Dan Collins said:
use MRV to move recordings off a TiVo with a failing drive.
I can't talk for other people, but I told my wife tonight that unless the Series 3 TiVo has MRV (there is a discussion that because of the HD DRM issues that the Series 3 might not have MRV) there is no way that I could buy into it.
I use MRV almost every day, mainly because I use my DVRs to record different material, the frontroom DVR records PBS (Frontline, NOVA, This Old House, etc), NFL and College Football games and other sports, Science channel programs, and HGTV programs, and Specials, and I use the one in the bedroom to record network series programs like CSI, Medium, Law & Order, House, Bones, 24, Surface, Lost, ER, Numbers, Desperate Housewifes, etc and some NFL and College football games that I can't record in the frontroom because of scheduling conflicts. And the third one is current being used my oldest daughter amd mostly contains her tastes, like ANIME and network shows like Alias.
But my viewing takes place where I am at when I get the time, so maybe I will watch a Science channel program or Football game in the bedroom, and a network series in the Frontroom. And without the flexability of MRV I would now be lost and I have only had it for about seven months and for the first two months I still attempted to record everything on both DVRs, which was totally impossible and would have been worst once football season started.
To me MRV is almost as important as the DVR, and without a doubt has made the DVR an even better video watching time shifting tool. I bet if more people had MRV they would understand the importance of it, kind of like the difference of having a DVR and not.