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ReplayTV's Remote Remote
plasmar writes: "ReplayTV has announced a new service due to roll out this Fall that lets you control your ReplayTV unit from a Web browser anywhere in the world. Full story available here." Just what I need, someone reprogramming my settings. I come in from dinner, and all of a sudden I'm watching 30 hours of Ron Popeil's Showtime Rotisserie Grill.
Kill your TV
Speak truth to power.
Given that this service will allow you to control your Digital Video Recorder via the web, the DVR will naturally be connected to the net, probably by a modem. Television has traditionally been a one way medium with the exception of pay channels, and more generally cable TV. Therefore, most TV watchers in America watch channels and programs with impunity, since no one knows what they're watching. However the ability of the DVR to connect to the net will give BigBrother (or BigBusiness), to know your television watching habits, increasing the amount of information available in your "profile", something most people won't think about.
Arun
Also, there are some things being pushed on consumers by corporate middle managers that have absolutely no point. WAP is the best example I can think of at the moment...
Seriously, can't you just ring a friend and ask them to tape it for you?
The Kill Your TV Website:
http://othello.localaccess.com/hardebeck/
No this is serious. He claims that Sesame Street may teach your kid to recognize letters and numbers, but it shortens their attention span.
It happens that, when I was a kid, I stopped watching television when my sister left for college. I had never really actively watched TV before, but would sit passively while she changed the channels. With my sister gone, I would at first just sit in silence in the empty house. But I started listening to music which, unlike TV, allows you to devote your attention to other things while you listen.
I read a lot, ground telescope mirrors, acted in the high school theater and eventually became the set director, started college at 16 while still attending high school, scored 890 out of a possible 900 on the SAT Math II achievement test and was accepted into CalTech, where I published in the astrophysical journal and did research on the 200" and 60" telescopes.
I still don't watch TV, and have a successful software consulting business.
Mike
Note - you can find refs to my papers in the "Publications" section of my resume. Abstracts are available online. I didn't say it in my original letter but the work that was published I did while employed as a research assistant the summer after my freshman year.
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-- Could you use my software consulting serv
Yeah, every Tuesday when I realize I'll be working past 10 I can record West Wing. Same goes for OZ on Friday. Sopranos this fall too, whatever day/time it winds up on... Basically, I get off work at 10 about 1/2 the time, and I forget about setting the vcr about 1/2 the time on days when I want to see something, so that means that I only see the show 3 in four times, and still miss the first quarter in half of those instances...
Intolerant people should be shot.
While they probably have hardware compressors and fancy algorithms, if you can use any PC you can use a public open-source compressor and just get a bigger hard drive.
It really wouldn't be that hard.
You'd probably get better realtime media streaming performance in the BeOS but then there'd be a chokepoint and I don't think the company is deserving of support by third party developers anymore.
Better to give people yet another reason to use Linux.
Are there any readily available hardware video compressor boards that aren't too expensive and have open source linux drivers?
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
People who like to watch TV and want to make a few extra bucks would sign up to be commercial monitors. Either they'd enter the station they're watching into their handheld web browser or this would be handled for them by a set-top box.
When a commercial comes on they press the "commercial start button". When all the commercials end they press the "commercial end" button.
People who subscribe to the service would receive a little unit that plugs into the internet and, when a commercial is on, turns off the sound, maybe blackens the picture and pauses their VCR.
For this to work reliably there'd need to be a voting system so you'd only skip content if a lot of monitors said there was a commercial on. Monitors who were consistently outvoted would be dropped from the monitor pool.
If you don't blacken the picture the subscriber could notice there was an error and override to turn the content back on (or if the commercial looked interesting)
There are things you can do to try to detect a commercial technologically (like have hardware listen for sudden changes in audio volume) but I'm sure advertisers will pay technologists to find a way to defeat it. I don't think there's a way to defeat the power of thousands of bored couch potatoes who feel they're putting something over on the corporation.
This invention was conceived by me, Michael D. Crawford a couple of years ago. I place it in the public domain as of Friday, August 11.
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
Heck, it may be possible to swich the playback of evangelist TV shows just for a fraction of a second like in Fight Club and put images of penis' and sex for these right wing moralists that piss eveyone off! Imagine their kid's faces!! :-)
*evil grin*
Some weeks ago a coworker brought his fancy WAP-phone and showed us (for a laugh) a WAP p0rn site... It was hilarious!
