How to Buy a Digital Video Recorder

Do you want to buy digital video recorder? Not a bad idea. VCRs are going out of date, and digital video recorders offer you an easier, better way to save your favorite shows. Before you buy one, though, you have a few choices to make.

First, think about your budget. You can spend as little as $100, if you want, or perhaps even less, and as much as $1,000. Some DVR's, specifically those from ReplayTV and TiVO may be available cheaply, or in some cases even for free, but will involve a monthly service charge, it usually in the ballpark of $15.00. Many cable and satellite companies will also offer DVR's for a small monthly charge, sometimes with no money up front at all. Unless you specifically want one of these, you'd be better off paying a one time charge for a Set Top DVR (one without a subscription, which is entirely self-contained) and avoiding monthly bills.

Of course, in thinking about how much you're willing to spend on a DVR, you'll need to think about how much memory you want. An average DVR will hold about 40 hours of television on its internal hard drive. This is great if you want to record your favorite show and watch it later, but insufficient to your purposes if you're planning to archive. If this is your situation, you would do well to spend a bit more money for a DVR with a built in DVD burner. With one of these, you'll be able to record a television shows to the hard disk, and later burn them to a DVD for permanent archiving. This is a obviously a helpful feature to have, but will, of course, cost extra.

One thing to consider here, before buying a DVR, is whether or not you'd prefer a capture card. A capture card, which can cost as little as $25, allows you to connect your television directly to your computer, allowing your computer to do what a DVR would. While it is certainly cheaper, a capture card might not make sense. Some people might prefer to save space and their computer, and might want to keep television shows off of it, and people whose television sets are not next to their computers would not be able to use a capture card anyway. If it would work for you, though, it is a good way to save money.

One other thing that you'll need to take into account is your televisions output. Almost all modern televisions use RCA output. RCA jacks are round and colored, and your television will likely have three of them: left audio, right audio, and video. Alternately, your television may use S-video. S-video jacks are round, and use a multi pin connector. Make sure the DVR you're looking at is compatible with your television. If your television doesn't have either of these outputs, and only has a coaxial cable output, it is time to start looking at new televisions! Although you may be able to spend another $50 on a box that will convert the signal, making your clunky old television compatible with a sleek modern DVR, the loss in quality will hardly be worth it. But the money toward a new television set.

If you have had particularly good experiences with one manufacturer, you may wish to stick with them, but any major brand is a reasonably good bet. Having read reviews of DVR's of all the major brands on the market, I can't recommend one over another. I personally use a Sony, but have no particular reason to recommended over anything else.