J.D. Biersdorfer has a nice piece in the NY Times on how a college in Chicago with a distributed campus is using a Sony NSP-100 network A/V storage device to move TV data around the various campus buildings. I’ve never seen one of these but they sound like a really simple Tivo or digital video recorder.
I bought a Sony CDR-W33 CD Recorder because it has an incredible amount in inputs and outputs (all digital, and optical) and it is a quality piece. I should also mention that professional audio equipment usually is not stymied by DRM and copy protection software.
A Television Network With a PC at Its Heart
more info on the Sony network recorders