Nobody would seriously surf that way (tiny screen, low-res). What was the initial idea of WAP anyway?
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
someone here sugested that you could mabey program the unit to record certin programs if they ever came on, if these units had some kind of removable storage, it would be great for collecting episodes of your favorite series, i know a lot of people out there would like every episode of startrek recorded and burned to cd or some other removable media when ever it came on
how bout backup tapes?
4gb raw capacity should be enough to record a movie
Linuxmedialabs.com place seems to sell boards, but not for cheap.
You could also buy a standard tvtuner board and use these or these drivers.
Presumably this works by storing your programming choices centrally, and then downloading them to your Replay device when it next dials-up to the Replay service (nightly?)
This means that most of the scenarios posted (South Park is on in 10 minutes, and the server just crashed... decisions, decisions...) are not feasible with this particular service.
Give the Replay device a web server and an Ethernet port, and then we're cooking with gas.
Despite ReplayTV's claim that the 30-second skipover feature is "to skip past boring scenes in the show", the real incentive for putting that there is to skip over commercials -- a feature that seems to have disappeared from many top-of-the-line VCRs. I don't know why.
Given the 70K TiVo/ReplayTV systems out there versus the 100+ million televison sets, I don't think that the ad people or the TV people are too worried as yet. The attempts to make VCRs illegal failed, which meant that "time shifting" was made a fair use for private efforts. (The issue of "sharing" a show, perhaps with commercials deleted, is another question.) The set-top boxes don't have the capability of sharing -- the media isn't removable -- so I suspect that the broadcasters won't go down that road again.
When we see the maturation of ReplayTV/TiVo, though, I would expect some action to be taken by the people who perceive themselves as "gored" by the new technology.
Actually, if they have a WAP enabled interface I'll go buy one of these things. (ok, probably not.) Recent example, my friends and I are out a bar and an episode of SNL is on that seems pretty funny. But we can't hear it and really don't want to be watching it in a setting where we're supposed to be hanging out and enjoying each other's company. Now, if I could use my "fancy" ($69) WAP-phone to record the show and forget about it, I think it would be useful.
./ headlines. I personally don't see how hires, Flash(y), graphics-intense web pages are useful. I just want some info -- fast.
Who tries to browse on their WAP phone anyway? It's just for quick info, like movie times, stock prices, or the occasional
Ingrediants: One Win9x machine, one ATI TV Card (or Linux and a Matrox, from what I've heard... I bought the wrong damn card three years ago), and one massive hard drive.
Directions: Set the software to record your shows.
It may not be in a cheap self-contained box like TiVo or the other clones... but it works, and you can do all kinds of nifty stuff to the video. All you'd have to do is write your own web-based programable-thingie and you can do it yourself.
TiVo is for people who want to seem high-tech but can't figure out how to work a computer. The real geeks can use a TV Tuner card.
Somebody already posted this link you bafoon.
Fon2d2
One of the more interesting possibilities with these devices is the feature that lets you tape all movies with a certain actor in them. If you're a Christopher Walken fan, for instance, (and who isn't) the box should auto-record all Walken films for you. A few months ago some friends of mine and I decided that you shouldn't have to get a TIVO of a ReplayTV to get this functionality. We hacked up a website www.tvminder.com that sends you email whenever films with actors you like come on TV. It runs on Linux, written in Java and Python. It would be fun to make this service available to the "Open TIVO" people that are rolling their own boxes. We'd send mail to your TIVO (if you ask it to), telling it what to record for you. Hmmm. It would need a good access control mechanisim so that you wouldn't get hacked, but it seems like a cool possibility.
I like the idea. If somebody can hack my ReplayTV to record eight hours of porn from these "can't say the f-word, can't show the finger" TV channels in USA I would really appreciate it :-)
/. that there is an interesting TV program today but I can't leave early enough to see it live I could remotely set the unit to record it. I would have needed that feature a long time back.
More seriously, for example if I'm at work and see on
Of course the whole idea of having to record something at home is lame, I want more like video-on-demand service, something like my.mp3.com for TV, but I guess that's not going to happen for another 5 years at least.
-z.
your replay unit would only be able to update its settings after dialing in to the server, and it does this once per day, late at night. so you would miss the simpsons. if only the replay unit could update itself via cable modem or dsl, then the my.replay service could push the updates out to the box pro-actively.
