Story here. [slashdot.org]

I guess D&M doesn't want to get tangled in lawsuits with the next-gen ReplayTV products... Then again, the commercial advance and send-shows-over-the-Internet thingie were the two real advantages Replay had... Sounds to me like they're throwing out the baby with the bath water.

As long as they don't kill the local network abilities, I won't mind. Besides, I already have a 5000 series, so it's not like I'm going to lose anything.

I never used Commercial Advance because it was always buggy. Although, reports from ReplayTV users on AVSForum are that Commercial Advance is much improved in the new 5.0 software, which is currently rolling out to the 5000's based on serial number. And as for internet show sharing, I would find that useful if I had the unfortunate luck of missing a show due to some unexpected circumstance (power outage, etc).

I'll just sit back and watch what happens.

I found commercial advance pretty useful, it seems to work with most of my shows. Has anyone recieved the new software yet?

I have. But I haven't had the chance to try out CA under it yet.

Internet Show Sharing doesn't really seem to be too practical, so I don't think anyone will be too sorry to see it go. Streaming over a home network is where Replay really has tivo beat at the moment, and there isn't any sign of that being discontinued. Tivo's home media option costs an extra $100 and last time I checked wouldn't let you stream to a PC.

Comerical advance on the other hand is something I'd be sorry to see them give up. From what I know of the issue, VCR makers fought this battle already and won. Where showsharing is of questionable legality, comerical advance shouldn't be. DNNA has to pick it's battles, but CA is one they should fight.

Now, the real thing I have to contribute to this thread is that Refurbished 5000's are now going to $329 WITH lifetime on the sonicblue/dnna web site, which is a great deal and a great use for my $25 coupon that has been burning a hole in my inbox.

Matthew

Now, the real thing I have to contribute to this thread is that Refurbished 5000's are now going to $329 WITH lifetime on the sonicblue/dnna web site, which is a great deal and a great use for my $25 coupon that has been burning a hole in my inbox.

Damn... That's pretty enticing. Even though I watch very little television... Hmmm.....

Yeah, you really can't beat the price. Next month lifetime goes up to $300, so you won't have a problem selling it for more than you're paying now, and there are no rebate hassles. The great thing is that it doesn't matter how much television you watch, the Replay will make that time much more enjoyable. The downside is that you'll start watching more television.

Matthew

Tony, you'll watch more once you get a PVR. I don't watch much TV either, but now that I know that I have shows waiting for me on my Tivo whenever I decide to turn it on, it's a much more enjoyable experience. My favorite thing to do is wait 5 days then watch a mini-Simpsons marathon from syndicated reruns. This makes me more inclinded to fire up the TV because I know I won't just be surfing (can't remember the last time I did that).

I know that with the Tivo, there are undocumented features and many hacks. One is a psuedo commercial-skip where one of the remote's buttons gets remapped to skip ahead 30 seconds (the length of most commercials). But I've gotten pretty good at just fast forwarding through commercials anyway. They always seem to end a block of commercials with a commercial for the local market or the network itself so you know to slow down soon.

Maybe SonicBlue will be wise to "hide" the commercial advance feature and leave it there for advanced users to find? I agree that it's a silly issue and the one thing that set RePlay apart from Tivo way back when they were just concepts at the CESA (yes I've been following that long!) was that Replay wasn't in bed with the networks and would allow commercial advance. (The only other distinction was that Replays cost more upfront but all had the lifetime subscription included.)

Okay, since I'm too lazy to do searches and stuff...

1. How easy/difficult is it to drop a hard drive into the RTV 5000 series? 40 hours is probably all I need right now, but if I ever wanna upgrade...

2. I'm assuming there are lots of nice tools for extracting shows to other computers and such?

3. A lot of the comments I remember reading about the 40xx series was that "it's great when it works." Most people have said that the Tivo is more "polished" than the RTV products with things like program guides, conflict resolution, etc. A few reviews said the RTV 5000's "feel slow" with program searches, and the search features on the Tivo are said to be much more featured. Random crashes are also mentioned. This comparison seems to be stating that, while the RTV's have more "whiz bang" features, the Tivo is better at doing what it's supposed to do.

