My plan is to purchase a DVD recorder in the near future and I was wondering if I need to get one with a hard drive? Ideally I would like to get one with a hard drive, but money is a life or death issue. My wife will kill me if I spend too much!

My plan is to record in the best quality possible.

I'm also curious as to what Canadian shows some of you may be interested in?

A hard drive is nice, but not necessary. My DVD recorder doesn't have one, but then, I don't normally record direct from tv with it, since I normallly record tv shows with the Tivo box. (The DVD recorder is now relegated to transfers from VHS or occasionally transferring from Tivo to DVD.) The problem you'd run into is if you were not home & going to record more than what would fit on a single DVD & not able to swap out the discs.

you don't really need a hard drive if the dvd recorder you're purchasing have more than one speed hoping the show you're recording is not more than four hours which i wouldn't recomend recording 6 hours on a dvd. another vcr to tape thoes longer shows or even a tivo. i'm thinking it might be cheaper to get a tivo and a dvd recorder