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ReplayTV 4000 Series Shares TV Over Net

Posted by Hemos on from the that's-a-lot-of-time dept.

REden writes " ReplayTV announces their ReplayTV 4000 Series networkable PVR. Features include video sharing between LAN attached Replays, sending a show to another Replay over the internet, and automatic commercial skip. Prices start at $700 for a 40 hour unit and max out at $2000 for a 320 hour unit. ReplayTV guide service included. Units are scheduled to ship November 14th." 320 hours. I can't imagine holding on to that much TV - but space is cheap, so, eh, why not?

20 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. Headed for a lawsuit? by FatSean · · Score: 3, Redundant

    This device sounds great! Too great, in fact. You can skip the commercials, then send the shows to people on the internet?! Surely some body will sue this company into oblivion, as their device enables users to enjoy TV without being subjected commercials!

    Maybe I had better buy one before it's too late.

    --
    Blar.
    1. Re:Headed for a lawsuit? by dair · · Score: 3, Informative
      No mention was made of sending shows over the internet...rather, it was to other units on a LAN.
      From their FAQ:

      Q. How do I share television programs with my friends?
      A. If your friend has a ReplayTV 4000, they can "talk" to each other over the broadband Internet connections.

      It sounds as if you need a ReplayTV unit at each end, but capturing what they send to each other would be trivial. The datastream is probably encrypted, but you have to wonder how long that would last.

      -dair
    2. Re:Headed for a lawsuit? by Legal+Penguin · · Score: 3, Informative

      This is extremely carefully worded. It does NOT say that you will be able to send copies of copyrighted materials to friends over the internet. It says the machines will be able to "'talk' to each other". I haven't read the FAQ, but this leaves plenty of wiggle room.

      "Talking" in this context might mean sharing programs, but it might also mean sharing programming data only or some other lame restriction. The fact is that, the way the law looks now, a Court could well find that there would have to be a "substantial non-infringing use" for the sharing feature to make it legal. In the context of the ReplayTV units (which I love -- I own one myself) that use would be hard to find. ReplayTV units record essentially only copyrighted material, so the sharing function (outside of a home LAN) would seem to have little non-infringing purpose.

      Within a home LAN, an argument could be made that the purpose is "space shifting" -- making legally copied content available in other places in the home for the person who made the legal copy. This is an extension of the "time shifting" rationale used to justify the existence of VCRs in the Supreme Court's seminal Betamax case. "Space shifting" was also found to be a fair use (by a lower court) in the RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia (Rio) case, and is one reason that MP3 players are not actionable.

      But the space shifting argument has not been extended in recent cases (either in New York or California, where most of this gets tried, see the various DeCSS cases) so I think the "sharing" feature, if it really does allow people to share copyrighted content with friends in distant locations, would be fertile ground for a lawsuit.

      Note that, much as I love 'em, ReplayTV has backed off its promises in the past. It originally told buyers that their personal viewing information would NEVER be collected or sold. It is now clear that such information IS being collected for the my.replaytv.com service. That's fine -- good, even, my.replaytv.com is very cool -- it just happens to be a clear, unannouced change in policy.

      Now if they put 802.11b in the thing, I'd pre-order right now.

      --
      "The true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government." - George Washington
  2. Re: ReplayTV 4000 Series Announced by seanellis · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Hmm. "Automatic commercial skip facility." If spammers can sue their ISPs now, how long until some advertiser sues Replay for loss of revenue?

    Sean

    --
    Sean Ellis
    Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
  3. I'll tell you why not! by HiroProtagonist · · Score: 5, Informative

    Space might be cheap but $2000.00 just for a larger hard drive isn't. I'm sorry, but I will never love TV that much.

    Especially when NVidia is coming out with a product that will run on my PC and support as large a HDD as I can afford!

    NVIDIA Personal Cinema Redefines PC Home Entertainment

    --
    --Remove chicken to e-mail
    1. Re:I'll tell you why not! by stripes · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Space might be cheap but $2000.00 just for a larger hard drive isn't. I'm sorry, but I will never love TV that much.

      Esp. since I expect someone to figure out how to send shows to a Linux box rather then another ReplayTV, so you don't need to store everything on the Replay, just whatever you don't have time to transfer.

      Especially when NVidia is coming out with a product that will run on my PC and support as large a HDD as I can afford!

