Today's hard-drive-based personal video recorders (PVRs), such as TiVo, DishPVR, and Microsoft's UltimateTV, pause, rewind, save, and organize huge amounts of television content. If you haven't used one, the experience is nothing short of transformative. If you have used one, then you know how a PVR changes your TV-viewing habits forever. See the latest PVRs, including Sonicblue's new ReplayTV 5000, on "Fresh Gear." (Vulcan Inc., TechTV's parent company, holds a stake in TiVo.)

Sonicblue's recently released ReplayTV 5000 improves on the original ReplayTV 4000 and 4500 series of networkable PVRs with minor but needed tweaks. With a revamped pricing model and a cosmetic redesign of the box and remote, the 5000 series should be more attractive to a wider group of consumers.

What's new with ReplayTV 5000?

The first obvious difference you'll notice with the 5000 is its new box design. While the 4000 and 4500 series were sleek, silver, and high-end looking, Sonicblue opted for a simplified, subdued, brushed metallic gray-blue color for the 5000. Gone are the hard-to-use front bezel controls and hard-to-read indicator lights. Thankfully, Sonicblue totally rebuilt the ReplayTV remote, mercifully reducing the number of buttons by six while increasing the size of some key buttons.

Sonicblue offers versions of the 5000 with 40 hours to 320 hours of maximum recording time at variable 2MB to 6MB video quality. Prices for the units range from $199.99 (with mail-in rebate) for the 40-hour version to $900 for the 320-hour player, plus the required cost of service at either $9.95 monthly or $250 for lifetime usage.

Setting up the ReplayTV 5000 box is fairly simple. In fact we downloaded the location-based channel guide and registered our ReplayTV 5000 on the Sonicblue network over our home Ethernet network all in about half an hour. The TiVo setup took a bit longer.

However, the biggest drawback by far that has not been addressed is the ReplayTV's slow speed. We often found ourselves waiting several seconds for the box to catch up.