I am starting to look out for a DVD Recorder with built-in HDD and FreeView receiver for a sensible price (say under £200). I would have thought the market would be flooded with these soon. Anyone seen many yet (even at higher prices?). FireWire connection would also be important!
Manufacturers to look at: Topfield, Humax, Panasonic and a few more. They all do either exactly wht you want or something like it. I've got a Liteon HDD/DVD without Freeview at present, and consider that I got it wrong, I should have gone for HDD with Freeview, Topfield do one with 2 tuners and HDD but no DVD, however, it has a USB2 port to move files to PC for recording. That would have been more sensible had I known about it at the time.
Sony and Panasonic both have a product that does what you want (2 in the case of Sony), don't know about anybody else. £200 is optimistic - at the moment it's likely to be more that double that.
I am starting to look out for a DVD Recorder with built-in HDD and FreeView receiver for a sensible price (say under £200). I would have thought the market would be flooded with these soon. Anyone seen many yet (even at higher prices?). FireWire connection would also be important!
a good dvd recorder with hard-drive costs approx £300
a freeview box alone , a good one , costs £50 plus.
so where you will get a good one from at £200 is a mystery to me.
Gary, the economics of construction don't work that way. Much of the cost of an item is the in-line profit made by dealers/distributors. The cost of adding, say a Freeview decoder is far less than £50, probably only about £3 on the unit, since much of separate hardware cost is in the casing and power supply. So, once you've got a box and power supply, it doesn't cost much to add features.
the economics may not , but , the only dual dvd and freeviews were released to sounds of clangers dropping.
if they had integrated known good kit into a single box , it may have worked , but , they needed major updates to get stability of freeview side , which is why i think it is better to buy known good seperates.
freeview quality is also wasted on high quality dvd recordings , as the stream is never of that quality , certainly round the local transmitters , those that carry it.
I would also look for one with "Gudie Plus", soooo easy to use timer then
Panny have one with Freeview built in.
http://ws4.richersounds.com/showproduct.php?cda=showproduct&pid=PANA-DMRES20
But no HDD, no Firewire.
My Panasonic DMR-E95H has a 80 gig HDD, firewire in, card reader and analogue out, including SVideo. It seems to work well. I have teamed it up with cheapo Freeview box and all works well.
When I bought the Pana it cost a fortune, but that was because it had only just been introduced and prices have fallen a lot since then.
I also bought a cheapo Tevion recorder recently from ALDI and have also plugged that into the freeview box. The Tevion again has a HDD.
Best wishes.
Tim
Tim,
One problem I am trying to get round is the need to set 2 boxes when you want to record something. The way I see it both the DVD/HDD recorder and the TV should have built-in Freeview receivers for any future purchases.
I don't know about the quality of this item, but you have to admire the price:
80GB Personal Video Recorder with FREEVIEW at £99.99.
Also a high spec dual core P4 830 at £749.99
Rick.
Rick, from a quick look at the spec it seems as though it does'nt allow output to a dvd. But for less than £100 it has to be a good offer.
The only mention it makes of dvd is that it deoesn't deal with dvd. This is a twin Freeview tuner and a hard disk drive, fine if you don't intend to make permanent recordings.
My mistake, sorry to give false hopes!
any updates on this topic as its just what
my mum has asked for Xmas just cant afford £500
I have a Sagem with an HDD in it plus Freeview. It also takes a Topup TV card if required. What you must take note of is the boot up time. Allow at least a minute to ensure that you do not miss the start of any programmes.
I am on ntl cable and have a Goodmans video recorder attached to that. It has an HDD inside it, but doesn't have freeview. It boots up much quicker than the Sagem. Also, on the front of it there is a Firewire socket, a S-Video socket and three phono sockets. The Firewire doesn't appear to do much, but the S-Video and phono sockets allow me to download both digital and analogue tapes onto the hard drive. I can then use the inbuilt DVD burner to turn out DVDs. The information on these DVDs can be used by ULead Movie Factory and edited on the computer.
Frank4689,
Please could you tell me the model number of the Sagem? A quick Google has only revealed HDD recorders from them so far.
I've just realised you may have meant that the Goodmans video recorder has the DVD burner in it, not the Sagem. So I guess I'm still on the lookout!
Yes it is the Goodmans that has the burner and not the Sagem. On the (very basic) instruction leaflet that comes with the Sagem in lists three models. The PVR 6200 UK, the PVR 6600T UK, which has a digital photo player/recorder and the one which I have, the PVR 7280 UK which takes the top up card. When I tried to purchase a PVR, I had difficulty finding one. I used the Which magazine to select the model which suited me, but could only find the Sagems available and only Argos had any. So I have a Sagem PVR 7280T UK, by default. It does have twin tuners so I can watch one channel whilst recording another.
The May issue of Which is going to cover the Sony and Panasonic models which May have burners included, but I think that they are very complex and very expensive. It may be cheaper to buy a digibox and a DVD burner and use the two together.
I've been on the lookout for a DVD recorder which has a small HDD and built in Freeview, I've just come across the Pioneer DVR-440HX-S.
It seems pretty good value at £280 from
http://www.digitaldirect.co.uk/products_moreinfo3/index.asp?product_id=10925
Has anyone got any comments / reviews on this model? Are there any other comparable device around?
Hmm, that's interesting! Looking at the picture I'm not sure where the DVD slot is! I wonder if the advert is wrong, or whether it's just well disguised.
If this is indeed a DVD recorder + HDD + Freeview for £280, then maybe we will finally see them appearing!
After a quick look at the Pioneer website, I think the front opens downwards, and the DVD slot is probably behind there. It seems to only have one tuner, and the other thing I wish it had is a firewire connector! Still, it looks like an amazing bit of kit and does DivX too.
Hi all,
Just picked up on this thread, because that's exactly what I'm doing. Since it first started, do we have many happy customers?
One thing that appears to be missing from all that I've seen so far, is a twin tuner to allow 'watch one, record one', which seems common for a PVR, or are there ways around this?
Cheerz,
Mike
many twin tuner units have enough problems getting that to work without adding dvd recordings to the equation.
most dvd / hd units only allow recording of one channel at a time no matter what inputs they have so a twin tuner would only allow a spare to be watched ........
cheaper to but a 20.00 set top box on top of a good single tuner recorder to get round the problem.