Or, how about a interface that uses the live TTY sessions generated in news programs, so you can actually record news segments that are interesting to you. So, a Web site collects streaming caption data from the major networks. If a caption contains certain keywords, the Replay records for a predefined interval.
This is actually an excellent idea. I've often left town and forgotten to set my VCR up to record, and this is a fix for that problem. Besides, someone would need to be REALLY bored to "h4x0r" your ReplayTV unit.
Why not be able to choose your programs through a cell phone (either web-enabled or just by pressing buttons?) Wouldn't that be a hell of a lot more mobile, and defeat the whole "cracking" issue (most digital cell phones have pretty high-level encryption as it is).
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
How truly sad it is to see that American culture has gotten to this point. How many hours of programming do you think it took just to make sure that Joe Bloe doesn't miss the next episode of Star Trek Voyager?
Very sad indeed....
Today we were notified My Boss would be on CNBC at the last minute, and I had to race home to tell TiVo to record it.
But you're right that happens so rarely.
BTW: My Tivo here in NYC seems to have developed a taste for Australia, any show with an Aussie in it or about Australia gets recorded.
I wish I had not chosen "the Crocodile Hunter Week" to go away on vacation, it missed taping the first Bledisloe Match because it _had_ to get the 13th consequetive airing of that goose! The crocodile hunter now shares the distinction with Alby Mangels of being the only show to earn a "3 thumbs down".
Sure. If you're half the country away on business, would you want to call your parents/mate/friends and say "Oh, dude, I forgot--I'll pay you back for the tape when I get back, but could you tape Stick Your Pole In My Hole for me tomorrow night?" Didn't think so. :-)
The real Karma Gigolo has Slashdot ID #3.14159265358979323846...
You don't have to program it and you can skip commeercials. I think most channels now are at 8 commercials in a row. 8 freaking commercials damn it! If it weren't for the news, I'd have probably gave up on TV already.
You could setup your machine to, say, tape things every week at the same time or better yet, you could buy yourself a nice book to read.
- Desi
Consider this:
You are at work.
Server crashes.
Southpark is on in an hour.
A) Miss the show and save the server
B) Screw the server and catch the show
C) Save the server, record the show and watch during your comped time off
It seems that this would be usefull, just keep those script kiddies away.
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
I could, if my machine was inclined to do fancy things like that...
I try to keep what books I can afford for work. Considering I knock off about 2000 pages a week, I don't feel that I can be faulted for 2 to 3 hours of television a week.
Intolerant people should be shot.
- Desi
No rest until Pepsi is written upon the sky.
The danger is not from crackers filling ReplayTV's harddrive with Matlock, but the fact that it gives ReplayTV, Inc. (Or whoever...) A deep insight into what you watch.
I can imagine being at work and reading on the web that something good was on - Sure, being able to set it to record would be a convenience. (Of course, I would then like it to FTP the show in DiVx format to my X-Drive, so I can watch it from my desk the next day, but from what I hear, that's 2-3 months away...)
But do you really want some company knowing that not only do you secretly watch 'Anne of Green Gables' you actually *tape* it? I thought not.
(Broadcast) TV and Radio are one of the few places that you have this kind of anomynimity anymore. Imagine what Nielson will do with the database of "What People Tape".
Remember the 'Bork Tapes'? Years ago, when Judge Bork was nominated for the Supreme Court, the Washington 'City Paper' did a story listing all of his video club rentals. Good ol' Bork had extremely boring tastes with nothing scandalous, but the fact that anyone's rental history is fairly public scared the crap out of enough lawmakers to very quickly pass some legislation.
This is worse.
One question for ReplayTV:
Does the net connection report what you are watching, even when you are not taping?
Also, when are you getting that super-secret X-Drive thingie done???
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
-- My Weblog.
Switch back and forth between multiple shows at just the right time. The playback could be quite funny.
Now, if you can download video to someone else machine.....hmmmmm...stop me before I get in too much trouble.
Fight Spammers!
Rich
Commercials pay for the content you are watching on television. Broadcast TV is still free to watch, provided you use an antenna.
.com's actually have to make money for a second). The web sites would have to look for other ways of making money. Would you like to have to sign up with your credit card and pay a few cents every time you look at a web site ? That would really suck, I'll take the banner ad at the top thanks.
