TV Time Shifters
Digital video recorders gained fame with TiVo. New competitors range from rented boxes to Media Center PCs--and our TV addict tried them all.
Lincoln Spector
DirecTV DVR With TiVo
DVR rating: Very Good
DirecTV's version of TiVo sells for as little as $50, depending on the hard drive size. DirecTV adds $5 to your monthly bill for the service. (DirecTV has a non-TiVo, high-def DVR for $749, too.)
I looked at a 40GB model that holds about 40 hours of video. As luck would have it, I had to replace my DirecTV TiVo just as I started this article, letting me reexperience setting the unit up. And that meant more experience with the atrocious tool for setting up channels. DirecTV expects you to create two lists: "Channels You Receive" (you'd think DirecTV would have this info) and "Favorites." Then it gives you a screen for selecting channels sorted by number and lacking any information beyond not-always-helpful acronyms. You can't view the channels to help you pick.
For other jobs, the menus are easy to navigate and figure out. And the tools for finding programs are first-rate. You can search by name either through a list of all upcoming shows in TiVo's database or in a narrower subgroup, such as action/adventure movies.
Best of all are WishLists, a type of saved search. I use them to find films by, and documentaries about, favorite directors such as Hitchcock and Kurosawa. I can easily bring up the search results to see if there's something worth recording. You can also set a WishList to automatically record everything it finds.
Bottom Line: Despite difficult setup chores and limited features, this is an all-around terrific DVR with fantastic search capabilities--provided that you subscribe to DirecTV.
