Url: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=1093…

I’ve owned ReplayTV’s for years now.  For those of you out there without a PVR, get one *now*!  Magenic (the company I work for) recently gave it’s employees a Tivo for a holiday gift.  I got the one with the DVD recorder in it and including some media features.  So far I am very impressed.

What I like about Tivo so far:

• Tivo interface is slicker than the ReplayTV interface with more options.
• The recording options are quite good and a Season pass seems to work well.
• With an network USB device, I can listen to MP3s and look at pictures that are located on my home server.  Eliminates the other device I had doing that.
• TV Listings are customizable, filter-able and has two types of formatting which I really like.
• 480p Output…'nuff said.
• Thumbs up and thumbs down is really interesting.
• Watching DVD’s and burning DVD’s…not specific to Tivo, but it makes a nice device.

Pet peeves about the Tivo:

• I could do without the incessant animations when switching from screen to screen.
• I wish that recording show at the same time every week was a little bit more straightforward than it is.
• I wish I could queue up songs instead of having to play a directory of songs, though I haven’t tried to see if playlists are supported.
• I wish that I could have the picture slideshow continuously looping.
• I wish that I could show pictures while listening to MP3’s.
• Network adapter should be included.
• Setting up the USB network adapter should work much much better than it does.
• Don’t send me adds for movies in theatre.  I installed it in my ‘home theatre’ for a reason…if I can’t watch it now, don’t bother me.
• 30 second skip should be the default, not a hack that I have to do everytime the device resets itself.

Overall I am very happy with the unit.  Better than my old ReplayTV?  I actually prefer ReplayTV for the PVR features, but as a whole (with DVD, MP3, pictures etc.) it’s a great all in one unit.  The PVR features are almost as good as ReplayTV.  Note, I only own one TV so all the features about sharing shows around the house don’t concern me, so I don’t have an opinion.