One thing that I love to do is watch the streaming netflix stuff. Get a roku device and go to town with a $8/mo netflix account. The roku has a great interface

One thing that I love to do is watch the streaming netflix stuff. Get a roku device and go to town with a $8/mo netflix account. The roku has a great interface and tons of outputs.(hdmi, composite, component, svideo, etc...) This is not a complete solution because you do not generally get shows or movies until some time has passed. But when they do have it on watch instantly it is great. MythTV has been going strong in the DVR category for a long while now but I haven't used it since it was an infant so I cannot attest to it's current level of maturity. If you try MythTV check out this plugin for some help recording: http://www.templetons.com/brad/myth/tvwish.html http://www.templetons.com/brad/myth/tvwish.html You can also try out a liveCD of MythTV+Ubuntu: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythbuntu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythbuntu