Word: dvr
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...life has often seemed like one big struggle over the TV. Digital video recorders (DVRS) are the ultimate in viewer control, allowing users to skip commercials, pause live programs and watch shows at their own pace, rather than on a broadcaster's schedule. So British subscribers to the TiVo DVR service took it as a personal insult when the BBC comedy Dossa and Joe was automatically recorded on their machines in a format they could not delete. The BBC, which struck a deal with TiVo to promote Dossa and Joe, admits the aggressive tactic was a bad idea...
FEEL THE BURN Are the VCR's days numbered? Pioneer and Philips have introduced the first DVD "burners" to create discs that can be read on most DVD players. Though built using competing technologies, Pioneer's DVR-7000 and Philips' DVDR1000 have one thing in common: a daunting $2,000 price...
...like a VCR, only digital. It automatically records whatever you're watching, all the time, so you can rewind, pause, slo-mo or instant-replay live TV. If you're watching something you've already recorded, you can skip ahead through the commercials. Best of all, the DVR has a built-in channel guide, so you can tell it to record a show, and it will do so without having to be told the when, where and how. That alone is proof to me that God loves couch potatoes...
...installation diagram that looks like a Jackson Pollock mural, the ShowStopper was surprisingly quick and easy to set up. If your TV doesn't have those red-white-yellow AV inputs (mine doesn't), you'll have to route it through something that does, like a VCR. Once your DVR is up and running, you plug it into a phone jack, so that it can download the week's program listings. (ReplayTV automatically makes a short phone call every morning at around 2; it's like having a weird nocturnal robot roommate...
WATCH OUT, VCR Electronics companies have been talking about recordable DVD drives for more than a year, but technical quibbles and piracy fears have kept real products out of the marketplace. Until now. Samsung's DVR-2000, which records onto DVD-RAM discs and plays regular DVD movies too, will go on sale in the U.S. in July for $2,000. Meanwhile, Pioneer is planning its own $2,400 DVD-RW version to come out sometime this fall...