I admit, I'm going to be biased because my only experience is my year with Tivo.

I'll just say that I couldn't watch TV without this thing. I agree with what was stated earlier about how it changes your habits. As a big TV-watcher, I would say that it has also improved the quality of what I watch. Instead of just watching what's on, I watch what I want.

As for the units themselves, I'd have to say that Replay offers nothing I'm interested in. The commercial skip feature is okay, but I'll admit it, every once and a while, I stop fast-forwarding just to watch a commercial. Also, I can't stand the 30 second skip feature. It never works! The reality is that a commercial break is not always 4 30 second blocks of time. In fact, considering that 70% of what I watch is on Comedy Central, I'd say that their commercial breaks are NEVER divisible by 30 second increments.

Anyway, count me in for the Tivo. I'm not sure why you found it so lacking in features (and yes, ethernet is sooo easy), but I abolutely LOVE mine.


ps- one of my favorite features of Tivo is not the unit but the people who have been "affected" by it. I was at the beach with a bunch of friends one Saturday, and some guys were worried that we'd miss Sunday's football game. One guy said (of me) "don't worry, he's Tivoing it." When you first hear people use Tivo as a verb, it's a beautiful thing.