Receiver Network Capability

ReplayTV RTV5504 40-Hour Digital Video Recorder

Amazon Sales Rank: #64011 in Receiver or Amplifier Size: 40-Hour Brand: Replay Tv Dimensions: 3.00" h x 16.88" w x 14.00" l, 12.00 pounds ReplayTV service subscription is either a $12.95 monthly fee or $299.99 one-time lifetime fee 40-hour personal video recorder with theme record for capturing programs based on keywords or themes Built-in home networking capabilities via Ethernet; no extra costs to network Pause live-action TV shows, jump back 7 seconds for instant replay, enjoy high-quality slow-motion and fast forward effects Send programs between ReplayTV units in your home; blaze past annoying ads in 30-second increments with QuickSkip

Amazon.com Hands-On Review You've heard the hype, but just how well does ReplayTV actually work? We tried the RTV5504 ourselves just to find out, and its performance was better than we'd imagined. It's great to be able to pause and replay live television. Even better: apart from gotta-watch-it news and sports, "live TV" is something ReplayTV users no longer have to think about. The RTV5504 puts all that's good in the TV universe at your beck and call, recording and storing content from TV, satellite, antenna, or external sources like DTV receivers and camcorders on its spacious, 40 GB hard drive. While watching either live or recorded TV you can freeze an image, advance frame-by-frame, watch in slow motion, or view at 2x to 20x normal speed. What's more, the RTV5504 is home-network-capable, letting you hook it up with additional 5500 Series recorders for multi-room convenience and/or link it to your PC for viewing custom slide shows of your digital photos. Not a cable or satellite user? Not to worry--there's an RF antenna input on the rear panel, just like on your TV. Just understand that the quality of your recordings can never surpass the quality of your reception. If you're using a satellite receiver, a supplied IR blaster will correctly configure the receiver to feed the ReplayTV recorder your desired programs at the correct times. Some basics: 40 GB holds 14 to 40 hours of programming, depending on the quality setting you select (standard, medium, or high). Use of the unit requires ReplayTV service, to which you can subscribe on a monthly basis ($12.95) or pay up front for lifetime access ($299.99). The ReplayTV recorder requires regular scheduling updates via either standard analog phone line (RJ-11 cable provided) or broadband cable modem (router or access point and/or Ethernet cable not included). But once it's set up, using it and appreciating it couldn't be any easier. Before you record anything, ReplayTV delivers real-time, onscreen scheduling information for everything in your area, making paper guides unnecessary and taking all the guesswork out of channel surfing. The channel guide shows program names, program durations, and even offers short descriptions or summaries for each program. ReplayTV's best features all stem from its ability to capture shows you're interested in, either one by one, categorically (all shows of a given title or in a given time slot), or by theme (baseball, music videos, romantic comedies, action movies, documentaries, dance, you name it). You can also search by actor, director, title, or description, and set the unit to capture anything that fits your queries. ReplayZones let you browse all scheduling for the next two weeks by seven primary categories and countless subcats within each category, a terrific way to discover programs you'd never think to look for. You can set recordings to start early or end late or skip broadcasts on any day of the week, one of many options for settling the inevitable recording conflicts. If you walk into a live broadcast you decide you want to keep, you can schedule on the fly to save the remainder of that program. The recorder shines most brightly in active use: navigating, viewing, and managing (resume playback/keep/delete) recorded programming. The QuickSkip button is indispensable, bumping you a commercial-appropriate 30 seconds forward with each press. If you first enter a number, such as 15, QuickSkip will take you forward an equivalent number of minutes, making it easy to hunt for a specific section of a program. Another essential feature is the ability to watch a recorded program while another recording is in progress. And, by turning the unit off (the hard drive is always on, even if the power is ostensibly off), you can watch a live program on one channel via your TV tuner while ReplayTV records another program on a different channel. At a minimum, all quality settings are what we would call "watchable." In the "high" setting, picture and sound quality are both excellent, if still slightly inferior to the raw signal. (If your TV is HD-ready, using the unit's progressive-scan video outputs should result in an improvement, however.) Using the medium and standard settings greatly expands the recorder's storage capacity, which--trust us--you'll probably find yourself wanting a lot sooner than you think. Let's face it: a dip in audio/video quality is a small price to pay for the programming discoveries and incredible conveniences afforded by this device. --Michael Mikesell Pros: Lets you easily prioritize and manage the TV you want to watch Intuitive operation Can play one recorded program while capturing another Well-designed remote control Myriad options for choosing and discovering programs to record Extensive options for navigating recorded content quickly and easily Makes it easy to skip commercials Switches quickly between menus and programming Cons: Best-quality image (live or recorded) is slightly inferior to the source signal May require use of a video amplifier when feeding a cable signal directly to the unit What's in the Box One ReplayTV RTV5504 PVR, a remote control, remote batteries, a user's manual, an RF coaxial video cable, a composite-video/stereo analog audio interconnect, an IR blaster cable, a 9-to-15-pin adapter, an RJH-to-9-pin adapter, and an RJ-11 phone cable. The RTV5504 personal video recorder, or PVR, delivers the ability to pause and replay live TV while recording and storing 40 hours of digital, tapeless audio and video--about a season's worth of memory for four hour-long programs. Enjoy a broadband or phone-line connection to the ReplayTV service and convenient home networking through a built-in Ethernet port--there's no extra hardware required. Subscription to ReplayTV service is available either as a $12.95 monthly fee or a one-time lifetime fee of $299.99; a discounted $6.95 monthly fee is available for consumers with more than one active unit. ReplayTV's 5500 Series is the most powerful and flexible PVR yet. With the RTV5504 and the other models in the 5500 Series, ReplayTV has made major revisions, enhancing its feature base while removing certain contentious features found on previous models. ReplayTV's 5.0 software adds four powerful features: recording priority, which identifies recording conflicts and lets you decide which shows to record; network recording, which identifies conflicts and automatically assigns recordings to a home-networked ReplayTV with available hard-disk storage; pause and resume, which lets you pause a movie in the living room and finish watching it in the bedroom; and First-Run Recordings, which records only the new episodes and skips the repeats. A PVR makes it simple to record favorite shows without the complicated programming requirements of VCRs and without videotape hassles. A PVR frees you from fixed TV schedules so you can watch what you want, when you want. Because ReplayTV uses digital recording to store television and/or cable broadcasts on a hard drive as you're watching, you'll also be able to control live television. You can pause live TV to take a telephone call, rewind to see a scene again, use instant replay to jump back seven seconds, or watch a scene in slow-motion. Remote is well laid out and easy to read. ReplayTV connects nightly to the ReplayTV Service to download the latest channel-guide information. Use this intuitive guide and the main system menu to follow simple--and in many cases, one-button--prompts. A feature called theme record automatically records shows using keywords or themes that you supply. You can also search for programs by keyword, helping to discover programs you might not have known about otherwise. If you forget to program your receiver to record a show before you leave for vacation, no worries: you can access your ReplayTV over the Web and program it from anywhere using MyReplayTV. With multiple ReplayTV 5500-series models in a home connected via their built-in Ethernet ports, you can bounce programs around the house to different PVRs or to send digital photos between your PC and your ReplayTV units. And, like the 5000 Series, the 5500 Series still offers the option for broadband connectivity, which at this time consists of the future potential (via upgradeable firmware) to send non-copyrighted material across the Internet to other ReplayTV units and, possibly, to computers. The 5500 Series units network seamlessly with 5000 Series units. And while ReplayTV has removed the Send Show and Automatic Commercial Advance features, the 5500 Series retains the QuickSkip and high-speed fast-forward buttons, so you'll still have considerable flexibility in your playback viewing. At the touch of a button, QuickSkip hops through a recorded program in 30-second increments--great for news features you don't care to watch and, yes, for bypassing the less interesting commercials out there. The fast-forward button scans at up to 20 times normal speed. Built-in Ethernet port allows for convenient home networking. Other features include room-to-room streaming between networked ReplayTVs, a progressive-scan output (for seamless, flicker-free displays on high-definition and HD-ready TVs), an optical digital-audio output (for direct connection with a compatible AV receiver), parental control (including channel blocking), show organizer, manual record, show extender (which lets you manually extend the start or end times of a recording). What's in the Box One ReplayTV RTV5504 PVR, a remote control, remote batteries, a user's manual, a coaxial video cable, a composite-video/stereo analog audio interconnect, an IR blaster cable, a 9-to-15-pin adapter, an RJH-to-9-pin adapter, and an RJ-11 phone cable.

