DVR's and DVD-r's

[KingVidiot]

OK, who is the expert on this whole DVR thing? Is Tivo the best way to go? I know nothing about the technology except that they save their files on HD's and I think the common OS is embedded Linux (?).

My main interest is to take whatever I get on my DVR of choice and burn it to DVD-r or whatever. Is it plug-n-play, or do I have to pull-out the hard drive from the DVR and burn it through my PC?

Is this actually possible? Is the format MPEG2 at the quality of a DVD?

Any info would be very helpful. I don't want to buy the wrong crap.

A friend has a DVD based DVR (actually a DVD "VCR") and it only plays the damn discs in his player, not any of my PC's, even with a closed session.

 

[mikkowilson]

Well you can get a tivo and pay a monthly fee for service. Or you can get a HardDrive / DVD-R combo unit that will allow you to use the HardDrive like a tivo (without the fee) and then burn DVDs from it later.

There is no way of getting the material out of a tivo except the analog cables out of the back. - It's a copy protection thing.

- Mikko