ReplayTV 3030 Digital Video Recorder

• Digitally records up to 30 hours of programming without videotape
• Pauses live broadcasts and resumes play at your leisure
• QuickSkip feature bypasses recorded commercials
• Instant Replay plays back programming in 7-second increments
• Free programming guide with no monthly service fees

ReplayTV is well worth adopting early and often. It took a while to set up the system correctly -due, I confess, to my anathema toward manuals no matter how simply written (and ReplayTV's is quite lucid). The customer service couldn't be better. They took at least a dozen calls as I worked my way through the setup and each time answered the phone quickly, knew what to do, and to a person exhibited a cheerful Job-like patience with me and the process. Wish that all customer service personnel were so well trained!

Others have already commented on the features... the biggest draw for me is the ease of use and the ability to create theme channels. I found VCRs to be fussy monsters ("plug and play," my arse). This is one technological advance long overdue. I can't wait to see what other innovations lie in the pipeline.

I took away a star because the screen gives off a blue triangle in the lower right hand corner whenever I play a recorded show. It's not a huge distraction, but worth noting.

post script: AOL bought out TiVo, yet another reason to choose ReplayTV.

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I first heard about the ReplayTV & Tivo (is it "tie-vo","tiv-o", "t-i-v-o" or "tee-vo"? I've heard all forms...) products several months ago from Sound & Vision magazine. I got really excited because I tend to travel from time to time & this new, user-friendly technology would definately help me keep up with my favorite shows something that you could never say about my VCR! Unfortunately, the money wasn't really there, especially for the available recording time.

Well, when the prices finally came down for the more capacity (especially consider that ReplayTV was originally $1500 for 28hrs when they first came out...), I started to do comparison research.

While the Tivo product looks pretty nice, I settled on the ReplayTV for the following reasons:

1. No monthly fees! I'm sorry, but I don't want another monthly bill in my life...

2. I'm a little uncomfortable with the idea of the Tivo thing trying to learn what I like it might work for other people, but I like the control that I get with ReplayTV.

3. The ReplayTV interface is a lot simpler.

Anyways, I hope this helps anyone who is on the fence about this Personal Television category. It helps so much not to be at the mercy of some random television programmer as to when you watch what you want now it's all on my schedule!

Read Best Reviews of ReplayTV 3030 Digital Video Recorder Here

Basically both units due the same thing...they record TV programs on to a 20 gigabyte hard disk. The beauty of the systems is that they are a breeze to program, you don't worry about changing or losing videotapes, and you can pause live programming if someone or thing interrupts you, and not miss anything. The Replay was my choice because of the additional input and outputs compared to the Tivo, and the greater cache time (30 minutes versus about 10 hours). What that means is that should you miss part of a program, the Tivo will overwrite that show after 30 minutes of recording versus the Replays 10 hours. The prices are about the same after you pay for the Tivo's lifetime programming charge.

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I've had my ReplayTV 3020 for a week now and thought i would express my views on it.

The box has a lot of different setups, you need to choose the right one for you. Personally I just split my cable feed and ran it to both my TV and the ReplayTV box so i can watch live TV or ReplayTV. Then i have the Svideo out of the ReplayTV to the TV and treat it as a VCR.

First i gotta say, the compression ratings that ReplayTV would have you believe are not exactly accurate. Standard recording quality can be as good as a VCR/Cable tv or worse it dependson the video being recorded. If the images are big and there's not too much movement it's pretty good. But if it's a crowd scene or a sporting event iwth lots of movement, it's worse than VCR. It can be very grainy uniless theres little movement or it's a closeup. It looks like you're watching an internet realvideo playback most of the time.

The Medium quality is a lot better, i'd put it up there the same quality as a vcr using Svideo out. Highest quality is great, but if your'e going to record everything on highest you should get the 3060.

It has lots of outputs on it to go out to a PC for video capturing or a VCR to save to a permanent storage which is nice. Also it has a few inputs, rca or svideo so you could record a DVD movie if you rented one and didn't have time to watch it unlike the Panasonic model which won't let you do this.

The ability to control real TV is nice. It actually records as you watch live tv. So you can pause, rewind and replay a live broadcast that you're not recording. The bad part of this however is sometimes the audio/video get out of sync. I'm not sure yet why this happens but it happens very seldom and it does clear itself.

The one great thing with this box is it doesn't come with the $10/month bill that TiVo has. Who needs another bill? And if you work in the cost of a lifetime membership to TiVo you could buy a replay.

The box itself is pretty quiet and it's smaller than most VCR's. It does have an off button if you want to turn it off, but i'd recommend just leaving it on.

The channel guide is nice. It's really easy to navigate around and select shows to watch or record. You can use this to replace your cable box if you want, then you don't need a TV guide or anything. I wish the channel guide displayed more listings per screen though, and i wish it started back at the beginning of the list instead of your current channel. Overall though it's very easy.

I'd definitly recommend this box, it's been pretty good and i've enjoyed having it over the past week.

I was very impressed with this device. It will tape things you like even if you don't know they're on. I love it except for one flaw but to me a fatal flaw. It runs off of TV schedules which aren't always set in concrete. In the short time I have had it, I taped a football game that went a few minutes past the scheduled time. In this particular case it was no problem but how would you like to miss the game winning kick or TD.

On another occasion, I watched a movie (action) where the finale was cut off also because the movie (actually the previous one) ran a little longer then programmed. Thus in the first week of ownership, two shows that I had wanted to watch were cut short.

I wll buy this equipment in the future when they allow a buffer time for shows to be recorded.