Considering the fact that the cable box doesn't actually know the exact correct time, and even
if it did, the broadcasters don't know the correct time either, it seems obvious to me that all recorders
should have a global setting that says: Hey! Always start X minutes early and stop X minutes late
for every single scheduled recording.

Unfortunately my comcast Scientific Atlanta 8300HD has no such feature (or if it does, it isn't
documented anywhere I can find it).

So which recorders can be told to automagically extend the time of all recordings? If I got
comcast to switch me to a Motorola box, can it do that? If I got a cable card and switched
to a Tivo HD, can it do it?

Considering the fact that the cable box doesn't actually know the exact correct time, and even
if it did, the broadcasters don't know the correct time either, it seems obvious to me that all recorders
should have a global setting that says: Hey! Always start X minutes early and stop X minutes late
for every single scheduled recording.

Unfortunately my comcast Scientific Atlanta 8300HD has no such feature (or if it does, it isn't
documented anywhere I can find it).

So which recorders can be told to automagically extend the time of all recordings? If I got
comcast to switch me to a Motorola box, can it do that? If I got a cable card and switched
to a Tivo HD, can it do it?

If you have an SA box, you can't just go get a moto box from the office, the two systems are incompadible with each other...

I don't know about the Tivo, but with the Moto boxes you cannot automatically tell it to do that. You have to manually do it each time you record something(it's not hard at all though).