Simon C

The Vcr is dying and its time to get its modern replacement for reasonable money.

A freeview tuner is a must and a HDD, thats it.

What do people have here???

vindaloo

humax

albob

ive got one of these - find it brilliant!!

Panasonic DMR-EX77 HDD/DVD Recorder - TrustedReviews

about £200

Klaatu

Get one that has twin tuners, able to edit the recording (To remove ads etc), rewind/pause/resume live TV, play back a recoring while recording two other programs, a decent EPG and of course a large, quiet drive of 500Gb or more. Make sure you find a PVR with a hard drive that is "CE" (Consumer Electonics) rated. Standard hard drives do too much error correcting and may affect picture/sound quality.

These are great, but I cannot afford one...Beyonwiz DP-S1 or DP-P1 High Definition PVR.

jasey

Topfield - So easy to use the wife can even set it

Topfield TF5800 PVR

Apparently you can download software to it to change things around - not tried that yet !

It's a very clever piece of kit.

We had set two things to record and were going out for a walk.

The wife said "Go and 'tape' Eastenders" - So I selected Eastenders on the TV Guide - Pressed record. The Topfield came back and told me that I was already recording two things so I couldn't record a third one - But Eastenders was on again at 10:00 on BBC3 - Do I want to record that one !

Impressed me

Also - you can start watching a recording before it's finished - no more waiting for the tape to finish !

Oh - and no more watching the daffy wife trying to find the start of programs using FFD / RWD / FFD / RWD ....... Press two buttons and you're watching !

Dark

iTrader: (1)

Humax

Dream Weaver

Topfield 5800 - fantastic.

Humax is good also although I find the pic quality better on the Topfield and the Toppy can be customised (EPG, timers etc etc all open source)

Nimbus

I've got a Topfield TF5800 as well. I bought it over the Humax specifically because it allows you to add small programs (called TAPs) to change a lot of aspects to the system as Dream Weaver mentions. These can be anything from the EPG layout, or Archive to adding extra functions like FF/RW skipping, program searches by keywords or changing the function of the front panel display. Take a look at Welcome to Toppy.org.uk for details if you're interested.


Be aware though that I think the current firmware being shipped with the TF5800 is the new Freeveiw Playback version and quite a lot of people have had issues with it (though these may be related to the broadcaster not sending the correct data). There is a non-FB Firmware you can load instead which is very reliable. There are also quite a few patches which you can apply to improve things further. I've had mine for over 2 years and I don't think it's missed a recording or messed up once. I've upgraded mine to a 400GB HDD as the old one was getting a bit low on space. You can also copy the recordings into your PC via USB (as you can with the Humax)

There's also a new version TF5810 with a larger HDD (500GB) and HDMi output. There's not so much support with TAPs or patches with this yet, as it's quite a new model.

I think the Humax is well respected and apparently it's very easy to use out of the box. But you can't change any aspect of it like you can with the Topfield.

I would say, if you just want something to work out of the box and are not interested in trying to change anything then maybe the Humax is right for you.

If you like tinkering and want to have a PVR that you change change things on to suit you and you're prepared to spend a little time reading up and playing with it, then the Topfield is for you.

Dream Weaver

Just to add to Nimbus's reply, the Topfield does work fine out of the box, had ours nearly 2 years now and I've never got round to adding any taps but it still works perfectly without any tinkering.

I just wanted the ability to mess with it if I so desired.

Nimbus

Of course, I didn't mean to imply that the Topfield could not be used straight out of the box and I expect many people do just that and are very happy with it. It's just that for me, the ability to customize pretty much everything about the TF5800 made the decision for me. I've never looked back.

Simon C

I bought the Humax 9200, cheers for the reponses guys.

The company were local to me and are 160 all in inc next day shipping. Thats 20 quid cheaper then JLP and 70 cheaper than HUmax direct.

corradoboy

Topfield and Humax are the first choice for a pure PVR, but if you want to archive anything to DVD then I'd suggest the Sony range of FV/HDD/DVD-R units. I got the 970 with 250gb HDD which can record up to 440 hours, or around 50 in HQ mode, will accept MP3's and JPG's loaded via USB to act as a media drive and I had mine supplied multi-region'd too. It's worked faultlessly so far, and allows me to pause live TV, watch recordings before they've finished and edit recordings. Dumping to DVD takes about 3 minutes for a 1hr recording. £240 delivered. It does have two tuners, but not actually 'twin' tuners. it can only record on either the digital or the analogue, but as we have FV on the TV and Virgin cable then we don't struggle, and it's rare there's more than one program in a day worth recording anyway

RDR-HXD970 (RDRHXD970) : DVD and Blu-ray Discâ„¢ : Sony : United Kingdom

peterv

You can have a look at the Topfield TF5800 and the tf5810pvr both the models more or less has the same features except the hard disk size and the HDMI upscaling.

bioforger

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Sky+

Scooby Soon!

What is a VCR?