Welcome to a new life as a couch potato...
Written: Feb 17 '01
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Pros: Ease of use, it WILL change your television viewing experience
Cons: Too...much...TV...to...watch!!!
The Bottom Line: Great product, great service, life-altering piece of technology. What are you waiting for?
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| antjenkins's Full Review: Panasonic PV-HS1000 (20.4 GB) 20-Hours Video Recor... |
Remember the change in your television habits when you got your first VCR? ReplayTV is a jump of the same magnitude. This device, for better or worse, has changed the way I watch television!
The Panasonic ShowStopper, based on the ReplayTV service has opened a new world of television. I never miss shows I want to watch, anymore. In fact, I can say that this is about the biggest problem I have with it. I now spend nearly every free moment catching up on shows I would never have worried about watching before owning this wonderful machine.
You set it up, and you let it go. Once you've told it which shows you want to watch and how badly you want to watch them, it will follow your instructions to the letter. Want to watch every episode of "Northern Exposure" that comes on during the week? There it is! Are you a big Bogart fan? Every movie with Humphrey showing that week is there waiting for you on Saturday night! Are you a Jones for campy Sci-Fi flicks? "Forbidden Planet" quietly came and went at 3:00am last Tuesday, but you get to watch it Thursday after work, even though you never looked at the TV listings! Remember all those shows that come on at 5:00am that you didn't worry about with the VCR? They can be yours again...every day!
Of course, that's just the tip of the iceberg. You can pause live television, you can rewind it, and you can easily skip commercials. You can see what this week's X-Files is all about, and you can peruse all the Three Stooges you can stand to look at. Truly, I cannot easily express the value of this magical device in words. You may become so dependent on your ShowStopper that you'll begin to HATE watching television and even videos. Fast Forward and Rewind on the VCR is a nice feature, but they just don't quite cut it when you're used to Quick Skip and Instant Replay.
If you've already decided on buying a PVR (personal video recorder...the technical name for this class of electronics), but can't seem to choose between the Tivo and the ReplayTV units, I would whole-heartedly suggest that you weigh the features of each. Tivo will record programs based on your likes and dislikes without you doing so much as pressing a button, while ReplayTV units only record what you tell them to record. On the other hand, ReplayTV units let you adjust your recording times so you don't have to worry about losing the last five minutes of that movie on TCM, and even let you set up recording based on time and channel (just like a VCR) if you prefer to do so (though I can't imagine why you would). Tivo charges you $10 a month (or $200 for a lifetime subscription), while ReplayTV hardware costs about $200 more, but doesn't charge you for the service.
Probably the biggest plus ReplayTV has over Tivo units is the free MyReplayTV service ( http://www.myreplaytv.com ), which lets you control your unit from across the country via a web interface which sends your new commands to the unit during its nightly call to the ReplayTV service. You can do most anything you can do with the unit via the web. The only restriction, of course, is that it won't show up till the next day (so you can't record something that night).
The thing to remember is that this basically a computer, complete with a hard drive. You get just so much space, then things start getting overwritten (or don't record). You can guarantee recordings, but that actually reserves space, so you can't use it for other programs. This is what starts pushing you to watch more and more television. You've just GOT to catch up on all those episodes of Dark Angel and Star Trek Voyager, or you might miss one! Getting the units with the bigger hard drives will only exacerbate the problem. The laws of time and space require that eventually, you have to watch or lose the shows you've recorded. It wouldn't make much sense, otherwise.
I realize that everyone won't react the same as I have to this device. If you don't watch much TV, you'll either feel you haven't gotten your money's worth, or you'll slowly slip into the world of the couch potato. If you're sensible about it though, it can make you the happiest television viewing family in your neighborhood.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): $499
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Epinions.com ID:
antjenkins
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Member: Anthony Jenkins
Location: Nashville, TN
Reviews written: 17
Trusted by: 2 members
About Me:
Stay-At-Home Dad, "gadget geek".
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