ReplayTV User Considers Tivo HD

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Yeah, some might argue that... since it's correct.

ReplayTV seemed like a cool product, too bad this led to its demise.

Of course, with torrents and TTCB today, there's not much need for a feature like that on the TiVo itself.

 

But you would never recommend that anyone use torrents. I mean that's illeagal and we never do anything illeagal here.

 

I would question your assertion. If I pay HBO for their programming, missed a show on the tivo and downloaded it via bittorrent; I would gladly see them in court if they tried to prosecute me.

 

The superior playback navigation allows you to jump to various locations in the show very easily. You can jump minutes or hours forward/back relative to current position, or you can specify an absolute time in the playback to jump to.

Hive mentality isn't really X11. It is more s client/server access to remote units, for playback, scheduling, and deleting shows that enables something like DVArchive to come along and offer centralized scheduling of all your units from single interface. DVArchive ends up emailing you whenever there are unintended conflicts, ie the ones where there was no conflict when you scheduled, but after the network moved stuff around, a new conflict was generated. For TiVo you need to look at the recording status to see if these future unintended conflicts have popped up.

DVArchive also acts like a virtual replay unit which allows all downloaded shows to be streamed back to the physical replay units. Keep in mind Replay has true streaming, not the buffer copy playback that TiVo MRV uses. That means you never run into the problem of hitting the end of the show before it is done copying, because with Replay you have direct access to any point in the show from the first second of playback and anytime afterwards.

If you have the bandwidth on your network, the streaming is much nicer than buffer copy playback, but the latter is more flexible for crappy networks.

The true ideal "hive" implementation completely abstracts the tuners or physical units from the picture. You have a single recorded show guide that shows every show, regardless of where they were recorded. Playback of local or remote shows is completely transparent and all functions are possible at any time. Also a unified recording guide (season pass) is created with the system optimizing the scheduling on the various units to minimize conflicts. Adding a new unit to the system just means more tuners are available. The user still interacts with the system exactly the same.

"Hive" jargon came from the borgs popularized in the newer Star Trek series. Seven of Nine was the most famous "Borg". Every borg knew what each other were thinking and doing at any point in time. There was only one conscious and everyone subscribed.

 

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The feature of downloading videos was only a small part of the picture. When Replay initially added that feature, it was hardly used because it was annoying to locate the show and episode.

Poopli came around and automatically indexed everyones recorded shows and that created a very nice master database where you could select shows you missed and have them show up in your now playing guide in a few hours or the next day. Once everything was set up, all you really needed to do was select "accept show" and it would show up ready to playback, even simpler than amazon unbox.

 

As a ReplayTV user since 2002, and Tivo S3 user since Sept 06, I can say that both have their plusses and minuses.

I still have my 3 lifetime ReplayTVs going and use them a lot in my bedroom (still have a 27"CRT TV). Down-REZZED HD looks superb on my Sony WEGA.. probably as good as Standard Definiton ever will.

I love the HD recording capability of the S3, and will be getting a TivoHD for my bedroom whenever I get around to getting an LCD HDTV in the bedroom.. But at this time, it just doesn't make sense.

Even after I get my new TV and TivoHD, I think I'll keep at least one to two of my Replay's around short term. Long term? Who knows...

Both are great devices and are miles ahead of cable co' DVRs.

 

It would be an interesting case but I think you'd lose. You pay HBO for the right to view and make personal use of the programming they transmit. That doesn't convey any other rights to the programming they transmit. By that logic if I subscribe to XM radio I could legally download any song they've broadcast since I've been a subscriber.

 

And that's what got Replay/Sonic Blue in legal trouble.

That's subjective. As a Panasonic Showstopper user, I prefered the overlay approach only slightly above the TiVo menus.

If I'm not mistaken, DVArchive was a third party program that identified the pc it was installed on to networked Replays as another Replay and was able to to use the Replay MRV functions that way.
It wasn't part of the Replay core functionality.

Yes, but TiVo's MRV is almost as good.

