This is a little silly because it costs a lot but it looks pretty cool to me. If you buy an iRiver portable media player you get a free TiVo and a free 1 yr subscription.
The player has a 20GB HD for mp3s and a 3.5" screen so you can also watch movies. They're offering this promo because the player supports TiVoToGo which means it transfers your TiVo recording to the player so you can carry the 'Skins game around with you in your pocket everywhere you go and watch it over and over! Pretty cool but I don't know how practical that is:
https://secure5.nexternal.com/shared/St ... oducts.asp
BTW, you can use a TiVo without getting a service agreement but you will not get program listings and will have to setup recordings manually.
Cable companies offer DVRs as well. I get mine for $5 a month more than normal digital cable and it's great because it has two tuners so you can do PIP and watch one thing while you record another. Additionally, if you already have a digital box you will not need another box to make things more complicated.
Finally, I think the best option may be to get a TV tuner card for your PC such as the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 150. It does hardware encoding so you can easily watch TV and work on the computer at the same time without dropping frames or affecting your PCs performance. It is generally considered to have the best recording quality of ant PVR card as well. Don't be confused, the PVR-250 is an INFERIOR product even though it costs more and is more popular. The 150 was made to replace the 250 and it has exactly the same features except it uses a more advanced single chip solution to encode TV into MPEG2 files rather than using two chips that encode audio and video independantly as the 250 does. The 250 has been the industry standard for a long time but the 150 is better. The cheapest I have found it for is $84 w/ free shipping here:
http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?s ... caid=15889
There is also the 150MCE which is made for Windows Media Center PCs. It comes with a remote and has an FM tuner and works with XP but I think that then the remote and FM will not work. $63 w/ free shipping here:
http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?s ... dwt=0&sp=1
Then you just need a DVD burner. This NEC one is really good with 8x dual layer burning and its only $44 w/ free shipping:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6827152046
So, for a lot less than a year of TiVo you could do this. However, its not as easy to use (but more flexible - you can burn to DVD easily and make your own highlight clips etc...). I wouldn't reccomend it unless you are reasonably computer literate or are willing to research and learn how to do it. It also makes sense to get a Home Theater PC made by a specialist company or HP or Gateway,... Those will be completely set up out of the box and then you can also do stuff like burn DVDs, write posts on TheHogs.net, play computer games or whatever on your TV and your whole MP3 collection can be there too. You won't need a subscription to do this either. Just laying out some options.
"We're not going to be the pushovers of the NFL, we're gonna push over some people!" - Clinton Portis