Panasonic PV-HS2000 ReplayTV ShowStopper 30-Hour Digital Video Recorder

This is the best gizmo I've ever bought in my life... of all the fancy bells-n-whistles types of toys I buy, this one has proven to be the most useful and enjoyable. After you have ReplayTV, you can't believe other people aren't using it... it's the way TV should be... for everyone.

I had originally intended on getting TiVo because the box and the remote looked cooler and the set was just a pinch cheaper... but you have to pay $9.95 a month for TiVo service... all the while they're getting valuable demographic data from you for free.

ReplayTV does not require any monthly payment and they offer essentially the same service, just different names for different screens, etc.

What you have is a pseudo VCR that uses a high-speed hard disk to record your shows digitally... but it's much better than just that.

Let's say you're watching your favorite show and the phone rings... just hit the "pause" button and pick up the phone. Sounds like a VCR... anyone can pause a tape, right? Well how about pausing live TV? That's right... you can be watching the freakin' SuperBowl and not miss a thing... you go to the bathroom when you have to go instead of holding it in while waiting on a commercial... and who wants to miss the commercials on the SuperBowl?

Let's say you've got some buddies over at your house and you're watching the Olympics. You get up to get everyone some colas during a time in the show where not much is happening and you don't feel like hitting the pause button and make everyone else wait on you. While in the kitchen, you hear everyone bust out laughing uncontrollably. You come back in the room and they're holding their sides and crying from laughing so hard. You ask them what they're all laughing about. One of them is able to catch his breath and tell you it was something, "you had to see it, man!" No problem... just hit the "Instant Replay" to catch the last 10 seconds... if the commercial was 30 seconds long, just hit it 3 times. Even though you weren't recording the show, ReplayTV was buffering it for you just in case you might want to replay a portion. Neat, huh?

Let's say you are recording "Stephen King's The Stand" from cable and it's recording when you come home w/ your kids. You really don't want your little ones to watch this movie, but you can pop in a DVD using an A/B switch and it keeps recording for you... very unlike a VCR... you don't lose the TV show you're recording... or let's say you also recorded a cartoon for the kids a couple of days ago... you can watch a previously recorded show on your ReplayTV while it is simultaneously recording a live show.

A favorite TV show of mine from childhood was "The Banana Splits." It finished airing on TV the year I was born, but I used to watch it in re-runs when I was about 5 or so. I haven't seen it in nearly 30 years, so I went to my ReplayTV menu and did a "find shows" and using the remote, typed in the name of the show. It searched the schedule for the next week or so and couldn't find anything showing regularly, so I created a "Banana Splits" theme channel so that if ReplayTV finds a show with that title on any channel at any time EVER, it will record it. I had forgotten about my special channel a couple of months after I had set it, but ReplayTV did not forget and faithfully looked everyday until one day I came home and saw the green light on my ReplayTV, telling me that there were new shows for me to see. I looked on the menu and there were 2 episodes of my childhood favorite recorded for me! That was such a treat... and you can do the same for any show you are missing from the past. I could tell by looking at the details on the menu that both shows had been recorded after 2am on Nick at Night... a channel I don't watch too much and at a time when I'm always sleeping. God bless ReplayTV.

When I come home, I don't sit through shows I don't like, waiting for my favorite show to come on... I sit down when I want to watch something and I select from the many pre-recorded shows waiting for me.

I can decide to preserve an episode so I can dub it to a VHS tape later, or delete it immediately. When I want to record "60 Minutes" on a Sunday, I know that the football games will make the show run late, so I can tell ReplayTV to record an extra 22 minutes (or you pick the figure up to 99 minutes) after it normally ends, so that I don't miss anything.

While I'm watching a pre-recorded TV commercial, I can hit the "quick skip" button which jumps 30 seconds forward... all commercials are 30 seconds, 1 minute or up to 2 minutes long. I can quick skip a couple of times to pass those commercials without missing a single minute of my show... this means that I can watch an episode of "Star Trek the Next Generation," which normally lasts one hour, in just 42 minutes, since I'm skipping all the commercials. ReplayTV is a time saver!

I can not tell you how much I adore this appliance. I've had it for over a year now and it is fantastic.

