TV Recording: Bring Me Into the 21st Century

[jaytee]

After 14 years of dedicated service, my VCR is acting like a little bitch--not recording shows I've programmed, getting hung up while rewinding, pulling the tape out of the cassette, etc. I'm thinking the time has come to replace it with another video recording device. I'd like to keep up with the times, so I was thinking of getting a DVR or DVD

Comments

[srb]

I get a DVR from Comcast as part of the regular cable package. If you're already paying to get comedy central you can probably get upgraded quickly. I have a Sony DVD player/recorder. I think it cost me about $100 at Best Buy. There are rewritable DVDs, but I've found that upon the first rewrite I can't seem to watch them on other people's DVD players, which may or may not be an issue for you. On the first burn, or on one-write DVDs I can take them anywhere to watch.

I'm also a big fan of On Demand programming from Comcast. There are usually a couple of free movies I want to watch, and uncut BBC series with all the boobs and cursing intact. I can burn those to DVD too.

[pentomino]

You can record on a DVD over and over, if it's a DVD-RW (rewritable).

[winnowill2]

We have both TiVo and a DVD Recorder. When we got our TiVo, you could pay a flat fee ($300) to use the service "for the life of the unit" but they don't have that any more - you can pay for several years at a time, though. Cox has DVR service now, though - it was just coming into its own when we got the TiVo.

Since we got the small TiVo which doesn't hold very much, we often record to DVD if it's something we want to keep (we have the DVD-R to function as a VCR, but we really haven't ever programmed it to record anything because the TiVo is so easy). DVDs are CHEAP these days - we got a spindle of 50 for $10 a while ago - they're cheaper now than VHS tapes ever were.

TiVo is awesome. You can tell it what you like and it will go out and find those programs. You can tell it that you want to watch every episode of a series, and it will faithfully grab them for you - and it knows when it's a repeat and when it's new. You can tell it you like a particular actor or director, and it'll grab stuff including those people. It's super

I am totally TiVo's bitch.

[geobabe1]

Seriously, TiVo is the bomb. It is completely worth the cost of the service--we got an 80-hour dual tuner box and pay $17/month for 2 years for both the box and the service, which is a pretty good deal, IMO. It's got so many great features that I honestly can't watch TV without it now. You can pause live TV--we often start a program, then pause it while we go fix dinner or a snack, then we can fast forward through the commercials. We have ours connected to our home network, so I can download programs to my computer and burn them to DVD. It beats a VCR six ways to Sunday.

Re: I am totally TiVo's bitch.

[winnowill2]

Ours decided some time ago that it dislikes our home network. We don't know why - it worked for a while, then, suddenly, it didn't any more. So we use the phone line and it works fine, and with the standalone DVD recorder, we don't need to put anything on the network.