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Is it a PVR or a DVR?

Most TV recording devices with hard-disks are today sold as PVR’s (Personal Video Recorder), but are they in fact DVR’s (Digital Video Recorders)?

According to “Decipher Strategy Consultancy” (as documented in the lower half of this page), only a TiVo or equivalent device may properly call itself a PVR, the “Personal” bit indicating that it is a smart device capable of, for example, learning which shows I like and automatically recording them for me. A Digital Video Recorder is just that, a video recorder that can record digitally. And this page claims that for it to be called a DVR it must have a hard-disk; writing digitally to a DVD-R for example is not good enough according to their definition.

Here is my definition:

If it can record TV digitally, it is some kind of DVR. If the media is something that enables features such as time-shifting while it is recording, it is a PVR. Why? By time-shifting I have made the TV viewing experience Personal. The additional “smart behaviour of a TiVo we can then call PVR+.

What do you think, is any recording device with a hard-disk a PVR or does that only apply to truly Personal Video Recorders that knows you and knows what you want to watch?

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