Stay Tuned for Cheaper, Better Video Recorders
Two companies, TiVo and ReplayTV, are out with similar but not identical products generically known as “personal video recorders.” These are nifty devices that allow you to pause, rewind and fast-forward broadcast and cable shows as though you were watching a videotape.
They work by recording the TV signal onto a hard disk just like the one inside your computer and spooling it onto the screen with a couple of milliseconds’ delay. In addition to pausing and replaying live TV, both also allow you to schedule recordings of upcoming programs, as with a VCR, and to download recorded content onto a conventional VCR tape for your video library.
There’s no question that, as a concept, the personal video recorder is terrific. No one ever need miss a dramatic moment of “ER” to take a phone call, or stay awake wondering exactly what Moe said to Larry that had the kids in stitches (both machines have instant-replay functions, great for reviewing garbled dialogue or spectacular NBA dunks).
The concept is quickly spreading. Already Microsoft’s WebTV set-top box can be ordered with an installed hard drive, and at least one company, San Francisco-based Ligos Technology, plans to offer software that allows similar functions to be executed on a PC’s hard disk. But TiVo and ReplayTV are the most heavily promoted.
So are these devices ready for prime time? I found that both offer exceptionally easy VCR-style recording. But they also have disadvantages, including less-than-perfect video reproduction, complex features that may daunt the less techno-savvy, and the high prices of first-generation technologies.
I subjected each machine to about three weeks of heavy family use. We recorded movies (both color and black & white), archived favorite series and sitcoms, and paid off the pizza man at the door while pausing the screen precariously on the cusp of a contestant’s final answer. (Useful hint: Fast-forwarding through the commercials and goofy banter from “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” yields a razor-sharp 20 minutes of questions and answers per night).
The test units were a TiVo model manufactured under the Philips brand name with 14 hours of rated capacity, and a ReplayTV box made by Panasonic with a 30-hour disk. Those figures apply only if you make recordings at the lowest picture quality settings, which few viewers will tolerate. At higher resolutions the capacity shrinks fast: The 30-hour TiVo box, for example, will hold only nine hours of programming if everything is recorded at the top setting.
We hooked the units to a VCR and a 28-inch Sony TV that we watch from an unhealthy six feet away, so no defects in image would go unnoticed.
In general, we found that both units make conventional time-shifting recording easier than with a VCR; in most cases it’s a one-click procedure on the remote control. But the neatest new features are more complicated to navigate and take some getting used to.
Setup
Each box comes with several different spools of TV cable, with different odd-shaped plugs, to accommodate the varied inputs and outputs of your TV and VCR. (Isn’t it time the TV industry standardized these things?) Each also provides an illustrated guide to hooking everything up. ReplayTV’s guide was marginally more comprehensible than TiVo’s, but in both cases there are more wrong ways than right to connect everything. The bottom line is that both units are even more complicated to wire up than the average desktop computer. Most users, I suspect, will spend an hour or more trying to get everything to work properly.
Each machine also needs to be plugged into a phone line for daily updates of its on-screen programming guide. The calls won’t interfere with your personal calls, but you will have to factor in the location of the nearest phone jack when deciding where to place your TiVo or Replay box. Before the machines are fully functional they have to make a toll-free call to headquarters; TiVo’s programming setup took several hours, much longer than ReplayTV’s.
In each case the setup process yields an on-screen grid that displays your channel lineup and daily program schedules for up to a couple of weeks ahead. You can simply watch live TV or seek out the day, time or name of a program you want to record, hit a button on your remote, and presto! You’ve arranged to tape that show, or even all episodes of the same show on into the distant future.
Programming
The programming guides aren’t perfect, however. Only TiVo’s allows users to browse through any single channel’s programming. If you want to see the movie listings for the AMC channel alone, for instance, with ReplayTV you’re out of luck.
On the other hand, ReplayTV’s system seemed more adept at keeping up with changes in program schedules. When A&E; suddenly moved its reruns of “Law & Order” out of its old time slot, TiVo blindly recorded the replacement, which was “Biography.” And while the life of Audrey Hepburn is enchanting enough, she’s no Det. Lenny Briscoe. ReplayTV seemed to navigate such changes without faltering.
Replay also allows you to seek out programs not only by title, but by random keyword and the names of performers and directors: I plugged in “Hitchcock” and acquired a mother lode of the master’s classic thrillers, which I subsequently downloaded to tape.
Prices
This leads me to one of the features in which TiVo falls seriously behind ReplayTV in convenience: Unlike ReplayTV, TiVo charges a separate fee for the program service, which is what makes the device work. For most people, setting up a TiVo account will mean a call to customer service and the disclosure of a credit card number. That’s a thoroughly needless burden.
