DVR-where to buy

[jbitakis]

my father has direct tv but no dvr. should i buy the one direct tv sells or one from an electronics store for him.

[Wolfen]

BestBuy sells those and around now or after the holidays you'll get a good deal.

[orsetto]

Apparently with DirecTV, if you go to Best Buy you can usually get the newest model DVR and its brand new sealed box. It costs more (unless they're having a crazy sale), but its the easiest way to get the latest DVR and you save time by hooking it up yourself.

If you order a DVR from DirecTV, you can often negotiate them down to $99, or even "free" if your Dad is a long-time subscriber and never asked for a discount until now. But it may be an older model and it may have a previous user's miles on it. Typically it boils down to spending $99 for a random DVR from DirecTV or $199 at Best Buy to get brand new latest. Personally, I'd go for the newest DVR: $199 is cheap compared to the garbage made for off-air use at $300-$400, like the Channel Masters.

If your Dad has never had a DirecTV DVR before, he may need them to send a guy out to add another cable to feed the extra tuner (that allows recording one show while watching another on a different channel at the same time).

[jbitakis]

Thanks. On a side note. I have a DVR and I want to download stuff from it to an external hard drive. How do I do that?

[orsetto]

Depends on the specific DVR. Some have a USB port that lets you add external portable expansion HDDs, but the additional HDDs are usually formatted and slaved to the DVR (can't use them with other DVRs or with a PC).

If the DVR does not have an official expansion port for external HDD, only option is to play the video thru the DVR analog outputs to a PC capture system or DVD recorder. DVD recorders tap into composite or S-Video connections to make standard-def copies, that are usually letterboxed. PC capture system can often tap into the analog component outputs of the DVR, to make full HDTV copies in true 16:9 widescreen.