I am seriously considering getting one of these neat little gadgets, but I went to Sears today(10% Off Day) and got all confused. So confused, that I couldn't even pick one, and just went home.

What advantages does TiVo have over ReplayTV? Or does Replay TV have the advantage over TiVo?
(I realized that the TiVo has a $200 one time fee/9.95 month for service.)

Can anyone shed some light on this for me?

Be careful Mr. Bleeding Edge
I am waiting for the price to drop in the 60 hour TiVo personally. I don't know how I feel about the monthly charge though. Thoughts anyone?

There are both Replay and TiVo forums there.

AVS Forum

Personally I would go with TiVo. I did a lot of research before deciding and chose TiVo.

You may want to think about an UltimateTv.

Ultimate TV? ReplayTV? Tivo?

WTF....what ever happened to easy choices....

And then, to make my life even more confused....I saw 4 different TiVo boxes at Best Buy this morning.

x2

Ultimate TV only works with Direct TV satellite, whereas TiVO and Replay will work with OTA, cable, Direct TV satellite and Dish Network satellite.

Ultimate TV only had a $9.99/month option whereas TiVo has a $9.99/month and $200 life time option and Replay TV includes a life time subscription within the price.

I like the no extra cost thing with my replaytv... Also like the 30 sec skip button to blast through commercials.

ReplayTV has pretty nifty web interface where you program it over the web. The only drawback is that your machine will only pick up the changes when it dials out again that night.

the quickskip feature is probably my favorite and most often used function on my replaytv.

I went to a group survey test for Reply VS. Tivo that paid participants for their opinions on both... and Replay won by a long run. There were even experts doing the survey on both units and all 35 of the experts voted for replay, namely the orginal replay not any other name brands like panasonic replay, etc. since they record virtually everything without macro-vision blockage. I've had both & replay is much, much better. As mentioned above, AVS forums will give you info on this as well. Also, Tivo has a monthly fee... replay is free. So your replay will pay for itself after a while if you consider the savings each & every month.

Replay is out of the hardware business abd is now following the same business model as TiVo. They are licencing the hardware to other company's although Panasonic is the only one making them right now and their's suffer from the macrovision problem.


Replay is NOT free. The 30 hour model costs $200 more then the corressponding TiVo although the 60 hour is $100 cheaper then the 60 hour TiVo. The point being that Replay includes the $200 lifetime charge in it's price. TiVo on the other hand does not charges $200 less for it's 30 hour model and also offers a 20 hour model. TiVo then gives you a choice of paying a lifetime charge of $200 or a monthly charge of 9.99.

Also there are approximately 150,000 TiVo's out there as opposed to less then 50,000 Replay's...I think that gives you an indication of what most prefer. After doing a lot of research I decided the TiVo was a much better product.

I do agree visiting the AVS forums will give you a better perspective of both products.

Buy.com is selling the 60-hour ReplayTv unit for $499.99. With no monthly fee, this is by far the best deal.

I keep seeing 20 & 30 hour Tivo's advertised for 299.99 (plus the $200 subscription fee). Pay the same price and get half as much recording time.

I bought a 60-hour Replay Unit in December and I love it.

It is so nice never having to worry about running out of space. I enjoy recording movies that aren't available on DVD from different movie channels like IFC & TCM and watching them at my leisure.

Just because Tivo is more prevelant does not mean anything. Many people simply see the Tivo commercials which I have seen much more than a Replay commercial, which I have not seen much of... and assume that its the best due to their marketing of the unit.

In any case, as I've said, I attended this survey and ALL 35 of the top experts for both units clearly said Replay is by far the better choice of the two.

If youre curious about Digital Video Recorder technology, check out DVRtalk.com . Its like DVDtalk except it strictly focuses on DVR technology -- Tivo, ReplayTV and Microsoft's new UltimateTV.


Jason Perlow
Site Manager, DVRtalk.com

Just as an FYI, there is a news report up at foxnews.com about Tivo. Apparently they have been gathering extremely detailed information about their customers viewing and remote usage habits (right down to which buttons you press, and how often), and they are selling this information to anyone who wants to pay them for it. They claim that they are not currently selling any personal details, only "ZIP code level data", but they also state that they could sell specific user information if they wanted to.

I think that may be something potential Tivo buyers should seriously consider before making any purchase.

Also, there is the fact that Tivo can be "hacked" to add a second hard-drive with tons of space for less money than "upgrading" the unit.

However, I have heard recent rumors that Tivo gathers user information and sells it to third parties -- in other words they spy on and sell out their customers.

Replay is easily "hackable" as well. I don't know about it, but many people at the survey mentioned this