OTHER TECH

Digital Video Recorder Cable and satellite receivers with built-in hard drives and standalone TiVo recorders - collectively known as DVRs - are extremely popular, and with good reason. Some of the receivers will let you record HDTV, while TiVos have by far the easiest-to-use EPG.

Time-shifting The EPG you get when you sign up for cable or satellite, or when you pay for TiVo service, is so simple and versatile that it easily beats the free EPG that comes with many DVD/hard-drive recorders. And with a DVR, you don't have to worry about how you're going to get the recorder to control channel switching. This makes DVRs the hands-down winners for time-shifting - best of all is a satellite receiver with TiVo!

Archiving With a DVR, unless you offload some of your programs to a DVD recorder - some TiVos have one built in - you will run out of hard-drive space. And it might be impossible to add more storage, depending on the model.

Editing DVRs aren't set up for editing, so you're stuck with commercials and can't cut your home videos (if your box will even allow you to record them).

Making Copies As long as the program you want to copy isn't automatically erased to make room for newer recordings (a hallmark of TiVo imitated by some cable boxes), duplication can range from moderately complicated (using an external recorder) to really easy (TiVo with built-in DVD recorder).

The TiVo-plus-DVD-recorder combo is easy to use and provides the best combination you'll find for time-shifting and program archiving - as long as you don't want to edit your keeper discs and are willing to pay the TiVo subscription fee.