I picked up a Panasonic ShowStopper 2000 (30 GB installed drive, it was a rebadged ReplayTV 3030) in ~2003-4 for $75, bought a 120 GB HD (biggest it could take, 127 GB PATA limit) for it separately. Installed it in the house when it arrived, gave my wife the quick tour of how to use it, and her immediate reaction was "what have you done to my TV". Three days later, the bigger HD arrived and I told her to watch all her shows, as they would be lost. She delayed my install for a day to catch up.
The base drive could do 10 hours in full SD quality, 20 in VHS quality, and 30 in terrible quality (for most shows, but it was fine for low-change animation like Simpsons or King of the Hill). I got four times that with the new one. It completely changed how we watched TV, and I say that as someone who had dedicated "crap tapes" for my VCR to record some daily shows before that. Watch a recorded show while a live show records (it had only one tuner)? Even that was a big step up from VCRs.
Without which almost nobody lives today.
I picked up a Panasonic ShowStopper 2000 (30 GB installed drive, it was a rebadged ReplayTV 3030) in ~2003-4 for $75, bought a 120 GB HD (biggest it could take, 127 GB PATA limit) for it separately. Installed it in the house when it arrived, gave my wife the quick tour of how to use it, and her immediate reaction was "what have you done to my TV". Three days later, the bigger HD arrived and I told her to watch all her shows, as they would be lost. She delayed my install for a day to catch up.
The base drive could do 10 hours in full SD quality, 20 in VHS quality, and 30 in terrible quality (for most shows, but it was fine for low-change animation like Simpsons or King of the Hill). I got four times that with the new one. It completely changed how we watched TV, and I say that as someone who had dedicated "crap tapes" for my VCR to record some daily shows before that. Watch a recorded show while a live show records (it had only one tuner)? Even that was a big step up from VCRs.