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

Mine has failed for the second time in two years. I bought an extended warranty, so I could box it up and send it back to the repair shop in Illinois AGAIN, but this year I bought a new, pre-formatted replacement hard drive, and installed it myself.

The recorder now has 120 hours of recording capacity versus the original 30 hours.

It is so great to not have to tied to the schedule set by the networks. Furthermore, an hour long TV program can be watched in about 45 minutes when you skip through the commercials. The only drawback to the unit is the lack of a fan. I found that it gets extremely hot when in my stereo cabinet, even with a few inches of space on all sides and top. By keeping it on top of the cabinet it runs MUCH cooler. The only problem with this is you can hear the whine of the hard disk. Thankfully, it is not so loud as to be more than a minor annoyance. I don't ever plan to be without a DVR again!

Replay TV is really the coolest thing to hit the TV market in quite a while but the reliability of both unit & remote is not great... We've had this "TV enhancement" for about 2 years and it's down right now. On the good side, TV watching has been completely under our control, including elimination of network broadcast timing/day, etc as well as the magic "replay" and "skip over the silly bits" buttons!!

Despite the constant useless messages about "call failures", clunky data entry (keypad select/click vs a REAL keyboard) and the crummy image quality, the system is worth every penny ... Online connectivity to your box is also super cool, letting you tweak the record settings when you're away. ... Enjoy it if you have one!

This gizmo will change your life! At least the TV part of your life anyway... I have had one for over a year now and have never regretted for one second buying one... it is hands down the most amazing gadget you could own. What I love is I have searching for themes of shows I want to watch for instance... Irish or Ireland, Occupational Therapy, etc and it goes and looks at every single program that might have those words in it's description and records it... you could do the same for actors names, singers etc. If you want your TV to always have something on that you want to watch, when you want to watch it... then order this because that is exactly what you will get!

We've had our unit well over a year. Two weeks ago part of the software froze up, and, since it was out of warranty, I called in to see how much it would cost to get it fixed. They said, send it in and we'll send you back a new one -- we want you to be a happy customer. I sure am happy, a new unit just came back today (free!) and prompted me to write this review.

I did a lot of research originally to choose between the tivo based systems and the replay based systems. Replay wins on features and user-friendliness (it is impossible to overestimate the value of the commercial skip button on this unit, compared to fast forwarding). When we first got this, my wife was very skeptical (to say the least), but now she makes sure it records all her favorites. We also use it to keep a couple of current kids' shows so they can watch only things we approve. It records daily news shows for me (I like the BBC world news, but it's on when I'm at work), movies, etc. etc. We also keep some very broad search criteria going for custom channels, which frequently find interesting stuff that we would never have looked for otherwise. I have come to strongly dislike watching live tv because you can't skip the boring parts, can't review the interesting parts, and all those ads! I had forgotten how spoiled I really was by this thing until I had to do without it for a couple weeks.

On the point of video quality, it really does record 30 hours and the "normal" (low) quality setting is just fine for most everything you will want to watch. Occasionally there will be a something that you want to transfer to keep permanently, or a movie with something special, so use the high quality setting for that rare show.

The search engine works really well. It takes about 30-40 minutes to set up the first time for a bunch of custom show search channels, but then requires less than 5 minutes a month to maintain all your search parameters and keep your recording preferences current.

This is what tv should be like for everyone, and I'll be a repeat customer for certain.