DVR

Just replace my old-fashioned digital cable box with a DVR - a tivo-like recordable cable box. Has all the old functions (video-on-demand, etc) plus the ability to record up to 30 hours of video on an internal hard-drive. So far, thumbs up. I got home with it, plugged it in, turned it on, started watching "A Charlie Brown Christmas" -- and hit the record button. No troubles, I can now watch that classic cartoon as much as I want. Next, I went to the normal on-screen program guide, scrolled over to 11:30pm, selected "Late Night With David Letterman", and hit the record button. Up pops a window to ask if I want to record the one show or, the option I was looking for, the entire series. Next morning, the show is there for me to watch. Watching is easy: Hit the "List" button and up pops a menu of all the recorded shows. Select one and watch. Downside: the response time from the cable box is quite a bit slower than with the previous digital cable box (which was slower than the previous analog box). As the system is (I think) constantly decoding the video stream and preparing to write the stream to disk in case you want to "pause" live TV, then switching channels takes more time. Must learn to be more patient.... more to come.