Oh, yeah?! I still have three VCRs and they serve me just fine for recording and playing TV shows. I also know how to program them! So there!
I also have a PCIe based Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 dual MPG encoder video card in one of my two main computers which records over the air TV programs, episodes, or movies including HD quality broadcasts. One channel can record over the Air ATSC HD video feeds through an antenna while the second channel can record any analog signal coming in via the Cable TV feed including a digital HD signal coming in via the cable TV feed using 'Clear QAM' signal.
Those machines are on 24/7 recording commercial free movies off Turner classic channel as well as other full length movie channels, and also recording several TV series.
After I record a movie or program or episode, I edit it to remove any commercials present and then I compress it with the latest DIVX software to reduce my storage space requirements. My ‘server’ machine has almost 14 terabytes of storage space spread across 9 hard disc drives.
My ‘master’ machine has two terabytes of space spread across three hard disc drives.
At sometime in the future I will add 7 more 1.5 or 2.0 terabyte hard drives to my 'Master' machine and have everything on my 'server' copied to my 'Master' machine to have a complete backup of all my videos. When I bought my house, I had it prewired for Cable TV and Home Network/internet in all six bedrooms, the Kitchen, the downstairs Family room, and the upstairs Bonus/game room which is as large as the downstairs family room. I also had the house prewired for Satellite TV. I also had a whole house security system installed which monitors all doors and windows as well as including smoke detectors in all bedrooms, the kitchen, the family room, the upstairs bonus/game room and the downstairs formal dining and living rooms also including glass breaking in the downstairs office, the formal living/dining room, and the family room. This security system connects via a telephone land line to a 24/7 monitoring service which is able to contact me whereever I may be and also call the police and/or fire department if I don't answer. All of this prewiring allows me to watch anything on Cable TV, Satellite TV or videos stored on my server in any prewired room of my house as well as anywhere in the world via the internet. As part of the pre-wire for cable TV and internet we received a cable TV amplifier and an 8 outlet/1 input TV splitter installed in one of three 28 inch long by 14.25 inch wide in-wall enclosure boxes. This box/enclosure contains a cable TV splitter which splits the incoming cable/internet signal two ways one of which sends the internet signal to the third box which contains all the internet equipment while the second split feeds the Cable TV portion to the TV amplifier in this enclosure. There is room remaining in this box to contain a satelite TV splitter which will connect to the existing cable TV network via a special input jack on the TV amplifier. There is also room for some special Internet broadcast capable video equipment which will allow us to send the home security cameras audio and video outputs to a special address on the internet which will allow us to monitor the house from anywhere in the world with an Internet connection. The second large enclosure contains the telephone splitter which sends the telephone land line to a few select rooms, This box also contains the home intercom system which allows us to answer the front and rear doors and talk to whoever may be at either one. The intercom system allows us to talk directly between all the bedrooms and the family room, bonus/game room, and kitchen as well as the front and rear doors. The home security video equipment allows us see whoever may be at the front and/or rear door and to talk to whoever may be at either one via the home intercom system. The video equipment allows us to view and record up to 4 external cameras monitoring whats happening outside the house and display those camera feeds on two internal wall mounted color LCD screens along with the audio from the video cameras. Finally this box also contains a video receiver which receives the signal from the external cameras and feeds the individual signal to another video device which feeds the LCD monitors which have the ability to display all 4 video feeds at one time, or each one individually in sequence, or up to 4 selected feeds to the two LCD monitors each of which has the ability to handle two different audio/video feeds. The third box/enclosure contains the cable modem for the Internet, a 'router' which will allow us to connect up to 256 computers to the cable modem and three 8 port gigabit 'switches' which are 'Daisy Chained' to the 'router' on one side and to all the individual network connections on the other side. The home network is rated at a full gigabit speed which is one hundred times faster than the normal home network speed of 10 megabits per second and 10 times faster than the improved 100 megabit home network speed. When watching a movie on a machine connected to the server, I only use about 6% of my home network capacity and even if I have 9 people watching videos from my server we only use 54% of the home network capacity and we still will be able to watch videos on the other machines with no interruptions or 'stuttering' in the video being watched. Along with a computer in every bedroom, I also have a laptop in the Kitchen which can watch videos from either the Cable/Satellite TV boxes, the home server, or built in CD/DVD player/burner, and one special family room home theater computer which allows us to watch any video stored on the server, or from the Cable TV and Satellite TV set top boxes, or on it's built in CD/DVD player/recorder on a large screen HD TV attached to that computer. My cable internet speed is currently 20 megabits per second but will soon improve to at least 30 megabits per second. I use ‘Beyond TV’ to schedule and make my recordings automatically and ‘VideoReDo’ to edit my recordings to remove any commercials before and after the main movies and any commercials in the TV series as well.
