DVR without TiVo, compare to PC HD w/ TV card

[tmh]

OK, here's what I want to do. Schedule movies to be taped on some sort of HD then either burn to DVD or edit some of th ecrap out (make viewable for my kids if "R" rated) then burn to DVD. I'm fine with the edit/burn part as I've done it some. My quest is to find a fairly simple, affordable yet good quality method to record. I currently have a DVD recorder (Maxent MX-rs215) which must encode on the fly to the disk. Quality is only OK at 2 hr record setting. Also, a HD is so much more convenient if I plan to edit at all.

I bought a DVR at Christmas from Circuit City only to find out the "cheap price" required me to subscribe to TiVo. I really have no interest in TiVo right now, I just want to set my gizmo to record movies. I have a WinTV card in my PC but the reception is lousy hookedup to the cable - I really don't know why.

Am I better of having the device do a hardware encode or just saving as raw video footage (don't know the format of movies over the cable) then encoding to DVD compliant? Is a stand-alone DVR a better idea than using the PC with a TV card? Any other thoughts? Thanks.

[tmh]

Anyone able to help out with this question? Thanks.