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If you use a dvd recorder you get the whole picture but will have those widescreen black bars. There are some dvd players that can upscale widescreen content to 1080p which also fills the whole hdtv screen and no black bars. That being said, the picture is not as great as watching it live on your hdtv.
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Im sorry but half of this is incorrect information
It is not the dvd recorder it is the Sources Output (Cablebox (Cox, Warner, Comcast), Sat Box (DirecTV, Dish Network, Etc)
DirecTV boxes HD Boxes HR20,HR21, HR22 output through S-video at the correct aspect ratio. They do not auto letterbox through the analog output. So whatever HD show you record from it direct to dvd will not be letterboxed (Black bars on top and bottom)
Cox Cable & Comcast make it auto letterbox through through S-video so the dvd recorder records it with the black bars.
But in the UK i have no idea if there is a lock on the cable boxes through Analog outputs.
To answer the first post it really depends on your end goal.
If your end goal is dvd then record straight to dvd would be the quickest way. but get a good dvd recorder which i would say the philips DVDR3575H/37 is the best one but this is ntsc not pal so i have no idea for you.
If your cable box locks the output of svideo then get a bluray recorder or just transfer the streams through firewire to your computer.
i know a lot of people that live in the uk rip the streams directly from channels. you will get .ts format usually.
It is a pain in the butt converting some of these files to dvd (Mpeg2) and not coming out ugly.
If you are going to have them on bluray in the end then get a bluray recorder. the hardest part will be removing the commercials without re encoding or coming out ugly.
go to avsforum and ask this question i bet you will get some good answers