I'm considering buying a digital video recorder. I like the idea of recording a show, pausing to answer the phone or get a snack, and then continue to watch the show from where I paused until I get to the "live" broadcast again. Plus the long recording time is also attractive. Recording quality doesn't matter too much.
My wife and I would pretty much treat it as a "digital VCR" since we don't save tapes all that much.
Tivo sounds okay, but I don't need another monthly bill and hooking a telephone line to it makes me a little suspicious (selling my tv habits info and such). I've heard the "Season Pass" option of Tivo is "really cool" from a fellow employee, but I don't really need that feature.
I'd like to get some suggestions from you about dvr players and your experiences with them. Thanks in advance for your suggestions and advice.

Chris

A few months back I got a DVR through my cable company. So far I love it, can record two different shows at the same time, can watch one while recording another. It's odd to begin watching an hour long show 15 minutes after it has started and end up at real time by the end of the show since you can zip right through the commercials. These things are how recording should be done, at least for convenience sake. Picture quality suffers some but I don't think it's to bad.

I may not be a good resource here, since my case is a bit unusual, but I've been using a Panasonic DVD recorder for a little over a year. We got it originally to archive some old home videoes from VHS to DVD-R before the tapes died. It includes a hard drive (mine's an 80GB, but larger ones are available now) that at the second best quality holds about 35 hours of material. It's fairly easy to edit recordings (trim junk out of home movies or ads out of TV shows) and dump stuff you want to keep to DVD-R. There's a standard cable tuner and three line inputs for a digital cable box, satellite receiver, VCR, camcorder, or whatever. It does not have any of the "brains" of a Tivo and is not continuously recording - if you need to go answer the phone or something, you'll need to start recording before you do. I set timers every week to catch the shows we normally watch, and we can then watch them at our leisure. It's one of the more basic approaches, but for our needs (a "digital VCR" to borrow your apt term) it's great.

cable company is probably the most attractive offer. low monthly cost, no equipment to buy, etc. tivo is going to force commercials on people from what i have been reading lately...

in my area we have hd or regular dvrs, i have only used the regular one over at a friends, but thought it was handy if you like to watch tv shows. he liked it a great deal. personally, i think it would eat up even more of my day, and id rather just miss some things anyway...

I just had my Cable company install a HD-DVR and my wife and I love it.

I watch DVD's so often that I kept trying to pause regular television. Now I actully can.

The quality of the recorded video is fine.

My Cable company charges an extra $10/month. I figured for $120 a year why not. If I bought a device I would probaly want a new one in a few years anyway so renting isn't so bad.

My box has two tuners so I can record two shows or record one and watch another.

Record allows you to record one episode, all episodes on the same channel at the same time, all episodes on this channel at any time or just first run episodes on this channel at this time. Then you can keep all episodes or only some fixed number. There are many options that give you complete control.

Since this is a integrated DVR/cable box usage is very simple. When you are searching the on screen guide for a show simply select it and the default option is to set a timer to record the show. Couldn't be easier.

If you have DVR available from your cable company I recommend it.

We have Dish Network since we live out in "No-Cable Country". I'd like to have a dual-tuner receiver, but that will have to wait.
Gonk, let me know which model you have.
Thank you all for your responses.

Any more suggestions are absolutely welcome.

I've got the DMR-E80 (and a lengthy review of it here ). I've had it for almost a year and a half now. It's pretty comparable to the DMR-E85 that they have out now (the E85 has a larger hard drive - 120GB instead of 80GB).

We also live in a no-cable area and have dish network. we have a dual-tuner DVR (DVR-522). It was available as a lease unit, which I prefer due to the rapidly advancing technology. It is not an HDTV unit (but neither are any of my TV's ) and may only be available to new customers. But they have other units listed on their website so give them a call. We love ours, it currently does not have Tivo capability but we know how to tell time, so it's not a big deal.

I've owned both ReplayTV and TiVo. As far as I'm concerned, TiVo is the gold standard for this technology. An excellent interface and superior features.

A friend switched from TiVo to DishTV's DVR. His conclusion? "It's no TiVo."

The TiVo commercials thing is not quite what curegeorg has heard. TiVo is not going to force viewers to watch commercials. They are going to sell advertisers little on screen banners that will be visible even as you fast-forward through the commercials.

Dishnetwork recently dropped the price of the 921dvr (HD-DVR) to $549. I've had mine for almost a year and love it.