I'm in love with my DVR

Please don't tell me whether Jack Shephard blew up the island, or whether Jack Bauer lives to fight another day. I haven't watched the season finales of Lost and 24 yet—they're on my DVR.

I'm saving my two favorite shows for an evening when I can kick back and revel in them. I want to watch them at my convenience, not the network's, so I'm not rushing in from work, dealing with a sick dog, or debating the merits of zoysia grass versus tall fescue with the landscaper.

Another reason I prefer to watch a recording is that I can fast-forward through each 2-hour program in about an hour and a half (sorry about that, advertisers, but I swear it doesn't affect my decision about which toilet-bowl cleaner to buy). I also make ample use of pause and rewind (a godsend for deciphering Jack's mumbled threats or simply replaying a scene to get a slow-mo look at the Smoke Monster).

Other things I love: It's incredibly easy to use—in fact, it's hands-down the most intuitive tech product I've encountered. Many folks say TiVo is even better than the Scientific Atlanta model I rent from my cable company, but I found it easier to go the rental route and get a recorder integrated with my set-top cable box.

It's also brain-dead simple to record a whole season of a series (just choose "Record all first-run episodes on this channel" option), and I'm blown away by the ability to record two new programs while watching a previous recording. Plenty of other consumers evidently agree with me—about one-third of households in Nielsen's People Meter Panel have a DVR, and the research firm says this device is "changing the TV landscape."

I'd agree. I half-jokingly tell friends that the DVR has changed my life—I know that sounds pathetic, but my defense is that watching TV is part of my job covering TVs and services for Consumer Reports.

It's not that I'm new to recording. I was quite expert at recording on a VCR, if I do say so myself, but even so, I was constantly juggling tapes, accidentally recording over something I hadn't watched, or losing the last episode of a six-part series on Masterpiece Theater. And it killed me to settle for a low-quality standard-def VCR recording when the original was in glorious HD. The day I ditched all my old videotapes was a happy one.

True, I don't relish forking over $10 a month to the cable company for the DVR service, but I consider it money well-spent. In fact, if I ever have to flee the house at 4 a.m., I'm going to grab the DVR as I head for the door. I'd take my plasma TV if I could, but I can't quite get my arms around it.

I can't say much about DVD recorders because I skipped right from the VCR to a DVR. DVD recorders offer a middle ground in convenience and quality, and the advantage there is that capacity is unlimited. With a hard drive, I occasionally have to purge some unwatched recordings to free up space for something else. Or when I'm nearing the limit, I'll record a show in standard-def, because it takes up about one-third as much space as its high-def counterpart. There's a way around that: I'm deciding whether to buy an add-on drive for my DVR or a DVD recorder for off-loading some of my archived programming, like the entire season of Monk.

Have you made the move to a DVR yet? Do you think you will? If not, why not? —Eileen McCooey