When we go to my parents’ house in Aspen Cove for a visit, my son will always ask how to pause the TV while he goes to the bathroom. He can’t because they don’t have a PVR like we do here at home. The boy has been spoiled but so have I. I love my PVR or Personal Video Recorder. Such a device is sometimes called a DVR or Digital Video Recorder, depending on where you get it from. It is a recorder for your television that records shows on a hard drive. This means you can keep a lot of shows on the disk (50 hours or more of regular TV but much less than that when you are recording HD shows). You can also get, as mine is, a dual-tuner DVR so you can watch one show while recording another, record two shows at once, or record two shows while watching another you have recorded previously. You can also, as pointed out before, pause and rewind live TV. This is because the DVR records the last 45 minutes of whatever channel you are watching, (or however many minutes you’ve been watching that channel, if it’s less than 45). It is a wonderful and convenient thing, especially when you have small children and you never know what crazy thing might interrupt your show. The DVR also includes an interactive channel guide which allows you to search for programs and use one button to record shows or to choose to record an entire series. Shows can pile up there too when you know they’re being recorded but you don’t get around to watching them. Just ask my PVR with its 23 episodes of Coronation Street waiting to be watched. Here’s a Rogers commercial about their PVR:
A PVR costs extra money for the service and to rent or buy the actual recorder but if you like to watch TV, and can’t always get to watch it when you want, a PVR can be a very convenient option.
