DVR

Digital Video Recorder, like Tivo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_video_recorder

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_PVR_software_packages

Becoming built into Set Top Box

Open Source: Myth Tv, Free Vo

Product Quality notes

We had in NYC the Explorer 8300HD via Time Warner

The sucker actually rebooted itself a couple times the first night, just while channel-surfing. Maybe because they were having problems with their Video On Demand service (per their hold message), and I'd just hit one of those (not sure that's true...)? Hasn't happened since.

A key feature for us is being able to record 2 programs simultaneously.

A big annoyance is that most non-network TV channels don't provide firstAiring-vs-rerun info (Meta Data), so if they have lots of timeslots during a week, you either record them all and then delete as you view and find reruns, or limit yourself to a specific timeslot (which kills the feature of automatically adjusting to tweaks in the weekly schedule, one of the key reasons we got the damn thing).

This also reinforces the problem with shows starting a bit early or ending a bit late, which some do as a habit. They need a global "start 2 minutes early and end 2 minutes late" setting (which they have now have per-series, I think).