Best way to record TV?

[Atty]

We used to have a DVD recorder we used to record shows with, usually we'd only use it for ones not popular enough to make it onto torrents but it's recently died so we can't do that anymore.

I'm wondering now what the best way to record live TV is? We're thinking it's finally a good excuse to get DVR from DirecTV but if we do, is there a way to record programming from the DVR and save as a DVD? Or transfer to a PC?

 

[Modelworks]

Get the DVR. You won't regret it. You can watch the DVR content on a pc over the network, but it is encrypted on the pc so you can't burn it straight to a dvd. You can put a capture card in the pc and record it off the DVR that way then burn it to DVD. They try to limit the ability to make a DVD of the recordings because of copyright issues.

If you are worried about running out of space you can add an external hard drive to the dvr. It has ports on the back for ESATA and USB.

 

[kalrith]

The DirecTV DVRs are pretty nice. I've used one for a little over a year, and it's been a good experience overall. If you have a HTPC, then you could get a Hauppauge PVR and integrate that with the DirecTV receiver. That would save you $6/month in DVR fees and allow you to archive your video either on the hard drive or on DVD. You can record two shows at once with the DirecTV DVR, but you wouldn't be able to do this with the Hauppauge PVR unless you had two receivers and two PVRs (at least AFAIK).