If the majority of the people defeat their advertising mechanism, they will be forced to increase their revenue through other means.
Is this really such a good outcome?
It's like what would happen if everyone started using junkbusters to strip banner ads (lets pretend
Yeah, but will it put the tape in the VCR for you, too?
-Rob
"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." -George Bernard Shaw
The juxtaposition of this and your sig gave me an image of Bill Gates sitting at a terminal with an evil grin on his face while in a distant house, someone's refridgerator was reaching a nice glowing cherry red (K=Kelvin)
Rich
a) Tivo runs a modified Linux PPC.
b) Yes, you can even get a shell prompt on it (thru the serial port on the back no less).
c) Yes, you can even pull out the drive and mount it on your Linux box, with some minor effort.
d) We're getting closer to figuring out the drive format they use to store shows.
Therefore e) within a few weeks or months we'll know how to pull shows off the unit in MPEG format.
If you want to help, get a Tivo and come by the Tivo Underground forum at www.tivocommunity.com.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I was at a talk by Mel Karmazin, chief executive of CBS, a few months ago. One of the questions from the audience was something like "as a network, do you feel threatened by the potential of these new Tivo devices for viewers to avoid commercials".
Turns out he has one. He said that if they found that consumers were skipping over the commercials they would find a way to put the advertising in the shows. Now, he may have just been kidding, or saying it for a bit of the shock value, but he seemed serious. That would suck.
I have a TiVo as well, and I absolutely use it to skip over intros, commercials, etc. You can take in an episode of South Park in 20 minutes. Unlike Replay, however, there is no button for 30 second skip; instead there is a 2x, 12x and 60x fast forward. I've actually come to prefer this, as I'll sometimes see something interesting or unusual zip by and go back to watch the commercial (some of them are more entertaining than the programming). So in the best of scenarios, widespread use of these devices will force commercials to be more entertaining/interesting so people will actually watch them.
Seriously, why would you want to control your TV from a web browser in the first place? Are some people so lazy that they can't even budge from their computer to adjust the volume? This all just seems like an invitation for script kiddies to mess with peoples' TVs. If I was a ReplayTV user, I'd be pissed.
Still, I can see how this would have some advantages, so hopefully ReplayTV will implement a secure-enough system (hint: security through obscurity never works!) that the lamer members of our population won't be able to ruin yet another new thing.
luckman
luckman
I don't involve myself with flames, much less know how to bait one.
You of all people should know that television rots your brain.
Very nice idea. Would have been handy a few weeks ago to adjust a few recordings while I was on vacation. Now Dish Networks just needs to hurry up and scrap the DishPlayer and get a Replay based reciever out. And add an ethernet jack, since my house has no normal phone lines anymore.
I think our culture could use a little dismissing.
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
Wait..let me get this right; you sign-on to your computer and log on to your ISP so you can remotely control your TV tomorrow so you can watch it later...I am losing my fargin mind.
"..don't you eat that yellow snow."
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
That someone would invent something so completely useless. Can anyone think of ANY good reason to have something like this?
- Desi
________
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
I believe infomercials are an unfortunte result of reduced value to airtime due to the popularization of cable and satelite TV and their 50+ channels.
Personlly, I hate them. Advertising sucks to begin with.. but usually interspersed between advertisements are some tidbits of value. This lets me put up with advertisement. How do people watch infomercials? How are they able to get any viewers?
Is there anything we can do about them (besides not watch them)?
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
Seriously...how many people really go on vacation and just HAVE to record a TV show. Chances are, if that TV show is any good, it'll be available where you are vacationing and then you can watch the show live. Although the people behind this service call it "revolutionary", I'm hesitant to even call it "evolutionary" because in the end this'll probably be one of those features that just doesn't pass the Darwin test!
Uhm, call me crazy, but isn't this sort of a dumb idea? I mean now you can have a hacker record eight hours of porn for you while your five year old is waiting to watch their transformers.
Oh wait, unless Microsoft handles security, then it will be fully protected, LIKE HOTMAIL! BWA-HAHAHA. Actually, then it won't even take a hacker, it will just take some five year old.
Yet again score another one for stupid ideas that seem nifty. It's all about gadgets. I can't imagine that many people who would really use this thing. But then again I could be wrong, maybe everyone will. Just don't blame me when your five year old asks why they're screaming so much.