I don't understand this as I found TiVo's search functions to be better than Replay's.
And I don't understand the need for a full keyboard. It's a "would be nice" kind of thing but since people quite successfully text on cell phone T9 keypads, I think it shows that the QWERTY keyboard is not the end all, be all.
(And I say this as a QWERTY keyboard Blackberry user)

And I never had to manage my TiVos anywhere near as much as my Replay.
Replay was incredibly late to the game with even a basic To Do list.
I found the lack of one rather annoying and disliked playing "Guess if this will record" with it so when the Showstopper power supply fritzed out, it didn't bother me that much.

Yeah, and that's what got Shawn Fanning and Napster in heaps of trouble.

I do think that there's a few lessons that TiVo could still learn from Replay, primarily in multi-unit cooperative scheduling.

You can still buy the Replay software and load it on a PC though.
http://www.replaytv.com/

 

You just have to come to terms that there will never be something with the full feature set of ReplayTV + 3rd party addons capable of recording full cable lineup in digital form. As mentioned you can keep your RTVs and get an S3 or THD. You will probably find after you use Tivo for a while (and the vast picture improvement of recording everything in native digital form) you will hardly ever use your RTVs - I still have 3 lifetime RTVs that get almost zero use from me. They are still useful once in a while to me mostly for their Zones Season & Series premiere channels (to automatically identify and record all season and series premieres, yet another feature standalone Tivos don't have), but other than that I will not go back to degraded picture quality.

 

Actually the studios decided to settle with Replay and allow the functionality to exist in older units and Replay decided to remove the feature in newer units. This was a compromise on both sides because the studios actually didn't want to take the risk of a court decision because Replay's implementation put limits on the number of transfers thus allowing the position that it was intended for sharing like sending a video tape to a friend vs unlimited mass distribution like Napster.

If the court decision went the way of Replay, it would have opened a can of worms for the studios. On the flip side, Replay could remove the feature from newer units, not annoy their existing users who bought the unit because of the features, and get on with life.

Knowing the studio's pit bull litigious nature, if they had a very strong case, they would have pushed for the feature to be banned on all units. They don't really care about the cost of law suits as they treat is as marketing expenses to discourage any content sharing where they don't get a cut.

Replay/DNNA got out of the hardware business because they felt that category would be dominated by MSO provided STBs, not because of the show sharing and commercial advance law suits.

 

This is one of the main things that annoyed me when I first got my Tivos. I was so used to hitting "exit" and returning to what I was previously watching, be it live or recorded. There is no quick way to do this on a Tivo. In fact, it seems like almost everything requires more button presses on a Tivo. That being said, you'll have to pry my S3's from my cold, dead hands.

 

If you pretend "Exit" is actually NowPlaying->Play->Play it will annoy you less. Doesn't always work the same as a real "Exit", but it at least gets the show you were playing back started again with fewest button strokes (can be implemented as slow macro also)

 

What's really annoying to me with Tivo is if you accidently exit play towards the end of a show Tivo automatically assumes you are done viewing it and resets the location marker so you not only have to cancel the "delete show" prompt but you have to play from start and skip all the way to the end of the show again to finish playback.

 

I have no doubt that you have not used the Tivo guide in years, because it absolutely sucks and is nearly impossible to use for anything but seeing what is playing at this very moment.

I do get the idea behind Tivo, I get it. I use the season passes of course, I search for stuff, I have suggestions enabled and I use thumbs up/down etc.

My point is shouldn't this thing at least do basic functions like guide navigation at least as good as other systems? People say that the Tivos not about that, I personally think that is just an excuse. The Tivos guide and navigation doesn't suck because of a principled decision to rely on search and other features. It sucks because of complacency and the drive to add new Internet features that help differentiate the Tivo from Cable DVR's.

I’m a DVR geek. I use whatever works the best at the moment. Having been a user of many other systems, I think I have some perspective that others may not. I waited awhile after starting to use my Tivo before commenting to see how things would shake out. With some time under my belt now I can say that this thing is harder to use in many ways than other systems and not just the guide. The Tivo is far less intuitive than other systems as well.

