This is a pretty nice unit. 120GB hard drive, which means 32 to 141 hours of recording capacity depending on video quality. MPEG encoding artifacts become pretty apparent in motion scenes at medium quality (94 hrs) so I'm sticking with High for most recordings, which means 46 hrs storage on the hard drive. Of course the great positive here is that you can archive to DVD the stuff you want to keep. There's no editing of the material before you burn, but if you have a PC at home, you can always rip the DVD and probably edit more easily there. This unit, as well as the Pioneers, has a major advantage in that it comes with TiVo basic (3-day program guide, no "season pass", "wish lists" or home media features) so you don't have to pay TiVo the $13/mo subscription unless you really want that stuff.

A few nits:

* menus can seem pretty slow at times, as does the program guide

* does not display amount used/free on hard drive

* even "live tv" is... Read more

PROS:

1) The unbeatable feature is the ability to record to DVD. The recording is fast and the quality is always solid. A lot of cable companies' DVRs make archiving to DVD impossible. It is also very easy to do the recording, since the machine tells you how much of the blank dvd you will use up.

2) The other huge pro is the fact that this can be added to your home network, meaning you can port over songs and photos to the Toshiba.

3) Though somewhat lengthy, set up is very easy -- even the remote.

4) TiVo interface much more useful than anything put out by my cable company. I much prefer to use it over the cable DVR.

CONS:

1) No HDTV through this, but I just rented an extra cable box for $9/month for recording shows in HD. I use that for shows that I know will be in HD (and there aren't that many). The fact is, no DVD player plays in HD yet (soon to arrive at a high price). However, you can't have the two cable boxes... Read more

Good: It works, it is addictive, it changes the way you watch TV...

Bad: Well, the picture quality is not too good, the free TIVO service only has a three-day TV schedule (although you can plan manual recordings further ahead), the connectivity is complicated, the unit responds slowly to the remote.

Outright ugly: The quality is poor. My unit died after four months, the DVD drive stopped accepting DVDs ('no disk'). I hear this is quite a common problem. Still working with Toshiba to get it replaced.

*** UPDATE: ***
Toshiba repaired the unit for free. I had to miss it for about two weeks. Worked OK ever after.
After having owned this unit for about two years now, I am satisfied with it. Tivo updates suck, every time there is a new service update the system crashes multiple times. Sometimes various functions stop working (like the electronic program guide) and it takes multiple reboots to get them back. I still don't want to pay for Tivo... Read more