I dunno, I'm not necessarily in the market for a PVR right now, but the price sure looks good. I just wouldn't want to buy it and have it unsupported in a year or two. It's not like I'll have the ReplayTV developers hanging around my favorite BBS...

1. Although I haven't done it myself, it seems to be as simple as installing the drive in your computer and running a program which formats it as a ReplayTV drive. This program also has the ability to copy any shows you previously had, but that function is buggy, I guess. Then just install the drive into your Replay.

2. The favorite is DVArchive. It acts as a ReplayTV on your local network, so any shows that you've downloaded into DVArchive can be streamed back to your ReplayTV as if you actually had a second one.

3. When compard to current and past ReplayTV models: Yes, TiVo has better conflict resolution. And TiVo's searches may be more full featured. As for randomed crashes - I have heard stories. But the only way I've gotten mine to freeze is by attempting to download a show from it while it was recording another. Also, as for speed, the newest version of the ReplayTV software does appear to make menu response a bit quicker. And there are reports that replacing the drive with an 8MB cache version (Maxtor or WD) have also sped up response time.

A lot of the same information gets repeated over on the ReplayTV section of AVSForum, because newbies keep showing up and asking the same old questions. So it might be worth your while to do a little reading there, and then ask someone who knows more about the TiVo units. I chose Replay because of the networking features. At the time, TiVo required warranty voiding mods in order to get those abilities. And the most I'd consider doing to my Replay would be a drive upgrade. But DVArchive makes that unnecessary.

1) uprgading the hard drive is pretty simple, just start with a clean drive in your pc, then run a software patch on it, then unscrew about 10 screws on the replay and put the drive in. You also need to remember that the stated hours is at standard quality, so 40 hrs at standard, 20 at medium, and ~ 13 at high.

2) transferring shows is pretty easy, but the format that replay uses is some kind of hybrid mpeg1/mpeg2 so many editors dont like to work with it. I have still not found a good ( simple) method for converting straight to divx or xvid.

3) The 5000 series is cool, but it does get slow especially when recording one show and watching another. I think i have had a few forced reboots, but no serious problems in about 3 months of owning a 5040.

Replay has really changed the way I watch tv, and commerical advance is really cool too.

Just for context, the DirecTivo's (DirecTV boxes w. built in Tivo) can record two seperate shows and playback a third with no slowdown. But this is because they record the stream straight from the dish, so there is no mpeg compression (which means that when you watch a recorded show, the quality is perfect) so the processor only has to do one mpeg decode. I am amazed that non-SCSI hard drives can do all of that so quickly though!

Hmm. It all sounds good, but since I use digital cable, I'd have to use that "IR Blaster" thing and everything I've read says they're nothing but trouble. I think I'm going to hold off on this until PVR's become more commonplace and cheaper. Plus, the Pearl is coming out in the near future, and I only have so much space in my budget for these toys.

so how does storage transalate to hours with a directivo ?

Most of the DirecTivo's come with a 40GB drive that stores around 35 hours. There is only one setting "perfect" as opposed to normal Tivo's and RePlays which have "basic", "medium" and "high" quality settings. The real amount in hours depends on how compressed the signal is... So, if you record PPV or HBO (not overly compressed) you'll get less hours of storage compared to normal channels.

Anohter advantage to the DirecTivos not having MPEG encoders is that they are way cheap. I put a thread in "For Sale" listing some good deals.

Sorry I kinda hijacked this thread, I really meant to just bring up the fact that if Tivo can come out with little hacks to add features like commercial skip, so can RePlay, so I wouldn't sweat about DM removing that feature (internet sharing would be harder to hack, but that feature doesn't seem as useful).

The IR blaster does suck. In fact, that is one of the two reasons I got rid of digital cable, the other being I didn't watch any of the chanels. The IR Blaster is buggy indeed, and insanely slow.

