I agree with everything Tom said about DVRs (aka godmachines). They are great, but if you want to save something off of the DVR you need to get a DVD recorder. DVDRs aren't quite as easy as popping a tape into the vcr and hitting record, but they are well worth it. For one the DVDRW disc will need about 20 seconds of formatting when you first drop it in. Mine will let you record after that by just hitting record, but that uses up a lot of disc space since it only records at the highest setting that way. Normally we just set up the movie to the beginning on the DVR then pause it. Then we set the timer on the dvdr and change the settings to whatever gets 8 hours on a DVD, then as soon as the DVDR starts we hit play on the DVR and the next morning its finished. If you can already program a VCR than its not too high a learning curve.

As far as the DVD/VCR combos go we have bought a few of them. If you can get more than a year before one or the other dies count yourself lucky. We stopped replacing them once we got the DVR and DVDR. The DVD plays DVD's like a DVD player as well, in fact mine has upsampling too, so the DVDs look even better on my high DEF TV. Tomorrow the sattelite company is coming to install the High DEF receiver and DVR. I'm so excited.

One last note about High DEF. HDTVs are coming down in price. Be careful not to buy one that says HDready. That just means you can install a HD receiver (sold seperatly) to it. I don't think there are any HDreadys left in the stores though, but you still may see it on the discount markets. You don't need sattelite or cable to get HD. You can pull it out of the air. I was so surprised to discover a bunch of extra HD channels I didn't know about coming off the antennae. My local PBS channel has a seperate HD channel that only plays their HD programming. I watched more PBS the week after I got my HDTV than I had in a very long time.