I have had enough of my cable company's DVR. I had a box from the same company that was very good years ago, but it was not a HD box. Since then, I've had a Dish Network VIP722 that was great but we went back to cable. The problems I am having with this one is that the box will freeze and not respond to any input, then start responding again and execute every command that the remote sent it while it was frozen. This happens most often while a tuner is recording and you are trying to watch that same recording with a time delay. The box also has issues with taping some new shows multiple times, though i dont know if its because of guide data or the box itself. My old Dish VIP722 didnt seem to have these issues with the same programs, but that was over a year ago so Im not sure anymore.

I ordered a re-manufactured TiVo HD XL for $200, and Im hoping it will be awesome. I haven't committed to the lifetime subscription. I think the 1yr seems like the prudent choice at $10 a month. Input and advice on this?

It's coming next week, I hope that my cable company doesnt give too much hassle to hook it up

 

tivo would be better. They give regular software updates. If you can spare $300 for a computer and $150 for a HDHomeRun you'd be much better off running mythTV, mythicalLibrarian and XBMC.