I have been quite happy with my TIVO however, which I bought around 3 years ago when the first TIVO Series2 came out with the 80 hour hard drive.

I got it (refurbished) direcetly from TIVO for only 99 bucks and at the time the "product" lifetime (not the owner’s lifetime) service fee was $199.00. So, for $300 total I’ve had three blissful years of TIVO joy.

I have a system for maximizing my hours, for example, all news and animated shows are recorded at medium or basic quality with no noticible picture quality loss.

I set it up to only keep one episode total of shows like the nightly news, that I won’t want to watch a day late anyway.

I record all my favorite shows at best quality with the "save until I delete" option.

Believe me, I always have way way way more shows recorded at any given time than I could ever watch. It has great search features too, and if you have free hd space, it records shows for you it thinks you would like based on the types of shows you record (i.e. news, or sci fi).

Anyway, it sounds like your set up is pretty cool and if I had the time and money it would be a sweet set-up.

Now I just have to pray my TIVO lasts at least another couple of years because with the rate hikes, I doubt I could afford a new one.

So we got the low end refurbished Tivo for $50. For now I am going with the monthly fee, but by no means do you have to pay it to use the Tivo. You do need it to get features like “Season pass” and “Info on demand” (a cool little feature that shows the TV guide blurb for each show)

At the lowest setting you do get 40 hours on the set. Watching the lowest setting is a little like watching TV in a storm. Sometimes it looks good, sometimes it doesn’t. I have settled on "medium" and about 25 hours of TV time. The picture looks about as good as it does normally though there is some clipping and fading.

At High quality there are none of these issues, but you only get about 11 hours of record time. Not quite enough for me.

I have to say I don’t ever want to go back to ‘normal’ TV. The ability to pause ‘live TV’ alone was worth the price of admission.

It hasn’t all been rays of sunshine though. I got the Tivo on Friday but after taking it out of the box I realized I didn’t have everything. It doesn’t come ready to hook up to your home network. That was very disappointing. I had spent about an hour drilling holes and stringing cable in preparation. While it does have a pair of USB ports on the back it has no Cat 5 ports.

I didn’t think that would be a problem so I went to the store to get an adapter. And then I went to another store, and another, and another. Not a single computer store in town or any store that carried computer parts had an adapter.

Luckily Tivo ships with 30 feet of phone line so I was able to string it along the same path. Once I had it setup up (about thirty minutes start to finish) it was super easy to use. The navigation of the software is simple and straightforward. I love it. It was so easy my wife was using it in minutes… and I didn’t have to show her how to do it. She figured it out on her own.

Still more badness though. You can record a show, and watch an already recorded show at the same time. You cannot watch live TV and record a different show at the same time. So this required a purchase of a splitter to be implemented before the cable ever got to the Tivo.

That solved the last problem I had. Since then I have been a TV watching fool. I have got to see shows I have really wanted to see but couldn’t cause they came on at 2 am. I also have reclaimed my Friday evenings. The past year I have been chained to the couch watching Stargate and Atlantis. No more I say! I can watch them at my leisure, and watch I do.

I love Tivo, it was totally worth twice what I paid for it.