What the heck is a DVR?

[SecretMaster]

So someone on my floor up here at school is trying to get into video and filming and that "art" stuff or whatever. And at some point he mentioned something called a DVR. He said it is a "Digital Video Recorder" and that usually they are small, recording devices which are extremely portable and useful for on the fly shooting.

So my understanding of it is just a mini, ultra-portable camcorder that records things on a memory card instead of tape. I did some googling around and found something like this. And this is where the story gets a bit weird.

http://www.spycameras.com/pvr-9122.htm

It's model number is PVR-9122. And the homepage alone is creepy enough.

So now I'm ultra confused. Are DVR's things that are used for nanny-camming and such? My friend said "on the fly" recording, whatever that means. And take for example the model that I linked to. I don't understand nearly half of all that technical jargon but from what I understand it needs some sort of cable connection? I can't tell if this is just an ultra-compact fancy video recorder or if it is something totally different.

I was thinking of getting a camcorder recently because it would be nice to have for college memories and such. And I was thinking about this whole DVR thing but now I'm totally confused as to what it is. Should I just stick with a digital camcorder?

[Nitrodist]

DVRs for most consumers mean the little box that digitally records and stores your TV shows on TV. For example, a Tivo is a DVR. Comcast offers DVRs to its customers, iirc.

[UberGerbil]

Digital Video Recorder. Technically, anything that can record video digitally is a DVR -- a TiVo, a Camcorder, even your cell phone (if it has a camera and can do video). But colloquially, most people use the term to describe TiVo-like devices, and consider a DVR to be the 21st century equivalent to a VCR: something in a set-top box or AV form factor that you hook up to your TV and use to record shows.

if you're looking for a digital camcorder, there are lots around -- using hard drives, tape, flash, even optical discs for storage -- but I've never heard any of them described as a DVR; even though they could be used as such, it's not really what they're for.