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Introduction:
I am biased towards the TiVo and I do not own a ReplayTV unit at this time. This page is to explain why I went with TiVo instead of ReplayTV. I wanted to get that out of the way right at the start so that people do not think this is a comparison review. I suggest you check out Eric Lund's or Stephen Tu's reviews if that is what you are interested in, I found both to be very helpful. The Bottom Line: I do not think it is possible to pick the "wrong" personal video recorder. The ReplayTV and TiVo units are both great and I think that it would be easy to love either unit. The basic features common to both units are enough to greatly enhance anyones TV viewing experiance. I can think of great reasons to own either unit. I decided to go with TiVo because it has a few features that I was very interested in and the online community for TiVo is simply outstanding. While I was trying to decide which unit to go with I saw someone post a problem on the AV Science TiVo forum. It was a legitimate problem with the guys unit and I watched as the people from TiVo lept into action and really bent over backwards to help him out. I always expect that kind of service, but it is pretty rare these days so I was impressed. I am a TV nut, I have always enjoyed TV and put a little too much emphisis on it's importantace. I used to schedule everything around TV. I have always been a little paranoid about missing the shows I really cared about and like to know for sure if it will be recorded or not. TiVo has a handy "To Do" list that shows exactly what will and will not be recorded. This feature has come in handy in many instances where shows were rescheduled so that two programs end up conflicting. Using the To Do list I can figure out exactly what TiVo is planning to record and correct things if nessisary. Replay does not have this feature and that weighed heavily on my decision. I am particularly happy to learn about the "season pass prioritizer" feature due in the 2.0 release of the TiVo software. That will allow me to set the priorities so that I will never miss another episode of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer again. :) Replay TV almost got me with the 30 second skip button used to blast through commercials. I really wanted this feature and it was almost a deal breaker. TiVo has "overshoot correction" and a much faster fast forward speed to make up for it. The overshoot correction is nice, it rewinds a litle bit after you stop fast forwarding to adjust for your reaction time. My only problem with that is that I react too fast and rewind back into the commercials. I am slowwly getting the hang of it and am glad it is there. I can come up with all kinds of reasons why the overshoot correction is great, but when you come down to it I would still rather have the comercial skip so I think Replay TV has a winner here. TiVo has the ability to schedule manual recordings in a method similar to a VCR where you specifiy the time, date, channel, and how long to record. This is in my opinion a required feature for a number of reasons. If a sporting event goes into overtime the recording will be cut off before the end of the game. TiVo and Replay record the "scheduled" time block for the game and would miss anything that went over the allotted time. You can use manual recordings to record the game and some padding to cover this case. Manual recordings are also very handy when you have a show that comes on many times a day, if you use a manual recording you can arrange it so you only get one copy of the show. I use this for "The Daily Show with John Stewart" on comedy central. Replay does not have this feature and that was a major blow to them in my mind. I think I heard something about them adding this support in the future so with any luck this will not always be a probem. When I was deciding which unit to buy I also took into consideration the future that these companies had. I did not want to buy the hardware and have the service go out of business making my machine useless. I felt that TiVo had a better chance of survival. Some really impressive companies have invested in both companies, but TiVo seemed more TV network friendly. There was a real concern that the networks were going to try and sue both companies out of existance. The 30 second skip made Replay a bigger target so I was more concerned about them. I don't think this is really an issue any more, but it did contribute to my thought process. There you have it, I pretty much went with TiVo because I was impressed by their service, online communitiy, and feature set. The decision was a difficult one but I think I made the correct choice for me. Go back to the TiVo main page. |