Its really a mixed bag for me. If you want HD from cable its Tivo or the cable companies DVR. That’s a no brainer, Tivo wins hands down. It just works great for the act of recording TV.

Getting back to your example, from the business end, getting the TV recorded, Tivo is the revolver. From the user interface side all around, no doubt Tivo is the tomahawk. Need proof, just look at how people defend the Tivo zealously and resist even the discussion that there may be a better way. Personally I think its people like me with some perspective that are bringing the "revolvers" to the Tivo community. Who is being the “brave” in this conversation? (edit.. that has to be the weirdest paragraph I've ever written)

 

Quote:
Originally Posted by gweempose
4) Superior navigation during playback


Can you expand on this? Superior how?j
Unquote

Replay allowed you to not only move a specified number of minutes forward or backward, but also to any specific point instantly. This is a feature I miss. The tick marks help, but it's still hard to skip back ... say 8 minutes.

 

You've got to be kidding me!!!!
I used Replay for the past many years and I always complained about having to wear out my down button (Ch- button) getting to shows starting with "The".

Now that I'm hardly using the replay I find this out. I am completely chagrined here. DOH! How'd I go so many years without figuring out this little gem?

Makes me wonder if there's anything I'm missing on the Tivo.

BTW, I'll never go back now. the Tivo is just too good. Once my satellite subscription runs out in December I don't think the Replay will ever be used again.

 

We are transitioning away from our ReplayTVs also. We have 3 lifetime units and 1 monthly. I replaced 2 lifetimes and the 1 monthly last week with TivoHDs. We used Tivo years ago with DirecTV and DirecTivo units and have always liked Tivo. However, once we stopped using DirecTV, we moved to Replay and have been quite happy with them over the past 4 years due to many of the reasons mentioned here (in-show navigation, DVArchive, easy upgradeability).

However, as our TVs have been replaced with HDTVs we have come to really enjoy HD. For the past year, we used the Comcast HD DVRs, but between having to have a digital package that had alot of channels we don't watch and the less than stellar performance of the HD DVRs, we returned them, downgraded to the Family Tier and are happy with the local HDs,TBS HD and the other SD channels included.

For now, we are going to hold on to 1 lifetime ReplayTV but that may also be shortlived. The main reason was to be able to access our DVArchive repository of shows. But over the weekend, I installed pyTivo, pointed it to the DVA folders and now can access all the shows from our Tivos. So the days for our final RTV may be numbered.

Like most things, there will be compromises but after weighing everything, Tivo's current offerings and Replay's lack of improvement to their offerings, put Tivo in the win box for us.

 

It has been determined in the mp3.com case that one is essentially only entitled to a copy of content that comes from the original copy one has, in the case of a cable or broadcast program, it has to be recorded from ones own cable or satellite service they are subscribed to, or by the OTA antenna on ones home using equipment in their home.

Any outside "copy" is you obtain is considered a separate license, and if the source of that "copy" doesn't have the license to distribute that, and/or doesn't pay HBO for the second "copy", then it is piracy.

In short, even though you may receive a particular channel, that does not necessarily entitle you to download a copy of a program from any old place.

 

I'm a longtime ReplayTV user that just switched back to Tivo. Previously had UltimateTV for DirecTV as well as DirecTivo's. Also tried Windows MCE as well as BeyondTV before the ReplayTV.

At first when I got my new TivoHD, I felt that the Tivo was missing many features that the ReplayTV had for years. But after figuring out how to use some of the built-in features, I have to admit it takes a little time to get used to, but there are definitely more options available.

One thing that still annoys me about Tivo is that when viewing the program guide, it doesn't indicate what shows are currently scheduled to be recorded. That is such a basic feature. Every DVR I've used has this feature. Why can't Tivo add it?

 

You can set up Wishlists for that, and there is a GuruGuide for season premieres.