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and most features that you'd find in a Tivo.

I presume that you've never owned a TiVo before then.

I'll admit -- I've never owned the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000 DVR (which is what the Comcast and TW boxes actually are), but there's a couple of good pages to read about the differences and just how feature poor the cable PVRs are.

Want a quick summary? Very poor searching, amazingly poor recording management, poor conflict resolution, barely adequate playback controls, and crappy live tv support. Oh, and it's less stable to boot.

The only upside is that the hardware is usually free and has a low monthly cost. That's great, except that Dish has a free PVR as well, and DirecTV with TiVo is only $99. Both have a monthly fee, but it's pretty much the same as the cable ones (and with DirecTV it's waived w/ the top of the line package). Oh, and that fee is once per household, not once per unit -- at least for sat.

And, of course, the signal quality is better over sat than it is from cable -- particularly for the analog channels (usually anything under 100, sometimes anything under 80, depends on your cable carrier).

Personally, I switched from my cable company (Charter) to DirecTV last October. My picture quality went up, I added about a dozen channels, and my monthly charge went down. Even with the forthcoming DirecTV price increases (all of $3 for me -- I can't think of a cable hike that was that little) I'll be paying less for more. Oh, and unlike cable, my TV doesn't go out randomly or with any really severe storm.

As for what Replay is doing with their "free" offer, it appears to violate the Federal Trade Commission Guidelines for use of the word "Free". These are quite specific.

• Because the purchasing public continually searches for the best buy, and regards the offer of ``Free'' merchandise or service to be a special bargain, all such offers must be made with extreme care so as to avoid any possibility that consumers will be misled or deceived. ...

  when the purchaser is told that an article is ``Free'' to him if another article is purchased, the word ``Free'' indicates that he is paying nothing for that article and no more than the regular price for the other. Thus, a purchaser has a right to believe that the merchant will not directly and immediately recover, in whole or in part, the cost of the free merchandise or service by marking up the price of the article which must be purchased, by the substitution of inferior merchandise or service, or otherwise.

  ... When making ``Free'' or similar offers all the terms, conditions and obligations upon which receipt and retention of the ``Free'' item are contingent should be set forth clearly and conspicuously at the outset of the offer so as to leave no reasonable probability that the terms of the offer might be misunderstood. Stated differently, all of the terms, conditions and obligations should appear in close conjunction with the offer of ``Free'' merchandise or service.

That's clear enough. It's binding on the supplier as well as the retailer; the supplier can't pass the buck here.

California also requires this: (Business and Professions Code 17509).

• Any advertisement, including any advertisement over the Internet, soliciting the purchase or lease of a product or service, or any combination thereof, that requires, as a condition of sale, the purchase or lease of a different product or service, or any combination thereof, shall conspicuously disclose in the advertisement the price of all those products or services.

One of the biggest hang-ups with DVRs is that some of them could automatically skip commercials. My ReplayTV 5040 does a passable job of skipping commercials: about 80% effective overall, so 20% of shows must be fast-forwarded manually. Sometimes, during those 20%, I get lazy and watch the commercials anyway.

ReplayTV's old owners, SonicBlue, faced litigation from many large TV networks over their ad blocking, so the forthcoming 5500 series will not have the automatic commercial skip functionality. TiVo's investors include some players in the TV programming industry, so TiVo has never supported automatic commercial skip. (Source: PVR Compare)

ReplayTV caved in to industry pressure. TiVo is part-owned by big industry players. Of course, these new set-top boxes will have feature sets dictated by content providers.

Don't like it? Build a Linux-based DVR, which should be feature-complete by the time The Simpsons' 16th season premieres.

There are much better comparisons available, including http://pvrcompare.com/ , a great site for people considering a PVR purchase.

Weren't there websites which had compared TiVo and ReplayTV when they first came out? This was one of the first website which did the comparison.

Here is a feature comparison matrix webpage.

The wordiest comparison is at pvrcompare.com. It's a little out of date right now because Tivo just pushed out it's home media option.

The main reason to prefer Tivo is it's focus on making it easy know what will record. When shows conflict Tivo uses priorities you assign to decide what wins, and lists what will and won't record. Replays conflict rules are hard-coded and complicated and it has no handy list telling you what the results will be.

A site that gets into more detail than you probably need is pvrcompare.com. It compares Tivo, ReplayTV, and UltimateTV and has a page of links to reviews from other sources.

A site that gets into more detail than you probably need is pvrcompare.com. It compares Tivo, ReplayTV, and UltimateTV and has a page of links to reviews from other sources.

Some of the reasons I'd guess people like Tivo better is that it's got a lot of features that it didn't copy from ReplayTV that make controlling what gets recorded much much easier, and that ReplayTV still hasn't copied from Tivo despite overwhelming user demand. Todo list, recording history, first-run only, no recording repeated shows withing 28 days, etc.

Tivos versions of features that it has "copied" from ReplayTV are far better than ReplayTVs versions. Tivos multiple user adjustable priorities give much better control over conflicts than ReplayTVs "guaranteed/non-guaranteed" system without demanding the compromises that ReplayTVs system does, and Tivo wishlists offer numerous advantages over ReplayTV themes, including integration into the the features I listed above that ReplayTV doesn't have.

ReplayTVs versions of these features Tivo just announced are strictly bare minimum stuff. MyReplayTV can still only set up recordings for tomorrow or later, even when your ReplayTV is using broadband; doesn't check anything for conflicts; only has a week of guide data; and is slow as molasses. ReplayTVs photo viewer can only do sequential slideshows. No thumbnails, no random access, no zoom. ReplayTV has again left the door wide open for Tivo to put ReplayTVs versions to shame. Of course Tivo can't be copying ReplayTVs MP3 player, since ReplayTV doesn't have one.

Theres a huge Tivo/ReplayTV comparison at pvrcompare.com that goes way beyond little bullet lists.

ReplayTV does not have built in 802.11 BTW.

Take a look at pvrcompare.com. Eric Lund has also finally updated his site to include the new Tivos and Replays.

pvrcompare.com has the most current comparisons I've seen of TiVo, Ultimate TV and the now-defunct ReplayTV 3000/Showstoppers. It doesn't cover Dish equipment or the Replay 4000 though, and doesn't get into much detail on picture quality specifically.