Product Spotlight

ReplayTV 4500

In a Nutshell
More Product Information
Who is Our Target Market?
How Much Are They?
What is the Press Saying?
How Do We Compare to the Competition?
How are Sales?
Related Terminology

In a Nutshell
A ReplayTV DVR (Digital Video Recorder) makes it extremely simple to record your favorite shows without the complicated programming requirements of VCRs and without videotape hassles. You are freed from set TV schedules, and you watch what you want, when you want. Also, because ReplayTV DVRs use digital recording technology to record live television onto a hard drive as you're watching - you'll also be able to control live TV. You can pause live TV to take a telephone call, rewind to see a scene again, use instant replay to jump back 7 seconds, or watch a scene in slow-motion, among other things.

The ReplayTV 4500 is the next generation following our ReplayTV 4000. The ReplayTV 4500 has two major changes from the 4000. The first change is the analog modem. With the ReplayTV 4000, we didn't enable the analog modem to connect to the ReplayTV Service. With the ReplayTV 4500, we enabled the analog modem and gave the choice to the customer on which way they want to connect to the ReplayTV Service. Please note: if the customer chooses the analog modem, the Send Show feature will not be available to them since it is unreasonable to try to send shows via a 56K modem.

The second change was our pricing. With the ReplayTV 4000, we included the service fee as part of the purchase price. With ReplayTV 4500, we have separated the service from the purchase price. In this scenario, the customer purchases ReplayTV 4504 (40 hour model) for $449.99. Then the customer needs to activate the ReplayTV Service by calling SONICblue Customer Care (1-800-480-7149) or by going to the SONICblue website at www.sonicblue.com. They will be required to provide the Service key for their ReplayTV 4504 as well as a credit card payment of $250.

More Product Information
A Flash Demo of Product
A Complete List of Features
Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Our Target Market?
Our target market is 80 percent male / 20 percent female; upper income; tech-savvy; TV-enthusiast.

How Much Are They?

* Please note: An additional Service Activation Fee of $250.00 is required in order to use the ReplayTV 4500. Once you receive your ReplayTV 4500, please go to the SONICblue website to purchase the Service Activation.

To order a ReplayTV at the employee discount price, complete the Employee Order Form and fax it to Customer Service at 480-367-2176.

What Is the Press Saying?
ReplayTV 4000 has won numerous awards, including:
FORTUNE magazine’s “Best Video Product of the Year”
BusinessWeek’s “Best Products of 2001”
Popular Science’s “Best of What’s New”
PC World’s “2002 World Class”

Read some of the Product Reviews.

If you want to know what some of our customers are saying, the AVS Forum has discussions about our products and the competitors.

How Do We Compare to the Competition?
Following are our main competitors in the DVR market:

Tivo	Tivo Series2 60 hours of recording capacity $399.99 plus Tivo Service at $12.95 per month or $249 lifetime.
Ultimate TV	RCA DIRECTV Receiver (End of Lifed) Model: DWD490RE 35 hours of recording capacity $149 plus $9.95 per month for UltimateTV Service Additional $21.99 per month minimum for Direct TV and WebTV access is extra for over 3 hrs. RCA DIRECTV Receiver Model: DWD495RE 70 hours of recording capacity $249 plus $9.95 per month for UltimateTV Service Additional $21.99 per month minimum for Direct TV and WebTV access is extra for over 3 hrs. Sony Receiver Model: SAT-W60 35 hours of recording capacity $249 plus $9.95 per month for UltimateTV Service Additional $21.99 per month minimum for Direct TV and WebTV access is extra for over 3 hrs.
DISHPlayer	DishPVR 501 An integrated satellite TV receiver and PVR 35 hours $349 Additional $49.99 per month minimum Dish package and $49.99 activation fee.

Comparison Chart from UltimateTV
Comparison Matrix from SONICblue

How are Sales?
ReplayTV launched into retail Father's Day weekend with a ½ page ad in Good Guys circular, to be followed by a full page the weekend of June 21st in the Wiz's. Additionally, we will be featured on Amazon.com's home page this weekend as well!!

First weekend's sales were very strong and each of the retailers are excited to be working with Replay again.

Continue to look for Replay at Fry's and Tweeter in the coming weeks.

