Which DVR - Tivo or ReplayTV?

lkd7 asks: "I have recently decided to buy a DVR, but I'm not sure whether to go with Tivo or ReplayTV. I know that it is a shaky market right now, but my VCR is just not cutting it anymore. I have tested out both Tivo and ReplayTV, and would be happy with either one (I do not have satellite service and so UltimateTV is not an option for me). The Tivo stocks and SonicBlue/ReplayTV stocks are not the most reassuring. I know that going with either one is taking a risk, but I would like to go with the less risky bet. I'd rather not invest in a $300 paperweight. Does anyone have a recommendation?"

Comments

Which PVR?

[AtariDatacenter]

You're question is vague in a sense that when you say ReplayTV, are you talking about the old generation, or the new generation that is coming up?

You're probably not going to find many people on Slashdot who will be able to intelligently compare the risks to both companies. I guestimate the chances are roughly equal for both. But keep in mind that the TiVo is much more 'hackable' than ReplayTV.

Yes, they've found ways to load television guide data into the box. If the company goes titsup.com, and the product is completely abandoned, you'll still be able to use it and still be funny functional, just self-serve. But you'd probably have to invest in a network card to do well.

Also keep in mind that you're probably going to be paying less than $300, certainly for the TiVo models. It is too bad that you aren't on DirecTV. Circuit City is selling a Philips DSR-6000 for only $99. And that includes the dual-feed antenna for only $0.01. But if you are very careful in your looking around, you could get a 20 hour TiVo as low as $150 or so. Retail stores are clearing them out.

My bottom-line opinion is to take risk out of the equasion, and choose the one that will give you the best price and features for your money.

Upgrade Upgrade Upgrade

[dimer0]

The lesson here is this: You get the smallest TiVo you can find (14 hour, 20 hour - Walmart supposedly had the 14 hours on sale for $109 or something), and then read this.

I had a 20 hour TiVo, and after a trip to pricewatch to grab a 5400rpm drive, and 9thtee.com to get the mounting bracket for the new drive, my cheapy TiVo unit now holds 130 hours.

ReplayTV resources

[crow]

Here are a bunch of resources for ReplayTV:

The AVS discussion forum. This is the leading site for discussion of ReplayTV. They also have a TiVo forum.

The ReplayTV Hacking Project at SourceForge.

A site for hacking the ReplayTV Remote Control

extract_rtv, a tool for extracting the MPEG files from the ReplayTV

ReplayTV advantages

[crow]

I have a ReplayTV 2020 (which I intend to soon upgrade with a larger hard drive). When I bought it, I didn't realize how much it would change my TV viewing experience. I've programmed it to record all the shows I'm interested in watching, so when I feel like watching TV, instead of channel surfing, I watch something off the disk. And I never watch commercials.

I think ReplayTV has several advantages to consider carefully:

* There is no monthly fee. I've heard of people buying units for as little as $199 (with a $100 rebate!) on closeout, so you don't always pay more than you would with TiVo for the base hardware.

* There is a 30-second skip button and 8-second instant replay button on the remote. This didn't seem like a big deal when I bought it, but it is incredibly useful. It is thanks to these buttons that I never watch commercials. I remember back when I used fast forward with a VCR on recorded shows, and this is just so much better.

* My.ReplayTV.com lets you access your box over the Internet. If I'm on a trip but have Internet access, I can log in and delete unwanted shows to make space, set new shows to record, and see what I have. This is especially important if you are running low on disk space.

I'm sure TiVo has its own advantages, but I'll leave them to a TiVo owner.

Re:ReplayTV advantages

[McSpew]

TiVo and ReplayTV each have their advantages, but TiVo has some important advantages in ease-of-use. Some people like to think of ease of use as "moron" features, but can openers are easy to use and nobody thinks you'd have to be a moron to resent using a needlessly-complex can opener.

Now, with regard to Replay's "advantages":

