I'm fancying a PVR, and was looking at the one from phillips with a built-in dvd recorder, and 80gig HD:

http://www.consumer.philips.com/consumer/catalog/catalog.jsp?fhquery=fh_secondid%3Dhdrw720_05_gb_consumer%26fh_location%3D%2F%2Fconsumer%2Fen_GB%2Fcategories%3Ccatalog_gb_consumer%2Fcategories%3Chome_audio_video_gr_gb_consumer%2Fcategories%3Cdvd_players_recorders_ca_gb_consumer%26&productId=HDRW720_05_GB_CONSUMER&activeCategory=HOME_AUDIO_VIDEO_GR_GB_CONSUMER&fredhopperpage=detail.jsp&language=en&country=GB&catalogType=CONSUMER&proxybuster=HNYBNEECU3AJRJ0RMRESHQFHKFSEKI5P

Has anyone seen or used one, or are their any others that people recommend?

I prefer not to go down the route of putting a pc in the living room to do this.

As always, all advice appreciated

Ventmore

Someone I know bought one of these recently and thinks it's great.

http://www.pioneer.co.uk/uk/product_detail.jsp?product_id=8849

I built my own. You can get the Humax 8000 from Currys online for under 140 with free delivery. Was on QVC last night for more money and with P&P on top. The Humax also has a freeview decoder in it so that you can record digital TV.

We've got a Pace Twin

Others have reported various problems with zero length recordings and other problems but we've I've found the box perfectly adequate for our needs, the limiting factor being the "small" 20Gb HDU. We intend to replace this once the 12 month warranty expires (mods and warranties again )

Whilst poor value at the original rrp of around GBP349 the current price of about

Dave, The pace twin uses laptop 2.5 inch hard drives so you upgrade will be limited in capacity.

I built my own. You can get the Humax 8000 from Currys online for under 140 with free delivery. Was on QVC last night for more money and with P&P on top. The Humax also has a freeview decoder in it so that you can record digital TV.

However the Humax can only record off the freeview tuner , and not from Sky or Cable.

Thanks for the replies guys...anyone have any experience with Sky+? Also, can they be fiddled with...20 hours doesn't seem like much recording time.

Cheers

Ventmore

With some PVRs you can just drop in a larger hard drive and thats about all you need to do.

Others require a bit more effort to upgrade them

I have Sky+ myself and I do believe you can change the hard-disks inside them with another chip/module of some sort, I'll be finding out in the next couple of weeks...

The Humax range is superb, alot of people in our place have them instead of Sony equipment... yes, you can only record from Freeview and yes, you can only record to an HD but it still represents great VFM...

The way most people seem to want to go at the moment is a DVD/HD recorder. I have a Sony RDR-GX300 connected with my Sky+ so I can make hard copies of anything I wish to keep. I just record football, some comedy series' and a mish-mash of normal programs but if there's a film on or a match I want to keep on DVD, I just transfer it across...

The Sony RDR-HX900 is a stunning piece of kit, it's a DVD/160GB HD with some cracking features. One, for instance, is the ability to record video in Sony's HQ+ mode at 15MBPs - DVD is only 9.88MBPs maximum! It retails at

Thanks again for the posts people...After much trawling of the net, I think I'm gonna go down the Sky+ route...they've just released a unit with a 160gig drive (and apparently nothing else extra to speak of) at

TiVo, everything else is a disapointment...(well, it is if you've owned one )

Dave.

The Sony RDR-HX900 is a stunning piece of kit, it's a DVD/160GB HD with some cracking features. One, for instance, is the ability to record video in Sony's HQ+ mode at 15MBPs - DVD is only 9.88MBPs maximum! It retails at

TF - That's why the HQ+ technology was put on the machine, for DV dubbing. I do alot of that personally, you can also play it back on most DVD players as it's in the same recording format. All recordings made on that machine are stunning . JFYI, Freeview transmissions are generally about 2MBPs :( . Sky is better but I've never ran any MBPs tests on it so I'm unsure, although it is superior to Freeview...

Ventmore - Getting Sky+ is a great option, even more so at that price! As soon as I find out about the HD 'upgrade', I'll let you know...

Ventmore - Getting Sky+ is a great option, even more so at that price! As soon as I find out about the HD 'upgrade', I'll let you know...

Cheers Liam...I look forward to hearing about the upgrade

to be honest i dont see the point in hard drive recorders as all portability is lost.

I've got a Toshiba DVD recorder at home which has a hard drive in it (stores around 30-40 hours at reasonable [good] quality).

Without the hard drive, you'd have stacks of DVDs around, just like you used to have piles of videos around for VCRs. I can honestly say I've not recorded any TV programmes to DVD-RAM in the 9+ months I've owned it - they've all gone to the hard drive (where I can edit out the ad breaks and burn out to DVD-R if I want to). The Content Library functionality lets me find my recordings easily (thumbnails, etc) and there's no mucking around looking for discs.

Most PVRs (including Sky+) can usually be upgraded by dropping in a larger hard drive - check out the forums on www.digitalspy.co.uk for more info....

Would have to agree Sky+ is the way to go had the original V1 Box on launch and just got a V2 Box both of them I upgraded to a 160GB Hard Drive and never had a problem with either.

I've got a tivo, 120 gig cannot fault it. If I already had sky I'd probably go down the sky+ route.