Each night it uses a built-in modem to dial a toll free number to get the latest updates to TV schedules to better enable you to find the shows you want. Don't have a phone jack near your TV? No problem... just get an RCA RC930 Wireless Modem Jack right here on Amazon.com when you order your ReplayTV... If you can afford one, it will be the best TV component you will ever buy.

The product is great! I use it more than I had ever imagined. It is so easy to record anything, even an entire day of Olympics. I can delete or skip over anything to see what I want with out being home to change tapes. The one thing I worry about is that Panasonic the only manufacurer using Replaytv that I've seen is discontinuing the player. At 500.00 for the player It wouldn't be cool if the service stopped. Tivo can be paid by the month, and then the player is cheaper if service is stopped your only out the months fee. If replaytv is stopped, your out a lifetime subscription as thats included in player cost.

Panasonic's ReplayTV is absolutely awesome! I just went through an ordeal purchasing and then returning a dud Tivo, so I was thrilled with how easy this thing was to set-up. Definitely purchase this over a Tivo for one simple reason: ReplayTV has no monthly fee, whereas Tivo charges you 10 bucks a month or 240 for the lifetime of the unit.

Here are my pros and cons thus far:

Pros:
1) You can record the shows you ACTUALLY WANT TO WATCH, and fast-forward through the commercials with ease. If you work graveyard, have kids, or just save TV for the weekends, this unit will allow you to own your TV again, rather than the reverse.

2) It is easy to set-up and use. This thing is very simple to set-up. Recording is even easier. You could be braindead and still be able to record on this thing. :)

3) NO MONTHLY FEE!! You will save 120 dollars per year over buying a Tivo, so factor that into your total cost.

4) Allows you to pause live television if the phone rings, your child wakes up, etc. Whereas Tivo lets you pause for 30 minutes, this thing will pause up to the remaining memory space! (up to 10 hrs even on high-quality mode)

5) There seems to be a bit of confusion about this, but YOU CAN watch live television while you record on the unit. It has very simple instructions in the manual on how to do this. (requires a cable splitter: very cheap)

Yet, this is a new technology, and it has a few downsides:

Cons:

1) You cannot play copy-righted videos or DVD's through the inputs. This is important because if you try to set-up your DVD player to run through the inputs on the unit to consolidate, you will not be able to watch your DVD's. This just makes the wiring a bit more complicated. (You can get an RCA box to solve this problem)

2) You have to plug the thing into a phone jack. Yeah, I know it's necessary to download the TV schedules, but it is a pain nevertheless. Most of us don't have a phone jack right next to the TV. Panasonic suggest purchasing a wireless phone adapter which could be a solution.

3) Don't try to run your video game systems through the inputs either. There will be an annoying delay that will drive you to madness. Again, RCA box comes to the rescue.

Bottom Line:

Digital video recorders are an exciting new advance in technology that allows you to take over your television viewing. DVR's are a little expensive, but if you are in the market to purchase one, get this one! If you can, purchase an extended warranty too because with this technology, any repairs will get expensive. I haven't had any problems yet, but I'm not taking any chances:o)

Truly will change the way you watch TV. Think of this as what you wished your VCR would grow up to be. We have just regular cable, so these comments geared towards that setup.

Pros:
*Record around 15 hours of programming
*Free on-screen programming guide (of recorded shows too)
*Watch recorded show while taping another (or same) one
*On-line management of your unit's memory
*Universal remote controls TV/Showstopper/VCR

Cons:
*15 hours of programming not enough (read below to let me explain)
*Cannot record two shows at once
*Volume is too low if not using a S-video input
*Need phone hook-up
*Another electronics lesson to the wife regarding remote
*Set-up took longer than anticipated

30 Hours of Programming (well, not really)
Three speeds/levels of recording - low, medium, and high quality pictures which reduce your recording capacity to 30, 15, and 7.5, respectively. The medium recording yields what I was use to seeing on the VCR, maybe even a little better.

