Andrea - the advantage of the DVR (Tivo or otherwise) is that you can watch a pre-recorded program while recording a live program. Personally, we almost never watch any TV program "live" any more. We're always busy watching programs that we've stockpiled to watch and recorded on the hard drive. So, the ability to only record one program at a time isn't as restrictive as it sounds. Though having dual show recording capability is always a good thing!

Jan - a DVD recorder is worse since 1) you still have to deal with media (i.e. changing DVDs to record different things) and 2) you can't watch other programs while recording (I don't think at least).

Masaki