[longtermmemmory]

It records on a hard drive but does it record on a DVD or CD? Seems like a rip off if you can't shelve, your recordings.

[SamAdams76]

It records on a hard drive but does it record on a DVD or CD? Seems like a rip off if you can't shelve, your recordings.

It's a ripoff in the same sense that an MP3 player is a ripoff because it doesn't burn the MP3s to CD. Like an MP3 player, a DVR fits a particular niche. If you want to record your own DVD's, you get a DVD recorder instead of a DVR (as you would get a CD burner instead of an MP3 player if you wanted to burn CDs).

The DVR's are supposedly hackable if you really wanted to send the video to another computer with a DVD recorder. But why bother? Most of us don't have enough hours in the day to watch a particular TV program more than once even if we could shelve them all.

In the near future, you will have all the TV shows and movies ever produced at your fingertips anyhow. Cable companies are working at a frenetic pace to make this reality. The DVR is simply a stopgap measure until the video on-demand concept reaches maturity.

[Monty22]

There's a Tivo that has a built in DVD recorder now.

More are coming.

There are people here that are anti-Tivo, and OBVIOUSLY never used one. Once you have one, you have pro-tivo posts.

It's just how it is. The ignorant simply can't comprehend it. It's like explaining freerepublic or entire internet to a cave man. They won't even understand the fundamentals.

They'll say 'oh, it's just like scratching stuff on the walls and someone else reads it'. That's how all these VCR comparisons come across. There's no comprehension.