Anyone have one of these yet? There was some discussion of it back in December but I haven't seen anyone here glowing with praise or screaming in frustration.. Anyone own one of these babies yet? I'm seriously thinking about getting one now that the DirecTivo option is no longer on the table (see my DBS thread for explanation.) The feature set looks fantastic and it looks pretty hackable/geek friendly. Expensive as all hell, but I think it might be worth it.

So, anyone?

I have a 4080. I was going to add another 80G, but I found I didn’t need it (yet). REPLAYTV has revolutionized the way i watch tv. Sort of like the empeg changed my listening. I have never used a TIVO, so i cant compare it.

I REALLY like the automatic commercial skip and the ability to get shows from planetreplay.com if i have a recording conflict.

There is a pretty good size hacker community at http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/ that have come up with some very helpful tools. The ability to send and receive shows to my pc for one.

I havnt had to deal with tech support, setup was a breeze. But I hear that its traditional sonic blue.

Warning: Once you get one, its hard to go back to live tv.

Damnit, when is somone going to add 4DTV tuning capability to one of these PVRs?

I would buy one of these boxes in a heartbeat if I could get it to tune my C-band dish. The ReplayTV FAQ over at avsforum specifically states it won't tune 4DTV.

Which leads to another question... Do they even tune digital cable boxes? Or will I be limited to the analog channels below #100?

It can change channels on digital cable boxes and satellite boxes (or both). Check the forum for the more problematic brands of cable boxes. Some use IR emitter and some use and interface cable.

Do you have to pay for entirely new subscriptions for each receiver for 4DTV at the same location or can you "piggy back" the first subscription?

Don't know about 4DTV but that's the case for TIVO.

Do you have to pay for entirely new subscriptions for each receiver for 4DTV at the same location or can you "piggy back" the first subscription?

Don't know, I think it's similar to the way the DBS systems do it, where there is a small additional subscription to support the second serial number.

The thing about C-band and 4DTV is that you can choose different programming providers based on their prices and packaging. There are a plethora of options. I'm with these guys:

http://www.cssnps.com/

Tony,

Just out of curiosity (and pardon me if I'm being nosey) ....
Why are you using C band? Or perhaps better put, what are you receiving?
I thought DirecTV pretty much had the DTH market sewn up where you are with KU band feeds just like Sky have over here. Feed hunting maybe?

Rue

I deliberately switched to C-band because I got sick and tired of the excessive amounts of data compression that was being done to the DirecTV signal. They are putting too many channels onto the transponders, far more than they were originally designed to hold. DirecTV used to look great when it first came out. Then the picture got steadily worse as they added more channels, and eventually it passed my tolerance threshold.

I have a big-screen hi-def television television, too, so that adds to the problem. The DirecTV compression artifacts are simply magnified on that television.

With C-band, I get a significant number of channels as pure analog original feeds, so there are no data compression artifacts. There are some digital channels on the 4DTV box, but I do not watch them very often. I do watch hi-def HBO and Showtime in digital form, but those have much less data compression and are higher resolution, so you only see the artifacts once in a blue moon.

I will agree that the DirecTV user interface is faster and more convenient, the equipment is easier to install and maintain, and the advantage of being able to use a PVR with DirecTV is quite good. But man, what a crappy looking picture.

Hi,

Out of curiousity, how much more do you pay in subscription fees for a c band system vs directtv?

We're actually paying less (all totaled) for our C-band subscriptions than we were for the DirecTV packages we had before, and we have more available channels, including a bunch of free in-the-clear programming that we otherwise would have been charged to receive via the DirecTV system. And the wild feeds are nice, if you know where to grab them. There are listings on the 'net that can be found, and they're pretty straightforward.

For the uninitiated, "wild feeds" and "backhauls" are the terms used to describe the satellite transmissions that certain networks use to broadcast their programming down to the local network affiliates for later rebroadcast. C-band users merely need to know where/when to point the dish to receive these feeds. C-band users often get to see the new episodes of certain TV series as much as a day or two before any of the regular viewers do. This isn't illegal or piracy, because the backhauls I'm referring to are not encrypted or hidden in any way. It's something that's been around the C-band world for decades. It's a pain, though, so I don't do it that often unless there's something really specific I need to get.

The price packages are all listed at the NPS site I linked above. I forget which one we're subscribed to right now, I just remember it being less than our prior DirecTV bill.

Do you find yourself switching satellites all the time or do you stay on the digital signal most often?

With C-band, even the digital signals are not all on the same satellite. So yes, you do switch satellites often. Having a good actuator arm is an important part of any C-band dish system.

This is actually one of the limitations with doing a Tivo-for-C-band. It's possible to have a two-tuner PVR for a digital satellite system because all you need is a double-LNB on the dish to receive two simultaneous signals. But on C-band, the dish has to rotate to get a different satellite so therefore a PVR would be unable to watch one live show while recording another. The other problem is the latency issue, the PVR doesn't know how long it takes to slew the dish and therefore wouldn't know when to send the channel change command afterwards. Also, the C-band receivers are very customizable and you can add/delete satellite entries at will, so the PVR doesn't know which satellites you have in your lineup. Finally (this is probably the biggest sticking point), the IR user interface on the satellite receivers don't have "absolute positioning" buttons which allow you to jump to a specific satellite, you have to use arrows to select them from a screen. There is an on-screen program guide on my receiver (just like the DirecTV guide but not as fast) which lets me choose any show from the entire sky with automatic selection of the bird, but again, this is all relative commands with arrows and cursor selections, the PVR would get no feedback as to what it was selecting.

