replaytv lifetime sub?

[chefwan]

i think a few guys in this forum told me about the tv awhile back and they told me they always used replaytv. i think it was dfergie. or someone else i cant remember. but i was just checking this out on ebay looking for a PVR. and came across this it says its lifetime paid sub fees for the DVR. what do you guys think about this. and will this work on my 12ft dish tired of not having ne thing recorded when im not home but here take a look please and let me know what u guys think before i look around anymore here is the link

http://cgi.ebay.com/ReplayTV-4040-P...096779889QQcategoryZ32850QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

[lumpkin666]

It will record fine (you'll have to do a manual record since replaytv isnt going to have your channel lineup). I have my doubts as to whether it will have any capabilities to control your receiver in order to tune to the correct channel. Some have figured out how to modify the IR codes on the 5000 series recorders to add their own personal IR codes, but that's a bit of a pain for a new user.

I suppose if your receiver has a timer function, you could individually set your receiver and the replay to record at a specific time. And you could run a WIRNS to serve a custom schedule, but that's going to be a lot of work.

ReplayTv's are nice, but they have their limitations. I think non-dbs satellite receiption is one of those limitations (not that it can't be done, but it'd be a hassle that might as well be solved with a VCR).

 

[dfergie]

I use one of mine with FTA, I just schedule it manually or as it's D* or E* Channel's counterpart, the box doesn't care what Svideo and Rca cables are plugged in . Replay box's HDD's are easilly upgradeable to bigger and even dual Hard Drives... and with dvarchive you can use your pc as a virtual Replay to store programming on...

 

[rglore]

I have one of the really old 2020s I upgraded to 100 GB. It still calls in every day and updates the guide. (It can only do guides for D*, E* and cable) When I want to record from my FTA, instead of manually recording, I pick a show from the guide at the same time and length to record. The name/descriptions don't match but it's much easier than setting up a manual record. I keep mine on the highest resolution and the quality is 95% of the original. I love how it's buffer is only limited by the hard drive size, I frequently back up the video 6 hours or more to catch what was on while I was sleeping.

 

[dfergie]

Yeah, I left one of my 5xxx's on when I went to work, it had over 15 hours in the buffer... right now though I have 4 hrs on one and 5 on the other with 92 hours on the last one ava... all have at least a 250 gig drive with 2 having 2 drives (the other one keeps flaking if I add 2 to it)and 3 external HDD's full ...Replay is how I do my Recaps

 

[lumpkin666]

If you guys are really going to use your ReplayTVs to record FTA, you should check out the projects over at avsforums.com. There is a way to insert your own IR remote codes into some receivers so that you can change channels from the ReplayTV (you can either get codes from a database, take them off a JP1 remote that already has them, or record them using a few different methods).

If you have a ReplayTV that can be supported by a program called WIRNS, you can build your own guide and serve it to your replaytv instead of just using the guides that they provide. You may need to do some programming to build your guide unless you can build one using the info from Zap2It Labs automagically.

You're missing a HUGE bunch of what ReplayTV or TiVo is about when you aren't using the guide and aren't able to automagically change channels and record (unknown/unplanned) content while you are away.

I haven't even started thinking about using my units for FTA viewing yet. But maybe someday! Right now I only have four 5000 model ReplayTVs and one Series 1 TiVo, but at one point I had probably close to ten ReplayTV's of various models and three TiVos througout the house. Many of those were either replaced by DVArchive and XBMC modded Xboxes, or just sold off because I couldn't come up with enough programming to justify recording on that many machines.

 

[dfergie]

I just removed Wirns from this pc as it was trying to hog my cpu slowing things down...

 

[chefwan]

thanks for all the info guys

 

[dfergie]

I love my Replays even though they cannot show HD, only HD downrezzed.... and high bitrate FTA and C-band....