You do have a hard drive for all recorded content.
Anything you schedule to record on Quantum is recorded on the hard drvie of the VMS.
Movies that are pruchased are stored in Verizon for access across multipel devices.
Verizon can still control what you record by setting the copy protection on the output of your STB.
Most DVD recorders will honor that copy protection and not allow recording of content being played.
I would suspect it is a matter of time before other providers will be required to block recordings as well.
I am still surprised that Tivo still allows users to save content to their PC (and I assume playback without a Tivo) allowing for sharing or recorded content.