If you get a good price for this DVR (under $230) then go for it. The GuidePlus is very cool and gadgety, but not as nice as with digital cable. The menus aren't my favorite. Picture quality is fine. Channel changing is annoyingly slow, and this unit adds an additionally 3 second delay to the video stream coming in because it buffers those 3 seconds in case you hit the record button unexpectedly. This won't bother most people, but we have two TV's that are semi-close to each other, and if we're watching the same channel, then you get a very irritating echo 3 seconds later on the TV that has the RCA recorder. My final recommendation is to go with a Panasonic DVDR/HDD unit instead - best menus, features, connections, etc of any of the 5 units I've tested. Still has slow channel changing (they all do as far as I know), but not nearly as bad as with the RCA.