      There is some advantage to having a dedicated device with (I assume) a real OS. Maybe not such an issue if your PC runs Linux, but I'm expecting it will be a while until you can use the NVidia with ease to capture TV shows (including tuning the cable box) under Linux. I have the competing product (TiVo) and it has never ever crashed. It has lost power a few times, but never had some random DLL blow up and cause me to miss a TV show.

  4. Next week: "Replay sued by world+dog" by 1010011010 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Broadcasting video over a home LAN? To other replays over the internet? Jackie "the fish" Valenti will have them in irons by the end of the week.

    --
    Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
  5. Holy cow! by raygundan · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There isn't a feature I can think to add to this thing! I've been complaining since I got my Tivo that it wouldn't automatically skip commercials-- if an $80 VCR can auto-FFW through the commercials, why can't my PVR? This solves that problem, and throws content sharing in just to sweeten the deal. Not to mention the huge storage capacities they have available!

    Tivo has always been chicken to try anything like this, and it looks like it's going to bite 'em now that somebody else has the guts to do it. Why would you ever buy a unit now that didn't allow commercial skipping and content sharing?

    It's probably too good to be true, though-- I imagine that this will be sued into oblivion before 20 units leave the stores. *sigh*

    1. Re:Holy cow! by stripes · · Score: 3
      There isn't a feature I can think to add to this thing! I've been complaining since I got my Tivo

      Sure you can, buy one and you'll miss a lot of the TiVo's scheduling features. The new "conflict catcher" is an improvement, but no session pass manager (for non-TiVo owners that lets you set up in advance which shows are more important, so if there is a schedule change the show that is most important will be recorded.

      That isn't to say that TiVo's scheduling is the end all. Both units could do better padding. TiVo could do even better with show tracking (yes I said new episodes of Sopranos are more important the The Practice, but since The Practice only shows up on Sunday and Sopranos all week, it "should" be able to figure out that recording Practice at 9 then Sopranos at 11 would be better then doing the simple greedy algo). Of corse ReplayTV isn't even good enough to complain about that yet :-)

      ReplayTV is also more irritating in the way it manages the disk space. You set aside disk for each show you want, so you can miss episodes of things you want even though there is ample free space. On the other hand that manages to deal with marathons without resorting to "Save at most N" on the TiVo (and "save at most" has similar problems to Replay's pre-allocate per show method).

      Tivo has always been chicken to try anything like this, and it looks like it's going to bite 'em now that somebody else has the guts to do it. Why would you ever buy a unit now that didn't allow commercial skipping and content sharing?

      Yes. But it is a harder sell now. Before TiVo's better scheduling was enough to make it a clear winner. Now it depends. Being able to move shows to a PC would win me over, moving between Replay's is not as exciting (but since it is likely that someone will manage to figure out how to make a PC accept the shows....). Commercial autoskip is nice, but not a super huge deal to me. It may be to others.

      If sending shows around is seamless enough (and I doubt it is just yet) it can be a lot better then two tuners (like MS UTV, or the Direct TiVo with the 2.5 software). Want two tuners, buy two ReplayTVs, want 4 tuners? Buy four.

      I'm glad someone has done it. It will be harder for TiVo to not do it now. The big questions is which happens first: TiVo gets networking, or ReplayTV gets better scheduling. Until one of those things happens it is a hard choice either way!

  6. who watches 320 hours of TV? by peter303 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Assume I want time-shift ALL my weekly viewing
    from night to day or to weekends etc, I'd need
    a maximum of 20-30 hours on the laziest weeks.
    I have seven four-hour tapes now for this purpose,
    and rarely time shift ten hours a week.

    I suppose the other 300 hours could be for
    archiving, but there isn't that much I'd want.

    I'd guestimate 100 hours would satisfy all
    but the hard core vegetables.

  7. Deciphering the Marketing Speak by jayhawk88 · · Score: 4, Funny

    From their FAQ:

    Q. How does ReplayTV use my Ethernet connection?
    A. ReplayTV uses the high-speed Ethernet connection to connect to your home network. This means that your ReplayTV is now connected to your PC and to the Internet. If you have more than one ReplayTV, they'll be connected to each other, too. This means, you can now share recorded programming between multiple ReplayTV's within your home, access new television content through your PC via the Internet, and even share programs with friends who also own ReplayTV 4000s. The Ethernet connection can also be used to transfer digital photos from your PC to your ReplayTV and once on your ReplayTV, you can watch digital slide shows on your television.

