Quote:
You should have both a stand-alone player plus a DVD burner in your computer for the best of both worlds.
In my case the computer has a tuner that converts the analog cable signal to digital (there is a two second delay) and records that onto the hardrive, so when I burn it to DVD at the highest quality (HQ) there is no coaxial connection and no apparent loss of information. The downside is a maximum of 1 hour 15 minutes or so at that compression rate (double that with a double layer disc, at 6x the cost). As said, the more compression, the lousier the quality, whether it's digital to digital or not.

I tend to save the 'slower speeds' for things like cartoons, where image resolution is not as apparent.