Scientific-Atlanta's MCP-100 Media Center
Scientific-Atlanta doesn't have the most amazing reputation when it comes to combination cable set-top box/digital video recorders (they've yet to introduce anything as stable or easy to use as a TiVo box), but they've just announced plans for a new model called the MCP-100 Media Center that sports a built-in DVD burner, multiple TV tuners, support for recording high-definition broadcasts, and multi-room DVR playback. The addition of DVD burner is promising, but they mention that it's designed "to respect key content protection flags", which means—you guessed it—that there will be all sorts of DRM nastiness involved. They don't get any more specific, but as we noted about a year ago, the cable companies and TV networks don't want you to be able to watch shows burned to DVD on any player except the one in your set-top box, and we're guessing that the MCP-100 will be no exception (though you never know…). That means that if your set-top box breaks your archived collection of shows is completely useless, since no other player will be able to read the discs. Annoying, but no reason to get too bent out of shape right now—the MCP-100 won't be available until sometime around the end of the year.
