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?