You should get a PVR man. You can probably rent one from your cable company and it's only like 5 or 10 bucks more a month than a regular digital cable box.
You swap out the 80GB HD for a 300GB one (being very careful not to void the warranty) and you can record about 150 shows.
I just set the thing up to record Monty Python on any channel it's broadcast. Same thing with a ton of other shows. By the end of the week I've got about 120 hours worth of stuff stored on it with a couple of pay per view movies to boot. Then ya just pick and choose what you wanna watch.
Best part is, no commercials & ya can record two shows while you're watching another one.
Monty Python's on about 4 different channels here in different time zones so there's usually a couple of episodes sitting in the menu ready to go.
I just erase em when I'm done but you could probably save em to VHS or DVD if there's no copy protection.