I have Time Warner Cable and they provide this HD DVR:

http://broadband.motorola.com/dvr/dct6412.asp

It's the worst POS I have ever seen. It constantly freezes up, scrambles recordings, ignores the remote and on and on. And this is the 6th one that the cable company has provided.

I know that TiVo makes an HD DVR but it runs $695 on Amazon. Is there any other cheaper alternative?

Well, imma have to guess that the answer here is no.

1. D-VHS deck with a Radioshack VCR Programmer. This is sort of a ghetto setup, but not expensive and doesn't require a firewire tuner/cablecard. You would need a firewire equipped STB, however, which all cable companies provide. Total projected cost: JVC 30k: $150 (ebay), Radioshack unit: $1.99 (eBay). You cannot watch one program while recording a different one. You can only set one recording at a time.

2. An AVHDD. The most common models of these are the RCA DVR10, DVR2080, DVR2160, the Indigita units, and the Toshiba Symbio. To use this, you need either a tv with a built in firewire tuner, or a Samsung SIR-T165 external tuner. You're only going to be able to record unencrypted channels with this setup, unless your TV has a built in firewire tuner with cablecard, in which case you can record pretty much anything (I think). Estimated cost: $75 (eBay). If your tv has no firewire and you therefore need a SIR-T165, that will cost another $175.

3. Sony DHG-HDD250. This is a cablecard equipped HD DVR. No subscription fees, you just need to rent a cablecard. Records unencrypted and encrypted channels. Supposedly works awesome. Estimated cost: $350-$400.

4. LG LST-3410A. Like the Sony, but no CableCard so no encrypted channels. Bsically this is an AVHDD with NTSC/ATSC/ClearQAM tuner built in. I dunno much about these or what they cost.

5. Computer with Firewire. This assumes you have a firewire cable box and a computer with a firewire port. You can only record unencrypted channels. The recordings are huge files (approx. 8GB/hr) This setup is 100% free if your TV has a firewire port. If you want to playback through your TV which does not have a firewire port, however, you will need either a SIR-T165, LG LST-3410A, or a D-VHS deck to take the firewire output from your computer and convert it into a format your tv can understand.

I hope this helps somewhat. #3 is the only cheaper alternative where you don't really lose that much functionality, unless you have a tv with cablecard and firewire, in which case you don't lose much functionality with number #2 either. The downside to #4 and #5 is loss of recording encrypted channels. With #1 you get encrypted channels, but the downside to #1 is that you can't watch one thing while you record another, you can only schedule one recording at a time, and you have to buy DVHS tapes as there is no hard drive. DVHS tapes are about $6.50 on various websites for a tape that does 150 minutes of HD or 300 minutes of SD.

Personally what I do (I'm cheap): I have a JVC HM-DH30000 DVHS hooked up to my main TV. I got it really cheap used on the AVS For Sale Marketplace. I have another small TV over the bar in my rec room that is rarely used except for parties. When I want to record ClearQAM (90% of what I record is Fox/NBC/ABC/CBS), I just hook my laptop via firewire to the STB connected to the bar TV. I have a Mac, so I use iRecord (free program) to set my timer recording. No one can watch the bar tv when the timer goes off to record, but this generally doesn't bother anyone. You could use a bedroom tv for this as well. For playback, I just plug my laptop into my DVHS deck on the main TV, open up VirtualDVHS (free program) and hit play. I get full HD playback on my 50 inch TV. When I need to record something that isn't ClearQAM, I have two options. If it's a channel that's also available on NTSC in addition to QAM (most SD channels), I just set the timer record on my DVHS to the NTSC channel (the JVC DVHS has a built in NTSC tuner) don't insert a tape, and plug my computer into the firewire and set it to record. This allows me to record to a hard drive without wasting $6 tapes. If it's a scrambled QAM channel that's not available on NTSC (ex. HBO-HD), I do a timer recording using the Radioshack deveice and the DVHS deck onto a DVHS tape.