Post 1000
here goes...
When VHS was brought out there was only one flavour of transmission UHF. No DTT, CATV, SatTV so putting a tuner in was a no brainer, the same one could / would be used by all. Nobodies going to bother putting any alternative kind of tuner in a VHS these days they are made with pennies of profit margin now. Look at the spec on your average £60 player, Nicam stereo, SVHS play and NTSC playback, things that would have cost £400+ a few pre digital years ago.
Now there are four flavours of digital TV transmission, all requiring different hardware and their network providers marketing competing products (sky+ and similar products exist on the US cable networks).
For this to work you would need a modular decoder slot which you could put the relevant hardware into to enable you to decode your broadcast source. This would not really work for the cable providers as they bring their own hardware. It could work well for Sky and DTT (and DTT+ TopUp, but would require some opeing up of the CATV networks.
Personally I would have thought that HDD recording with a DVD archive function would be the way forward though.
And poor in my part of Hertford, as is analoge terrestrial, probably why there is a good takeup of cable and sky in the area so yes I still have a £250 areial on the roof, but the reception despite spending a fortune (when NTL said no service existied outside my house) is still pants and not worth recording. The pass through on the NTL cable does much the same trick (no Channel 5 vs poor reception of C5).