Remote DVR dilemma

I misses TV in the US.

Yeah I know, some of them are real crap that no one should touch with a 3 food pole. But there are shows like "dharma and greg" that I can't get on DVD like Friends.

So what do I do?


Here's what's been floating in my mind. I need to put a DVR in the living room of a friend anywhere in the states. This DVR needs to be remote scheduled to record all my favorite shows. It needs to allow downloading of these shows via inkernet, and no, LAN would not work. It needs to allow downloading of these show quickly, so probably transfering compressed version of the video would be a good idea. Most importantly, the DVR needs to do all these without it being hacked, because the device would be ordered and sent directly to the said friend who would hopefully not mind wiring it up for me and having another equipment in the living room.

Here's what i found:

• Tivo-To-Go: It does almost everything that I want the DVR to do, except that transfer rate is almost 1-to-1: in the sense that a one hour show would take an hour or more to transfer, and that's just over local area network. Through the internet the transfer rate would most likely be a lot slower.
• Replay-TV: There's a close-to-open-source-third-party application that allows all the above, but it was said that the software was unstable, and the last thing I want is to have downloaded only half of an episode of everything.
• Rumoured Mac Mini as a DVR: Apple was rumoured to be introducing the new Mac Mini with Intel Chip built in, Front Row 2.0, and a newly designed Digital Video Recording built in. A "TiVo-killer" if you will. This is supposed to happen in Mac World Expo in Jan.
  

The Mac Mini 2.0 would give me more time to research my options for this remote DVR idea. Meanwhile, if I can get hold of a Credit Card with US Billing Address, maybe I don't need this at all. Perhaps I can then be buying episodes off iTunes and still be not pirating.