to figure out my price and wait for a good time to bid.

Doesn't the hdr312 have some grey on it? (and the 112 is all black?)

I have 3 112s and I gave the 312 to my parents.

I was just checking it out vs. TiVo.

I told myself I wasn't going to get involved in a debate about religion... but as a TiVo user for more than two years now, I felt I just had to add my two cents worth.

[disclaimer]This is a biased account -- I have never used, nor even seen a picture of a Replay unit. So all I can do is tell you the things I love about the TiVo.[/disclaimer]

The user interface is far and away the best I have ever seen in a complex consumer product. You can throw away the instruction manual and completely master the thing in an hour. The power and the flexibility of programming is staggering. My TiVo will never record anything that has to do with professional wrestling, for instance; but it will record everything that has to do with (I blush to admit it) Buffy the Vampire Slayer, to the point where if Alyson Hannigan is a guest on the David Letterman show TiVo will record it. All of this happens week after week without intervention on my part other than the initial setup of preferences.

My local PBS station does a wonderful thing: They replay their very best shows daily between midnight and 6am. So I get Nova, Scientific American Frontiers, Frontier House, Nature, Rough Science, National Geographic, etc. without having to worry about conflicts with prime time programming -- and again, TiVo is smart enough to do this without intervention on my part.

On the rare occasions that TiVo does schedule to record a program of lesser interest at the expense of one I would prefer to have, I can look at the "Recording History" list which shows everything that it might have recorded but couldn't because of time conflicts; and also everything in the next two weeks that it would like to record but won't be able to because of conflicts. Conflict resolution is easy.

There is no auto-skip of commercials; if there were, I wouldn't use it. I have had auto-skip functions on VCRs, and found it unreliable. TiVo fast forwards at 60x playing speed -- I can skip through a four minute commercial break in four seconds, but still have the option of stopping, skipping back, and watching a commercial that interests me. (Some commercials are more entertaining than the programming)

TiVo is to VCR as empeg is to cassette player. It has changed both what I watch on television and the way that I watch it. Maybe I am just living in an ignorant fool's paradise -- but I cannot imagine how the Replay could possibly be as good, let alone better.

That said, I would spend serious money to have a dual-tuner standalone TiVo. Does anybody think that will ever happen?

tanstaafl.

Amen, brother, amen.

The 312 has silver/gray in the curvy center region around the HAL eye. 212s are all black, and I think the 112s are the opposite of the 312 (but I don't have one).

I've found Sony's TV-related remotes to just suck in general.

Series2 Philips remotes are the same shape.. slightly longer, with 4 additional buttons between power/live and thumbs down/up, and a slider switch to control 2 different TiVos with one remote.

I realized another great thing about PVRs today. I recorded an entire 3.5 hour football game. After you take out commercials you get about 2.5 hours. After you take out half time it's about 2.25 hours. Then after you take out the hideous between-play commentary from moronic anouncers, you get about 1 hour and 50 minutes!

LOL.... that is my biggest gripe about just about any American sport.

Back in the UK, a footie game lasts approximately 1 hour 52 minutes, including all breaks. (Just the one at half time..). I was astounded the first time I went to a live basketball match - a 48 minute game that lasted well over 3 hours. Ludicrous.

Yeah, I agree - some of those live sports like BasketBall and Football [American & Soccer kind] can be real boring to watch live.

I recall a couple of years ago when the Superbowl was on live TV, [Superbowl is always on a local public holiday here and the main Pay TV carrier runs it live].
Unfortunately we don't get to see the half-time advertisements you guys see - only the (generally boring) half-time show.

The game started about 12pm (midday) local time, I started watching it (and don't get me wrong - I *like* American Football BTW).

I got bored after about 40 minutes of not much happening, went upstairs and did some other stuff I had to do (such as vacuuming the house, having some lunch, a short sleep after lunch etc).

Every time I passed the TV, for the next 3 or so hours the Superbowl was still on (and every time I went past the TV set all the players were standing around waiting for stuff to happen),
game didn't end to nearly 4 hours after it started.

I like American Football, but only when its replayed/ in highlight only - the live stuff is just too much of generally not much happening.

I think with a Tivo/Replay you could zip to each play, watch the play [5-10 seconds worth], then zip forward again to the next play, and have watched the whole game in about 30 minutes.

Therefore you could record the superbowl on your Tivo, turn up about 3+ hours after it started, sit down, watch the whole game in 30 minutes (plus replay the plays you liked), and still be able to talk knowingly about the game to all your colleagues, co-workers etc the next day, and still be 3+ hours ahead.

If there was ever a good case to get a Tivo, then I don't know what better reasons there are.

I also make the same comments about most Soccer (Football) matches I've ever seen - watching the (soccer) ball go endlessly up and down the pitch without a goal being scored is boring to the extreme.
Its nearly as bad as an American Football match with no touchdowns or a Baseball game with no home runs.

Therefore you could record the superbowl on your Tivo, turn up about 3+ hours after it started, sit down, watch the whole game in 30 minutes (plus replay the plays you liked), and still be able to talk knowingly about the game to all your colleagues, co-workers etc the next day, and still be 3+ hours ahead.

