Philips HDR312 TiVo 30-Hour Digital Video Recorder
Neat, but a lot of bugs.
We hooked up TiVo about six months ago.  It took a few hours to set up and download all the info, but then it was working great.  Our one problem initially - sometimes it doesn't like to communicate channel changes to the cable box.  So you'll put channel 4 into the remote, and TiVo says you're on channel 4, but you're still watching 36.  Very annoying.  Don't know whether that's TiVo or Philips, so there's a chance that Sony may be better.<br />Second problem, sometimes TiVo can't display a channel.  You'll flipping along, and suddenly, sometimes for hours at a time, it just won't show one or more channels.  Very irritating, and as far as I know, there's no way to fix it. <br />Other than those two occasional things, we were very happy with it.  I love being able to pause live TV, rewind live TV, and record things without having to remember that day to leave a tape in.  It's also great to be able to watch stuff later without all the commercials.  <br />But then three days ago, I turned on the TV and there was no sound.  We unplug TiVo, plug it back in, and everything's fine.  So it's done that about 15 times over the last three days.  So we call them last night and we are told it's probably the sound card.  Send the unit to Philips and they'll either fix it or send you a new one for ....  Are you kidding me?  So right now, I'm about ready to throw TiVo out the window.