Because the TiVo and ReplayTV services are more or less fungible and can’t be dispensed with, it’s hard to see what this system achieves other than fostering the illusion that TiVo’s hardware costs less than ReplayTV’s. TiVo’s top-of-the-line, 30-hour unit costs $399 retail, compared with ReplayTV’s $599. But TiVo’s $199 “lifetime” subscription, the most cost-effective of three billing choices (users can also pay $9.95 a month or $99 a year), obviously negates the cost advantage.
Moreover, setting up the personal account introduces another potential point of customer discontent. In our case, it took the TiVo customer reps about a week to figure out the paperwork on our account (which was being furnished gratis by the company for our borrowed unit). During that time our TiVo kept flashing rather unpleasant messages at us about our failure to register. Because ReplayTV’s service is included in its retail price, this was never an issue.
Features
ReplayTV offers one other convenience unmatched by TiVo. Its remote has a skip-forward button that instantly advances a recorded or time-delayed program by 30-second intervals; three or four clicks and you’ve consigned an entire commercial break to oblivion.
TiVo forswore this great feature, apparently because the company hoped to maintain good business relations with the networks and cable systems; as a substitute, it allows you to fast-forward through an ad block, then automatically jumps back to the end of the final commercial so you don’t miss any programming. But you’ll need to develop a lot of wrist technique to get this to work right.
On the other hand, ReplayTV does have one glaring flaw: The box is noisy. Sometimes, notably while we were watching a program on time-delay or watching an already-recorded show while a second one was recording, our unit emitted a stream of audible clicks. This is apparently a familiar complaint among ReplayTV owners, and the company keeps promising to fix it. But our unit was a brand-new model and it still sounded like a schnauzer clicking its toenails across the kitchen linoleum. TiVo, which comes in a larger and less elegant-looking box, operated quite silently.
Picture Quality
As with all video, the picture’s the thing. TiVo and ReplayTV would both have us believe that there’s no degradation of the TV image when it’s put through their compression and digitization processes on its way from the hard disk to the screen, but I disagree. Even at the highest resolution settings, the process adds some artifacts to the image on both systems; at best these amount to a scarcely perceptible reduction in clarity akin to what you’ll see when viewing a video feed over the Internet.
But at the lowest resolutions, the degradation makes any moving image almost painful to watch; the companies rightly advise users to reserve this level only for news and talking-head programs where there’s little motion except for the flapping of lips. But because recording programs at the highest-quality settings eats up storage capacity, users will have to carefully balance the quality of what they record with how much of it they want to keep.
ReplayTV’s overall picture quality was generally higher than TiVo’s; we found that the latter introduced some noticeable degradation even into live TV. The audio on programs we transferred from TiVo to our VCR, furthermore, also seemed to come out muffled, a problem we didn’t notice on ReplayTV.
So do TiVo and ReplayTV enhance the television experience? Let’s be frank: I watched TV a lot more while these units were installed at my house. That’s mostly because it was so easy to order up recordings of shows being rerun at 3 in the morning.
But if they’re really going to become consumer hits, their prices are going to have to come down from the $600 stratosphere and their quality will have to improve. It’s a safe bet that both trends will be realized: These are, after all, first-generation devices. But I can’t wait to own one of their offspring.
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TiVo vs. ReplayTV
TiVo
14 hours for $299*
30 hours for $399*
(at lowest recording quality)
*Plus programming service subscription at $9.95/month, $99/year or $199 lifetime
*
Special features
Thumbs-up, thumbs-down viewer rating allows system to “suggest” other shows the viewer might like
*
Pros
Handier remote, easier to scroll through program schedule channel by channel, quiet operation
*
Cons
No ad zapper, lower quality of picture
*
ReplayTV
20 hours for $499
30 hours for $599
(at lowest recording quality)
No additional fee for programming service
*
Special features
Ad-zapper button instantly advances recording by 30-second increments, about the length of a standard commercial
*
Pros
Superior picture, more reliable programming service
*
Cons
Machine is noisy during some functions,
confusing remote and programming screen
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Personal Video Recorders
These devices record TV and cable shows on a hard disk, without videotape, and allow viewers to pause live shows and download movies. Both devices have pros and some cons, including less-
than-pristine reproductions. For details, see C6.
* TiVo
Costs $299-$399, plus subscription fees. Picture quality somewhat inferior to ReplayTV’s, and setting up a subscription account can be a chore.
* ReplayTV
Costs $499-$599, with no separate fees. Easy-to-use system to blot out commercials, but the box itself is noisy.
