I’m a huge DVR fan.

DVR is an acronym for Digital Video Recorder. Most people have heard of Tivo, which is a DVR. The convenience of watching the shows and movies I want whenever I want is enormous. It is hard to imagine going back to regular TV now that I have that constant ability to pause live TV and fast forward through commercials.

My DVR of choice is Tivo. I’ve been using a directv flavored version of Tivo for over two years and have always been impressed with its interface and reliability.

This weekend I visited a friend in Seattle who works for Microsoft. Having drank the cool-aid, he had the Microsoft DVR called Windows Media Center set up in his apartment. For the most part the features were the same, but the biggest difference between the two systems is performance.

Maybe his setup wasn’t optimal. Maybe he should have been using wired Ethernet instead of a wireless network. Maybe he didn’t have enough RAM or processor power for the streaming and encoding tasks needed. In any case, the result was a poor experience.

For now, I’ll stick with Tivo.