We got a humax box when they turned the analogue signal off, as we could only get satellite where I live. The (not very) old dvd/video recorder is never used.
The best thing is that you can start recording something whilst you finish off a job, then sit and watch it from the beginning, 20 minutes later. Or, you can rewind and watch bits again when it doesn't make sense. If you start watching things a little later, you can ff through the adverts.
Most of it is easy to use, but there are some annoying 'technology' quirks and I hope they have improved these since we bought ours.