this wasn't in the plan |but life is still pretty good

The Tall One and I have always been ones to get our TV stations via rabbit ears.  Once Tivo and DVR came into the picture, I was about ready to jump ship.  Being able to pause live TV and easily skip commercials just sounded too good to be true.

For Christmas, my in-laws gave us our very own digital video recorder (official name - Hard Disc Drive  and DVD Player/Recorder with Digital Tuner).  It's like the best part of cable with no monthly subscription fee, and I had no idea that it existed!  Because of the new DTV revolution, all you need for this nifty machine to work is a TV with video input slots (and chances are it does if you've bought it in the last decade). It has a built-in digital converter box (though you'll want an additional one if you think you might want to watch one channel and record another one).  Last week, we paused a TV show, started watching it about 15 minutes later, and then fast forwarded through all the commercials, it was great!  The recording feature is fabulous too, though it's not as intuitive as you'd get with your cable package (meaning you have to tell it exactly when to record as opposed to programming it to just record Sesame Street whenever it comes on).  Ours has more hours of recording space than we will ever need, and since it's also a DVD player, it's easy to record anything over to a DVD (well, it appears to be easy, we actually haven't done it yet). 

I love not having to worry about accidentally recording Heroes over Bug's beloved Word World or making sure there's actually a tape in the VCR.  I could also use it record to DVD my husband playing our new Wii, not that I'd want to, but I could.