Tom's has a review of Sling Media's Slingbox. This is dedicated hardware to not only 'time shift' TV, but 'place shift' it anywhere in the world. Ok so that really just means stream your recordings over the web, but still cool. Of course if the networks would just make shows available online...
Someday far in the future we will look back on all these crazy gadgets we had to use to get TV on OUR terms.