Pioneer DVR-810HS DVD Recorder with TiVo Basic Service
All was fine until...
I bought this unit in August 2004, and had been using it with both TiVo Basic and TiVo Plus, until it conked out in February 2006.  Eighteen months is not an acceptable product life for any video component in my book, and now I have a friend trying to hack a repair by swapping out what is apparently a dead HDD with a $40 Seagate 160GB HDD.  If he succeeds, the unit will go to 160 hours of available recording time.  That will make up for the downtime.<br /><br />In short, however, I must warn any prospective buyers that these kind of hard disks are not really meant to run non-stop for years on end.  Perhaps the best plan is periodically to have a tech friend create a mirror/backup of your season passes/preferences/etc, and to use \\"TiVo to Go\\" regularly to send your favourite recordings to your home PC.  The system inside is Linux, not Windows, so that's why a techie is needed for the hack.<br /><br />Finally, if you don't care to do more than use this as a modern VCR with time-shifting, stick with the free TiVo Basic.  In retrospect, paying for the lifetime service doesn't make sense when not six months later the unit dies...