Digital Video Recording
Digital Video Recording and Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) are an evolution of video recording, and available in a variety of techologies from slingbox and TiVo to dedicated devices such as those from Philips and other manufacturers, and modified versions of Microsoft Windows and Linux (MythTV) computers.
Unlike the VCRs you remember, these newer DVRs have capabilities including the ability to time-shift — the ability to play back a program that is currently recording — and the ability to index and store recordings on-line. One other salient difference from your VCR: the occasional lock-up or crash. Hopefully, that gets fixed.
Philips HDD DVR
Philips offers various models of DVRs, including the HDRW720/17 series with a DVD+R/RW recording drive, and a hard disk drive. A nice and quite functional unit, though prone to the occasional lock-up or crash. Once or twice a week, it locks up. Or it locks up, realizes it, and tips over and reboots itself. Other than that, it is quite useful.
Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition
Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition (MCE) is a variation of Microsoft Windows XP, specifically with the so-called ten foot interface, and capabilities targeting television recording and playback. Specific MCE capabilities are obviously dependent on the particular hardware underneath the software, and can include moderate- to high-end graphics, and quite often one or more ATSC or NTSC tuners.
HoffmanLabs has found MCE not quite fully ready for prime time. (This situation seems unfortunately prevalent among the products available for DTV, however.) The MCE recording software loses its place and its schedule periodically, occasionally forgets recordings, has an interesting buffering problem where the audio sometimes chatters when starting up the playback, and the program listings mechanisms haven't yet managed to correctly download the digital broadcast listings using the default (automatic) path. And then there are the minor annoyances, like the front-panel display (HP Digital Entertainment Center z557 with two NTSC and one ATSC tuner) periodically forgetting to update itself. From what HoffmanLabs can fathom, MCE appears to have been steady-state tested -- if you leave the box alone to record or to perform any other single task, it usually works.
If you try to combine two or more tasks such as recording and playback, well, MCE is not quite so reliable.
There have been other and transient MCE problems, too, as one round of critical Windows updates that sent MCE deep into the weeds. The on-going chattering problem became endemic. Once the particular patch was located and extracted, the chattering resumed its normal levels. A Windows cycle or two later, and a replacement update arrived, sans the severe chattering.
When MCE does work (which is quite often), it works quite well. But unlike a VCR, MCE or most any other DVR requires rather more effort and attention. But discussions of the strengths and weaknesses of MCE and DVRs are fodder for another time and another discussion.