Page 1 of freeview pvr recomendations ? anyone?

looking for a freeview pvr unit anyone recommend one pros and cons prices best ones etc thanks micky .

This item was edited on Sunday, 19th June 2005, 17:57

I have a humax, which cost around £160. I can`t fault it BUT it only has a single tuner.

The Humax was one of the first Freeview HDD recorders and was good when it came out,but its single tuner is extremely limiting as you can`t watch one channel and record another simultaneously,can`t record 2 channels and watch an earlier recording simultaneously,and worst of all ,the Humax won`t even let you watch an earlier recording if its recording something else.One to avoid.
The Fusion and Thomson models are the way to go currently.They are both twin tuners,there are various Fusion models with even larger Hard Drive capacity and are well priced ,but neither can cope with Top Up Tv(if you are actually bothered about that poor mans Sky package).
There are more obscure but more sophisticated models from other brands that are more expensive

I have a DigiFusion and i think it is great. THe only minor drawback is it uses thier own EPG which is updated overnight, so changes dont show up if they are last minute. Other than that it is excellent. I dont know if it still is, but when I bought mine it was the only one on the market that was capable of recording subtitles along with the programs if that makes any difference to you.

thanks for the info guys i think ill go for the new fusion 200 should be in stock next week @ dixons

Search online, it may be cheaper.

I`ve got the Pace Twinview, and it`s been fine-the occasional skipped programme, but on the whole very good-The 10 hour recording time is a bit poor, and it`s a bit more expensive swapping the HDD in them compared to the Sky boxes, with which they share an almost identical design.

I`ve just thrown a Videomate DVB-T300 in my PC-this is a `hybrid` card that offers both analogue and digital in one. The digital stream is recorded direct to your PC`s HDD exactly as broadcasted-ideal for saving that great gig off TV or that special moment when we beat Aussie 5-0 in the test series (a-hem!!) to a recordble DVD.

As long as you`ve got XP or W2000, a p800 or better cpu and 256mb of RAM then with the latest drivers and software, you will get good, skip free, in sync MPEG2 recordings direct to your HDD, with the added bonus that you can also hook up analogue equipment to either the composite or S-video inputs (You need about a p1700 for DVD quality MPEG2 captures from an analogue source, and the card is only a software capture unit on the analogue side. You can also get it to wake your PC up from cold, record a program (in MPEG2) and switch it off again if you wantedI skipped that stage, but all the leads needed to do it come with the card.


Cost was about £55 inc the VAT-Excellent quality, good reports on the back up too.

www.comprousa.com will take you to the manufacturer home page

You might want to reconsider the Digifusion FVRT100 box from TribalUK for £120. This price does make it a bargain.

Thats the one I have Mike. Excellent piece of kit. Only downside is when I move next month not sure if I will be able to get freeview. :-( Will have to go to Sky+ as the dual tuner and time slip are invaluable now.

ive bought the £129.99 sagem twin tuner pvr from argos good unit few issues on it which hopefully will be resolved with sagems firmware update next week ;)