Im holding off for a couple of years. I think that one of the FCC requirements is that by 2007 "recording devices" must have built in atsc tuners, along with (or instead of) ntsc tuners which most have right now.

Also, I notice that most dvd recoders only have s-video inputs. I bought a no-name one like this a few months ago, and returned it the next day, as the quality was abysmal, far worse than DVD, and only marginally better than my S-VHS;

Costco are currently selling a philips model that has component inputs, I would imagine that this would do a farly decent recording. however it only has PCM audio inputs, so no 5.1.
True, it wouldnt be HD, it would be degraded - but then that could be said of the "traditional" VHS recording of an off air ntsc signal; , still a good dvd recording of an hd signal will (for me) be perfectly adequate for timeshift purposes, which is all I use my VCR for. Id really like to record the 5.1 audio though.