thanks for your quick replys you guys.

The new Series 2 Tivos you can watch a show live while you are recording. On the old Tivos you had to have 2 antennae to watch a live show and to record one.

ReplayTV is in financial trouble. I wouldn't buy a lifetime sub from them simply because I don't know how long they can make it.

Actually, I believe they were just bought out as stated on page 1.

Ok, I'm going to adress a few different posts in turn...

1) Red Dog, interestingly enough the 5xxx series do not have the TV/DVR toggle feature you mentioned. However, it does pass through the coaxial input (i.e. it has a coaxial output too), so you can accomplish about the same thing by turning the ReplayTV off. It will still record while off, and you can switch your TV to the coaxial input to watch a second show on whatever channel you want. No splitter required.

2) Deftones, I don't know how Tivo Series 2 lets you watch one thing live while recording another (I suspect its a pass through type solution as above), but I want to be clear that standalone Tivos (i.e. not DirecTivos) absolutely do not have dual tuners (neither do ReplayTVs).

3) BJacks, as other posters pointed out, ReplayTV (and Rio--think about that re: future integration) are now owned by the Japanese holding firm D&M, makers of such brands as Denon and Marantz. These are well-respected names in home audio/video. Under this new ownership, ReplayTV is actually in *better* financial shape than Tivo.

4) Last but not least, D&M currently has a fantastic deal going on factory reconditioned ReplayTV 5040's. The price is $329, and this includes LIFETIME ACTIVATION. Normally, a new 5040 costs ~$250 (before currently available $100 rebates---the rebates aren't valid with these refurb units though), and lifetime activation will cost $300 as of June 1st (previously was $250). This is a great deal, as you will be getting a lifetime unit for basically $29. These units have been certified by ReplayTV and likely as not already come with the new 5.0 software on them. Many people have jumped on this deal already, so if you're interested I'd get in ASAP. Here is the URL: http://www.sonicblue.com/shop/_templ...del=196&cat=22

Yeah - I just got an e-mail from Replay today about the transition to D&M re: rebates. I bought my 4508 back in February from Costco. Got my $50 Costco rebate already but I was waiting on my $50 rebate from SB. D&M said that the outstanding rebates would be sent out by June.

Wow. That is a great deal. If I didn't already have 2, I'd jump on it.

That is one helluva deal!! I'd really like to order it....

but since I have Direct TV, would I be wasting my money? Should I just plan on getting the D-Tivo?

Update: I've put more info about the current deal in the Hot Deals forum, including a way to bring the price down to $284. See
http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthr...hreadid=294501

kramdenfan,
I don't think you would be wasting your money at all, but DirecTivo is certainly very attractive for DirecTV-only use since it simply stores the digital streams from the satellites natively (i.e. they are already MPEG, so no encoding is required unlike standalones). This has the benefit of no quality loss from an analog to digital conversion and also allows you to record two things at once.

However, note that DirecTivo has no tuner; so if you ever want to record off of cable or over-the-air broadcast, you will be out of luck with it. It also lacks some of the nicer features of ReplayTV such as Commercial Advance and LAN sharing. I don't have DirecTV myself so I don't know what to tell you, but I'm sure there are people happily using standalones of either brand with DirecTV.

I'm using a standalone TiVo with Dish Network and it works well. I use medium quality on my recordings with VBR enabled and they are decent. For shows I want to get the best out of I record on my Dishplayer, because like DirecTiVo, it doesn't recompress for storage.. it just simply writes the native mpeg2 to the harddrive. We do most of our run-of-the-mill TV watching from tivo since it is superior in smartness to the Dishplayer.

I ended up ordering the Replay TV 5040- from that great deal that JM posted about... My main driving factor was #1- the price, #2- I can record off my local antenna and D-TV, #3- the lifetime subscription.

So we'll see- I'm anxiously awaiting the "shipped" e-mail!!

Bought a ReplayTV 5040 yesterday at Best Buy (between the rebates, the coupon and the Best Buy gift card that defrayed some of the cost, it was almost as good as the SonicBlue deal mentioned earlier).

And I love it. It's easy to set up, easier to use, and simple to integrate into my existing setup (FYI, digital cable). I haven't even begun to play with all the features yet, but it's a whole new world out there.

Thanks to everyone for all their great advice in this thread!

