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My wife's wanting something to record her TV shows over the antenna. Most of the channels in this area are digital, but there's still one worth watching that's analog.

Any suggestions for what sort of recorder to get? I thought a hard drive-based DVR would be better than a DVD recorder, since we wouldn't have to mess around with media. If there's not a decent consumer recorder for digital broadcast, I'm not necessarily opposed to building a basic media PC - I'd been wanting something to play emulators on.

Inexpensive is nice. Our TV is 720p with HDMI, component, S-Video, composite, and CATV ports.

Consider TiVo Premiere to be the standard by which all other DVRs are judged.

I've been having good success with digital tuner cards and Windows Media Center under Windows 7 and under Windows Vista. If you've already got a PC, it lets you turn it into a very capable DVR for less than $100.

If at all possible, I'd rather not pay a monthly fee for this - that's one reason why we bought an attic antenna.

Don't have an existing PC that I'd want by the TV. The best spare one I have is an Athlon 2200+ in a mid-tower case.

JustAnEngineer wrote:

Consider TiVo Premiere to be the standard by which all other DVRs are judged.

Also comes with Tivo's monthly fee, too. ($12 or so)

About the only other standalone OTA HD DVR box in the US, IIRC, is the DTVPal DVR, which is a flat $300 (but can't record analog).

Not a lot of options; an HTPC is going to be more flexible and, if you do already have most of the parts, cheaper.