Just what I need, someone reprogramming my settings. I come in from dinner, and all of a sudden I'm watching thirty hours of Ron Popeil's Showtime Rotisserie Grill.
It could be worse, you could be watching 30 hours of Barney reruns.
=================================
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
I think the real possibilities here lie in the user interface. The ReplayTV/TIVO are simple and easy to use, but not that powerful.
Add the web and some powerful database servers and you could do some pretty neat things:
a) Have it record every movie that Roger Ebert and Co gave 2 thumbs up to for ever.
b) You could quickly pull up a list of the top 400 sci-fi movies of all times, check the ones you liked and presto, they would be recorded if they ever came on.
c) etc...lots of possibilites...
Simplistic versions of these sorts of things exist or are coming to the set-top boxes themselves, but I think it will be tough to make them really work well.
ps - I'm a TIVO owner and love it. All you doubters should get one (or a replayTV) from circuit city or someplace else with a 30 day return policy and just give it a spin. On the down side, I no longer exercise or read books. sigh.
________
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
I sent ReplayTV an email requesting them to add DivX support in one of their nightly downloads.
According to this link, DivX takes just 15% of the space that MPEG-2 takes (the format used for DVDs, my satellite, and my ReplayTV).
If they could just add the software codec, then it would turn my 20 hour player into a 133 hour player!
It would even be worth paying $100 extra for this download. Not that I'm asking them to charge me, just that I understand how the market works (nobody does something for nothing except college kids). ;-)
Thing 1
--
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Founder's Camp
Founder's Camp
News for non-Nerds. Stuff that matters.
Now I just want to be able to do this with Tivo. Not because I have a need to, but rather because I will then be able to say "Look at me, I'm setting a program to record from the library!"
It will get better ratings than Survivor and Alley McBeal's kissing Ling Scene. People will just hack into it and have every system out there record The Hacker Channel during sweeps week.
Talk about must see TV. :)
Fight Spammers!
Sig.
this reminds me of a classic article from The Onion...New Remote Control Can Be Operated By Remote...no more leaning forward to get remote from coffee table means greater convenience for viewers.
i wanna be a karma whore!
This is good news for those of us looking forward to the day when we can say "I just hacked your refrigerator and put it on defrost"
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
So because of the inherent security risks, we can't just set it and...
FORGET IT!
All the world's an analog stage, and digital circuits play only bit parts.
Second greatest trick. Greatest trick was God making the world think that He does exist.
Than a lot of other shows. How about this, though. . .could Replay TV set it up so THEY somehow had control of what one was watching? If this works through a web browser, I don't see why not. But then, I usually miss something vital.
I guess that depends on which movies you watch. Don't go lumping everything together just because it all shares the same medium. You'll end up dismissing our entire culture that way!
Ryan
I'm sure that this could have some useful application in the real world, but to me it seems like a "gee-whiz" innovation.
However, the ability to tell my tv to record this week's episode of space ghost while I'm out of town could prove useful.
Then again, the evil corporations will track your recording habits through their webpage and build a profile with which to bombard you with more useless advertising.
There's no escaping it...big brother is watching you.
---
If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten. -George Carlin
The box has a built-in modem that you connect to your phone line. The current software polls a central server once a day for program guide and software updates. I would assume that they would download the new recording schedule to the box when it polls the server.
I asked about what security measures we were planning to implement, and was told: "ReplayTV will use SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) technology as well as password protection. This will ensure that only the person who has the password will be able to set the recordings using MyReplayTV.com." As for user privacy, please see: http://www.replaytv.com/custome r/productprivacy.htm Basically, your PERSONAL information, including viewing statistics will not be sold to anyone without your prior consent (although, I think if I was offered the option of becoming a Neilsen viewer, I might take it - get better shows on the air). AGGREGATE viewing statistics may be sold to third parties, but your PERSONAL viewing habits and demographic information is safe. -David -Hardware Design Engineer -ReplayTV, Inc.
nt
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he doesn't exist.
Yep, with a WAP phone interface the ReplayTV will be much more usefull than just with a web interface
Both Tivo and ReplayTV already make a daily call to the "mother base" do download the schedule, software updates, and yes, upload your viewing habits. It all comes down to how much you trust their privacy statements... I don't see this new service making it any worse than it already is.