You don't need the Turbonet card, and the associated opening of the box and voiding the warranty. Many USB ethernet cards will work just fine. Also, with the latest software update, you can select the network option, rather than using the #401 workaround.

I was under the impression he had an older Tivo like myself... being he wanted to upgrade. Those of us with older series 1 TiVo's do not have USB ports. Turbonet is the only option for us if you want your Tivo to abandon the phone line entirely. TiVo series 2 is less hackable (no video extraction, telnet, ftp.. I don't think).

I own a Replay TV, and here's a feature I like which hasn't been mentioned yet. (I do not believe Tivo can do all of this, but somebody correct me if I'm wrong.)

You can pretty much navigate to any point in a recorded show almost instantly. For instance, press 5-4-jump on your remote control, and the program jumps to the 54th minute of the show. Press skip and the program leaps forward by 30 seconds. Press 3-skip, and the program leaps forward by 3 minutes. Press repeat and the program jumps backward by 7 seconds. Press 3-repeat, and the program jumps backwards by 3 minutes. Very nice.

Also, when I originally bought my Replay TV, it was the only PVR that could do a search for anything you specify in your eight day channel guide. For instance, if I wanted to know all of the shows with Heidi Klum in them, it would tell me, and I could even program it to record any show with Heidi Klum. I haven't been keeping up with software upgrades for Tivo, however, so it may now be able to do that as well.

I have an Series 1 Tivo and it's setup to get updates over the net, but I didn't hook up a turbonet card. The Series 1 has a serial port on the back that I plugged into the back of my PC. So now my Tivo connects to the net via my PC and it's cable modem. It works flawlessly and I didn't have to void a warranty to do it.

D

Not sure how long it's been around, but Tivo wishlists take care of this just fine (and they have a 14-day channel guide).

I had forgotten about that. So yeah.. a couple ways for the series 1 to download guide data from the net instead of dialup...

Yes, I have the old one, but I've never been able to get the serial connection working, even after trying all the stuff listed on the Tivo Community forum.

FWIW, newer ReplayTV models including the 5xxx series have longer channel guides than the older models. I'm showing 12 days on my 5040 right now.

Anybody get the impression this is turning into a "my TiVo can beat up your Replay" and "oh, yeah?" kind of thread?

Derrich,
Do you have a link/page with how to set up TiVo to use the serial port instead of the telephone line? My wireless modem jack decided to stop working so now I'm looking for alternate methods. Thanks.

I'm under the impression a Turbonet card would be easier. If your TiVo version is 3.00, then you can simply slap in a Turbonet card (drivers are already on the TiVo in 3.) and then change the dialing prefix to ,#401. Of course opening the TiVo voids the warranty. There's also something called AirTivo if you want wireless ethernet for the guide downloads. took no more than 5 minutes for me to crack open my tivo, slap in the card, plug it into my home network and change the dialing prefix. Done.

BenCJedi,
Thanks for the info. I went home and tried plugging the wireless modem jack into another socket and lo and behold, the damn thing worked. I guess I had too much stuff going from the one socket. I think I'll leave it alone until it completely craps out Then I'll be forced to use airTiVo or Turbonet.

Slighty off-topic:

Last night, Screen Savers had a review of a new program called SnapStream. Anybody use this? If you hook up cable or satellite, it will work like a TiVo/Replay and can record stuff to your harddrive. You can access the program through the web to set-up programs. And, of course, you have the stuff right on your computer to do whatever you feel like with.

Anybody have any experience with this? I believe 3.0 comes out tomorrow?

The big question I have: if you use DirecTV with a serial connection, where does the connection attach to your computer? Any old serial port?

I used to use snapstream (albeit a couple of versions ago) before switching to TiVo. It was useful as a program to record programs and have them already transferred directly onto my PC (if I wanted to transfer them to DVD/VCD). The only thing I didn't like was that it couldn't check for conflicting recordings as TiVo could. I'm not sure about the latest versions, but that was my biggest qualm at the time. It did a nice job with the interface and recording/watching programs though. Give it a try (I'm pretty sure they have a 30 trial period). If you like it, keep it, if not, you haven't lost anything. I think TiVo also is offering some sort of trial period too. Give them both a try and see which you like better.

As for serial to PC connections, I'm not sure if you need anything special to connect your box to your PC, but you can check at this place...
http://www.garysargent.co.uk/tivo/hacking.htm