Based on your requirements, I

Based on your requirements, I recommend the Hauppauge Colossus (assuming you caught our review) to fulfill your first two objectives. The Colossus will do an excellent job in digitizing your VHS content and liberating the STB content.

For a FiOS DVR replacement, I recommend you go with a Digital Cable Tuner (DCT) because it will allow you to tune all of your subscribed package without requiring a STB any longer. Verizon can provide you with a CableCARD which you can use with the Ceton InfiniTV, the soon to be released Hauppauge WinTV-DCR-2650 or the soon to be released Silicon Dust HDHomeRun.

While you can use the Colossus to accomplish 3 & 4, it will require the use of a STB to tune and decode video to send to the Colossus and you can only view and/or record 1 program at a time per Colossus installed. As you add STBs and Colossus cards, the solution quickly becomes more expensive, more difficult to maintain and more bulky than a DCT.

Since SageTV has been purchased by Google, you can no longer purchase a license so you can really forget about using it since you don’t already have one. You also need not worry about Boxee which is a solution designed to play back local media files or stream Internet content. Boxee has no electronic programming guide (EPG) or support for tuners. This basically leaves you with a solution based on Windows 7 Media Center which is included with Windows 7 Home Premium and will work with DCTs as well as the Colossus.

So, the choice in DCT is would you rather have a Ceton InfiniTV 4 which fits an internal PCIe slot and offers 4 tuners, a Hauppauge WinTV-DCR-2650 which is external, connects via USB and offers 2 tuners or the Silicon Dust HDHomeRun Prime which is external, connects via Ethernet network and offers 3 tuners? For the easiest setup, I recommend the Ceton or Hauppauge solutions because in some cases, the networking solution can be a little more tricky and advanced to figure out.