Actually (and I hate to admit this), last year's superbowl was sooo uninteresting towards the end, we were *gasp* fast forwarding through the game and watching the commercials!

I second that. Oh, amen to BtVS too. I am not ashamed to admit that I too have a bit of an obsession with the show (and anything related to it, i.e. Angel, BtVS comics, Fray, etc). Mine started with the movie, albeit not exactly what Joss intended (the TV show is much better, and sticks more closely to his original concept), it was still funny, but it was the whole concept that really pulled me in.

Laura,

I agree with you. I hardly watch any TV right now because we moved into an apartment temporarily for six months waiting for our house to be built. This apartment only has satellite (no cable) so to avoid high installation costs we got the cheep package. The result is we've turned on the TV to watch the satellite maybe three times in the last six months, and I feel I'm better for it. I can think of tons better things to do (like reading a book) better than watching TV.

All that said, we are getting a satellite system in our new house and my wife had proclaimed that we ARE going to get a PVR with it. Not that I think this is a bad thing, I am just hoping we don't get sucked into watching stuff we wouldn't watch otherwise.

With the NFL Sunday Ticket and my dual tuner DirecTiVo I can watch two (American) football games simultaneously with no commercials and other time wasters. It's the only way to live.

Sorry to bash Replay some more but I have to make my point. I have 40-50 season passes/wishlists (repeat recordings) with constant conflicts. These are a mix of one time network/sports airings and cable shows that repeat a lot. Replay's poor conflict management, lack of prioritization and wasteful space usage would make it impossible to do with it what I do with my TiVo.

If you don't have a DVR, then 40-50 repeat recordings probably sounds ridiculous. But I record a lot of stuff I never watch. Again, that sounds silly. But, like someone described earlier, it's a sort of video on demand. I record a lot of shows where I keep just 1 of them around. I may or may not watch them on any given day but I always have an episode of the Daily Show, Seinfeld, Howard Stern and a bunch of other things around for when I want to watch them. And because TiVo gives me control over priortization I can make sure I get exactly what I want recorded.

I disagree with the TiVo/Replay Mac/PC analogy. Replay gives you less insight into and control over what is happening.

-Dylan

Umm...I have a query. Is it possible to convert my VHS tape to CDs for playback on my DVD player somehow? Perhaps an imput for auxilary or something. I never really looked into these devices before and I figure one of you guys would know. I have a ton of VHS tapes taking up major square-footage in my house!

I had the amusing experience of seeing a movie at a theatre and wanting to use the "go back 10 seconds" button when some dialog wasn't clear.

I had the same thing happen when I got my DishPlayer (it has a seven secon jumpback and 30 second jump ahead). I even envisioned the little symbol popping up in the upper right corner.

Of course I do have this control with about anything now from the couch. The ATI Remote Wonder lets me easially get around shows I have archived without using a mouse.

Sure, you can capture the VHS tapes to a computer, and burn VCD's. Time consuming, but it would let you free up some space. It would also allow you to do some editing (i.e. removing commercials, etc). Of course, there are also services that will do this for you for a nominal fee per VHS/CD, it might be a better idea to look into this if you have an extensive collection.

Okay, it doesn't have a NIC out of the box, but he doesn't seem to be adverse to hacking.. Adding a NIC to a Series 2 consists of buying a USB dongle, plugging it in, and telling the TiVo to use it (make your dialing prefix ",#401").

Do you have a site with this info? I have a friend who is currently unwilling to deal with a PVR since he believes none have broadband support. If he can simply do this, he might consider it. Also, do the newer Replay boxes have complete broadband support out of the box?

Yeah. I'm sure that there's a service out there that'll do it for you, and there might be a device you could purchase to automate it, but if you want to do it yourself with your computer, you'd have to capture the output of the VHS tape (requiring a TV-in card for your peecee), encoding that to an appropriate codec (these first two steps could be combined into one, conceivably), then recording that to a Video-CD. There are many different types of Video-CDs, and different DVD players can play different types. You could also record to DVD, if you have a DVD recorder, but there are compatibility issues with those, as well.

The major problem with this is that there's not any way to speed up capturing your tapes into your computer. VHS plays at a single speed only, so you'd have to play each tape in real time to capture it.

More info is available at http://www.vcdhelp.com. They might even have a HOWTO for exactly what you want to do.

Hmm. I thought about doing that but I'd rather not use a PC to do this task. My brothers computer has a DVD writer and video in that I would need but he LIVES on his computer so ripping it away from him would be futile. I'm just waiting for an idiot-proof way of doing it - namely a theatre combo component device that will dub VHS to DVD or VCD. With any luck some company will make something that does this.

I couldn't find the site just now, but you can assure him that Tivo does have broadband support, and it's included "unofficially" in the software. I would do it but I have a series 1 Tivo. maybe someday I'll upgrade to the series 2, but not just yet

This site has info:
http://www.tivonews.com/features/backdoors.shtml