Related Terminology

Broadband	A type of data transmission in which a single medium (wire) can carry several channels at once. Cable TV, for example, uses broadband transmission. In contrast, baseband transmission allows only one signal at a time.
Coaxial Cable	A type of wire that consists of a center wire surrounded by insulation and then a grounded shield of braided wire. The shield minimizes electrical and radio frequency interference. Coaxial cabling is the primary type of cabling used by the cable television industry and is also widely used for computer networks. Although more expensive than standard telephone wire, it is much less susceptible to interference and can carry much more data.
Commercial Advance®	Allows you to playback recorded shows without the commercials.
Conflict Resolver	If you have two conflicting shows set to record, a message will appear on the screen and ask you which show you want to record.
DVR	Digital Video Recorder
HDTV	Short for High-Definition Television, a new type of television that provides much better resolution than current televisions based on the NTSC standard. There are a number of competing HDTV standards, which is one reason that the new technology has not been widely implemented. All of the standards support a wider screen than NTSC and roughly twice the resolution. To pump this additional data through the narrow TV channels, images are digitized and then compressed before they are transmitted and then decompressed when they reach the TV.
MPEG	Short for Moving Picture Experts Group, and pronounced m-peg, a working group of ISO. The term also refers to the family of digital video compression standards and file formats developed by the group. MPEG generally produces better-quality video than competing formats, such as Video for Windows, Indeo and QuickTime. MPEG files can be decoded by special hardware or by software. MPEG achieves high compression rate by storing only the changes from one frame to another, instead of each entire frame. The video information is then encoded using a technique called DCT. MPEG uses a type of lossy compression, since some data is removed. But the diminishment of data is generally imperceptible to the human eye. There are three major MPEG standards: MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4. The most common implementations of the MPEG-1 standard provide a video resolution of 352-by-240 at 30 frames per second (fps). This produces video quality slightly below the quality of conventional VCR videos. MPEG-2 offers resolutions of 720x480 and 1280x720 at 60 fps, with full CD-quality audio. This is sufficient for all the major TV standards, including NTSC, and even HDTV. MPEG-2 is used by DVD-ROMs. MPEG-2 can compress a 2 hour video into a few gigabytes. While decompressing an MPEG-2 data stream requires only modest computing power, encoding video in MPEG-2 format requires significantly more processing power. MPEG-4 is a graphics and video compression algorithm standard that is based on MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 and Apple QuickTime technology. Wavelet-based MPEG-4 files are smaller than JPEG or QuickTime files, so they are designed to transmit video and images over a narrower bandwidth and can mix video with text, graphics and 2-D and 3-D animation layers.
MyReplayTV	MyReplayTV is a website that allows you to program your ReplayTV remotely
NTSC	Abbreviation of National Television Standards Committee. The NTSC is responsible for setting television and video standards in the United States (in Europe and the rest of the world, the dominant television standards are PAL and SECAM). The NTSC standard for television defines a composite video signal with a refresh rate of 60 half-frames (interlaced) per second. Each frame contains 525 lines and can contain 16 million different colors. The NTSC standard is incompatible with most computer video standards, which generally use RGB video signals. However, you can insert special video adapters into your computer that convert NTSC signals into computer video signals and vice versa. A new digital television standard being developed is called HDTV (High-Definition Television ).
QuickSkip™	A button on the Replay remote that instantly jumps ahead 30 seconds in the recorded program (perfect for skipping commercials)
ReplayZones™	ReplayZones™ allows you to search the guide by category such as Sitcoms, Sports, Talk Shows, etc.
RF	Short for radio frequency, any frequency within the electromagnetic spectrum associated with radio wave propagation. When an RF current is supplied to an antenna, an electromagnetic field is created that then is able to propagate through space. Many wireless technologies are based on RF field propagation. These frequencies make up part of the electromagnetic radiation spectrum: Ultra-low frequency (ULF) -- 0-3 Hz Extremely low frequency (ELF) -- 3 Hz - 3 kHz Very low frequency (VLF) -- 3kHz - 30 kHz Low frequency (LF) -- 30 kHz - 300 kHz Medium frequency )MF) -- 300 kHz - 3 MHz High frequency )HF) -- 3MHz - 30 MHz Very high frequency (VHF) -- 30 MHz - 300 MHz Ultra-high frequency (UHF)-- 300MHz - 3 GHz Super high frequency (SHF) -- 3GHz - 30 GHz Extremely high frequency (EHF) -- 30GHz - 300 GHz
Serial Port	A port, or interface, that can be used for serial communication, in which only 1 bit is transmitted at a time. Analogous to a railroad train, where each car (data bit) follows the other in single file. A serial port is a general-purpose interface that can be used for almost any type of device, including modems, mice, and printers (although most printers are connected to a parallel port).
S-Video	Short for Super-Video, a technology for transmitting video signals over a cable by dividing the video information into two separate signals: one for color (chrominance), and the other for brightness (luminance). When sent to a television, this produces sharper images than composite video , where the video information is transmitted as a single signal over one wire. This is because televisions are designed to display separate Luminance (Y) and Chrominance (C) signals. (The terms Y/C video and S-Video are the same.)
Show Organizer™	Allows you to sort and access all your recorded shows in a customizable Replay Guide.
VGA	Abbreviation of video graphics array, a graphics display system for PCs developed by IBM. VGA has become one of the de facto standards for PCs. In text mode, VGA systems provide a resolution of 720 by 400 pixels. In graphics mode, the resolution is either 640 by 480 (with 16 colors) or 320 by 200 (with 256 colors). The total palette of colors is 262,144. Unlike earlier graphics standards for PCs -- MDA, CGA, and EGA -- VGA uses analog signals rather than digital signals. Consequently, a monitor designed for one of the older standards will not be able to use VGA. Since its introduction in 1987, several other standards have been developed that offer greater resolution and more colors (see SVGA , 8514/A graphics standard, and XGA), but VGA remains the lowest common denominator. All PCs made today support VGA, and possibly some other more advanced standard.

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