Home audio & video forum: Copy shows/movies from U-Verse DVR to external hard drive?

Hi -
I'd really appreciate the help here..... been looking through the similar questions already on the forum and am a bit confused. Also, none I found mention how-to from an AT&T U-Verse, 2wire dvr system.

I have a fairly new HP desktop running Windows 7, a "franken"-OneTouch4 Plus external 1TB hard drive (had to replace the case cuz we lost the power cord in moving and manufacturer folded), an external dvd burner on the pc, and could also use an *old* HP laptop or my acer netbook in the process if needed. I also *might* be able to get my hands on a media hard drive (attaches to tv). This is a very shaky *might*.

As I mentioned, we have u-verse and a 2wire gateway, and the normal u-verse box on the tv. We need to tighten our budget and have to cut the "paying for TV" cord, since we don't watch much beside local channels anyway. But, we want to save a lot of little-kids tv shows (my sanity savers!) and movies we've collected and not yet viewed (plan to view the films in winter).
{whew}

So, if you can't already tell, I'm not very tech-savy, and don't have an HD tv - so I just need the quality to be viewable, not HD.
I'm just a budget-consious mom who's trying to figure this out. I've seen a few devices mentioned (other posts) to facilitate the process, but I can't spend $100 on this right now... and don't have a tv-to-dvd burner. Well, is this possible?? Could I do it without buying anything? Or, can it be done cheap??
I'd prefer to copy files to the external drive, and dont have time to record to dvd while viewing. (if I had that kinda time now, I wouldn't need to save as much!)
If so, can someone post or send me the process, and dummy-it-down a bit for me???

Any real help here is VERY appreciated!! If I can get this done right (and cheap!), I'd be willing to send the person that got me hooked-up a couple loaves of my famous banana bread!! Or, maybe brownies?

Thanks for reading this really long-winded post...