Question: Do I want to buy an extended warranty with my ReplayTV?

Answer: Fred W asks: I just purchaed the ReplayTV 5000 unit with the 4 year warranty and purchased the $250 lifetime. If in 3 years it dies and BestBuy gives you a new unit will they transfer the membership for free?

jleavens writes: Excellent question, and the experience has been mixed. From reports from users who have had to use the extended warranties bought at a retailer, some users have been able to get their activation moved to a new unit, and some haven't.

The basic issue is this: If you pay lifetime activation for a new unit, and at some point the unit is exchanged during service for a new unit, you may have to fight with the store manager to make sure your activation is paid on the serviced unit. These stores SHOULD have an arrangement with Sonicblue to get activation transferred, but they don't seem to have done so. Bottom line is that if the store sells you a warranty, they should cover the activation.

Please note: If you have monthly activation, this is not a problem! This may be one of the few benefits of monthly payments.

John M added on 03/17/2003: The DVR person at Circuit City said they would. However, the customer service people at the warranty center said they would not.

jleavens writes: Yep. This is the problem. :*)

bac added on 05/01/2003: Being in the electronics industry, most Integrated Circuits (IC), if they are going to fail, will fail within the first 30 to 45 days of use. If you make it beyond that, then IC's will operate for quite awhile before failure (Most have Mean time between failures of 15 years), of course there are exceptions to this. Too much heat severely shortens the life of IC's.

In the ReplayTV, the hard disk is the weakest link in product, still most major manufacture's of hard disk drives have a minimum specification of 5 year service life and Mean time between failures of 600,000 power-on hours.

But what a lot of people forget about is their credit card. If you used a credit card to purchase your unit, many credit cards add to the manufacture's warranty period. For example, my credit card doubles the manufacture's warranty. So my ReplayTV is covered for 2 years. Check with your credit card company, you may already have an extended warranty for free!