Recommended recording equipment

hi guys,

ive been using a spycam on my wife for the past couple of years with the aid of a pci capture card.
but now im think of adding 1 maybe 2 more cams in the house, so im looking at maybe using a standalone cctv dvr to record,
has anyone got any experience with these devices, im so used to using the media pc thats sat in the loft to record, but the price of the multi video/sound pci cards are more expensive than a dvr with h264 full d1 recoding quality.

any help would be much appreciated.... cheers

thnx for the reply, dvd recorder is a workable idea but then its the whole transfering it to pc to quick scan the recording for action.
at the moment im using a piece of software called active webcam to record via an old pci tv card, the software works well and I can schedule / motion control my recordings to suite. but now its time for multiple cams id rather stay with the pci card idea, sadly tho multi video input cards that come with multi audio input arent cheap. there are cheaper cards with only one audio input but u have to use the on board pc audio hardware which causes complications when the wife decides to watch tv or a video from the pc.
This is why im looking at a newtwork controlled standalone security cam dvr which is easy to hide in the loft, quiet and user friendly... alas I hate spending money blindly on gadgets.