Philips HDR312 TiVo 30-Hour Digital Video Recorder
The coolest box ever
I usually watch tv only late at night, after work.  I used to switch endlessly thru cable channels, almost 100 of them, and find very little of quality.  Now with Tivo, there's always something recorded that I want to  watch, either movies or 1/2 hour sitcoms, sports events or interesting PBS  shows.  It's so easy to make it record the shows you want.  It's totally  changed our family's tv viewing habits.<br />I must point out that it's not a  good idea to record at lower resolutions, high quality is where I record  most programs, and I don't really notice a difference between that at  regular broadcast quality.