3 Things to Know About your DVR

For those that have gotten a DVR (digital video recorder) it becomes an indispensable part of their lives. I have one and my wife and I think it is the best entertainment investment we make each month. There are a few tricks and notes that we only learned over time. I wanted to share just a few of those with you here.

• Recording New Episodes – Many people who schedule recordings on their DVR forget to only record new episodes of their shows. This is a setting you can choose when setting up your scheduled recordings. Those that record ‘all episodes' find that their DVR is cluttered with repeats and soon enough they are out of disk space. Be sure that you record only ‘first-run' episodes.
• Rewinding Live TV – This is the biggest misconception about a DVR. Yes, you can rewind Live TV, but only if you were already watching that channel. You cannot just change channels and then rewind, unless you were already recording that channel. Bottom line – record everything you think you might want to watch and then you can rewind at any time.
• Recording in HD – If you have a DVR in conjunction with a HD reception, you can record your high definition programming on your DVR. The trick is that your playback, while in wide screen aspect ratio, will not retain the HD quality that it initially aired in. Except in cases where you own an HD-DVR which works with DIRECTV service. It will still be a superior picture, but because it is now digitally stored, you may encounter some minor pixilation that you would have on the original broadcast.