I want to watch OTA HDTV on my soon to arrive front projector and, beleive it or not, I've never owned a DVR. Do you guys think it is worth it to spend the extra ~$500 (plus monthly service) on the Tivo? It seems like a heck of a lot of $$$ to fork out for the ability to record. What do you guys think?

BTW, I'm going to get a wireless broadband router hooked up in my home office, so I should be able to hook the Tivo up without having to run wires, right? The nearest phone jack would require a 50' wire :(.

Any other suggestions?

How about the Sony DHG-HDD500 or 250 DVR's? They work great for OTA, have a free guide and no monthly fees.

Fry's Electronics are still selling them, and there are some usually available on ebay.

You can check out the thread here if you want to learn more about them.

Just be aware that the EPG on the Sony units (TV Guide On Screen, aka TVGOS) is piggybacked onto an analog TV signal from one of your local stations, which will disappear in two years. I haven't seen any official statement from Sony or TVGOS about whether there will be some kind of upgrade that will make the EPG usable after analog shutdown, but most of the indications I've seen so far have not been encouraging.

I love my two units, but I'm not counting on them being very usable (except as simple tuners with live pause and rewind facilities) from 2009 onwards. The big problem is that the clock is set by the TVGOS system, and you can't set it manually, so timed recording becomes very awkward if you don't have a TVGOS signal.