More on the Replay TV 4000

boskone noted that Replay TV's site has updated with a variety of new information that will definitely allow the Tivo/Replay flamewars to escalate. Besides the networking capability we mentioned earlier (send shows to friends, or to other Replay's on your home LAN), and the gigantic 320 hour maximum storage capacity, there are more detailed specicifcations. Also notable is the progressive video output port, and the fact that it actually requires ethernet, but doesn't require a subscription! I'd love to try one of these buggers out when they ship.

Comments

subscription

[Sc00ter]

"the fact that it actually requires ethernet, but doesn't require a subscription!"

Part of the reason early replayTV units were almost twice as much as the same recording capacity was because the subscription price was included.. You do pay for it.

Re:subscription

[Syberghost]

Don't be so quick to jump on the "no commercials" idea.

The broadcast networks can only afford to be free if they have income, and if enough people start skipping the commercials, they'll have to do something about it.

So unless you wanna pay a monthly fee for access to the networks and your local stations, you better hope Autoskip stays a niche product.

Re:subscription

[Zaknafein500]

Also, FWIW, the 2.5 version of the TiVo software includes a backdoor to enable 30 second skip. Check out the AVS Forum and I'm sure you'll be able to find it. Almost all DirecTiVos have been updated to 2.5, so they have this feature right now. Stand alone TiVos won't see 2.5 until about January ufortunately due to some delays with VBR encoding.

Also, what about dual tuners? Having a second tuner is invaluable, as it allows you to record two shows at once. So far, I haven't seen any mention of dual tuners on the RP4000. DirecTiVos have this ability right now.

I'm not even convinced that Sonicblue can pull off the features they are promising. The "Send Show to Other RPTV User" has so many copyright issues I won't even get into it. Plus, who really wants to spend at minimum $700 on a RPTV when you can find DirecTiVos for as little at $129 with new DirecTV service. Add in the $250 TiVo lifetime sub, and you're still about $300 ahead. Hack your box, and you can have over 120 hours of recording time, and still be underneath the cost for the base RPTV 4000 model.

I'll stick with my TiVo. UTV came along with big promises, and has largely failed. Replay won't have me convinced until they actually get the thing working with all the features functional.

Re:subscription

[stripes]

I don't understand that, with Tivo, when you fast forward you just go thru the commercials, as soon as you see the show, you hit play, it jumps back a few seconds and BAM, you don't miss any of the show. I think that's far better then 30sec skip, because with that you could accidently skip into the show..

They are around the same. The people that have both TiVo and replay tend to like the 30sec skip a little better, but not all of them do. After you skip the right number of times you normally have to back up a little bit, so it is about as much fiddling with buttons as TiVo, and just slightly less time.

The upside is on the TiVo if you see a commercial you think is interesting you can watch it (at 60x FF the commercial is half a second to a second long, so don't blink!)

Replay's skips are more useful to move around in a TV show, like if you watched about half of it, and then your wife watched the rest, you have to FF for 30 seconds on the TiVo, the reply you can hit a few buttons. Apparently TiVo's 2.5 software will let you skip to the 15min tick marks, so that is less of an issue.

FYI, there is a backdoor code on TiVo's with pre-2.0.1 software, and I've been told 2.5 software to change the "skip to end" button into a 30 second skip.

The only compelling Replay feature (to me) is moving shows from unit to unit. Everything else you can either do (frequently with hacking!) to a TiVo, or just isn't that interesting to me. To be honest you can even currently move shows from one TiVo to another after you hack it, but I'm not expecting that to last :-(

However other people have other priorities, and may be better suited with a Replay. One thing's for sure though, if you watch TV, you really ought to own one of these things. Like now. I'm sorry I waited so long to buy mine (even with the price drop, and larger drives)!

Yeah, TIVO is in trouble now (sarcastic)

[hoggoth]

I don't think they have the engineering resources to figure out how to install a bigger hard drive and an ethernet card.

At what price is it worth it?

[Refried Beans]

Take a look at the pre-order form:

RTV4320 ( Approx. 320 hours of recording time) $ 1,999 *
RTV4160 ( Approx. 160 hours of recording time) $ 1,499 *
RTV4080 ( Approx. 80 hours of recording time) $ 999 *
RTV4040 ( Approx. 40 hours of recording time) $ 699 *
* Plus applicable tax & shipping charges.
Estimated shipping costs within Continental US are:
$25 3-5 business days, $35 economy 2 day, $45 next day

TiVo prices:

Philips HDR 212 20 $199
Philips HDR 312 30 $299
Philips HDR 612 60 $599

I love my TiVo, even if I did pay $400 for it a year ago. $10 a month is pretty cheap. $100 a year isn't too bad either. I loved mine so much I paid the lifetime fee.

One FAQ, I'd like to see answered

[eam]

I read the FAQ on their site, but there was one important question that went unanswered:

If I buy a Replay4000, and Replay goes under, will I still be able to use it, or will it go dead when it can't get schedule updates from the Replay server?

