The trouble is, it’s hard to find a DVR that can record in high definition, so most people wind up simply going with the bare-bones high-definition DVR capability built into the set-top box supplied by their cable or satellite service.

But TiVo, the pioneer in digital video recording, has recently entered the high-definition recorder market with a high-end, high-priced product. It’s called the TiVo Series3 HD Digital Media Recorder and it sells for a whopping $800, as much as some HDTVs themselves. And that doesn’t include the $12.95 a month it costs to subscribe to TiVo.

I’ve been testing the new TiVo and I like it a lot, but it’s hard to swallow that huge price, especially since the new Series3 model doesn’t include some nice features available on the much cheaper Series2 version, which doesn’t record in high definition. It also can’t handle certain cable features.

So, why not just stick with the high-definition DVR supplied by the cable company? After all, while it isn’t free, it’s cheaper than the TiVo.

The answer is that, at least in my recent experience with the nation’s biggest cable company, Comcast, the high-definition DVR it supplies is just awful. If cable boxes were sold at retail like consumer-electronics devices, the Comcast DVR I tested, built by Motorola, would get creamed by better competitors.

My Comcast box, a Motorola DCT3412 I, which Comcast rents for about $12 a month, holds a maximum of 15 hours of high-definition programming or 60 hours of standard programming. The TiVo holds up to 35 hours of high-definition programs or up to 300 hours of standard.

Also, the user interface on the Comcast box is crude and confusing — nothing like the elegant interfaces people have become used to on their personal computers and devices like iPods. The TiVo interface, by contrast, is effective and attractive.

The worst problem is that the Comcast box flubs the basic functions of a DVR. It is maddeningly slow at responding to commands sent by the remote control to pause, play, fast-forward and rewind. You press pause and nothing happens. So you press it again. You try to return to normal speed after fast-forwarding through commercials and the unit takes so long to obey your command that you badly overshoot the resumption of the program.

This latency problem didn’t affect just one dud of a Motorola box. In our home, we have four of these units, and three have the problem. All, of course, share the capacity limitations and user-interface problems.

In the program grid, even on a 50-inch, high-definition screen with acres of room, the Comcast box displays just four rows of stations at a time. Until recently, there was a fifth row, but now that has been replaced by an ad. The ad not only sucks up space, but also is aggravating because it gets selected each time you reach the bottom of the grid screen.

Advertising is fine, but in this case, sacrificing 20% of an already paltry information screen for an ad just shows contempt for users.

By contrast, the basic TiVo grid shows eight rows of stations at a time, and offers an alternate view that packs in even more information using two vertical columns: one displaying stations and the other showing a list of shows scheduled in the coming hours.

And, unlike the Comcast box, the TiVo Series3 can be programmed from a Web site, so if somebody at the office tells you about a great show, you can tell the TiVo to record it long before you get home. The new TiVo can also play music and display photos that are stored on Windows and Macintosh PCs on your home network. The Comcast box can’t.

But the TiVo also has some downsides. Unlike older TiVos, it’s intended to replace, not complement, a cable box. So, installing it requires a visit from cable-company technicians to install gadgets called cable cards that plug into the back of the TiVo. In my case, that process took over two hours. Even worse, these cable cards don’t support Comcast’s on-demand feature, which allows you to see certain programs and movies whenever you choose.

And the new Series3 lacks the capability of cheaper TiVos to let you transfer recorded shows to computers and portable devices.

Also, unlike the Comcast box, the TiVo doesn’t have a filtered grid display showing only high-definition shows, which is handy once you become addicted to HD.

Fortunately, it may be possible to get some, but not all, of TiVo’s superior features by just waiting. In 2007, Comcast and TiVo expect to roll out an option for downloading TiVo software to Comcast boxes. This would provide the TiVo interface without sacrificing Comcast features such as on demand. The pricing and details haven’t been announced. Comcast is also working on other new user interfaces and features using non-TiVo technology.

But, for now, the choice is tough. The Comcast high-definition DVR is a cheaper, but flawed product and the TiVo Series3 is an excellent, but overpriced one.

Email me at mossberg@wsj.com.

