The invention and introduction of the digital video recorder or DVR to the TV watching masses has revolutionized the way people watch television. In fact, some people think that DVRs (also referred to as personal video recorders) as a piece of high tech equipment is as groundbreaking as the development of the television, and with good reason. DVRs has made televisions watching not only easier, but it has also made it a more personal experience. With this equipment you can now personalize how you watch television by programming it to follow your personal viewing habits. You can program it to record your favorite shows even when you're not at home and even skip through a whole load of commercials. You are no longer a captive audience, you control everything.

But DVRs are actually more powerful than you think. Not many people know that these gizmos actually have hidden features that you can unlock if you know what to do. By ?hacking? your DVR you can open up new features that expand its capabilities and make it so much more useful than it already is.

Below are just some of the more useful hacks that you can do with your DirecTiVo, Dish Network DVR or your stand-alone DVR unit:

The good thing about recording your favorite show is that you now have the chance to watch them again at your convenience. The bad thing is that the default settings of your DVR means that you cannot immediately copy the recorded content to a DVD because of the incompatibility in default file formats in a DVR. Now you can convert the format of recorded content on a DVR to MPEG, which makes it easy to copy to a DVD. To do this, just download and use DirectShow Dump (DSD) (just use software version 0.1.1029.0 or the newest one you can find).

More recording time

Increasing the recording time of your TiVo means squeezing in more shows into the unit and that is always a good thing. People who are new to hacking TiVos should get Mfs Tools 2.0 (for series 1 and 2).

As mentioned above, increasing storage for the TiVo is always a good thing. Another way of doing this is by actually installing a second hard drive to your unit. If you are not necessarily a TiVo hacking virgin then you can take a shortcut by going straight to installing a new HD without doing a backup through the use of mfsadd. This particular hack is a bit complicated but if you are the adventurous kind then this is a great way of getting your hands dirty with the upgrade. Just search the net for this nifty utility.

Getting your video files on to your PC and back is another wonderful ability that you can unlock on your TiVo. All you need to do is to perform the GoToTiVo hack (aka TiVoBack) . Doing this hack successfully basically turns your PC into an unlimited library for your TiVo files, allowing you to make archives of your favorite videos and even organize your videos in a more personalized fashion.