Dude, one word for ya... TIVO The technology is not perfect (yet) but overall it rocks. My VCR is only used for one thing now: playing the Elmo tapes (and anything else not available on DVD) for the boy.
I (of course) have mine programmed to grab everything with the word "Porsche" in the description that hits the airwaves, er, satellite waves. It also grabs Monster Garage and various Speed Channel stuff for me, automagically. As well as every Sesame Street episode in the universe, and some random Spanish language stuff too (LOL, I guess the nanny watches some TV when we're at work). You can also pause, rewind or slowmo anything, even live TV, and then catch up the time (FF) during commercials.
Someday very soon you will be able to access your DVR (digital video recorder) over the web or perhaps even by phone to tell it to record shit for you. There are probably already guys who have figured out how to hack video out of Tivo boxes (they are basically just Linux computers; hard drive and all, with MPEG-based compression.) So you could potentially access your recorded shows from around the house, or even over the 'net. Or email the sweet race clips to your buddies.
Too bad the Hollywood lawyers will never allow half of this stuff to be done, legally.
(And no, I don't work for Tivo, I just think it's one of the better things I've wasted money on in quite a while.)