We would like to purchase an HD DVR (Motorola DCT 6416, for example) instead of leasing one from Charter. Has anyone had any experience with this?

I have purchased my own cable modem and set that up through Charter so I am wondering if this would be similar to getting a DVR. All I did was give them the MAC address or ID number of the cable modem and everything was great. They didn't give me a hard time about it and the cable modem worked fine.

In the United States, Motorola sells boxes exclusively to cable companies. There are no Motorola DVRs sold to consumers. Any Motorola DVR sold by a U.S. resident is stolen, unless they purchased it while in Canada. For that reason, cable companies will only activate the Motorola DVRs they provide.

People see Motorola DVRs for $100-$200 on ebay and assume these DVRs are inexpensive. They are not. These boxes cost over $450/ea in quantity, and they are priced that way because they are stolen. If you rent the Motorola DVR from Charter and then "lose it," they will charge you their cost of $480-$550.

If you want to own your DVR for cable, then you'll have to buy a TiVoHD ($250 w/ monthly fees or $698 w/o fees), a Vista CableCard PC, or one of the discontinued, single-tuner Sony units.