Y'all are definitely entitled to your opinions... However, my personal view on this is that these will never become doorstops. Because they are, in essence, computers, their operating osftware can be updated at any time.
If (and if ReplayTV didn't succeed this would be a likely scenario) TiVo (or some other DVR company if it were to exist a the time) were to buy out ReplayTV, these boxes could probably be converted to the new service without much fuss at all. I agree that without the service these boxes are useless, but I don't think they will ever be without service one way or the other.
According to the article, skeptics think that any company can "slap a hard drive inside a product" and pay programmers to write their own software. I think that is a tad oversimplified. The software is only one component. You've got to have the availability of local access numbers, nationwide content information, marketing, and not to mention well-designed software that's idiot-proof. All that takes a lot of money, and it would be much more cost-effective to license software from a company that specializes in it and already has the majority of market share. We live in a standards-based world. Our markets simply won't support a dozen different producers of incompatible technology.
Now, whether it can even support two is questionable, I admit... but until someone tells me that a ReplayTV box could never be capable of running some sort of modified TiVo software then I wouldn't fret. TiVo wants Replay's customers, believe me. If Replay goes belly-up (though I don't believe that will happen) then I'm sure TiVo will come up with a way to gobble up Replay's customers.
l2c
P.S. Of course all of this is speculation and MHO. Feel free to sell off your Replays if you want to. I'll be keeping mine.