That's one thing we haven't tried with our DVR, is starting to watch a show while it's still "taping". I know Tivo does that, you can watch it "live", and skip the commercials. Very cool. A DVR is more like an old fashioned VCR, except it records onto a hard drive, and the quality is just as good or better than live. The other possible advantage to Tivo, you don't have to worry about time changes, like daylight savings time. We have to reset the DVR, and usually forget.
Tivo owners, what about the weird times on ABC? For instance, Lost went 5 minutes over last week. If you set the Tivo with the recording code, would you get the whole show? We set our DVR by times and channels, though I think we can use the code.
Still, the Tivo advantages might not be worth that monthly fee!