[sourcery]

If you care about HDTV, but don’t want satellite, get a Tivo S3. Otherwise, if you don’t want HD capability, get an S2.

[Keltik]

This should be in chat, sorry.

[americanophile]

I don’t think you have to have Directv to use Tivo, but I have both and love the Tivo.

[mom4kittys]

bump for later

[HAL9000]

Some relatively inexpensive products are available for home computers to record television programs without a TiVO subscription.

For example - Elgato EyeTV

[weegee]

I have a Pioneer DVD recorder. It has a DVR drive, editing capabilities, and TV Guide’s free tivo-like service (no subscription, no registration).

It cost me about $250 new in the box, no warranty (Pioneer had dropped support for my model but the vendor backed it up for something like the first week or month of performance).

I don’t know if Tivo has a free service, but TV Guide does. And not all DVR systems can burn DVDs or give you editing capabilites (there are also some that just burn straight to DVD-R, no caching to DVR drive).

Hope this helps.

[AZLiberty]

If you have a recent Mac with a large hard drive, Elgato's EyeTV is cool. Records everything on your computer hard drive. Plays on your computer or, through Apple TV, on your regular TV.

I'm still using ReplayTV, however. Years back they were something like $100 after rebate for the basic model with a small hard drive. Upgrading the hard drive was a semi-easy hack. Now ReplayTV has a PC-based, software-only model.