The advent of digital TV recorders mark a significant departure from the traditional method of recording on VCR, or indeed onto DVD. Instead of recording on a removable cassette or disk, these devices use a hard drive to store TV programmes as data. This clearly has a number of advantages.
Firstly there is storage to consider. With VHS and DVDs inevitably you have to find a large amount of storage space for your recorded material. Not to mention trying to keep track of what you have and where you keep it. Digital TV recorders clearly do not present this problem. Different models will vary in storage capacity, but most will be able to store considerably more than a large pile of VHS cassettes.
Keeping track of what you have recorded and where you put it has always been a problem with both VHS and DVDs. However, good your system may be there is always something that goes astray meaning that you have to hunt through a large pile of cassettes or disks to find what you want. With digital TV recorders all your recordings are in one place. Finding what you want is simply a matter of navigating your way through an on screen menu.
One of the serious disadvantages of VHS is that the quality of cassettes will degenerate with use, particularly if you record over them several times. With digital TV recorders this is simply not an issue. As it records onto a hard drive there is no such deterioration and you can record, delete and record again as many times as you without ever affecting the quality of your recordings.
Many digital TV recorders have a feature where you can set it to record an entire series of programmes rather than having to set it to record each episode individually. This clearly saves a considerable amount of time. Also some models allow for remote programming so you can set it via a mobile phone or a laptop via the internet. This is a great feature if you have forgotten to set it to record your favorite programme or are later home than anticipated.
Clearly things have moved on since the days of the VHS and digital TV recorders have considerable advantages over their predecessors.