Pioneer DVR-510HS DVD Recorder/Player
Great piece of gear
If you hate to watch TV commercials, and want to watch a movie/sports event/documentary from the beginning while you are still taping the end (\\"chase play\\"), this is for you.  Connected directly to cable input from the wall, you can record hours (and days) of shows to the hard drive from different channels while you are away (my VCR couldn't do this) - then save to DVD anything you want to keep (or erase anything not worth saving)....all without messing with video tape.  You can watch things like golf tournaments and slow the playback to a frame at a time to see what's happening in a golf swing.  The controller has a commercial skip function in 30 sec. segments - or with a little effort, you can edit out commercials permanently.  It also can copy video tapes to DVD (and allows you to edit them), and has a digital camera input (IEEE 1394) on the front of the machine.  The machine is complex - because it can do a great deal of things - so it requires some time to get up to speed on all its capabilities....but is worth the investment.