Philips HDR312 TiVo 30-Hour Digital Video Recorder
Tivo changed my life!
I think some of the folks writing reviews of this product do not completely understand it.  Sure, it's nice to be able to pause live TV, but that's not what I love the most about Tivo.<br />I used to tape a lot of shows on my VCR.  My wife was always complaining because I never got around to labeling the tapes, and looking for a show I wanted to see would take a while.  Once I found the tape, I'd have to search it to find the show.  I had tapes piling up alongside the deck.  It was a mess.<br />Now that I have Tivo, watching TV is more fun than ever.  All the shows I want to watch are right there, labeled and dated.  The picture quality, even at medium, simply blows away VHS.  I watch whatever I want whenever I want to.<br />The user interface is magnificent.  You can pad start times and end times (I always start ER a minute early!).  I have wishlists, with which I can have Tivo look for an actor, director, or keyword, and then it will tape the show automatically.  And it has an amazing feature that lets me rate any show I see with thumbs up or thumbs down (up to 3 of either), and it learns from my ratings what I like to watch and what I don't like to watch.  With Suggestions enabled (you can turn them off if you don't want them, but this is a great feature!), Tivo will seek out and record shows it thinks you might like.  <br />As a result of having Tivo, I get so much more out of my television experience than I ever did before.  It's like there's always something great on that I want to see.  I hardly ever watch live TV any more.<br />I saw a review here where the reviewer was concentrating on Tivo's limitations.  Sure it has some limitations (and by the way, that reviewer was off the mark on several things he wrote.  For example, you can pad start and end times if you expect a show to run overtime.  And while it doesn't have a 30 second skip, it has a wonderful fast play forward and reverse that makes it a breeze to zip through commercials!), but as far as I'm concerned it offers so much more than a VCR that it defies comparison.  My wife was never comfortable with our VCR.  She couldn't program it and had trouble finding recorded shows.  She loves our Tivo and operates it easily.  <br />Very few products these days can claim to be life changing.  Tivo has completely changed the way we watch television, and we can't imagine life without it.  It's been a solid and reliable piece of equipment as well.  If you do a lot of taping, or if you just like to watch television, I heartily recommend this item.