Wow. That's strange. I find the all the TiVo resolutions other than best quality unwatchable.

My premise is that storage is cheap. There's no reason not to drop a 500 gig drive in there and watch everything with as good quality as possible (unless your TiVo is still under warranty.)

Also, both of my last two cable providers offer a lineup that they do not advertise, nor do they list it in any of their lineup lists. Last I had it, they called it "Broadcast Basic." It's basically just the first 20 channels of their lineup, analog only. It's $13 with TimeWarner in our area and I think it was only $11 with Adelphia before the switch. You might want to check to see if your cable provider offers something similar.

To limit your channels, they simply screw a little adapter on the cable up at the pole that limits the frequency range on your drop.