I have a one time cost of ~$200 and I have a HTPC (Home Theater Personal Computer) that does everything a DVR does and then some. I currently run Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition 2005, but you can run cheaper or free alternative in Linux (Ubunutu is my fav).

Bought $40 worth of cable and connected the TV to my PC and viola!

Sure, it can’t record HD, but I’ll stomach the “normal” picture so I can save a few hundred dollars … I’d rather spend the money on something else.

The satelite company charge $5 a month access fee for the 3 extra receivers that we own. The forth owned receiver we traded for a DVR plus paid a $69 upgrade fee. We thought since we owned the first box, that the $69 would mean we own the DVR. But we now have $29 a month charges which added about $350 a year to our TV programming costs plus the $60 access fee for each of the other 3 boxes we own. The only charge I feel is fair on the DVR is the insurance on the receivers.

Can anyone tell me if it is legal to charge those access fees on owned boxes? We pay a DVR NETWORK access fee of $5, plus a leased receiver fee of $5 and a programming access fee of $5.

We have called and tried to get this straightened out and it does no good. It is like they set at the computer and come up with all the extra charges they can.

Determining whether DVR is necessary or not is like deciding whether spending $50 on a dinner is necessary or not.

I love my DVR. Yes… It is basically like renting a VCR, but much better. It is a personal choice, and as such, I think we own have different opinions about it. You can still be frugal as long as you keep your “not necessary” expenses under a budget. Whether you spend it on movies or more cable channels or DVR boxes… It’s your choice.

This isn’t the same as an argument between buying a home and building equity versus renting. But aside from the person with very basic cable and limited functionality needs from their cable box the technology in these things advances to the point where you can literally upgrade to something newer every six months or so.

When you get into the DVR type of boxes you are at a huge disadvantage to buy outright since storage capacity in these things is increasing significantly from year to year. If you were to spend even just $500 on a DVR box now while your cable company charges 10/month to use one of theirs, you would need to keep your box in operation for nearly 5 years in order to pay for itself. And 5 years from now who knows what kind of insane storage capacity or other features will be available.

So, I do see this move could be a disadvantage for some people with basic needs, overall I think the benefits of renting a box outweighs that of purchasing one for most people.

Many new TVs have slots for CableCards — no box required. Right now, it prevents you from doing things like On Demand, but you can get all the cable channels and premium content.

I haven’t hooked it up to a tv yet other than my 23″ LCD monitor, which it looks great on. But I don’t see why you couldn’t hook it up to a TV that accepted DVI input.

Anywho as far as renting goes, I think I’d do some homework on this one. Like you mentioned, it pays for itself in 18 months. If the models don’t change that often and you think you’d keep cable forever, it sounds like a good investment to me.