Most helpful customer reviews 159 of 166 people found the following review helpful. Tivo vs. Replay By Keith First of all, the DVR (digital video recorder) category is amazing. It is not just an incremental step up from a vcr -- these things make TV watching far more convenient. Start a show whenever you want, pause it, rewind live tv, etc etc. There are plenty of reviews on all of that, so just a word on choosing a Tivo or a Replay:I have 2 Replays and 1 Tivo now. On the whole, both are great and for the most part, they do exactly the same set of things. The only "important" feature that Replay has that Tivo does not is the ability to skip commercials automatically, which works most of the time and is very cool. The only major feature Tivo has that Replay doesn't is that it automatically records "similar" shows to ones you've chosen in the past to fill unused disk space -- also cool. Outside of these two, they are functionally very similar.The main differentiator I find is power vs. ease of use. Tivo is slightly easier to use -- our 5 year old is a pro at it. Replay requires a couple extra keystrokes, but is a bit more flexible, such as giving you more range on how many of each show to save to use your disk space, etc. If any of the above are decision makers for you (commercial skip, auto record, or ease of use vs. flexibility), then go with it. If not, the rest really is about the same so just shop on price.Enjoy -- they're both great. 24 of 26 people found the following review helpful. Get the better version. By A Customer This replay is good but you can still get the better (previous) version RTV5040 at www.replaytv.com.Get the "ReplayTV 5040 (Brand New Unit) with Lifetime Service Activation" for $399.50 after rebate and free shipping.The old RTV5040 version includes the Commercial Advance® and the ability to send program to friends via broadband. Both features have been removed from the newer RTV5504 version due to a lawsuit againt ReplayTV.Also the newer version has only three years of service included in the price. But if you buy the older RTV5040 version from the replayTV website, they include the Lifetime Service Activatio (a 250 dollar value).So the RTV5040 version is better and cheaper.Remember ReplayTV is better than Tivo! 12 of 12 people found the following review helpful. Great Product! By J. Baehr I bought this after much debate between the TiVo and ReplayTV about a year ago, and am very happy with my Replay. Although the TiVo is easier to understand for most people, this doesn't mean the Replay is difficult by any means. While visiting some family friends out of town, I told them about my Replay and how much better it makes TV watching, and I set it up for them the next day. Since then, I haven't heard of any problems figuring it out. I'm also showing some local friends my Replay and encouraging them to get one. Although it sounds like I'm a ReplayTV missionary, I wouldn't convert my friends if it wasn't worth it. Since getting my Replay 5504 about a year ago, I upgraded it from 40 hours to 120, something that's apparently more difficult to do on the TiVo. Also, although ReplayTV was hit with a lawsuit for the 5000 series because of the ability to automatically skip commercials, the "Show|Nav" feature does the same thing, although they can't advertise it as that and you need to push one (1) button now. The TiVo makes you fast-forward like a VCR. See all 142 customer reviews...