So the whole PVR thing is a real problem for my C-band dish, and it's the only thing I dislike about C-band. Otherwise, I much prefer C-band to DBS.

That's ultimately why I switched from C-Band to DSS but it was before they had digital available on C-Band. I didn't know if it was on one satellite. I can just imagine the yelling and screaming from a back room when someone else switches the dish.

I do agree the picture is pathetic on DSS. The artifacts are getting more noticable all the time. We have a 64" HDTV. When we first got it (or the one I had before) I think Braveheart had just come out. In the battle scene, the people fighting were like little block figures. My first thought was that the fighting had been done with special effects via computer animation... like a real slow computer at that so they couldn't manipulate enough pixels or something. If you can believe this, I was thinking they had saved money on the extras. Like a SimCity - Battle Edition. Kind of weird.

By the way, are you sending any PC signals to your HDTV as a computer monitor? I am looking for a better Video Card with improved support for the HDTV. ATI?

I have the ability to send a 540p signal to my HDTV via a breakout cable. I've done this, it works, but I only did it to mess around with certain things and it wasn't for the purpose of actually watching stuff. I still prefer a regular DVD player for watching movies, and still prefer the small computer monitor for doing computer work and playing computer games.

Ditto here on the DVD. My original concept was to use the TV as a monitor as the focus of the MP3 PC. It has been less than gratifying. I've resorted to a remote control program. Might try the RioCentral. I've heard it can pick up files off another computer.

Considering my DVD player isn't progressive scan, but my computer is...

Of course not too many people actually have a real VGA monitor in use as a TV. The Destination line from Gateway was awesome at the end of it's life, too bad they didn't have the money to keep it going.

Gaming usefulness of the system has faded recently though, with most modern games liking 1024x768 minimum for a decent sized and non cluttered interface. The Destination line of monitors went to 800x600 as the highest.

Considering my DVD player isn't progressive scan, but my computer is...

PC-based DVD player software doesn't do motion adaptive de-interlacing, but a good consumer DVD player will.

Most every program now is just not usable on HDTV with the limitations on the resolution. I wonder how a touchscreen would work in the AV rack? Ever try one with a standard application as opposed to a POS application?

I have to agree on the DTV picture quality. It sucks. I have an RCA 52inch Hi-res bigscreen and the DTC-100. The DTC-100 has a built in line doubler so the picture is much improved over watching a regular DTV reciever. It hooks up to the tv via vga cable. It has regular connections too, but you have to switch modes maually and such. So I gave up the PVR for now. I have used my tv as a monitor to play games. Played a lot of Max Payne there in the living room with friends. It only accepts 800x600 as the highest res mode. So not the best, but still pretty good. It has a separate vga port for that as well.

I would realy like to get a RTV4000, but lack of connections makes me wait for the next unit available.

PC-based DVD player software doesn't do motion adaptive de-interlacing, but a good consumer DVD player will.

A good PC video card seems to do it, and it's part of the card I use.

"ATI’s VIDEO IMMERSION™ II technology integrates industry-leading digital video features, including advanced adaptive de-interlacing algorithm, temporal filtering, and video gamma enhancement for unprecedented video quality and integrated digital TV decode capability."

Some people wonder why I like ATI so much. Checking NVidia on this one, it seems they don't have adaptive yet, just advanced. NVidia hasn't advanced technology like this since the release of the GeForce 2 from what I can see from their site.

Wow. The hacking community for Replay TV and Tivo are really going strong.
There is some software with source about to be posted 'SwapDV' http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=e80c507adbecb0adccf136729c6a0125&threadid=116035&perpage=20&highlight=PAL&pagenumber=1

It does ALL sorts of stuff between your Replay TV and your networked PC. One of the cool ones was - basically you can get one of these boxes, hook it up to your network and stream recorded mpg2 to the rest of the PC's in a network. There is even talk in another thread I read which was talking about serving divx from your PC, converting to to mpg2 on the fly - then outputting back through your replaytv or tivo (can't remember which)... Cool stuff.

The only thing I couldn't find was any hacks or mods to get the Replay TV to work in a PAL environment (short of buying a high qual NTSC<>PAL converter - Tivo has been hacked for PAL since mid last year....

Anyone know / heard any different for Replay TV in PAL countries?

Cheers,

Kieran
OZ

So the big question is can I buy a 40 GB ReplayTV and later throw in a larger hard drive for additional storage? Or is it not user upgradable? I know I've seen people stick larger drives in Tivo units but I know the companies would rather sell the larger units for more profit...

Yes, you can upgrade the replaytv. It has a place for a 2nd 3.5" drive. 5400rpm drives are recommended for noise and heat reasons. There is a hack on AVSfourm message board that you would need. It preformats the drive in you PC before it will work in the REplay. Similar to the process for upgrading the empegs

Cool. The 4040 model is within my price range. Dropping a monster drive in there would be pretty sweet...

I don't watch THAT much TV, but I *always* forget to watch shows I like because I'm busy doing other stuff. Then I go to watch TV and nothing is on. For the three or four things I actually do watch, ReplayTV seems perfect.

Thinking... thinking... ReplayTV.. Roland V-drum set... Cordless phone... sigh.