A couple of years ago, I reviewed two second-generation personal video recorders (PVRs) from ReplayTV and TiVo. At that time, these gadgets were still relatively new, having come out in their first versions less than a year previously. Since then, both have made significant advances, and between them they've captured the lion's share of the PVR market. However, several companies have been working on products that enable you to turn a PC into a PVR with software and hardware; one strong contender in this race is SnapStream. In this article, I'll examine the progress that TiVo and ReplayTV have made in the past two years and review SnapStream, which I've had running on my PC for the last two weeks.

PVR update

TiVo has gained a strong foothold in the marketplace, and TiVo has become synonymous with PVR in the lexicon of many TV viewers. At the time of my last review, TiVo service (the program guide that lets you pick shows and automates recording--updated nightly via your telephone line) cost $9.95 per month or $199 for the life of your TiVo unit; it's now up to $12.95 and $249.00. Besides selling standalone PVRs, TiVo has forged an alliance with DirecTV, and there are integrated boxes that act as both dual-channel DirecTV tuners and 35-hour TiVo recorders. Currently, these are available for $99 with DirecTV activation or $199 for current subscribers (TiVo service is on top of these prices--it's not integrated with your DirecTV subs...

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