Audio Video News

The ReplayTV DVR platform is about to lose its electronic program guide updates. It's another nail in the coffin for what was once TiVo's major rival.

The ReplayTV website reports that the EPG will be "permanently discontinued" on July 31, 2011. Users will still be able to program their units or software manually, but will no longer be able to use the EPG to record.

The announcement sounds a resigned note: "The industry conversion to HDTV is complete and ReplayTV DVRs are unable to take advantage of the wealth of HDTV programming." So arguably ReplayTV was already obsolete. Certainly TiVo has long since left it in the dust.

Back when ReplayTV got started in 1997, some people were still referring to DVRs as PVRs (personal video recorders). ReplayTV started as a standalone piece of hardware. It was purchased by SONICblue in 2001, only to see its parent company file for bankruptcy in 2003 following legal attacks by the television networks, which hated the whole idea of PVRs. Or DVRs. Or whatever.

Hardware sales were discontinued in 2005. After that ReplayTV continued as PC software under the aegis of D&M, parent of Denon and Marantz. D&M sold most of the assets to DirecTV while still providing the EPG.

See ReplayTV, Wiki history, and Zatz Not Funny!, which broke the story.