- Even just with Australian cable (FoxTel) there's more that I'd be willing to watch than I have time to watch it. Missing one thing means I have time to watch something else
- What, don't people have 10 minutes to program their VCR/ReplayTV in the morning?
- Don't people check the TV guide ahead?
- Do all ReplayTV owners live alone? Is there no-one to program the unit if they happen to be on holiday?
Since getting cable, the number of programs I really don't want to miss has probably only gone up by 2 or 3 (Still undecided on Earth, Final Conflict & Lexx). If you're not anywhere near the unit, why do you need to program it for something?Oh, yeah, major hacking target...
I'm not clear on how this works - would an http server be running on the box in my living room, or would everything go through a central server? Or both? In any case, it's just one more way for Them to look over our shoulders.
It seems to me that while many really dumb intellectual property lawsuits occur all the time, there are many more in the computer world than otherwise. I have a theory for this. As many of you know, when perfectly intelligent people get involved with computers, they tend to completely lose any shred of common sense they may have possesed. I think what happens is these patenet reviewers or others who have the power to grand broad intellectual rights say, "Hey, that sounds like a great idea. I'll give this guy a patent for doing something with computers that we do every day, because it works on a computer!" And the computing public just groans and says here's another one.
I can just imagine the fun we can have with this little technology.
Nope. I have a ReplayTV, and the tuner takes 1-2 seconds to change the channel and queue up some video (for instant replay).
Some of you seem skeptical of why this would be a good idea. As a ReplayTV owner for almost a year, let me explain.
Replay is designed to be a very simple "set top" type box. It has no keyboard, only two LED's and one button on the front panel. The entire UI is manipulated via the remote.
It works OK, but there are certain operations that are undeniably tedious when attempted via a remote. For instance, entering "Clint Eastwood" via an on-screen keyboard, to program it to record all movies that Clint is in. You have to use arrow keys to move around an on-screen alphabet and press ENTER on each letter. You get used to it, but it can be quite annoying.
By providing a web-based alternative UI, it gives some users a way to work around the limited I/O capability of the set-top box. On the web site of course you can use your mouse, keyboard and so on. Conducting various searches to look for things to watch would be much less tedious when you can use a richer web-based UI.
And consider the possibility of building scripts that visit the site automatically for you. You could figure out arbitrarily complex criteria for recording programs, put them in a script, and have it run your replay for you. This would give you lots of flexibility that you don't have right now.
I'm sure from ReplayTV's perspective, this is also probably going to turn into another revenue opportunity for them. Remember, Replay's service is free for life, so they have to have an ongoing revenue from alternate sources. They already sell ad space in the "Replay Zones" menu. I will almost guarantee you they will be selling banner ads on MyReplayTV.com to generate more revenue.
I agree there are definitely privacy and security concerns here. For instance, a web site with banner ads would have the potential to allow ReplayTV to link viewing habits to other web-oriented habit information collected by ad services like DoubleClick. Replay also knows your zip code (in order to give you the right cable listings) so the potential for geographical demographics are interesting too. And then of course the whole idea of someone hacking the web site and using it to program other people's boxes.
That having been said, I think there is a good chance that the Replay folks will get this right. So far I've been impressed with the technical competency of their staff, both in their hardware and their web site. For an example, disable Javascript in your browser and visit http://www.replaytv.com. Unlike many sites which just go brain dead in this case, Replay's site recognizes the issue and lets you view a less snazzy version of the site. Very smart.
Wow, if this thing had a firewire port or some other high speed way to get data off it I might consider it. The tech specs on their website only mention a serial port, which doesn't sound to me like a high speed interface.
Are there any hacks out there to make the hard drive removable so one could load it up into your computer? If I could record a months worth of the Simpsons, pull the drive, put it in my computer, and burn to multiple CDs, I'd be all over it. It would save me the trouble of compressing all that stuff.
Without that, it's functionally equivalent to a VCR jukebox with some fancy programming options. Not worth $500 IMO.
cot
ReplayTV is a nice idea, however there is already competition from companies like TIVO, not to mention Videotron's Videoway which has been avaliable for years. (at least in Canada)
However, we are lucky enough to live in Capitalism where competition is vital to encourage companies for perfection in order to attract customers. Therefore the introduction of ReplayTV is not only necessary but vital to the industry in order to prevent monopolistic gorillas like Microsoft from appearing.
--
Kiro