Anyone recently dabbled in this market? Have not looked into anything to record stuff off TV since I bought a Panasonic VCR at university in 1999.

Looking for the best value, but equally a decent quality hard disc recorder / freeview box.

Some friends bought a goodmans one and took it straight back as the picture was very jerky.

They tried a different one of the same model and took that straight back then tried another goodmans model and that went straight back.

They eventually got a wharefdale one i think that is pretty good... I had a play with it.

Think they just got it from argos.

Phil

It's probably worthwhile looking at the range Panasonic currently do - probably difficult to go wrong with them. I haven't got a Panasonic HDD recorder, but my DVD recorder and TV are both Panny's, and I've had no problems whatsoever with them.

I'm looking for a freeview+ box at present, Humax appear to be quite good, but pricey. The other make that I have seen is Sagem, but I don't what they are like except a few write ups on Revoo.

If you have a PS3, you can get the PlayTV addon for about £50 which gives you a very neat EPG / on screen menu and uses the HDD of the PS3 to store recorded stuff

The only real pain with freeview is that your antenna has to be a good one. I have a shared one in this property and it is a pain as they knocked it out of alignment so all the ITV channels are shot. Wired up an old antenna that I used to have again, but to get the feed down was a joy..

Quite often the slightly cheaper models need a signal booster to get them to behave.

I bought one from aria.co.uk when they did refurbed ones, they slapped in larger HDDs and it has done me well.

Edited to add: the one from Aria is a Sagem

Edited 25 January, 200917 yr by WW_VRS

Although freeview.co.uk states I cannot receive freeview in my area, I have been using freeview for more than five years. I got a local aerial guy to fit the aerial as my old one could only pick up a few channels. He put a amplifier on the aerial, which is powered through the coax lead. With that I was able to receive all the stations. He told me that the digital signal is tuned down otherwise it interferes with the anologue signal and this was the problem with the early ON digital / ITV digital, so once the anologue is turned off the digital should be turned up.

Bought my dad a Humax one last year and its good - even he's impressed. I've got an older Humax and a Panasonic (both 4years old) and they've both been good and reliable

we been trying to get the sagem one out of argos with the hd plug into tv bit (around the ton mark) bu t they havent had any in stock for months now :(

Humax PVR-9200T Personal Video Recorder Review - Home Cinema Reviews - TrustedReviews

The HUMAX PVR9200T is a very good box and I've owned one for 2 years without any issues.

The only minor problem moving forward is that it's not future proof, i.e. no HDMI support but then again it all depends upon your budget.

we've got a 9200 as well, and managed to get it for £100 just at the time they were bringing out the newer model this summer.

goes great, and we actually watch less telly now, as a result of "taping" what we want to watch and not just "grazing"

Humax and Topfield are both well respected.

I opted for a Sony RDRHXD970 which is FV with a 250gb HDD and a DVD player/recorder. It has been superb in every respect. It can record something like 700+ hours on the lowest quality, but 40+ even on the highest. I use the 2nd or 3rd down to get 80-120 hours and the quality is still every bit as good as live transmissions to my eyes.

The option to archive to DVD is very useful when mates want copies of stuff. My 1yo loves 'In The Night Garden' and we have about 40+ episodes on the HDD, and another 20+ on DVD's the missus carries in his changing bag to play wherever she goes. You can edit the recordings to remove ads, titles etc.

It can also play JPEG's and MP3's, so work as a basic media server. These can be either stored on the HDD or run from a USB device. For DVD it is multi-region enabled and upscales to 1080p (I run it at 720p for my TV) via HDMI.

SONY RDRHXD995 at Richer Sounds - HI-FI Separates, Home Cinema, Speakers, MP3 DVD Portables, Plasma LCD, etc.

Edited 25 January, 200917 yr by corradoboy

Ebuyer are selling HDD freeview boxes made by Vistron, prices appear reasonable, but does anyone know what the quality is like?

Just replaced our 80GB Humax with a Sony thats 500GB!!

Cant grumble at either one for ease of use and quality

AC:thumbup:

The HUMAX PVR9200T is a very good box and I've owned one for 2 years without any issues.

The only minor problem moving forward is that it's not future proof, i.e. no HDMI support but then again it all depends upon your budget.

The 9200 has been discontinued and replaced by the 9150 which has basically the same spec , or the 9300 which has twice the capacity and a HDMI output.

I've had a 9200 for several years and it rocks (had an 8000T before too).

The only other PVR worth a look are the Topfield.

Sony thats 500GB!!

I've been thinking of swapping in a bigger HDD into mine. There's a guide on how to do it on AV Forums.

As I havent got anything HDMI compatible, and if I wanted that, I'd buy the whole thing in a set, it mainly depends on how long you are going to keep things.

They eventually got a wharefdale one i think that is pretty good... I had a play with it.

Phil

wharefdale, this is the same company as Venturer btw.

Both me and my partner bought our parents a Thomson Top up TV box last year. My parents has crashed on a number of occasions and my partners parents, well it crashed and never seen the light of day again. So as we are now in the market for one this thread has been very useful. Will be looking at Topfield ( i believe you can download all sorts for these ) and Humax.

Thanks.

My parents have been happy with the £75 Asda 80gig one I got them last Christmas. It's had no problems and is used on a daily basis. Granted, the interface isn't that posh, but for the money you can't complain!!

Another vote for Humax.

Not the cheapest but from what I've read cheap = unreliable generally.

On N0 3 now -all from Asda - first one locked up and only released on powerdown .Second one started to go out of sync -all within warranty .Last one OK to date ,and is same as No1 ,.What is worthlooking at ,before you buy ,is the EPG -the one we have at the moment id easy to use .The second was horrific (so we were glad when it went funny .)

Another story just came to mind ,is being too close to certain makes of TV can cause funnies etc - dad had sound problems on his top of range Panasonic kit years ago - Panasonic dealer traced it to video and TV proximity -move them apart and everything OK.

humax for me, had it for two years a truly great bit of kit.

On N0 3 now -all from Asda - first one locked up and only released on powerdown .Second one started to go out of sync -all within warranty .Last one OK to date ,and is same as No1 ,.What is worthlooking at ,before you buy ,is the EPG -the one we have at the moment id easy to use .The second was horrific (so we were glad when it went funny .)

Another story just came to mind ,is being too close to certain makes of TV can cause funnies etc - dad had sound problems on his top of range Panasonic kit years ago - Panasonic dealer traced it to video and TV proximity -move them apart and everything OK.

And that's why you should only buy a decent PVR.

The cheapo ones sold under a huge number of brand names are made by a handfull of factories in the far easy and are unreliable cack.