TIVO (which I'll admit we have and love - we have a seriously low grandfathered rate of something like $4 a month though, since we've had it for years and years) or a similar DVR may well be worth the monthly fee just because you won't have to purchase recordable DVD's and the hassle factor is very, very low....

We also had a DVD recorder - we had been taping cycling for a friend of ours and had a chance to get a DVD recorder on ebay cheap so we went for it. It was really quite a pain in the behind... The recorder didn't always make a viable DVD... sometimes you would get to the end of a recording and it would error and spit out a frisbee... It was super picky about the media - not all brands of disc would perform well. We were recording off of the TIVO too - so we had a chance to do it again if it goofed - which you wouldn't off the air. It also had the disadvantage of not being able to record if you weren't watching - so it couldn't really be used to record something live if you weren't at home - another nice feature of a DVR.