Luckily, I worked out the connection to my parents' sat box, and if you can control a box with serial, there isn't any problem. I'm not sure if any of them come with serial inputs, though.

Oh, Brad, I think standalone Tivo's have 4 recording settings. I believe they are Basic, Medium, High, and Best. I think that typically, the storage advertised on a Tivo is the maximum at Basic quality, which is not very good at all. In the past, I've been recording almost entirely on Medium, which is not noticeably bad enough to complain about (for me). Now, I'm archiving several shows and saving them at Best quality. I think I read once that on a 30 hour standalone Tivo, Basic quality will give you 30 hours, whereas Best quality will give you a little more than 9. Not great, but when you can back them up (which I'm still trying to do), that becomes inconsequential.

One is a psuedo commercial-skip where one of the remote's buttons gets remapped to skip ahead 30 seconds (the length of most commercials).

I have Dish Network's PVR and it has skip ahead and skip back buttons. The skip ahead moves forward something like thirty seconds and the skip back moves back about 10. Thus you skip agead, skip ahead, skip ahead, skip ahead, see your show, and then skip back, skip back. This works great letting you bypass the commercials in only a couple of seconds.

Well, I have been going back and forth on this $329 deal, especially since I ditched my digital cable service (they wanted to charge me $16 a month for it.) So I'm back to regular old cable, and have one less reason to avoid the ReplayTV. But from what I've been reading, channel changes on the RTV's are painfully slow (4 seconds is normal) and that's just not acceptable. I'm a compulsive channel changer, so that just wouldn't work for me. (I know, in theory I'd be watching a lot of recorded stuff and have no need to change channels, but when I watch sports, I usually wanna watch them live, and switch between games.) 4 seconds is just absurd!

So I'm gonna wait until the next gen RTV units and see if they fix this problem. I see no reason why they can't get channel changes done in less than a second...

The excuse is buffering the video. This, of course, would allow you to rewind live TV (instant replay anyone?). I won't tell you it's not slow. But I was a channel surfer myself until I got this thing. I was annoyed with the slow channel changes. But realistically, I never watch live TV anymore. Even if I'm home when something I want to see is on, I don't watch it then. I get stuff done, and come back and watch it when I feel like it.

As for the actual speed of channel changes, you're looking at buffering live video at high quality on a machine about equal to an empeg Mk2a. My own experience with a stock 5040 is a little under 3 seconds with the new software. Others have reported that drive upgrades using 8MB cache drives (WDs & Maxtors) have also decreased those times.

Basically it came down to taking the chance. I liked ReplayTV's features, so I did. And I couldn't be happier. I don't channel surf or jump between two channels anymore. I actually spend less time in front of the tube. That's how it works for me. And honestly, I don't think you'll find a PVR user who's watching habits weren't changed by owning one.

Tony,
If you don't have a DVR, you should get one. It will change your life (ok, that may be overstated a bit!) and you won't believe how much better you watch TV. I don't know about RTV, but get something. You won't regret it.

I do plan on getting one, but I'm gonna wait until the next generation. My problem is 80% of what I watch is sports, and I usually wanna watch them live, otherwise I end up hearing/reading the score accidentally before I watch it. It's hard to avoid... These things seem to be targeted much more at people who watch a lot of series, sitcoms, etc. I'd get use out of this maybe once or twice a week when I can't be around for the hockey game... And, of course, to have a complete archive of all the Simpsons and Family Guy episodes (without dealing with DVD's.)

Then again, I have a video capture card, large hard drives, and an infrared remote for my PC. Not as elegant as a PVR, but the net cost to me is $0.

Gotta save money for the Pearl anyway.

When you flip around during sports, is it to do something else during commercials and other downtime or is it because you want to watch both games. (I can understand why you might want to watch it live.)

I have three suggestions.

1. Again, I understand the live thing, but if you set it up to record your game, but then don't start watching it until half an hour or so into it, you'll be able to fast-forward through the commercials and whatnot as you get to them. You might have to adjust that delay time, as there's a lot of waiting in sports.
2. If you got a DirecTV TiVo, you could record both games at the same time. I don't have one, so I don't know how easy it would be to swap between the two, but it's a possibility.
3. You could just bypass the PVR for your sporting events and watch them as you always have.

