Don’t Miss Your Favorite Fall Shows

Right now you might be too busy watching Michael Phelps banking gold medals and breaking world records in Beijing to think about the fall television schedule, but it’s time to sit up, take notice and prepare. The first full television season in two years will debut in less than a month, and some tough decisions lie ahead.

Should you continue watching David Caruso spit trademark one-liners on CSI: Miami on Monday nights, or try something new with My Own Worst Enemy, starring former teen heartthrob, Christian Slater? Should Thursday nights be dedicated to the much-hyped Life on Mars, a remake of an acclaimed British show, or to Eleventh Hour, a conspiracy theory thriller? And how, exactly, will you sneak in the guilty pleasure of the new 90210 on CW without anyone knowing?

Invest in a DVR, or digital video recorder, to solve your viewing dilemmas. A DVR is essentially a large hard drive that connects to your television much like a cable box, and is programmed to record shows. According to the Consumer Electronics Association, 38% of American households currently have a DVR, and since 2004 the average cost has dropped from $190 to $160. Plus, if you sign up for DVR service through your cable provider, you won’t have to purchase any new equipment at all – you just pay a monthly fee.

Cable-based DVRs will in most cases replace the cable box you already have, and they offer the cheapest and most popular DVR service on the market. Either pay a fee (usually around $25) to have your cable provider install the recorder, or pick it up and install it yourself for free. The service then runs around $9.95 a month on top of your monthly cable bill. Direct TV (DTV) also offers packages that include a DVR and cable starting at $44.95 a month (Warning: this goes up to $62.99 a month after a year).

For more features than are offered on a cable-based DVR, look to the TiVo (TIVO) for the gold standard of user interfaces. In the DVR market, TiVo has become eponymous for both the machine, and the act of recording a show. “Tivo has come to represent the product and the activity so a lot of times what I hear is people saying, ‘I plan to TiVo that show,’ and they don’t own TiVo,” says Steve Koenig, director of industry analysis for the Consumer Electronics Association. “It’s sort of like Kleenex.”

A TiVo DVR costs anywhere from around $120 to upwards of $1000 for models with 145 hours of HD storage. You also have to subscribe to TiVo service for $12.95 a month, or $129.99 a year. TiVo is known for its usability and offers great options for parents wanting to control their children’s access to programming. You can also rent or buy movies directly from the Internet, transfer them to a computer or iPod (AAPL) and connect to your computer and home Internet.

But you don’t have to buy a DVR that’s already tied to a specific programming service. Sony (SNE), Phillips (PHG) and Pioneer, among others, all offer DVRs that range in price from $100 to more than $500 depending on size and whether they’re formatted for HD. The upside of these is freedom from a monthly subscription service and many, like the Philips DVD Recorder w/ 160 GB DVR, DVDR3455/37, which sells on Amazon (AMZN) for $342.99, also have the ability to record to DVDs, so you can keep your favorite shows after you watch them, or build a personal library. The downside is that they can be more challenging to program, and you often need to order a cable card from your cable company for installation, which you need to do yourself.

All these choices may seem unnecessarily confusing, but rest easy – it’s for your own good. Koenig attributes falling prices and better machines to the fierce competition in the DVR world. “The more people that are in the market competing, well that forces them to get better and better to attract business,” he says. “I expect more good things to come out of this market in terms of ease of use, recording capability; that’s more good news for consumers.” Bottom line: now’s a better time than ever to go DVR, and things are only looking up.