Purchasing a dvr without the monthly fee

[ohkanada]

My wife uses the VCR a lot and would like the ability to tape many programs withuot having to worry about tapes and all the issues they have.

So a DVR seems like the logical choice. We have DirectTV and they have a DVR but that has a 5.99 monthly fee (for tivo). We actually don't really need all the fancy features of the DVR. Pausing live TV is not important. Plus some of the nice features like it will tape all programs based on some criteria. We will be happy if we can tell it what to tape, just like a VCR.

What we really want is a VCR with a hard drive.

I havn't had much luck researching this and my wife's birthday is coming up.

Any help or ideas?

Ken