TiVo TCD540040 Series2 40-Hour Digital Video Recorder
Poor man's MythTV
I finally gave up on keeping my MythTV (a linux-based do-it-yourself Tivo) running - my harddrive went bad and setting everything up again was just too much work, so I decided to go the easy route and get a TiVo.    First off, apparently I'm a total freak for not having an analog phone line.  It's the 21st century and I only have a cell phone.  Basically there is no way to set up your TiVo if you don't have a land line.  I won't go into details, but lets just say that getting my TiVo up and running was a nightmare, and TiVo and their website were totally unhelpful.  This experience was truly embittering, and also provided the first hint that TiVo doesn't actually care about their customers.    Second, TiVo is not very configurable.  I guess I was spoiled by MythTV where everything is configurable, but there are tons of things in TiVo that you either can't change or I just can't figure out how - annoying beep noises whenever you press a button on the remote (imagine hearing \\"beep-burp\\" when ever you press channel up/channel down or type in a number), the fact that the channel info is in the center of the screen when you change channels, not at the bottom or top like it should be, stuff like that.  It goes without saying that there aren't any downloadable skins/fonts.  I can live without that mythTV feature, but it is kinda nice sometimes    Third, it's not really designed with the user in mind.  There's no automatic commercial recognition, no 30 second skip ahead (apparently there's a mini-hack to enable that though), adverts appear sometimes in the main menu (\\"click here to learn about exciting new vehicles from GM\\").  It's not as bad as those stupid cable boxes the cable company gives you, but still, I feel like I'm not really the person they're trying to make happy - the MPAA is who TiVo wants to keep happy.    So, in summary, TiVo is worth having if you can't get a mythTV working (or can't keep it working in my case).  If you've never experienced the magic of DVRs, you'll probably love it.      EDIT:  I've now had my Tivo for about a year and I think I was overly harsh in my original assessment.  It Just Works and there's a lot to be said for that.  And the user interface is just so easy to use, especially compared to the DVRs that cable and satellite companies hand out, damn those things suck.  I still grumble about the monthly fee, but it's worth it.