ReplayTV 2020 Personal Video Recorder

  a totally awesome device

you just owe it to yourself to get one before or for Christmas.

here's what the programming screen looks like.

Features:

• Stores up to 20 hours of recorded programming
• Pauses live broadcasts and resumes play without gaps
• Instant Replay plays back last 7 seconds of a program
• Accommodates DSS receivers, VCRs, and other AV components
• Newly designed, advanced remote control

For those unfamiliar with the concept of television servers, ReplayTV records television programs digitally and stores the information on a hard drive, much like a computer. Similar to using a VCR, you can record your favorite show while you're away from home, store it on the 2020's hard drive, and watch it later. However, unlike VCRs, the personal TV server has no moving parts and requires no tapes to store programming.

We like to think of ReplayTV as a "delayed reaction recording device." One of the coolest features on the personal television server is the ability to pause a live broadcast and resume watching it if you're interrupted. When you use this feature, ReplayTV acts as a time buffer. For example, while recording a football game, you may need to pause the game to take a phone call for 10 minutes. After the call, you hit Play on the remote, and ReplayTV resumes the program where you left off. If the time warp is too weird for you, don't fret--you can resume watching the game in real time simply by fast-forwarding. When the time delay catches up with the live show, ReplayTV automatically stops and resumes recording at that point.

An Instant Replay button on the remote allows you to review a live TV event at any time--great for NFL football broadcasts. You have to be quick, however, because the Instant Replay only skips back seven seconds. When you use this feature, ReplayTV picks up the broadcast where you left off.

ReplayTV also allows you to personalize programming for a specific theme. For example, you can set ReplayTV to monitor TV listings for any program featuring actor Clint Eastwood and to automatically record such shows.

We loved ReplayTV's QuickSkip feature, which allows you to eliminate TV commercials on programs that you have already recorded. QuickSkip is so easy to use that it's causing a bit of an uproar in the television industry, which fears that the feature will cut into its vital ad revenue.

It's important to point out that the actual amount of the Replay 2020's storage space depends on the recording quality that you select. A higher quality picture will take up more storage space than a lower quality recording. At the lowest setting, the picture quality is still better than a standard VHS videocassette recorder. At the middle setting, the picture quality is better than an S-VHS VCR, but storage capacity decreases by approximately 40 percent. So if you leave the 2020 at the middle setting, you can expect approximately 12 hours of storage space. The highest-quality setting approaches 500 lines of resolution, but further reduces storage capacity to about six hours of recording time. We recommend using the High Record Quality setting for movies and the middle level for sporting events, sitcoms, and other programs, then erasing the content immediately after watching it. If you wish to save a particular prerecorded show, you can record it on to a VCR using the back-panel outputs. We were impressed by ReplayTV's inclusion of two sets of audio-video inputs and outputs, as well an S-Video input and output. This enables users to hook up a DSS or other direct-broadcast satellite receiver to the 2020, along with a VCR or S-VHS deck as an output device.

One drawback to the ReplayTV concept is that it does not yet allow you to record a live program while watching a live program on another channel. Unless you choose to directly view programming from a second video source, you won't be able to change the channel during recording.

In order to download Replay Networks' free TV programming guide, you need to have either an open phone jack or purchase a wireless phone transmitter/receiver kit. If you're already subscribed to DSS or another direct-broadcast satellite service, you can use a splitter to connect your Replay system to the phone line. If you opt to use a wireless transmitter, Replay recommends a high-quality model with a data transmission rate of at least 33.6 kilobits per second. Using the wireless option, you simply place the transmitter next to your phone and the receiver next to the Replay box. However, there are limitations with wireless transmitters, so you'll want to keep the distance between the transmitter and receiver as short as possible.

The first time you tap into the ReplayTV network via your phone line, you need to provide some information so the service can customize the programming guide to your viewing preferences. It typically takes between 40 and 60 minutes for the initial download and only a few minutes each night thereafter for Replay to refresh the TV programming data.

A major advantage to ReplayTV is that it doesn't charge additional service fees after you make your initial purchase. This is not the case with some other digital video recorders, which offer similar programming-guide services for a monthly or annual fee.