Here's how I do it:

Dinner: 7-7:30p
The Office (Live): 7:30-8p
Grey's Anatomy (Live): 8-9p
Ugly Betty (from my Tivo): 9-10p
CSI (from my Tivo): Sunday nights when we get a chance

And then onto the CC News hour (TDS/TCR) at 10p.

I had to get a Tivo because of everything I like to watch in Prime Time on one dang night. Tivo is an addiction, I kid you not, and it's worth every penny.

Man, you guys need to get one of these SnapStream Beyond TV PVR cards. It'll turn your PC into a TIVO, but the best part is THERE'S NO SUBSCRIPTION FEE TO PAY! I never owned a TIVO mainly because of the monthly fee, and now that I have Beyond TV I doubt I'll ever own a DVR.

Plus, Beyond TV along with the HDTV tuner is only around $250. Can TIVO give you HDTV recordings, plus no monthly fee for that price? Don't think so.

I am so glad to see I am not the only person who is holding out on the DVR/Tivo craze. I refuse to pay a monthly fee for what I can do on my two VCR's for a fraction of the cost (the tapes).
If my VCR's fail me I have Innertube and ABC's online version of the episodes.

I watch it the way TV should be watched:

Download it all and watch when I damned well please!

Thanks to CTV and Global airing shows at different times here in Canada, the wonderful world of timeshifting, and of course with the power of my PVR, I'm able to get everything in that I need to. (It's all gotta be taped because I'm often not home during the evenings.)

7:00pm: Grey's Anatomy
8:00pm: Scrubs
8:30pm: The Office
10:00pm: Survivor
11:00pm: CSI

Thank goodness I stopped watching The O.C. a couple seasons back.

I just hope the ratings for Scrubs are strong-ish.

You're right. You can only watch one program at a time, even with a TiVo. I guess it just gets my goat thinking of all the prep time needed to use multiple VCRs...scheduling the shows via the inferior interface on a weekly if not daily basis, swapping out tapes, suffering through the tape degradation or buying new tapes regularly, and so on...when they have a technology that does exactly what you want it to do, across two tuners. I mean, you're a writer for the most prestigious TV news and review blog on the internets...and you use a VCR set-up. This is like a graphic designer trying to ply his art with a Commodore 64. You have written on numerous occasions how you "might cave" and get a DVR. Just do it, is all I'm saying. Pick up a TiVo dual-tuner, write it off as a business expense, pen a glowing entry saying you can't believe you held out this long, and live happily ever-after.

Thomas, I don't get how selecting what to watch and what to record changes with a TiVo. Yes, I might be able to time-shift a little more tightly (like starting to watch Grey's at 9:30 instead of 10, knowing the device is recording ahead). But it's still a matter of picking what to watch now and what to watch later. TiVo or no TiVo, you can only watch one show at a time.

Dude, it kills me each time you write these silly articles about how you're going to TAPE things while watching other things. Do us all a favor and go pick up a TiVo dual-tuner. You can start watching your shows at 8:10, and zip through the commercials. Frankly, I'd rather read a silly article about how you can't believe you waited so long to join TiVo Nation rather than get sucked into your mini-crisis each time a network opts to take on the competiton.

Thursday's from Heck is right! I'm negotiating this Thursday by recording all the NBC shows from 8PM - 11PM (Earl, Office, Scrubs, ER), and Watching Ugly Betty & Grey's live. I don't know what the F I'm going to do when Supernatural returns with new episodes. Scrubs & 30 Rock better produce the funny if they hope to keep the slot I reserved for my Man Cheese show with surprisingly good stories this year.

Watch Survivor and CSI live, watch DVVRed Earl and The Office at 10:00. My wife will watch DVRed Grey's tomorrow. I hate Scrubs, so that's no loss, but with only a two tuner DVR, that leaves me hoping that NBC will have a full 30 Rock online rather than the two minute recap. If they do not, that's one show that I guess I will not watch.