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.