Actually, you can burn or record to an outside unit from TiVo as well. There are RCA outputs on the back of a TiVo box that will allow you to hook up a VCR or DVD burner so you can back it up. It's a wonderful thing. My wife and I finally invested in one a month ago and love it. Well, when we get it fixed, that is. The modem got fried in an electrical storm and now the unit cannot obtain program listings from Comcast (which it does via modem). We can still record but we have to set it like a VCR. Still much better than friggin' VHS tapes, which is what we used before this.

Starkiller, you missed one cool thing about the subscription... when, for example, you set your TiVo to find all the episodes of Lost to record, you can either tell it to record every instance of the show or just new episodes. With shows that are in syndication and still have new episodes on, this is great, because, otherwise, you will wind up with a TiVo full of King of Queens episodes, both old and new, when all you really wanted to see was the new stuff. But, if you are trying to catch up on the old stuff as well, then you're not just stuck with the new episodes. TiVo automatically finds them all regardless of time, date, and station.