I'm sure no-one else will be interested, but I seem to have beaten Windows 7 into submission in this area at last.
Win 7 seems to come with what you need to record, from a suitable tuner or maybe off line, TV programmes to DVD. Initial tests showed I could record via Media Center and burn a DVD with Windows DVD Maker. What I couldn't do inside Win 7 was find any way of topping and tailing or removing adverts etc.
Windows Live is a set of downloadable junk that includes Movie Maker, but this is less useful than older versions and on my 1 hour 45 minute test file put the audio sync out to a completely impossible extent.
I've now discovered that there's another Microsoft freebie called Expression that includes a basic editor, loads the WTV or dvr-ms files and exports as wmv, which can then be fed to DVD Maker. There are still a load of conversions, but it seems to come out with the lips on the same page as the sound.
The whole thing is the usual Microsoft mess with files stored in all sorts of weird directories instead of in basic sensible order, but it all can be made to work.
The only other peculiar thing, as a result of the file conversions I think, is that it is very easy to load a file bigger than one DVD's worth into the DVD Maker program, which, if you insert a normal DVD, valiantly converts and burns a dud. You have to know to insert a dual-layer DVD into the burner, as there seems a complete lack of warning about file size at the burning end of the process.
Now back to your normal programming.