It's time to retire my current DVR system and I'm trying to decide which path to take.

DO WANT list:

• TV gets watched in two places primarily, and anything recorded should be available from either TV.
  
• It needs at least two-tuner simultaneous recording, possibly three.
  
• Ease of use - I've gotten to the point in my life where I get enough computer time doing the stuff that I have to do. Sometimes I'm ready to relax and watch some TV without hacking something to enable a feature.
  
• Ability to easily transfer recordings to windows machines.
  
• Fanciness and coolness are good things if they are useful.
  

DO NOT WANT list:

• Advertising
  
• Subscription fees
  
• iTunes
  
• onerous DRM
  

I'm a big fan of media center PCs, but I highly suggest either MediaPortal or Boxee as the software instead of Vista Media Center.

Why not just get a plain digital terrestrial tuner like the 20$ ones from MSI?

Software is "good enough", remote is fine, and they almost all have dual tuners.

I'm not sure what device you're talking about, but does it pause and rewind live tv, and record and store 500 - 600 hours of television, and allow the recorded shows to be shown on more than one television in different rooms?

Posted by MutantMandias I'm not sure what device you're talking about, but does it pause and rewind live tv, and record and store 500 - 600 hours of television, and allow the recorded shows to be shown on more than one television in different rooms?

They're USB devices that plug into your computer that can be brought to do such things; sorry, I thought you were trying to decide on extension to hardware you already had and not an entirely new system.