It may sound like a digitized version of a VCR, but ReplayTV’s RTV-5504 is far easier to use and has substantially greater flexibility. You don’t have to rewind or change tapes or even wait for the program to stop recording before you can watch it.

ReplayTV, back from the brink of bankruptcy and now thoroughly funded by D&M Holdings, has introduced its latest, slightly more studio-friendly version of what curmudgeons might call a "digital VCR." D&M may have appeased network broadcasters by eliminating the RTV-5504’s ability to automatically skip commercials and e-mail programs to friends, but the company has retained enough features to make the VCR description loose at best.

For one thing, you can watch a program from the beginning after it has already started, while the DVR finishes recording the end so you don’t miss anything. You can record programs repeatedly, preserving only the latest, first-run episodes, without monitoring the TV Guide and constantly rewinding the videotape. The DVR will even save however many episodes of Reba you want. It just copies over the oldest recordings with new episodes. Even VCR Plus, the process of looking up codes in your local TV listings and then typing them into your remote control to program the VCR timer, is complicated enough to explain, let alone to do. Compare that to DVR recording, where you simply select a program from ReplayTV’s on-screen guide and press the record button. Taking candy from a baby is more complicated than this.

There are enough back-panel inputs and outputs to connect the DVR to most systems, though additional S-video and a FireWire (1394) connection would be good. The unit’s progressive-scan component outputs are an added plus.

You’ll get forty hours of recording capacity with the DVR adjusted for the lowest quality level. This setting provides the most recording time but degrades performance to broadcast TV levels. Then again, this is still slightly better than a VCR. The middle- and high-quality settings, which are nearly indistinguishable from one another in terms of picture quality, drop recording time to as little as 14 hours, exhibiting only a slight loss when compared to the original broadcast signal. Versions with larger hard drives are also available for up to 320 hours of recording capacity. I recommend buying the largest hard drive you can afford. You’ll find all sorts of neat stuff that will fill up the hard drive quickly.

When the hard drive does fill up, you can offload content to a VCR or DVD recorder using the available outputs. More than one S-video input and output would be welcome, as signals coming through the unit’s composite video input don’t look as good as they would going to a better-than-average TV. S-video will always look better. A digital video FireWire connection would also be nice, even if it weren’t HD quality. However, that would require components you record from, like satellite receivers, to have similar types of connections, which they don’t. The RTV-5504 does have a progressive-scan component video output, which is useful for HDTV owners (even though this unit won’t record HD signals). The DVR does a fine job of converting interlaced sources into a higher-resolution progressive output and compensates for film-based source material (most of what’s on TV) to prevent any motion artifacts. The result is a solid picture with no distracting jagged, diagonal edges.

You’ll also find an Ethernet connection, which can link to your home network and broadband connection. (Whaddya mean you don’t have a home network?) While you can’t e-mail shows to friends anymore, you can stream a show recorded on a bedroom DVR to a similarly equipped DVR in the living room. You can also transfer digital images from a PC and display them on the TV. I couldn’t get this to work and wasn’t really sure I cared, but ReplayTV claims a future software patch will better communicate with Windows XP-based networks like mine. The Ethernet connection mostly allows you to download the program guide via the Internet. Those without a broadband hookup can use the built-in 56K dial-up modem to download program guides.

The RTV-5504’s on-screen menu guides you through the initial setup with relative ease; setup concludes with the unit calling in to ReplayTV central to acquire channel listing information. Once the information has been acquired, you can run a search through a week or more of the guide (including satellite listings) to look for actors, directors, titles or keywords. The unit calls in regularly to get up dates. But be aware that if you constantly change the input settings like I did, you can temporarily lose your program guide information. There doesn’t seem to be a way to force the unit to call in to get new information without serious hassle; you just have to wait until the next cycle.

Commercials for DVRs talk about how the technology "pauses live TV." This function is made possible by a constant recording buffer that records any channel you’re watching, regardless of whether you programmed it to record or not. ReplayTV’s buffer uses the total available hard-drive space at the high-quality setting. While I rarely pause a "live" program, I did rewind about 20 minutes of The Daily Show after my wife proclaimed I had "missed" the funniest take on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s gubernatorial bid in California’s special recall election (as if the jokes didn’t just write themselves). She forgot that the ReplayTV buffer was recording. I was able to catch the whole bit, then skip the commercials to catch up with the live program using a button that jumps ahead in 30- second increments. Since D&M’s studio acquiescence program omitted the Commercial Advance feature, which skipped over commercials automatically, you can only skip them manually.

Few new products make life so easy that you forget how you lived without them. The automobile, the ATM machine, and e-mail certainly qualify. Digital video recording will ultimately be added to that list. It’s just impossible to explain how cool it is. The RTV-5504 is no exception and has a plethora of features to prove it. FireWire and/or HD capability would be nice additions, given that we live in a digital age, but if you’re not up to the razor’s edge of technological advancement (still using a VCR?), then this product is for you. Quite frankly, if you watch TV—ever—I can’t imagine how you get by without a DVR.

Photography by John Phillip