SO what happened to the satellite DVRs? Recently, CNET touted the DISH Network DVR as the best on the market.

You can also use your HTPC to play world of warcraft on your big screen!

hi i live in holland and whel digital tv is just getting a foothold over here and i just got digtal cabel.

cable providers over here trie you to force you onto there set top box , but lukely there are 3 tv companies that have built in videocards withe decoders.

i thought about the whole set top box thing and opted for a sharp tv withe built in analoge , hd cabel and satelite tuner and hd recorder withe 160gb.

this way i have 1 mashine and can pop my decoderd card straight into my tv's slot.

the interface is pretty oke.

the only thing is that my tv alows to export recorded material to another mashine via hdmi cable , but i'm not quite shure what kinde of mashine :-S think it's a burner / recorder , but would like to be it a pc so i can store / burn material would like to find that out as shuttle has a pc withe hdmi interface but i'm not shure if it goes bothe ways.

i now tend to record a lot of movies and show's but after a while 160 gb seems smal.

but so far i love the al in 1 thing , to bad it did not had a built in bleuray player / burner :-S
that would have made it even better.

but so far i'm loving the recorder , i never had a vcr but i love this , so easy to skip comercials espacialy withe sharps 1 step forward 1 step back systhem wich puts you in 3 steps right at the end of the comercials.

over here some comercials last like 5 to 10 min sometimes :-S

so i tend to record and watsh insted of watshing live , it's 1 way to stop spam advertizing on your tv.

i can recomend a tv withe a built in systhem , trust me if you have a smal apartmant like me it's heaven...

I started out with a ReplayTV (which I freakin' loved!) and now have a cable box dvr. I'd love to upgrade to TiVo, but the lack of On Demand support will keep it out of my hands. I'll sacrafice interface for On Demand, which no matter how much hard drive space you have, you'll never have enough room to store all those "In Treatment" episodes.

I've been using a Phillips DVR/DVD Recorder for the past year and it's wonderful. No service fees, it hooks up right to your cable like a VCR and you can dub from HDD to DVD or just delete when storage reaches capacity. There's no built in channel guide, but if you have any sort of digital cable you'll already have that with the cable box, so why pay the extra price? Plus, I can take this when I move and use it with whatever service provider I want. It's all a one time payment. I think I paid a little under $300 total. Why pay the extra cost for a service you don't need?

Pay per view works just fine on Tivo contrary to your chart. It is less convenient because you have to do it the old fashioned way- call or use internet rather than simply activate the show if you have a cableco box.

Regarding "Bittorrent" and stuff like Home videos you might want to view and store on the DVR- since nearly all homes that have a dvr have a home computer, It is fair to say that Tivos do this kind of content just fine- and by the way- with far far less hassle than doing it on the MCE.

Lastly- Transfers. I transfer a lot of programming to my video IPods- it is a great pacifier for my 4 kids in the car. Anyway- I have a Windows media center hooked up to the TV, a Tivo HD and a Tivo (non HD), and so I am familiar with transfering programs.

There is a huge difference between their capabilities. The MCE and Tivo HD won't just refuse to transfer HD programs- they will refuse to transfer digital channels that have a no copy flag set on them. All of this content can be recorded on the Non-HD Tivo, so I am always going to have one in the house. The flagged shows are at least 20% of the shows that I record, and it would be a lot higher for other types of content.

"All Digital" is not necessarily a good thing.

Actually, the HD capacity on the stock TiVo HD is about 20 hours, not 12. And CableCARD fees vary widely - in some areas the first card is free and the second only $1.50. But the TiVo HD can use M-Cards, which means you need just one card - not two. Most cable MSOs now offer M-Cards, and if the first card is free in your area - you're golden, no fee.

TiVo also supports more than just podcasts (and YouTube is later this year) - nearly any video you have can be transcoded and transferred to the TiVo over the network. That could be DVD rips, BitTorrent downloads, video from your camcorder, etc. This can be done with TiVo Desktop on Windows, or a number of 3rd party tools, like pyTiVo.

For PPV/VOD content, TiVo has also announced a partnership with Jaman.com, which will bring more movies to TiVo this year - similar to Unbox. And you can download free music videos from Music Choice. And there is also support for music services Live365 and Rhapsody, of course.

You can also expand the unit beyond the 500GB eSATA drive if you're willing to open it up. There are tools to upgrade the TiVo - the largest units today are 2TB with 1TB internal and a 1TB eSATA drive.

The Motorola HD DVR that Comcast uses is the most horrendous piece of garbage. I miss my Dish Network DVR. =:o(

There is a way to do the 30 second skip with the Comcast DVR's, it's just not something they're eager to tell you about due to the fact that their advertisers would frown on it. Very few techs actually know the codes and the ones that do are told to give it out very sparingly.

For instructions on how to program the remote to do the 30 second skip, go to the following website:

http://dcortesi.com/2005/05/04/motorola-dct6412-comcast-dvr-30-second-skip/

Thanks for this article. It had information that I didn't know about, and hadn't heard from other sites like CNET. I thought I'd be able to just plug & play an old computer I had lying around and use it as a media center. I now know there's much more to it. Keep up the good work.

Tivo is the only way to go. Direct Tv's box is slow and not even close to Tivo's offering.