I've just added a slave unit to mine and are thinking of spending £50 on another one, you can record a bewildering number of programmes simultaneously: The manufacturers tell me that they've got 12 going at once. I have it linked to digiguide, so that I just click on a programme to record it each week. I've also got a video editing package called Videoredo (I know there are lots of these about and this is not free), which is faster and easier to use for cutting out the commercials than others I've tried.