I still remember the Christmas of 1979 when my wife gave me my first VCR. It was a Sylvania brand VHS the size of a small suitcase. It must have weighed 30 lbs but it was fantastic. The cassette tapes held up to 4 hours of programming so I could get a full football game on one tape. The really neat thing was that it provided me with my first remote controlled electronic device. It wasn’t a wireless remote like what we have today. I had this 25 foot cord strung across my living room floor with a box on the end that let me play, pause, fast forward and reverse what I had taped. This still was pretty cool even though my infant daughter kept tripping on it and we had to make sure to put the remote out of reach when we weren’t using it so my daughter wouldn’t strangle herself. The only thing at the time I didn’t love about my VCR was the fact that my wife paid $1,200 for it. Remember this was 1979 and $1,200 was a heck of a lot of money.

Up until three years ago I still loved the VHS. In fact I loved them so much I had one on every television I own which is 4. Over the years the VCR’s price dropped to under $100, you could record up to 8 hours programming and the remote was wireless so I didn’t have to worry about strangling any rug rats. The onlydraw back was the remote became so tiny that I was always losing it. It either fell in the cushions got carried off by the grandkids or in one instance accidently fell in the trashcan next to my easy chair and ended up getting thrown away

Then one day life as I knew it came to a sudden and screeching halt. I discovered the Digital Video Recorder better known as a DVR. I am a subscriber of Direct TV and over the last few years I was getting advertisement in the mail from Direct TV touting this great new device that would revolutionize the way consumers record and watch TV. I was skeptical at first and as with any business Direct TV was not giving these away. The initial offer was to pay $100 for the DVR plus $5.00 per month along with my other programming fees. My thought was “why would I want to pay an extra $60.00 per year when I can stay with my beloved VCR for free”?

In May of 2006 my neighbor was moving out of state and had a garage sale. He subscribed to Direct TV as I did and decided to sell his equipment as opposed to taking it with him. I volunteered to help him with the sale and spent two days lugging old cloths, exercise equipment, furniture and anything else he didn’t want to take with him, out to his driveway in preparation for his garage sale. The day after the sale I received a knock on my door. It was my neighbor and in his hands was a 1 year old Samsung DVR that nobody purchased at his sale. He handed it to me and said “this is a gift for all the help you gave me preparing for his garage sale”.

I thought, wow, this is pretty cool but I have 4 VCRs and still was too cheap to pay an extra $60.00 per year to use it. A couple of week went by and one day I was visiting my son at his home and noticed he had a DVR hooked up to his cable TV. He took me over to it and started showing me the features and benefits of this new recorder. I couldn’t believe it. He could record up to two channels at the same time while watching a previous recording. While watching and recording a live sports broadcast he could pause the recording, rewind to the last play watch it again and then fast forward through the commercials.
At halftime of the game my son paused the picture, then went outside, started up the grill and barbecued some burgers. We ate lunch, visited, then went back to the game and picked it up were we left off. This was awesome! The halftime of the ball game took 10 seconds to fast forward through and we were ready for the 3^rd quarter. We watched the rest of the game without watching one commercial. I was sold, I had to activate mine.

I got home that night, took out my free DVR from the closet and hooked it up to my Direct TV. Fortunately I had a duel LNB on my dish as the DVR took two inputs to allow the viewer to record two channels at once. I sat down, turned on the DVR and have never used my VCR again. Some of the many features I have with this DVR are the ability to set a season pass recording. This allows the user to record all the episodes of their favorite shows without having to set the dates or times for each program. My wife and I love the show “24”. I searched for it, hit season pass, and I knew no matter what, I wasn’t going to miss an episode. Unlike a VCR if the power in the house goes out for awhile, the DVR will not lose the program settings. Once power is restored, the DVR is back on line and ready to record what you set it for earlier. I like sports but hate the commercials, time outs and delays. Not anymore. I record almost every live event and watch it later or at least after the first half of play. A football game that lasts 3 hours takes only about an hour and 20 minutes to watch when you take out the commercials and the half time break.

The only problem I found was that all the programming is stored on the DVR’s hard drive thus if it’s a show or movie you want to keep and watch a few years in the future you had better hope the DVR lasts that long. My DVR holds up to 80 hours of programming but you can still fill it up if you are recording a lot of shows and not watching them and deleting. I overcame this obstacle by purchasing a DVD player/recorder. If I have a show on my DVR that I want to keep forever, (or at least for awhile) I record it to a DVD and then erase it from my DVR.

On Christmas day of 2008 I returned the favor to my wife, I gave my loving bride her own DVR player. Just like the VCR she gave me almost 30 years previous, she considers this gift one of the best she has ever received from me. Since Christmas of 08 she hasn’t missed one single soap opera and this makes her happy which makes me very happy.

I still have two VCRs on the TVs in our spare bedrooms but never use them. The other two are setting in my closet. I have tried giving them away but nobody wants or needs them.

They all have DVR players.