PVR purchase

[jmc41]

I'm strongly considering buying a PVR, or DVR, or whatever the latest term is.
Basically one of those freeview boxes that can record programs to a hard drive.

I have a dodgy little £25 freeview box and a VCR but I can't record freeview, it blips up every 15 minutes cutting out the sound, screws up the VCR when it is plugged in, and is so annoying I hardly use it anyway.

I'm fairly sure I want a dual-thing to record two channels at the same time, a 80 or 160gb HD, and 14 day EPG but other than that I'm not sure especially on type. I don't think I need to 1080 upsclaling that may affect quality as I only have a 28" non-HD TV and doubt I'll be upgrading to HD for a few years unless the UK housing market suddenly drops average prices by about 100k

The Inverto 7000 is meant to be either very good or very bad depending upon where I read about it, but seems to be virtually impossible to buy. Does anyone have any experience with any models to recommend or suggest I avoid; and also good places to buy them.

I really need to try and avoid one that makes a loud updating noise at 4am too because it'll be in my bedroom.

Thanks for any info!

[Del Lardo]

Humax or Topfield seem to get the best reviews. Topfield is better if you want to customise and Humax is better out of the box IIRC.

[Mark]

What he said. Humax have one of the best EPGs on the market, but Topfield has the better future-proofing options.

Dual tuner is a good thing unless you want to get interrupted by recordings, and more disk space is definitely better than less. I believe the 'updating noise' problem you're referring to was a feature of the 'old faithful' TiVo, which stored the EPG on the hard disk and updated at silly AM. Very few boxes store the EPG.

[dimple]

Humax & Topfield do get the best reviews but recently I bought a Digihome DTR160 from Argos for £89 and its superb.
Dual tuner, records 2 channels at the same time and it hasn't let me down yet.
We've also got 3 Digifusion single tuners in the house which we've had for over a year and none of them have let us down.
The Digihome is also sold in Matalan under the name Goodmans and my mother has one.
Its so easy that even a 75 year old woman can use it.

[jmc41]

Thanks all, the Humax 9200t is looking good from that. Wasn't too sure about just a 7 day EPG but it seems to allow options to record weekly for example so shouldn't be as much of an issue. Few things about the topfield 5800t (taps) do look nice but at ~£240 it's just a little too high for me!

[Mark]

Freeview only offers 168 hours worth of EPG data anyway so the only recorders that do more have to get their data from the internet.

However, as that model is Freeview Playback certified, it'll do all the funky 'Series Link' stuff that Sky+ can do.

[jmc41]

Excellent, that'll cover me if I'm on vacation while the apprentice changes dates again then!

[Mark]

Well, allegedly anyway. It does rather rely on the broadcasters to set the links up (and they don't always get it right).

[kaiowas]

I've had the Humax box for a while now and it's been pretty decent, despite the various complaints on ther forums about Accurate Recording and Series Link etc not being 100% reliable I've not had any problems with it (although I'm a pretty light user compared to some).

Might be worth having a quick look around before buying though as last I knew there were rumblings of an upgraded version capable of HD recording in the works (the current model is not and never will be HD capable) if the new version is anywhere near release it might be worth holding out for it.

[Daz]

If you're with BT's internet, I can recommend the Vision box. Been no trouble for us, dual tuner, 160GB, and HDMI out w/upscaling, which works pretty well. £30 for t'internet customers.