Oh, there's a fourth option, actually. Buy multiple PVRs and hook them up to separate inputs on your TV. That might get a little expensive, though.

Otherwise, don't worry about flipping channels. It's not a big deal. I was a huge flipper before my TiVo, but I came to realize that it was because I wanted to watch some TV, but couldn't really find anything on. But one you get a PVR, it records stuff that you want to watch when you're not interested so that its available when you are. Even if it's just Barney Miller reruns.

Your suggestions are valid... But I personally would have difficulty waiting a half hour when I know my favorite team is playing NOW.

The main issue is my own stupidity, though. I am quite sure that more often that not, I'll end up accidentally seeing the score of the game (or worse yet, highlights) somehow, which will ruin my whole plan to watch the game later. It'd be like if you've got an X-Files episode queued up in your PVR and as you're going to watch it, you see "The Lone Gunmen are Dead!" scroll by on a crawl at the bottom of CNN. (Or on a Slashdot story.)

I totally understand the utility and novelty of the PVR concept, I just don't think it's something that I'd benefit from as much as a lot of others. And if it's something that's going to lure me into watching more shows on TV than I already watch, maybe it's not a good thing. (Time savings from skipping commercials and flipping channels notwithstanding.) It's almost a situation where I'm scared of what other mindless tripe I'd be lured into watching.

What it's really great for is the times when the big play is happening and your wife/S.O. needs the pickel jar opened or help rebalancing the washing machine load or you want to take a call. You can do these things and STILL see the big play.

-Zeke

(Tivo)

hehe, that's happened to me once or twice, Tony. My girlfriend and I will delay the start of the Redskins game, and we'll turn on the TV without remembering to press the Tivo button first. Then we see that our team is losing (this isn't a hypothetical situation, merely the way of it). But we still go back to the beginning. You know why? Because anything is better than commercials

So why is the loss of digital cable one less thing in the way of you getting a Replay? It should also be one less thing in the way of the Tivo, since you won't need an IR blaster. I hated digital cable.

You asked about video extraction. Well, it's tough. I think it is very much in the infancy stages for both products. At the moment you cannot go from video on your Tivo to a DVD in one, two, three, or even four steps. It's a trying process that doesn't yeild completely positive results. Very frustrating. However, I can tell you that there are things you can do with Tivo to make it a little easier.

For instance, Tivo uses some funky resolutions when it records. The "Best" quality on my box records at 352x480. Well, that's funky and DVD creation software and DVD players don't like it. So, you can go into Tivo's settings and tell it that when you record something on "Basic" quality, you want it to record at 720x480. This made it a little easier to get something that would play on a standalone DVD player. I'm still working to get it to the point where I don't have to alter the video in any way.

At the moment you cannot go from video on your Tivo to a DVD in one, two, three, or even four steps.

Taking what I've recorded on my ReplayTV and archiving to CD or DVD is not an ability that I desired. If a series was important enough to me that I'd want to own every season, I would rather have the official, high quality DVD. That's just the way I am.

That said, there are many users on the ReplayTV section of AVSForum who have condensed this process into 2 or 3 steps, using different combinations of software (although Womble is favored), and have no trouble doing this task repeatedly.

archiving to CD or DVD is not an ability that I desired. If a series was important enough to me that I'd want to own every season, I would rather have the official, high quality DVD.

Yeah. I see that archival quality Greg the Bunny coming out real soon now.

Sorry, I don't get the reference. I'm only 23, you see. I'm thinking of shows like La Femme Nikita and Farscape.

Greg the Bunny, while an obvious ripoff of Meet the Feebles, was one of the funniest shows ever on TV. It was on last year.

Blah.

I'm waiting for my NewsRadio DVDs, too.

... one of the funniest shows ever on TV.

I don't watch sitcoms.