Dear Uncle Tiny: What Kind Of DVR Should I Get?

One of the perks or side-effects of being a games and tech writer is that you nominate yourself as the go-to guy for gaming and technological questions of every stripe - whether you're qualified or not. Yesterday I posted my response to an Xbox 360 shopping question, and today I answered my older sister's questions about DVRs and TiVo. This is a question I get asked a lot, and while the answer depends almost entirely on where you live and who provides your cable or satellite TV, there are still some basics to cover.

DVRs (Digital Video Recorders) are great - you definitely want one, and TiVo is a good choice if you don't have a cable company that offers a decent DVR box instead. So, you'll need to answer two questions:

1- What cable or satellite company do you use?
2- Do you watch HDTV or watch TV on an HDTV? If you've got a flat-panel TV, or a regular boxy TV with a widescreen screen, the answer is probably yes.

If you're lucky enough to have Time Warner Cable, or a cable company with an equally good DVR offering, that is definitely your best bet to start off with: you won't have to buy the DVR hardware (TiVo sells for upwards of $300, for instance, in addition to a monthly, yearly, or one-time lifetime subscription fee), and while you'll still pay a monthly fee to have it, if it breaks or your cable provider starts using a better one you can upgrade your hardware for free or for a nominal exchange fee.

If you've got DirectTV or Dish satellite TV, both offer DVR set-top boxes that are integrated into the receiver units, much like a cable company's DVR cable box. Those are almost always a better deal than TiVo, even though they lack TiVo's super-easy interface and you'll have to pay for them up front.

If you don't like your local provider DVR options, TiVo is a good choice. It's been some years since I bought my last TiVo, being lucky enough to have Time Warner Cable and their excellent High Definition DVR cable box, which I in fact just upgraded for a newer model at no charge to me. Try doing that with TiVo! TiVo's interface is also legendary, and many people find it's worth the money for ease-of-use alone.

TiVo options (there are only 3):
If you do go with TiVo and you do have HDTV or don't want to lock yourself out of being able to watch HDTV in the future, go with either the TiVo Series3 HD DVR or the standard TiVo HD DVR - if you can get the former, I recommend it. For frugality's sake and if you don't have any plans to watch high-definition television, the $99 TiVo Series2 DT DVR is an excellent bargain. Video quality suffers and you'll still have to pay that monthly/yearly/one-time fee, but in my day this box sold for $300, so it's quite a discount.

Recap:

Go with a "free" DVR from your cable company if that's an option. If you don't like it you can always return the DVR and remove the service from your cable bill.

If you use satellite TV, paying for a new satellite box with DVR built-in is a better choice for your money - and the satellite company is going to force you to do it eventually, anyway, because of the infrastructure upgrades they're mandating over the next year or so.

If none of these apply, buy yourself a TiVo! You won't regret it once you've discovered the thrill of being mistress over all of television. It's a pretty neat feeling to free yourself from the schedule of television, and having a DVR makes watching your favorite show a real treat, because you can do it when YOU have the time or need the "me" fix.

I deliberately left out TiVo alternatives from this advice because I didn't want to confuse my sister - but for our Homotron audience I'd like to mention phrases like "Media Center PC" and "Slingbox" and see if anyone has advice to add or another relatively tech-simple path to DVR-ness to suggest. Anyone?