By Jeff Roberts
If you've heard of TiVo, you know pretty much everything about ReplayTV.
For the benefit of those who haven't heard of either, here's a quick
summary:
ReplayTV is a TV-set-top digital recording device and service which
has the capability to record programs in interesting ways. The device
has a hard drive capable of storing up to seven hours of television.
The service provides an interactive digital schedule which I can browse
through, or, if I'm looking for a particular show, I can punch in
the name and find when it's on. When I find a show I want to record,
I just select it and hit a button. If I hit the button twice, ReplayTV
will record the show every time it's on. Neat.
ReplayTV also continuously records whatever I'm watching at the time,
so I'm no longer bound by the constraints of real-time viewing. If
I need to stop watching for some reason, I can pause it-even if it's
live. Or I can rewind and play back what just happened. I can even
watch in slow motion. Of course, after doing so, I'll experience "TV
lag"; if I pause for ten seconds, then start again, I'll be watching
the show ten seconds behind everyone else.
There are some key differences between TiVo and ReplayTV. When I
get "TV lag" as described above, ReplayTV has a trademarked
"QuickSkip" feature that automatically puts me back into
real-time whenever I want, say, when I hit a commercial. ReplayTV
has an easy "one-button" process I use to program the device
to record; apparently the TiVo system can be a bit more complicated.
Maybe the most interesting feature of ReplayTV is that my "remote
control" is also on the web; that is, I can tell ReplayTV to
record a show at any time from MyReplayTV.com. Probably the biggest
difference is that while TiVo charges an up-front cost for the device
and a monthly fee for the service, ReplayTV charges a higher price
for the device and provides the service for free. I would eventually
save money with ReplayTV, that is, assuming they don't go out of business
in a year. Finally, ReplayTV advertises winning more awards than any
other digital TV-recording system, which I suppose would make it superior
to TiVo in the same way Betamax was superior to VHS.
ReplayTV and its competitors are advertised as being the next generation
of VCR. ReplayTV advertises performing VCR functions "without
the hassles of videotapes or VCR programming." Well, in reality,
it doesn't do all the same things a VCR can do. Most importantly,
it can't play movies; if VCRs couldn't play VHS movies, it would be
hard to imagine them being so popular.
ReplayTV also has the limitation of only being able to watch one channel
at a time. Therefore I can't perform the neat VCR trick of watching
one show while taping another.
So now I have to ask whether I want something that can be used to
easily and instantaneously record shows. Possibly. Now that there
are so many channels, with everything on at different times, and I'm
so busy in my daily life, it's hard to watch everything I want. Maybe
I shouldn't be letting the programming schedules dominate my TV enjoyment.
Of course, I really could do about everything ReplayTV does with a
VCR (which I already own), a blank tape I can buy for a couple bucks,
and a TV Guide which is similarly cheap. I can look up a show and
program to record it, or if I wanted, I could tape a show while I
was watching it, stop the tape at a commercial, rewind, and watch
whatever I might have missed. ReplayTV just makes this infinitely
faster and more convenient. $700 more convenient? Difficult to say.
But most of all, there's something un-television-like about this.
One of my basic assumptions regarding TV is that for a show to really
be worth my watching, I have to make the time to watch it when it's
on. You also get to watch it along with the rest of America (except
for those poor few who live in the Mountain and Pacific time zones)
and talk about it at water coolers and chat rooms everywhere the next
day. There's something to be said about sharing an experience with
an invisible audience; why do so many non-football fans watch the
Super Bowl (besides commercials)?
One might also say that this type of technology moves TV a little
closer to the internet. It makes it more of an on-demand, individual-user-centered
medium-I can watch what I want, when I want it. It also creates for
TV one of the biggest problems of internet-based media. If I can watch
any show at any time now, how am I supposed to decide what to watch?
There are too many options for me to handle. I need some way to tell
what's good-and the unofficial rating system of network/cable, primetime/daytime/late-night,
with a few exceptions, helps me figure out what's good and what's
not.
In conclusion, though perhaps digital recording is the way of the
future, it's not happening right now, at least not for me. Though
I'd certainly play with ReplayTV at my rich friend's house, it's just
not something I'd feel good investing in. I'm content to watch the
shows I like when they're on, and if I can't do that, I'll either
deal with the "hassle" of VHS or have a friend tell me what
happened so I'm caught up for next week's show. Or I'll just miss
it entirely. When ReplayTV starts playing DVDs, or if it can get me
movies on demand, then maybe I'll think it over again.