It's only been a week, but I wish I had a "60 hour" unit (in my mind, really 30). We don't watch that much TV, we really don't. Our son is limited to about 1.5 hours every other day, and we watch about 1.5 hours every night after the kids go to bed. If you think about it, below is how much capacity I would like based on weekly consumption:

Shows the wife and I like to watch 7 hrs
Last week's shows 7
Movies for us 4
Mindless TV for us (OK, it's all mindless) 3
Shows for the kids 2
Movie for kids 2
Total 24 hrs

That would leave 6 hours of impromptu recording (or 3 hours of high grade recording for the football game). Only drawback - and it hasn't proven to be that big of one - is the inability to record two shows at the same time. Perfect example is "Survivor" vs. "Friends". You can work around this using the VCR, but in a perfect world I wouldn't have a VCR.

On-Screen Programming Guide
It's pretty handy to press a button to see what show are playing and details about those shows (e.g., new/rerun, plot, actor names). It's even more handy to see on-screen what I've recorded. Have you ever hunted on 2 or 3 VCR tapes for the second half of "Jack and the Beanstalk" with your 5 year old waiting impatiently?

"Watch TV when you want to watch TV"
The commercial where the family is eating franticly to catch the beginning of their favorite show has a ring a truth to it. However, in your Showstopper household you eat at a civil pace, load up the dishwasher, THEN sit down to watch TV. Since you can skip commercials, you end up "catching up" to live TV before the end of the hour - with a clean kitchen.

On-line management of your unit's memory
Since I only have 15 hours of memory, I have to be a little more active in managing the hard drive. Sort of neat to be able to go on the internet to my account at ReplayTV.com and delete shows. Also easier to scan for various shows with their on-line programming schedule and ask to have it recorded. My on-line database syncs up with the database on my hard drive every morning (2 a.m. - 5 a.m.), so the only limitation there is you can't go into the office and ask for something to be recorded tonight.

Remote Control
It's another universal remote control. This one does a good job of controlling our TV, VCR, and of course the Showstopper. Only cumbersome thing is to you have to remember to press the "TV" button before pressing "power" to turn the TV on. Same thing in controlling the Showstopper - press "showstopper" button then "power" to turn on Showstopper. Cumbersome to learn at first, rote after a little while.

Set-up took longer than I anticipated
What I though would take me 15 minutes took about an hour the first time, then 15 minutes to change some things the next day. With regular cable, here's how I have everything configured:

Incoming Cable
Split to run to Showstopper and to VCR

Showstopper Output
S-video and RCA's to TV
RCA's to VCR

VCR Output
Coaxial cable to TV

With this configuration, I turn TV to channel "00" for Showstopper, channel 3 for VCR, and when the VCR is off then you can still go up and down the TV channel if desired. This also allows me to dump shows on the Showstopper to the VCR. Finally, originally was not using the S-video input from the Showstopper to the TV (using the yellow plug instead), and the cut the TV volume in half. Don't know why. Using the S-video input solved this problem.

Phone hook-up
The dreaded phone hook-up! We have one by the TV (actually spliced the line running to our alarm system, not that big of a deal) so this isn't an issue with us. The unit does "phone home" every night in order to give you a week's worth of programing, so you're going to need this. I've seen - but not used - the phone connections utilizing your house's wiring. I guess that would work. Had some initial problems with the unit doing it's initial dial-up to the ReplayTV servers, however, I just picked another number for my area (we had three number from which to choose) and it worked fine. I've seen complaints about this though.

ReplayTV vs. Tivo
Thought long and hard on this one. If I had a satellite dish I probably would have gone for Tivo since they are offering the all-in-one packages. However, since I'm on regular cable Tivo's ...didn't look that appealing for the marginal service of catching the special time a show appeared (i.e., Tivo would record the full 2 hours of a season-ending show, while Replay will record on the first hour). I'm glad I went the ReplayTV route.

The Showstopper (Panasonic's version of the ReplayTV) is the best device I have bought in a very long time. Like the garage door opener it became indespensible almost immediately. Having become indespensible it is now inoperable. The sets require a telephone connection to operate. The telephone connection broke down about four weeks ago and a large number of us have not been able to get the connection since then. It is almost impossible to get through to customer service and when one does get through they cannot solve the problem. Hence we have a great toy that we cannot play with.