TiVo Love

It's not that Replay couldn't hang with TiVo. It's the fact that TiVo kisses Hollywood's ass and won't give you the freedom to use your TiVo records in any way that you would want to use them. Therefore, keeping Hollywood from suing them.

Replay has great features, and if the Motion Picture Industry would leave them the hell alone, the battle would be on. The way things stand now, Replay gets beat up by a bully and then TiVo wants to fight. Not a fair competition at all.

For instance, say we both wanted to see the same show, and you recorded the show but I didn't. If I had a TiVo (I don't), and missed the show you couldn't send the show to me (or vice versa).

However if you had a ReplayTV like I do, I could ask you to send it to me via the net, and I wouldn't have to wait for a freaking re-run.

Furthermore, if you have 2 TiVo's in your house, you can't send a show from one room to another, unless you disconnect the TiVo and physically move it to the other room. That means that you have to record the show twice if you want to have the option of watching the show wherever you want to. This option is just now being added to TiVo and you have to pay more money for the feature. And, if I read the article correctly, you have to pay extra for each additional TiVo you want this feature on.

However, if you had 2 Replay's you could record a show in one room and a different show in the other room. It wouldn't matter where you are. You could watch both shows because you would be able to download the show from the other ReplayTV using your network, no extra charges.

Anyway, as you can probably see it would make for a great fight, and I would love to see it happen. But, it won't be fair until the Motion Picture Industry shuts up, or TiVo decides to take on the Motion Picture Industry as well, which they won't do. My whole point was that it's not Replay's competition that is putting Replay out of business. Replay is going out of business because of the mounting legal fees thanks to the stupid Motion Picture Industry.

If it was a fair battle, I would put my Replay up against your TiVo any day.

I agree that ReplayTV had much better features, but business is about who plays the political "game" best, not who "is" the best. In a perfect world ReplayTV would have won. In a perfect world, we would all use Apple Macs, would have had Beta VCRs (instead of VHS), and would own electric cars. The best products don't always win.

Tivo now has a Home Media option (for a fee) that brings it a little closer to the ReplayTV feature set (i.e. it will be able to share shows from one unit to another, but only in the same household). After a few revisions, I am confident that it will be just as good (if not better than ReplayTV).

I am sorry for your loss--and I am still enjoying the hell out of Tivo. Thanks for the comment.