Re:One FAQ, I'd like to see answered

[mjh]

What I would like to know is, since Replay TV doesn't sell their program guide, then would they be opposed to someone else reverse engineering the service and providing a competing program guide? Or even better, handing out the specs so that someone else could easily provide a competing service. Personally, I'd like to see the program guides provided by the tv provider (i.e. your cable company or satelite provider). Why? Because then I know that both services will always be available simultaneously. I won't have to worry about getting a tv signal and not getting the program guide. Both will either work or fail. And if both fail, then I just switch to someone else who will provide both. With Tivo/Replay/Microsoft I might still get tv signal, but the program guide might go away. So clearly a competitive program guide is what I'd want.

But I don't think we'll ever see it. Clearly Tivo isn't going to do this, they want to sell the service. But I suspect that Replay won't do this either. Why? Because what they also want is the data that they download that tells them what you watched and when you watched it. They want the information about what programs interest you. They want the data about which commercials you skipped and which ones you watched. They want to know if you prefer the sports replays that the tv networks generate or the one that the PVR generates. They want to know who/what/where/when/why you watch TV.

Think about this. How can Tivo/Replay/Microsoft provide a service that needs to run forever, without corresponding income that gets generated forever? By selling the information gathered from the service to program providers, or advertisers or ??? Think this isn't a viable business model? Think of it as the same service that Nielson sells, but with tv viewers paying money to participate.

So with program guide going across an ethernet now, I imagine it's only a matter of time before the protocol is reversen engineered... unless of course, it's encrypted. And then it's only a matter of time before someone tries to hack the box to get the encryption secrets. And then it'll be only a matter of time before Replay/Tivo/et al, sue under the DMCA.

This will be an interesting next few years in the PVR world.

Rock on, Commander!

[AtariDatacenter]

Thanks for posting the new updates. I'm going to save over them. But if all of this isn't enough to get you going, there is something else for you:

ReplayTV PROMOTIONAL CODES!

Some are geared at existing ReplayTV customers. Others are for 'people in the industry'. But they were freely given over the phone. I worked with this guy and got some codes corrected, so they now work properly.

I took the $100 off and no payments. (That'll make it easily financable over a few months.) Note! Most of these promo codes are for all but the most basic model.

Isn't 320 hours of recording time overkill ?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

I have a Tivo with 30 hours. I usually record things in "medium" quality, so I guess I get no more than 15 hours in reality. But I virtually never run out of space. The only times I wish I had more space are :

When I go on a trip for several days

When some channel broadcasts a bunch of episodes of something I like in a single day (a something-"marathon" they call it)

But even if I could record all these things and keep them in memory, I'd never be able to watch them all anyway. I hardly watch everything my mere 30-hour Tivo records already.

The thing that I'd really really like to see appear in PVRs is a second tuner. Very often, choosing between two programs is the real bother, not the amount of memory. The only reason why single-tuner PVRs work nowadays is because interesting programs are so diluted in an ocean of crap on TV. Come to think of it, that's also probably why 15 hours are enough, because there aren't enough interesting programs per day to fill it up.

I DO...

[BillyGoatThree]

...pay a monthly fee for access to the networks and local stations. They come over my cable channel and I can't get them any other way. Plus I note that there are still commercials on channels like Comedy Central. So here I am, paying to watch commercials. How dumb is that?

Let me guess

[BillyGoatThree]

"...there are more detailed specicifcations."

Are they going to include a spell-checker for you WebTV users?

Re:Commercials.

[Syberghost]

Without commercials, we would have to pay for content - using the money that we have saved by not having to pay 20 to 40 percent more for products to cover the cost of their ad campaigns. I can live with that.


Wrong. The companies will still pay for advertising, just in other media, since TV will lose it effectiveness.

So you'll pay just as much for the products, AND pay for your TV besides.

It's not a zero-sum game, you'll be creating new income for radio and print.

Hidden "features" like spyware, rights management?

[tmoertel]

Two questions:

1. What kind of information about users will these units gather and transmit back to ReplayTV?
2. Do these units incorporate any kind of "rights management" system that would infringe upon fair use or home-recording rights?

It ISN'T about the Ethernet card. Software!

[AtariDatacenter]

It is about the software. I've got an ethernet card in my TiVo right now. But I don't have any compelling software for it. I can't share video with other TiVo users without going through extreme measures. In all, the Ethernet on the TiVo is great for toys like a web server, or doing stuff from the shell prompt.

That's why ReplayTV is better than a TiVo with an ethernet hack. ReplayTV embraces the network connection. TiVo, unfortunately, is too in-bed with corporate sponsors. Here's hoping they change.

It will send to other ReplayTVs via ethernet...

[-=OmegaMan=-]

... so, a hack to make your PC look like a ReplayTV at the end of the cable would be miiiiiiighty useful. :)

Security, anyone?

[nuetrino]

Let me see if I got this right. The RePlay unit is now to be connected to Internet 24X7. The company needs to have access to the unit to upgrade software and presumable download viewing statistics. The software is remotely upgradeable. And to say more precisely, it doesn?t look like it can be behind a firewall because the company needs access to the unit.

So, are we talking a gleaming new attack vector into the home network with a guaranteed propagation strategy as user exchange content, or has security been taken seriously? I do not see anything in the specs or FAQ.

I would probably let a M$ box onto my network first.

Microsoft's terra server

[peter303]

Microsoft and Oracle anticipated this have had terabyte video raid disks around for years. The stored TV market isn't quite there yet, so they have a demo on web that serves satellite images. Once there is a market, MicroSoft will be there.