Do you have and/or use a DVR?

I spoke (wrote) some about my use of DVR in the comments area for the VCR related thread.  If you can't figure it out, I love having a DVR at my disposal and have found it to be a very useful device.  Useful enough to quickly get past the question of paying a monthly fee to use one.

Don't get me wrong, I wish I didn't have to pay extra fees for DVR usage, and for having extra receivers on my DirecTV system (3 total active in my house at this time).  I hate being nickeled and dimed for these extra fees, but I quietly pay the DVR fee because it has long proven to me that it is an invaluable service.

Before DVRs I was left using VCRs to record programs.  There were hassles with having to change tapes.  Image quality typically sucked.  Tapes would stretch and wear and make the image quality even worse.  But, the alternative was having to let the TV schedule rule my life if I didn't want to miss certain programs.

Thanks to DVRs -- especially dual-tuner DVRs -- I don't have those concerns.  I can record programs digitally and watch them with no loss in image quality.  I can watch programs at my own pace, on my own schedule, and stockpile episodes if I want.  I can pause live TV and fast forward through commercials to help reduce the time I do spend watching TV.

Anyway, to me DVRs are marvelous devices.  I'd love to get one for my family, but what stops me is the idea that they aren't DirecTV customers and getting them a TiVo box would add a monthly fee that they don't want to pay.  Even if I paid for multiple years of service for them, eventually they'd have to pay the monthly fees (or I would have to pay again).

I'd suggest that they get a DVR from their cable provider (Comcast), but people that have them have said they aren't the greatest devices and my parents just don't seem to feel they have to have one.  I still think they'd change their mind soon after using one, but you all know the old saying about leading horses to waterin' holes.

I don't have one but I would love one.

I have one through the cable company and I use it to record things I'll miss while I'm out/things I want Adrian to see when he comes home/things that come on at the same time as something else I want to watch.

I sometimes forget to DVR things (like last night when I went to a BBQ and forgot to set it to record the Simpsons, d'oh!) but I still use it at least a couple times a week.

I also recorded a piece of a news broadcast when my oldest was on the news.

I have a DVD recorder, too, but I don't use it because I don't know how.

I have a DVD-R but not not a DVR that you pay a fee for (via the cable company) I went out and just bought one outright at Best Buy.
Just like the one's you have...I can record oodles of tv on the HD, do the whole insta-playback and pause while I'm recording and I can edit out the commercials and burn it to disk. (or play cd/dvd/dvd-r/dvd-rw)
It was under warentee and there was a HD failure and I lost a bunch of stuff, but BBuy just swapped it out for the new (and upgraded version)
I have never filled up the hard drive-and I"ve had up to 108 hours on there so far. It comes with an integrated TV Guide tunner that makes it easy to record all the episodes of my shows.
There are a few minor irritations: a 30-60 sec break between recording shows even if they are on the same channel, so you might miss the first minute of a cliffhanger show. If you set it to record 2 shows and a network airs a rerun at the same time your new show is on another channel, it might record the wrong one. But other than that, it's fantastic. TV shows are only about 40 min long without commercials!
Plus it's handy for mailing tv shows to Iraq or recording cartoons for my kids without having to listen to the obnoixous toy commercials.

stockpile episodes

oh yeah, that's fantastic.....I love to do that and then watch 5 episodes of Lost etc all at once. It makes the cliffhangers less frustratiing!

I have been using Media Center for almost 2 years now. I love it. I have 300 hrs of record time that could easily be adjusted by adding another disk. I get all of the great things about the DVR without all of the intuitive bull that's a real pain.

I have two tuners and plan on adding a third (this time HD) tuner in a couple of months. I was using 2005 XP MCE and then I upgraded to Vista Home Prem. in November and dealt with all of the Beta Crap and got full release in Feb. There are a lot of things I like better about the Vista version but the biggest pain is the resource requirements. One Gig of Ram was enough with 2005 but it's only about 1/2 of what I need with Vista.

I still wouldn’t give up my Media center though. I don't pay any fees. My system is highly reconfigurable and I can burn a disk of whatever I want. Bonus is that all of my music, home videos, pictures and other online media services are at the end of my remote. I can use online movie services on my TV. My media selection is not restricted by a single wire coming into my house.

I will never go back to pre-DVR days. It is an essential tool -- not just for paused playback (which was made for football games) but the ability to record at any time, any channel, one-button convenience. I can preprogram the DVR to find episodes of my favorite shows and it'll record them without me even knowing they're on. Too cool for school.

If we did not have On Demand, I would probably go out and get one.  As it is, I really dont have time to watch much TV, so I do not miss it now.

I used to have one and enjoyed having it. I was able to record all the programs I missed. One problem I had, not with the DVR but with my timing is there would be months of programs to catch up on because I just didn't have the time to watch them all. That was surely defeating the purpose of my recordings! Then I realised that I had "On Demand" and didn't need to record all those shows! Unfortunately I gave up the DVRs and my extra cable channel.

Now I'm down to one movie channel and all the basics. I was paying out too much per month just for them and most of the times they repeat everything anyway, or there was nothing to watch!

I like Tova's idea of bying a DVD-R, makes better sense to me!

Nope