Panasonic DMRE85HS Progressive-Scan DVD Player/Recorder with 120 GB Hard Drive Recording
How did I live without this!!
For taping shows it is incredible.  I have never had TIVO, and am only comparing this to a VCR, an archaic piece of equipment whose time has gone, but I don't have a montly fee to pay.  I was a little leery after reading reviews about the problems of the TV guide feature, but I did not run in to the problems that others have had, although it did leave out some channels.  I was however able to manually put them in by using a station unavailable to me and inputting the channel number.  If these were not unimportant channels (for me anyway) such as a Spanish channel, I would probably have needed tech support to fully fix it.  I have not run into the problems other reviewers have reported, such as the first or last 15 seconds being cut off, and I have found the TV guide feature a breeze to use. Regarding the former, losing the last 15 seconds doesn't affect the program which does not go off on the hour anyway, and losing the first 15 only happens if you are recording successive shows to DVD-R (according to the manual - and for me, using the hard drive, this has never happened).  Regarding the latter, find the channel, press ONE button, and it is set to record.  Press another and it will record daily or weekly.  With the Direct Navigator you get a thumbnail of all your recorded programs and the date they were recorded.  Hit enter and your chosen show starts from the beginning.  No fast forwarding, no rewinding, no searching for the right tape, no guesswork, no accidently copying over something you wanted to see. Setting up the channel order was, as another reviewer noted, tedious and time consuming, but it is a one time deal.       I have not recorded on to discs yet (having so much fun with my new toy, I forgot that saving home video was the reason for the purchase), but I am hoping that it goes equally well.        I do not have a cable box, so I can't speak to the problems others may have encountered here.  But for my uses, this is a joy.    ALL GOOD THINGS OFT COME TO AN END!  After about a month of use, I lost one show I had set up to tape with the bizarre message that it could not record from a protected disc!  Another attempt resulted in the wrong channel taping, although it indicated the correct show title.  Tech support told me that the unit was defective, so I sent it back. After that I tried dubbing three times, with two failures! The new unit has a tuner problem with half the channels coming in blurry.  Normally, I would chuck the whole thing at this point, but am reluctant to do so (I'm still undecided) as I know if I can ever get a unit to work correctly, it will be beautiful thing.