Originally Posted by spike2907:
“It will cost me £129 to have the sky+ box (£99 box plus £30 fitting) and I will also need a DVD recorder for archiving (£50). this is starting to get expensive!
....
My subscription is approx £22 per month (All the main channels except movies & sport)”
It depends how much you're reliant on Sky. You could wait until Freesat appears in March then you'll be able to get a twin-tuner PVR without any monthly subscription, but of course you won't receive the Sky subscription channels on that. Note that you're paying Sky over £250 per year for their channels so one-off costs as mentioned above for the hardware is not much in comparison!
If you're willing to forego the "record one while watching another" requirement then I'd recommend a DVD recorder with built-in hard-disk which has the Guide+ system in it, then it will be able to record from and control a Sky box very easily. Edit and shuffle recordings while on the hard disk (not limited to a 2-hour DVD) then archive to DVD if necessary. Get an additional cheap Freesat box later for at least being able to view a free channel while recording a Sky channel, or vice versa.
If you only want a recorder for timeshifting and not for archiving to DVD, then a PVR/DTR is certainly better than a DVD/HDD recorder, but you're limited to Sky+ with a subscription or Freesat when launch in March.