Where can I get a good priced VCR from?

What DVR should I get?

• I am looking for a DIGITAL VIDEO RECORDER. I'm trying to get one for my dad's birthday because he loves football but he can never watch Monday Night Football since he has work. I don't have any VCR's in my house anymore so I was looking to getting a DVR. Now my question is: 1) How does a DVR work? Is it like a VCR? It records data (digitally vs tape) and we can replay them? 2) Is there a MONTHLY subscription of some-sort of cost? 3) What should I get? Please help me find something reasonable priced and works. I just want a standard DVR that records shows. I don't need any other fancy features or monthly payments. Thanks.

• Answer:

  It depends on the type. Provider DVRs bascially copy the already digital signal from the provider to an HDD (often two channels at a time), and play that out a video decoder. DVRs which are analog, or work from a set-top-box have a video encoder, which writes its output to the HDD. A DVR, over most VCRs, usually have guide based recording features. Being an HDD, one can randomly access any point on it, so can record and watch different things at once. Most DVD based or OTA only recorders do not have fees. A straight DVD recorder is not a DVR, but is alot more like a VCR. Even DVD recorders with HDD are usually pretty manual for setting recordings. What you get depends if you have OTA, cable, or another box service. If you have a pay TV service, you should be able to get their DVR (which may have fees associated with it). For TiVo, you can get a Premiere (or older HD model) and use that with OTA , or cable with cablecard. Series 2s are SD only, but work with most box sources, or analog cable. You do subscribe to their service, because most software features are licensed, and the subscription pays for that license. You can choose to buy that license up front though, with Product Lifetime. You can built a PC DVR, but it costs up front, and may have a setup/initial learning curve. For OTA, there is the ChannelMaster DTV PAL line. Those use PSIP or TVGOS data.