This week we speak with Bill Loewenthal. He's Vice President and General Manager of ReplayTV. The company is one of the pioneers of PVR technology. Last year, ReplayTV announced it would no longer sell set-top boxes, but instead would focus on bringing its personal video recorder software to the PC. After several delays to fix last minute bugs, ReplayTV is set to launch its software next week.We'll have more on ReplayTV's software once it officially launches, but here's a few details to whet your appetite.
- ReplayTV has focused heavily on its search interface, allowing users to find programs in a variety of ways. For example, you can search by actor, director, or genre. But you can also search by channel. This doesn't sound that impressive, but when you see it in action you wonder why it's not a feature on every PVR.
- The software also makes heavy use of the "Surprise Me" feature, letting you select if you would like your unit to record certain programs (like Simpsons reruns), genres (comedy movies), or featuring actors or directors that you like. It's a nice way of helping you find material you may not have known you were looking for.
- There's also custom search features such as the ability to browse through season premieres of finales. Again, this is the sort of feature that would have saved me a lot of time a few weeks ago when I was looking for all the shows I needed schedule recordings for.
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1. Yeah, ReplayTV PC stinks. In today's world of Microsoft Vista MCE, BeyondTV, SageTV and other competitors, the ReplayTV PC Edition is very lacking in compelling features. Surprise Me isn't interesting, the search capabilities are of dubious use, and the fact is that there are better products on the market for less money. Thx, but no thanks, Mr. Bill Loewenthal. Pay more attention to the market and what it wants, and less attention to your history and pedigree of starting the PVR market.
Posted at 7:23PM on Jan 27th 2007 by Neu Hoover