Philips HDR312 TiVo 30-Hour Digital Video Recorder
Good for recording, not worth the money
First off, I want to say that I am completely satisfied with my Philips 30 hour recorder, ONLY because of the 100 dollar rebate along with a 100 dollar gift certificate that I had.  So I paid only 200 dollars for a product that I knew I was simply going to use to record just a FEW television shows.  I was not getting tivo because I wanted to pause or rewind live tv or record 30 hours worth of shows.  For 200 dollars and not expecting much from this product, tivo was completely worth it.  I can record up to 9 hours at best quality, which is equal to live tv quality.  I don't like watching recordings at less than tv quality and besides 9 hours is plenty for me; I'm not trying to record every single show being broadcasted!  I hardly ever pause live tv, but occassionally I will rewind a few minutes to catch something I missed or want to watch more carefully (i.e. basketball play).  Right after, I usually fast forward back to live tv (you can skip straight to live tv, but by fast forwarding it's like skimming the show, so that you don't really miss anything).  Another cool thing with tivo is that you get displays like direct tv, whereas you can see the title of the show and read a short summary.  Set up was very easy and straightforward.<br />And now for the drawbacks of tivo (which far surpasses the good things).  <br />1. Unless you have a newer tv with 2 video inputs, you can't record one show, while viewing another.<br />2. You can only rewind live tv back to the point where you changed the channel.  This means that if you change the channel to Leno and just barely miss the punchline... too bad, you can't rewind.<br />3. You can only pause for a max of 30 mins.<br />4. You can only rewind to a max of 30 mins, UNLESS the show is being recorded, in which case you can rewind all the way to the beginning of the recording.<br />5. If you are watching tv behind real time and want to change the channel for a few minutes, when you come back to the show you were watching, it'll resume at real time and you can't rewind, so you'll have missed however much time you were behind.<br />6. The &quot;Season Pass&quot; function is supposed to record the selected show no matter what time it plays and no matter what channel.  I got a season pass for Spin City, but I had to set 2 Season Passes... one for channel 13 and the other for channel 7 in order for it to work correctly.<br />7.  The Thumbs up/down system doesn't work very well.  For some reason I end up with more Fresh Prince of Bel Air (3 thumbs up) than Spin City (which I have a season pass for).  Also, my tivo likes to record practically every movie on Sundance even though I give every single one of those movies 3 thumbs down.<br />8. Since the tivo box is ALWAYS on, there's no way for it to tell if you're actually there watching tv.  So in the middle of a show a message will pop up asking to change the channel so that it can record a &quot;tivo suggestion.&quot;  Sometimes this is a hassle to find the remote and select &quot;cancel recording and stay on this channel.&quot;  Also, if you're listening to the tv, but not actually watching it, you may miss the pop up message, in which case it will automatically change the channel and start recording.  This means, that you have to cancel the recording, and then switch back to the channel you were on, therefore missing part of the show you were listening to.<br />9. Sometimes you'll be watching a show (which is not being  recorded) and something really spectacular or funny will happen.  You would think that you could rewind and then hit record, so that you could show it to somebody later.  But when you hit record, it'll start recording from live tv to the end of the show.  This is also the same problem if you have live tv paused.  Let's say the phone rings, so you pause the show you're watching.  You realize that you're going to be on the phone for longer than 30 mins, so you hit record.  When you go back to watch the show, you'll find that itdidn't record from the point it was paused at, but rather the point of live tv when you hit record.<br />10. Shows are recorded based on the tivo programming guide which is downloaded over your phone line.  This means that many times you will miss the intro or last joke of a recorded show.  Or if a game goes into overtime, yep, that's right you miss the whole overtime.  Of course you can always record manually by setting a time period, but that's kind of a hassle.<br />To sum it up, imagine this: You invite a friend over and you begin demonstrating your tivo system.  Your friend says &quot;do this... do that.&quot;  Well, you can be sure that with the majority of those things, you'll have to reply, &quot;it can't do that.&quot;  <br />If you want something that records shows easily and at good quality and you don't mind blowing 400 dollars plus the cost of tivo service (10 bucks a month), then tivo is for you.  If you're looking for a really cool gadget that has complete control over tv, save your money because you're going to be disappointed.