To find out, my wife, Edie, and I lived for several weeks with a big, beautiful HDTV, the Pioneer Elite PRO-1140HD, lent to us by Pioneer Electronics. It has a 50-inch screen, a long list of features and lists for $5,000, though you can find it for under $4,000 on the Web.

I tested the Pioneer with digital cable service from Comcast, my local cable provider. This service transmits high-definition programs where available and can record them to a digital video recorder (DVR) built into its set-top box. Comcast also has an on-demand feature that allows you to watch certain programs whenever you like.

The test demonstrated why people are so hooked on HDTV. The Pioneer Elite set performed brilliantly and was a joy to watch with HDTV programming. With HDTV, you are not only increasing the size of the picture, but its quality as well. On the Pioneer, colors popped, details I never saw before emerged, and the whole experience was almost cinematic. DVDs looked great, as did content from a computer plugged into the set.

But there is a hitch: Most TV programs aren’t available in HDTV, and these non-HDTV shows can actually look worse on an HDTV set than they do on older, standard TV sets. So do most videotapes. Also, buying a big-screen HDTV carries hidden costs and hassles. You may well need help installing the set. You may also have to switch or upgrade your cable or satellite service, get a new DVD player and buy new furniture.

The Pioneer Elite model I tested happens to be a plasma TV, which is one of the three major types of HDTV sets. It works by stimulating a captive gas with an electrical charge. The other two are LCD, or liquid crystal display, which uses a screen like those on laptop computers; and “microdisplay” sets that project the image onto the screen from the rear of the set, mainly using two technologies: DLP, or digital light processing, and a form of LCD.

Plasma TVs tend to have the blackest blacks and the best ability to be viewed from all angles of a room. Their colors are warm and vivid. And they cost less than LCDs in large sizes. But their screens are more reflective and a bit darker than LCD screens. There is also a slight chance they can suffer “burn-in,” the permanent embedding of an image, like a network logo, if you leave such an image on for a very long time without changing channels.

LCDs are bright, and they are the thinnest and lightest of the HDTVs. But their colors often seem cold and their blacks too gray. Their viewing angles aren’t as good as with plasmas. And in some cases, fast motion can look blurry.

Microdisplay sets typically cost the least, but they are the thickest of the three types. They tend to have limited viewing angles and can display a “rainbow” effect, which causes problems for some people.

Our Comcast service gave us high-definition channels from all the big broadcast networks and some of the major cable ones. We immediately started watching shows like “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Desperate Housewives” and “Heroes” in high definition, and found they were greatly enhanced. Watching the World Series and NFL games was a great experience, with every clump of dirt, bead of sweat and blade of grass looking so much more real.

The Pioneer also did a great job with an Apple Mac Mini computer we plugged into it, displaying family photos and downloaded videos stored on the Mac.

The big downside was that only a small fraction of programming is high definition. At 8 p.m. on Tuesday night this week, there were just 13 high-definition programs available from Comcast, out of more than 230 total. The on-demand service had a smattering of additional high-definition shows and movies.

And standard TV shows on a high-definition set can look awful. They can be fuzzy. They also typically fill only a portion of the wide screen, with big black or gray bands on the sides. You can eliminate the bands using TV features that stretch or zoom the picture, but these modes either cut off too much or distort people so they look unnaturally short and stout.

Also, we ran into plenty of extra costs and hassles. We had to buy new furniture to hold the TV and all the gadgets that attached to it. We had to replace our DirecTV satellite service with Comcast cable, because the trees in our yard blocked the high-definition satellite signal — which is beamed separately from another position in the sky. The Comcast digital service with high-definition costs more than the company’s standard cable service and its DVR holds only 15 hours of high-definition programming versus 60 hours of standard programming.

Despite all these costs and limitations, we were won over by our HDTV test. After returning the test unit, we went out and bought our own HDTV. We decided that in the slow transition to high-definition programming, there’s now enough content to make HDTV worthwhile. And once you get used to high definition, it’s tough to go back to plain old TV.

Email me at mossberg@wsj.com.

