We have it and love it! It is just a box thing that your cable connects to. You can have regular television, satellite, digital cable or just a tv antenna. Ours we just got a Circuit City for $199.00 with a limited time $50.00 rebate so only $149.00 for the 40 hour limit. It is SO nice to have when you have kids and you want to watch a show you can pause live tv and it will keep a 30 min buffer in front so you dont miss anything. We paid the fee upfront for the $300.00 because after something like 19 months of the service fee it was cheaper and we figured we'd have it at least that long. We connected it to our phone line and during the night once a week it updates programs for the tv guide. We use the pause feature all the time when watching sports and you can even do slow motion (like on a basketball dunk or something). Also you can pick programs to record by time, channel, name, actor or whatever. We are big fans of HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm and Sex and the City. We set a season pass for it and it just auto records it and will filter out the reruns and it does not record those. We dont even have to think about it anymore..we just set the shows we love and let it go.
It sounds really complicated but really it is much easier than a vcr and no worry about tapes being rewound or new.
Heidi