What's a better option? To pay my cable service ten dollars a month more for their dvr, or to buy my own?

IMHO, buying your own is better. Renting anything that doesn’t become yours feels like such a waste of money for me! :)

SPAM!

You’re going to pay $10—$12 a month to any DVR service, so that’s a wash.

The question is usability. In my experience, TiVo is much easier to use than any knockoff I’ve seen. On the other hand, Comcast is licensing TiVo software now, so maybe they’ve learned.

@JellyB: the way to deal with spam is to click on the “Flag as…” link and report it, not to shout about it in the thread. Unless you can make it witty.

Maybe he did BOTH, like I did.

@JellyB LOL! Sorry…..i shall flag it now…. :)

Not all DVR services require monthly fees, but from my research these companies provide a DVR with a unser interface that leaves a lot to the imagination when comparing it to ones that do have a monthly cost like TIVO. I would also take into account how much programming you will be recording, how quickly you can watch it, and how many programs you will be saving on your harddrive. My Comcast DVR which I can’t wait to get rid of has less than 100 Gb of memory. I constantly have to delete programs I intended to save. You may find that you want a large hard drive, which is unavailable from your cable service? The other nice thing about TIVO and now Verizon FIOS is that you can program your DVR from you cell phone or computer if you forget to record something. I don’t believe Comcast has that feature on their DVR’s unless it is coming out soon or did just recently.

If you have your own DVR, how easy will it be to record? I use one from the cable co, just because it’s included with my bundle of services, and it’s very easy to record (“Just one click of the button!”). If you have to jump through hoops to record, it’s a definite disadvantage, no matter how much it holds.