For instance, Verizon’s entry-level DSL service, at 768 kilobits per second for downloads and 128 kilobits per second for uploads, is considered high-speed here. But in Japan and Korea, families can buy moderately priced Internet service measured in the tens of megabits per second. They get a race car, while Americans are stuck with a bicycle.

A megabit per second (mbps) connection moves about 1,000 times as much data every second as a kilobit per second (kbps) connection. A service running at 10 megabits per second is more than 13 times as fast as Verizon’s base DSL service. All such services have two modes: downstream, for downloading Web pages, email and files; and upstream, for uploading email or files. Generally, Internet providers offer much faster downstream speeds than upstream speeds.

Even the faster common U.S. broadband offerings, like Comcast’s $42.95 a month basic cable-modem service, which delivers 6 mbps downstream and 384 kbps upstream, are ridiculously slow compared with the Asian offerings.

But now, Verizon is offering Americans in certain parts of the country a new, much faster Internet service for only a little more than Comcast charges for its basic service. This new product, called Fios, offers 15 mbps downstream and 2 mbps upstream for $50 a month, or $45 a month if you use Verizon for your telephone service.

There are also two other Fios plans: 5 mbps downstream and 2 mbps upstream for $40 a month; and 30 mbps downstream and 5 mbps upstream for $200 a month. Both also are discounted if you also use Verizon phone service.

I had Fios installed in my house in July, and I’ve been comparing it with Comcast’s basic cable-modem service. I have been pleased with Fios’s speed and reliability, which are true to Verizon’s claims. On some tasks, it is markedly faster than Comcast. And on my laptops connected via a Wi-Fi wireless network, which tends to degrade Internet speeds, the speed increase has been especially noticeable.

This speed boost, however, isn’t the kind of transforming event that people experience when they first move from dial-up to broadband; there’s a limit to the discernible speed increase you can get when downloading Web pages and email — the two most common Internet activities.

So far, Fios is available to fewer than three million homes and business in selected cities and towns in just 15 states, including the Maryland suburb of Washington where I live. Soon, Fios will have competition. Comcast has been working on its own higher-speed solution, and I expect Comcast to match or exceed the Fios downstream speed in these parts of the country where Fios is available in the next few months.

I chose the middle of three Fios plans Verizon offers — 15 mbps downstream and 2 mbps upstream. It took two visits from Verizon crews to install my Fios service — one to lay a fiber-optic cable to my house, and another to install the indoor electronic gear. The service hasn’t been down for even a minute since it was turned on.

I ran a rigorous series of tests comparing Fios with the Comcast basic cable-modem service, using an Internet speed test site accessed from a hard-wired Windows PC. My Fios service repeatedly was measured at just over 15 mbps downstream and around 1.8 mbps upstream. The Comcast service clocked in at a mere 2.3 mbps downstream and around 360 kbps upstream.

Comcast says I should have gotten nearly 6 mbps downstream in my tests, and that my poor test results are likely due to some problem unique to my house. But even if I had gotten, say, 5.5 mbps downstream with Comcast, Fios would have still won hands down.

On my Windows and Mac laptops connected wirelessly via Wi-Fi in distant parts of my home, test speeds jumped from under 1 mbps with Comcast to around 8 mbps with Fios, a huge improvement.

I also did some real-world comparisons. I downloaded a 65.8 megabyte file with Fios in just 42 seconds, compared with nearly seven minutes with Comcast. An uploading test was even more impressive. I uploaded five digital photos, totaling 10.2 megabytes in size, to an online photo service. Fios did this job in just over eight minutes, while Comcast took one hour and 22 minutes.

Streaming video clips from the Internet were much smoother, and suffered fewer hiccups, with Fios than they did with Comcast, especially on my wireless laptops. But Fios wasn’t markedly faster at fetching Web sites, or downloading email without large attachments.

I consider Fios a good service and a good bargain. If you are a heavy Internet user, and you can get it, I recommend you do so. That is especially true if you use the Internet over a wireless network, and stream a lot of videos, or download and upload lots of files. If you are a light user, just surfing the Web and doing email, a slower service will do fine.

• Email me at mossberg@wsj.com