Which to buy...DVD recorder or box that records onto hard drive?

ben500

I'd say this would be a good buy, at least I can't find anything near the price with the same features an it's only £119.99 80gb freeview dvr by sagem has twin tuner too.

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/5320572.htm

They've also got this model with twice the hd at 160gb but a little steeper at £149.99 I certainly wouldn't contemplate paying anywhere near £249.99

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/5320761.htm

mobfant

One thing to bear in mind is that you need one with two digital tuners to be able to record one channel while watching another. Irritatingly enough.

Woby_Tide

mobfant wrote: »

One thing to bear in mind is that you need one with two digital tuners to be able to record one channel while watching another. Irritatingly enough.

of which very few DVD/HDD combos have, whereas the PVR market mostly is moving to dual tuners

swings and roundabouts

Cricri

I have a housemate who has one of those 160GB Humax thingies. He filled it up within a couple of months!
We tried to retrieve the files, but it seems to be USB1.1 (sloooow), and the driver is rubbish. Eventually, I couldn't connect it to my PC anymore.
He used a third party program to retrieve the files to his PC, which took him "24 hours" (sic) to retrieve the whole 160GB. Besides, the files have a funny extension, I didn't check whether they are actually based on MP4 yet (besides, it's not my device anyway).
Meanwhile, he opted for a temporary solution... he bought another one so that he can empty one while filling the other! Duh...
So anyway, humax are cheap, they record fine, but retireving its contents has been a pain in my experience.

BillScarab

It all depends if you want to keep things forever or not, we have a Telewest TVDrive which is a hard disk recorder. We can connect a DVD recorder to it to archive stuff if we want to, in the last 12 months we've archived exactly nothing. We just record stuff,watch it and delete it. So basically unless you like recording stuff to keep just get HDD recorder.

Humax are supposed to be very good as are Topfield. Have a look on https://www.avforums.com for other recommendations.

Woby_Tide

Cricri wrote: »

I have a housemate who has one of those 160GB Humax thingies. He filled it up within a couple of months!
We tried to retrieve the files, but it seems to be USB1.1 (sloooow), and the driver is rubbish. Eventually, I couldn't connect it to my PC anymore.
He used a third party program to retrieve the files to his PC, which took him "24 hours" (sic) to retrieve the whole 160GB. Besides, the files have a funny extension, I didn't check whether they are actually based on MP4 yet (besides, it's not my device anyway).
Meanwhile, he opted for a temporary solution... he bought another one so that he can empty one while filling the other! Duh...
So anyway, humax are cheap, they record fine, but retireving its contents has been a pain in my experience.

Thats one of the few downsides, that said youc an archive off to a DVD-recorder if need be, the transfer is actually USB2 I think and can be used if necessary. there is also a solution to connect the HD vis IDE cable to a PC that means you can download it in a matter of hours as per a normal PC.

As for the 'funny extension', they're transport streams, thats wha they are broadcast as before any machines stat tinkering with the format and compressing them into other formats

Cricri

Woby_Tide wrote: »

the transfer is actually USB2 I think

If it is, it is darn slow

Woby_Tide wrote: »

As for the 'funny extension', they're transport streams, thats wha they are broadcast as before any machines stat tinkering with the format and compressing them into other formats

But according to the size, the files do seem to be compressed? If so, in what format, and why are they flagged as .TS (you just rang my bell)?

tisithebomb

Just get the sony 160 gig hard drive dvd recorder.

I use 7 for work and they're dead simple to use and have never given me any trouble. You can get cheeper ones but they're cheaper for a reason.

tweeter

I have a Topfield TF5800PVR 250GB, and I started to save programmes to watch, but as they piled up I was reduced to skating through them just bookmarking cogent points and going back if need be, as its so easy to do.Its changed everything and I'm less bothered about watching stuff now.

ps,you can download interfaces from the web or do your own if you are a bit of a programmer, so you're not tied down like other brands.

Mathers_2

I've just got a Humax 9200 and I've go to say I'm really pleased with it. Got it for just over £160 at Richer sounds with their price beater deal.

You can record two freeview channels at once as well as watch the start of a program that you are recording. The interface/menu is pretty good and the ability to choose which programmes to record at the start of the week using thier programme guide is excellent.

With regard to transferring the video to your PC, I found it straight forward. I used the elinker software with my printer USB (A to b) cable to attach Humax to my PC. Once I had transferred my programmes to my PC, I changed the file extension from .ts to .mpg and was able to run it in windows media player. I haven't burnt any programmes to dvd yet but I understand this can be done in nero vision express or windvd.