By the way, after doing some more online research, I learned that you should not record DVD's at anything other than the 1 or 2 hr recording time options, otherwise they will not play back on any other machines. Also, there is debate over whether recording on DVD-R is better than on DVD+R in terms of being able to play back on other machines. I did not realize that the -R and the +R were different media! And finally, some programs and movies and esp. PPV may broadcast with a copy protection flag and not allow you to copy to TiVo or DVD recording machines. I don't know if it's worth investing in a recording machine yet. Have you found yours useful for your purposes?