    OK, this stops just short of saying, "Yes, you can record all those Simpson reruns on ReplayTV, then copy them to the hard drive on your PC for archival/editing/sharing with the entire world", but it seems like that would be a logical use as well. Then again, logic rarely plays a part in copyright/IP law. What do you guys think, would that sort of thing be possible with this unit, or do they have some built-in protection against it (i.e., only copying to other ReplayTV units)? And if so, how long before the MPAA comes a-knockin?

  8. Re:320 hours = 320 gigabytes = $800 by AtariDatacenter · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They quote the most agression compression rate in these hour ratings.

    And the most aggressive compression rates, too! But being able to select the compression rate you want really is a big win for the consumer and manufacturer. The manufacturer doesn't get flamed that they've made a hard choice which either makes a poor quality video, or doesn't have enough recording space.

    Get the cheap version. Hack on another disk.

  9. Back To School, VideoOnDemand, Demographics by martyb · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I can just see the net admins at colleges trying to deal with this. They've had to deal with napster and the like and all the bandwidth they'd consume on their LAN. Now imagine an entire dorm (or campus!) sending saved shows to each other.

    If there's a way to hack the system, I can well imagine folks at the likes of MIT will find a way to do it. The result is that the initial broadcast of a show over the airwaves, cable, satelite, etc. could eventually be dwarfed by the time-delayed transmissions.

    The Result? Bypass the current transmission media and get your shows direct from Replay! Sign up for the shows you want and they'd send it to you, over the internet. Then, just add video servers on the internet with pre-compressed movies available on a pay-per-view basis and you've got all you need to bypass the Blockbuster video rental shops -- just watch what you want, when you want it, without having to go out to get / return a video and no worry about late fees. Sure, it'll be free to share between RePlays for now, but I suspect that's just the initial push to build market share, and then there'd be a rollout of central server subscriptions, copy protection, and per-show charges.

  10. Nothing New by nhavar · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is nothing new. My wife and I have been doing this for awhile with the ATI AIW cards. We have three computers running with the card and their default software (which includes guide and PVR functions) all hooked up over a home network. Movies can be shifted back and forth over the network and viewed from any machine/tv in the house. Additionally they can be DIVX'd and sent to CD, etc. It cost me around $150 for each card (the newer much faster Radeon is $200 and the even faster 8500 is around $500 w/RF remote). 20 gig hard drive is about $69 bucks...so for about 219 you can have most of the functionality that is offered by this set top box plus be able to play your favorite games on the big screen. Or you can overpay, or your can wait for nVidia to play catch up in this area.

    --
    "Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
  11. Ludicrous by Controlio · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's funny... it seems as if ReplayTV has been scouring the TiVo message boards and looking for complaints from the underground. Every single one of these features are things that have been worked on or at least discussed in the TiVo Underground. Seems like the TiVo employees aren't the only ones browsing the bulletin boards in their free time.

    Things of this nature have been discussed for a long time, but eventually discarded as being impractical. Now, here it is in box form, and it's even more impractical than I would have ever imagined.

    First of all, I spent $250 on my 20hr TiVo, and then an additional $300 in hard drives for a total of ~144 hours recording time in 120gig of storage. This combined total is CONSIDERABLY less than their 40hr unit, and comes with over 3x more storage time. This, alone, proves that it's not worth it. And $2000? For a PVR? Don't even get me started. I would MUCH rather buy a video card with TV in and the PVR-like services that video cards are being bundled with now. Then I could record to my heart's content... not that I've ever been able to accumulate 65hrs of content on my TiVo to date...

    The networked video storage... this was never spoken of (out loud) because of the frowning of not only the TiVo sponsors, but the threat of lawsuits to a young company. People seem to have major issues when you distribute copies of programs with no visual loss between generations. At least someone else is here to take the fall that TiVo couldn't.

    Skipping commercials was the other big problem. This has always been available via backdoors in TiVo (removed in 2.0.1, rumored to be back in 2.5), but again, never a mainstream feature because of the sponsor problems it would cause. I'm going to be real interested to find out how the television community reacts to these features, and hopefully ReplayTV can be the whipping boy to pave the way for TiVo's next software update.

