Purchasing a dvr without the monthly fee

[TomCollins]

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I wanted to watch TV on my PC but didnt want to shell out the loot for a new video card.

So i picked this up ATI TV TUNER

You can record on to your hard drive and even rewind and pause live tv.

I think this is what your looking for.

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I have one of these, and its a real piece of crap. It bluescreens my computer continuously. Spend the extra money and get one that isn't an ATI POS.

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You must have done some thing wrong i use it every day with no problems

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I realized I had a PCI card and yours was USB. Anyway, I have updated the drivers to the newest versions. It's a POS and I didn't do anything wrong.

[Ulysses]

I agree w/ those that say the price is definitely worth it, but if you really just want a HD VCR, you can get an old TiVo really cheap and it will do exactly what you want it to do - plus more stuff like pausing/rewinding live TV, etc. However, the cost to get the program listings as well is well worth it imo.

[MtnDave]

I agree with all the others. Tivo is worth the money.
However, one alternative that I did not see mentioned is to get a DVD recorder with hard drive and tuner (Panasonic, for example.) You can just use the hard drive as a VCR, and you can burn a saved program to DVD if you want to.
But... they are expensive and you could go the Tivo route for 5 or 6 years for the same money.

Right. I have a Hauppage and it's amazing. Best bang for your buck (and this is according to hot deals.com and cnet as well).

[Freakin]

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250GB drives are $90 every day online, so $80 b&m with tax is pretty equal

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It was something worth buying... i think they were 7200 sata with 16mb cache or something.

I still called him stupid for buying 2 tb with no real reason. His roommate (another friend of mine) is now using galleon to pull stuff off his tivo, then videolan so he can watch streaming arrested development on his pocket pc while on the can. It's all a very pointless use of $800, but I can be confident that if I need a copy of a show he watches, he's still got it archived.

[Vlorg]

Buy a standalone Tivo unit. Pay the $300 lifetime activation fee (or hack it if that is still possible with the newer models). Problem solved.

Vlorg

[astroglide]

you can buy maxtor maxline iii 7200rpm 16mb sata drives for $90 online. i got some for work last week. these are their enterprise sata drives with 5 year warranties.