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October 20, 2004

Purchasing a ReplayTV

I have just purchased a ReplayTV and just wondered about the state of the product. I know the previous company that owned it went bellly-up. Are the new owners fully behind the product? Are there any rumblings of Replays being obselete in the near future?
-- Brian Middleton

October 20, 2004 in ReplayTV

Answers

Plenty - DNNA, the current owners of ReplayTV, have basically abandoned the standalone DVR market. Check out alt.video.ptv.replaytv (via Google Groups if you don't have a news server), this has been discussed a few times.

They haven't revised the hardware since the 5000 came out a couple of years ago. There has been very little work on the software since they took over, and they've been transferring engineers out of RTV into Escient. Several previousoy announced features, such as MP3 playback, USB WiFi adapter support, and content sharing between the 4k and 5k series were cancelled.

They've been adding DVR functionality to the high end Escient media servers, and it is expected they'll do the same under the Denon and Marantz brands. (DNNA is owned by D & M Holdings - the D & M being Denon and Marantz.) They've talked about licensing the RTV software, but they've been talking about that since before SB went bankrupt and there haven't been any takers. The general feeling is that they're not going to do much development on the RTV products, but rather they'll focus on the high end servers which sell for several thousand dollars and have a much higher profit margin.

Posted by: MegaZone at Oct 21, 2004 9:07:35 PM

I won't speculate on what DNNA will or won't do. I will say that as a long time Replay owner I don't buy into what MegaZone is saying. Replay recently had a software upgrade that added some functionality and has continued to enhance the 5000 series and now has the 55xx.

Will we see the Replay functionality in media servers from DNNA, probably. IMHO, that's not a bad thing.

As to reliability, I can tell you that my 1999 era Replay is still chugging away and my 5040 and 5504 are both refurbished models that I expect to outlive their rated life.

Posted by: BadHoy at Dec 10, 2004 4:11:21 PM

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