    This will be the only good thing to come out of ReplayTV, the fact that every legal team even eyeing TiVo in the past will all start looking Replay's way now... and if Replay can get away with these features without a problem, expect the apprehensive TiVo to have them Q1 next year. As for me, I couldn't even consider buying a PVR for $700. I almost never bought mine for $250, there's just NO WAY I could justify that much of an expense. Not when I could get at TiVo with better service (just a few less tricks up it's sleeve) for $199 nowadays.

  12. It's not really 320 hours by ryanvm · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Everybody keeps saying, "Whoa - who needs 320 hours of TV?"

    However, I'm assuming that ReplayTV advertises their hours just like TiVo does, which is based on the lowest quality setting. If it's similar to TiVo, here is what it is probably like:

    • 320 hours = Basic = pretty crappy quality
    • 160 hours = Medium = tolerable but not great
    • 120 hours = High = cable TV quality
    • 80 hours = Highest = DVD quality


  13. Ethernet? Who still uses that? I want 802.11b by IvyMike · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Seriously, since I've had my ReplayTV, I've wished that it could get show listings, etc., over my home network. It was obvious when I first got it that one of the future upgrades should be an ethernet port. But my home network cabling doesn't go near the TV, as I suspect is the case for a lot of people.

    On the other hand, I now have an 802.11b base station. Wi-Fi would be perfect in this situation. No need to run cable out to the TV! Hopefully, the ReplayTV people are working on that right now. (Also, Xbox could use an 802.11b option, too. Listening, Xbox designers?)

  14. REALLY, $700 isn't that bad. No, I'm serious! by AtariDatacenter · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Start with the closest standalone TiVo model, the 30 hour HDR312 from Philips. It is $300 (list). Add in TiVo's lifetime subscription fee. It is $249. You're already at $550. Add in an Ethernet kit from 7thTee that you have to install yourself. That is $100. Now you're at $650 and you've got a TiVo that has 10 hours less, and an unsupported ethernet connection with a minimum of useful software.

    Shell out $700 for the low-end ReplayTV (40 hours), and it has the lifetime subscription at no charge. Ethernet is built in. You've got USEFUL networking apps that are SUPPORTED by the company. And you can download (via iChannels) content over the web so you've got a new content provider for non-mainstream media.

    I think it is almost a no-brainer for advanced TiVo users to get one of these. I really hope it takes off. Or TiVo gets their act in gear.

  15. Needed: peer-to-peer automatic commercial skipping by Animats · · Score: 3, Interesting
    What's needed now is automatic peer-to-peer commercial skipping. That way, once a few people have skipped a commercial, everybody else on the net then skips it.

    All that has to be shared is information like station="WMAL" date="2002-06-03" skip-start="08:31:00" skip-end="08:31:30". Every time you push the "30 second skip" button, an entry like that gets created. Entries are distributed over Gnutella or Freenet. When watching a show, your player queries the net for entries with appropriate station, date, and time info. If a few different people have skipped over the same time slot, your player should skip it too.

    Great open source project for somebody.

  16. Networks can opt out of file sharing! by raygundan · · Score: 3, Informative
    According to this cnet article, the networks will be able to opt out of having their programs shared, even over the local network. This seems to put a serious cramp in ReplayTV's plans-- the only networks who won't immediately opt out are NASA TV and PBS. (Note that SonicBlue has purchased ReplayTV and that the names are used interchangeably in the article) To quote:

    Sonicblue jumped into the market for digital video recorders Wednesday, unveiling four high-end boxes it will sell under the ReplayTV brand.

    Sonicblue acquired the digital video recording pioneer on Aug. 2 after announcing the deal in February. Digital video recorders (DVRs) allow consumers to record TV shows onto a hard drive instead of onto videotape.

    As reported earlier by CNET News.com, the four boxes vary in price and capacity from $699 for 40 hours of recording to $1,999 for 320 hours. Unlike its competitors, Sonicblue will not charge a monthly service fee.

    The new boxes include broadband access and allow consumers to send TV shows via home networking to other ReplayTV boxes. However, Sonicblue Vice President Steve Shannon said the company will allow TV networks to decide if this capability should be disabled for their particular shows.


    So, in short, this feature will probably be disabled by angry networks before it leaves the gate. And it also answers the lawsuit question-- ReplayTV won't be sued, because this feature will come pre-disabled for your convenience.