• TiVo does charge $9.95 per month if you want to pay a monthly fee, or you can pay $249.95 to get the "lifetime" subscription. To be clear, the lifetime is the lifetime of your TiVo box, not the lifetime of its owner.
• TiVo doesn't offer a 30-second skip button, but most TiVo owners are quite satisfied with being able to reliably fast-forward through 3 minutes of commercials in five seconds (including the "oh, there's the show again" delay in hitting the play button). TiVo's two highest-speed fast-forward modes automatically correct for reaction time delays and backtrack to before you hit the button, allowing reliable commercial skipping with a minimum of effort. TiVo also has the 8-second instant replay button on the remote, so there's no advantage to ReplayTV there.
• Replay's internet website seems like a great idea, but the Replay box won't usually call out more than once per day, so it's not likely you'll often be able to program the device to record something you forgot about from work. More likely, it would be useful for extended absences from home (business trips or vacation). TiVo owners using the TiVoNet cards have actually got apache running on their TiVos. Some users are actually working on web-based interfaces to the TiVo recording functions, allowing you to connect to your TiVo from anywhere on the Internet (assuming you've got a full-time connection at home) and make changes to your TiVo.
• TiVo's user-interface is extremely efficient and intuitive. Every direct comparison I've ever seen with Replay indicates that Replay's interface is clunkier, although that may have changed in recent ReplayTV software revs.
• TiVo allows much finer control of program selection, even going so far as to allow you to specify conflict resolution between overlapping shows for which you have Season Passes. Season Passes are vastly superior to Replay's method for recording your favorite shows every week, although once again, this may have improved in recent ReplayTV updates.
• TiVo allows users to determine when programs can be deleted, by specifying "save until I manually delete" or by giving a specific date when programs are safe to delete. The last I heard, Replay's space-management scheme was much clunkier.
• TiVo has the "To Do List" which is indispensible. Users can view upcoming programs which will be recorded and manually cancel or reschedule recordings. TiVo also has the "View upcoming episodes" feature which allows you to easily find another showing of a program. The To Do List also allows you to see Season Pass programs that will not be recorded and the reason why.
• TiVo offers suggestions. Some people find this feature annoying, but I love it. I give three thumbs up to programs I really like but don't want to create season passes for (such as Simpsons reruns). Whenever there's available space and nothing else is scheduled to record opposite, TiVo's suggestions mechanism will record those shows for you. In addition, TiVo will scout for shows it thinks you may like based on your Thumbs preferences. Occasionally, TiVo will find stuff you like a lot but would never have found on your own.

Overall, TiVo's ability to allow you fine-grain control over what you will or won't record, its superior management of disk space and its superior hackability all add up to compelling arguments for most people in the /. crowd.

Oh, one other thing. If you decide you like ReplayTV better for whatever reason, be sure to not buy the Panasonic ShowStopper models. Panasonic botched the implementation of Macrovision on their boxes. TiVo strips Macrovision, tags the show with a Macrovision bit and then reapplies Macrovision on playback. Panasonic ReplayTV units just flat out won't record anything with Macrovision.

Why not cook your own?

[rakerman]

Features of TiVo:

1. PVR - record TV to hard drive, pause live TV etc.
2. basic local programming guide
3. advanced local programming guide (recommendations, sophisticated search etc.)
4. modular component fits well into home AV system

Anti-Features of TiVo:

1. monthly fee
2. some tracking of user activity

A point about computers - we all have different experiences and setups - I have a Mac as my main desktop, and a low-end PC as a multimedia machine that sits next to my television. So I never have to worry about running a PVR on my desktop computer.
So what I look for in a PVR is features 1 and 2. I don't care about 3 and 4 and I don't want antifeatures 1 and 2.
For PVR, basically, again to my way of thinking, you need a PC with reasonable monitor, moderate CPU and memory requirements, because the sound card and video card will do all the compute intensive stuff (e.g. MPEG-2 encode/decode) in dedicated hardware. Then just pick a suitable sized hard drive and then "all" you need is:

1. find a way to get TV listings for your locality
2. find some PVR software (if it didn't already come with your video hardware)

There are many options for PVR software on Windows. There are also lots of ongoing project related to television listings and PVR functionality, particularly of course for Linux.
On the subject of standardized TV listing formats, the one I know of is XMLTV
http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~epa98/work/apps/xmltv/
there are lots of TV guides to scrape information from e.g.
UK TV guide http://www.tvtv.co.uk/ German TV guide http://www.tvtv.de/
As for PVR and related projects, here is a list from my bookmarks
Mac TV Reminder http://members.home.nl/vissering/Shareware.html#TV rm
Mac BTV http://www.btv.org.uk/
WinVCR http://www.cinax.com/Products/winvcr.html
LinuxVCR http://hyvatti.iki.fi/~jaakko/linuxvcr.html
LinuxTV http://linuxtv.org/
LinuxVDR (video disk recorder) http://www.cadsoft.de/people/kls/vdr/download.htm
Kvdr http://www.s.netic.de/gfiala/
Hauppage WinTV-PVR http://www.hauppauge.com/html/wintvpvr_datasheet.h tm
ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon http://www.ati.com/na/pages/products/pc/aiw_radeon /
preview article about Bell Expressvu Canada's PVR service http://www.cedmagazine.com/ced/2001/0401/04e.htm
I can assemble a web page on these topics, if there is interest.

ReplayTV attitude

[crow]

If you've been following the press, you'll see a distinct difference in attitude between TiVo and ReplayTV corporate marketing. TiVo seems to be working carefully to avoid upsetting the TV networks. When ReplayTV came out with a 30-second skip button for avoiding commercials and TV networks complained, TiVo said they would never include such a feature. Now the new generation of Replay boxes goes even further and will automatically skip commercials on playback. And taking it a step further, Replay 4000 units will even let you send shows to other boxes over the Internet (granted, they limit the number of copies you can make to keep from getting sued, and they probably also encrypt the MPEG files for the same reasons).

So while TiVo got a big boost from the open source world because they used Linux instead of a proprietary OS, I think ReplayTV is more in touch with the attitude of the community.