Hehheh. For my friends and relatives, seems like borrowing movies from me is the best bang for their buck, if they don't want to bother spending the extra $$$ to get good quality HD for movies.
Besides, for many, NetFlix might be more compelling.
BTW, if you do love using the HD-DVR to "own" those HD movies, you might consider getting a Raid capable external drive instead. I just noticed that such a 2TB beast (for 1TB use w/ simulataneous backup) costs almost the same per GB as smaller externals. That's probably what I'd do if I really want to use this method in place of HDM -- assuming the HD-DVR works fine w/ such.
As for concerns about HDM releases, I'd point out though that movies released to DVD have already regularly gotten HD transfers for a long time now. However, as noted repeatedly elsewhere, there's plenty of real concern whether older transfers have been good enough for HDM as we want it. Presumably, more recent and future HD transfers for DVD (and HD broadcasts) should be good enough, but that still leaves a good deal of catalog titles in question. And it's there where I wonder if we won't see at least some studios (like Universal and Paramount) cut corners w/ their HDM releases. I sure hope not or the quality advantage over HD broadcasts will be lost.
Then again, don't widescreen movies typically get cropped to 16x9 ratio for HD broadcasts? Not exactly what most of us here want even if the PQ/AQ is similar.
_Man_