Any DVRs that don't require monthly fee?

[cyberdvd]

I want to get a hard drive recorder like the Tivo ones but I don't want to pay a monthly subscription fee. As far as I know the monthly fee for Tivo is for the fancy programming guide which I don't need, I just want a hard drive recorder that works like a VCR and I don't want to buy a DVD recorder with a hard drive because they're so expensive. Are there any hard drive recorders like this?

[churchie04]

AFAIK, you don't have to pay the montly subscription fee, and you won't get the programming guide. If you do it this way it is considered a "dumb-DVR". You can still schedule times and channels on which to record, you just won't see the program name and all the "fancy" stuff. Or you could get a tv-tuner for your computer, the guides that come with them are very free.

[cyberdvd]

That would be cool if I didn't need to pay the monthly fee but I was at Best Buy over the weekend and asked one of the customer service reps if I could do it that way and he said I couldn't. I'm not sure how much faith to put in the guy's advice though.
Another thing I saw on the Best Buy tag for the Tivo is that a phone line is required and on Tivo's website it says you have to activate the box, I imagine through the phone line. I suppose I'll contact Tivo about it but I wasn't sure if there were other hard driver recorders besides Tivo. It seems like there should be but I haven't found any yet.

Edit: I already have a tv tuner for my pc but I think the video quality is better with component recorders and a lot of times I want to record something and still use my PC at the same time which I can't do since the tuner doesn't have a hardware encoder and I don't want to buy a new tuner.

[gcutler]

You do have to pay for the TiVo subscription. There were a few loopholes, but they have been pretty much closed off.

1) Some Toshiba and Pioneer DVD combo units (perhaps some others but not the TiVo brand ones) allowed you have a TiVo-Basic sub that would do a subset for free. But those machines are hard to find these days, and the new Humax DVD combo machines machines require the sub.

2) If you have an older series 1 TiVo (usually with a Sony or Philips brand name) and the software was not upgraded then the machines would still allow manual recording (just like a VCR) if not connected to the phone and without an active sub. But those machines are hard to find, and getting old.

For both 1 & 2, E-Bay may be a place to find these machines.

3) Supposedly there are hacks that may help you but I am not familiar with them.

[handyguy]

Lots of dvd recorders, some with hd, some no hd, have TVGuide plus which is free.

[tluxon]

I have three 5000 Series ReplayTVs, none of which have monthly fees. Most of the Replay users I know have lifetime activated units, which means they'll never have a monthly fee, but constantly get up-to-date guide info. The guide info is very handy because it gets recorded along with the show. Also helpful for setting up automatic theme-based recordings such as everything that has a certain actor in it or has a certain word in the description, and so on.

Another handy attribute of Replays is that they become part of your home network and you can play its shows on any networked computer or archive selected shows on any large hard drive in your network. Its Mpeg-2 shows are easy to strip commercials out of and burn to DVD if you wish.

It should be pretty easy to find lifetime-activated Replays on eBay, and if your timing is good you can get them for very good prices. Check the AVSForum (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=27) for a large user community and more information.