For one thing, you can watch a program from the beginning after it has already started, while the DVR finishes recording the end so you don’t miss anything. You can record programs repeatedly, preserving only the latest, first-run episodes, without monitoring the TV Guide and constantly rewinding the videotape. The DVR will even save however many episodes of Reba you want. It just copies over the oldest recordings with new episodes. Even VCR Plus, the process of looking up codes in your local TV listings and then typing them into your remote control to program the VCR timer, is complicated enough to explain, let alone to do. Compare that to DVR recording, where you simply select a program from ReplayTV’s on-screen guide and press the record button. Taking candy from a baby is more complicated than this.

There are enough back-panel inputs and outputs to connect the DVR to most systems, though additional S-video and a FireWire (1394) connection would be good. The unit’s progressive-scan component outputs are an added plus.

You’ll get forty hours of recording capacity with the DVR adjusted for the lowest quality level. This setting provides the most recording time but degrades performance to broadcast TV levels. Then again, this is still slightly better than a VCR. The middle- and high-quality settings, which are nearly indistinguishable from one another in terms of picture quality, drop recording time to as little as 14 hours, exhibiting only a slight loss when compared to the original broadcast signal. Versions with larger hard drives are also available for up to 320 hours of recording capacity. I recommend buying the largest hard drive you can afford. You’ll find all sorts of neat stuff that will fill up the hard drive quickly.