My recordings are completely legal since they are broadcast in analogue TV mode and not in digital. Also, my cable service provider provides online digital recording as part of their basic service. Since they provide the Cable TV set top box, they also provide for HD recording of their cable TV signal as well and therefore there is no copyright violation since they themselves are providing the ability to record everything they broadcast.
I do have the ability to produce CDs or DVDs but I reserve that capability for live recordings of church services I make at our local churches which protects me from any copyright violations since they own the copyrights on anything I produce for them which includes both CDs and DVDs.
I make every effort to avoid violating any copyright law and only record what the cable company delivers to me in analog format which is exempt from the new digital copyright laws because they are not broadcast digitally and have no video protection on them and therefore are exempt from the latest laws regarding digital medium or the over the air ATSC signal or the 'CLEAR QAM' via the Cable TV side, both of those signals are provided without any digital protection and they are not encoded by any encryption and they are also ok to record since the cable owner rents the video recording equipment themselves to the individual customer who orders it.
All three of the set top boxes my cable supplier provides allow for copying in analog format any of their broadcast signals. All three of the set top boxes provided by my cable service provider allow for direct copying to an internal hard drive. One of the three boxes also allows a direct feed via a HDMI connector to a TV set. I started recording back in 2000 and I have so far recorded over 2000 full length movies and over 200 TV series many of which have over 200 episodes per series.
I use my ‘server’ machine to feed anything that I have recorded to TVs throughout my house.
The bottom line is that I don't need to use DVDs for any thing (movies or TV episodes) that I have recorded either on analog TV broadcasts on the cable modem or anything that was broadcast through the air and received on an antenna.
I occasionally do use my stand alone DVD player/recorders or similar units installed in my PCs to watch DVDs that guests have brought over with them..
Even though I obviously have several thousand movies, episodes, or various other TV broadcasts I have no need for either CDs or DVDs to record them or play them on any machine in our house. The one thing which really helps me was having the house prewired to have both internet and cable TV in the six bedrooms as well as the kitchen and family room. Even though we haven't completed the entire system we designed for, we do currently have complete video and internet capability in all appropriate rooms. I appologize if I went too far in describing our home pre-wiring, but in order to understand our good recording and viewing capacity I felt it was important to explain exactly why we have the ability to handle so much video with our recording and viewing systems and why we had all the prewiring done, as well as the pre-planning we did in order to get the results we desired. I must also explain that I am retired and living under Social Security disability pay and therefore have little money to afford things like going out to see a movie at a theatre or buying DVDs unless I can buy them extremely cheap at Walmart or Sams Club. Since I am retired with little ability to get out of the house much and have a lot of time on my hands, I am able to do all the recording, editing, and compressing with DIVX that I am doing. A person working full time wouldn't have the time necessary to do all that I do. Before I was disabled I worked with mainframe computers for about 35 years and even owned my own computer consulting business. I also used to make my own computers and therefore I was capabble of designing exactly how my video system was to function. Along with my computer background, I also had abundant time to research anything I needed to acuire more knowledge about.