 The switch to digital television will render the humble video cassette recorder obsolete, but a new generation of Personal Video Recorders has risen to take its place.
Rather than record to video tape, PVRs record to a hard drive - which lets you perform impressive tricks such as pausing and even rewinding live television. You can also bend time by watching the beginning of a movie while you're still recording the end.
What to look for in Personal Video Recorders
Tuners
You'll need a PVR with two built-in digital TV tuners if you want to record two shows at once or watch one live show while recording another. High definition tuners are important if you want to watch the HD channels using a HDTV.
Freeview
The Freeview logo signifies that a PVR has at least one HD tuner that's MPEG-4-compatible. The downside is that ad-skipping is disabled on Freeview devices - you can fast-forward the ads, as with a VCR, but you can't jump forward in 30 second blocks as you can with some non-Freeview PVRs.
Hard Disc Size
The bigger the hard drive the more recordings a PVR can store, keeping in mind that high-def recordings chew through more space than standard-def. Some PVRs let you hook up an external drive to boost your storage space.
PVRs vs DVD Recorders
Plenty of big name consumer home entertainment manufacturers offer hard drive and Blu-ray or DVD-based recorders, but these tend to lack the flexibility and advanced recording options of true PVRs.
Electronic Progam Guide (EPG)
Most hard drive-based recorders extract the free-to-air Electronic Program Guide from the TV signal so they can display the TV guide on your television, letting you schedule recordings with the press of a button.
A handful of PVRs download the EPG from the internet instead, which means you need broadband internet at home. TiVo's online EPG is free. Other PVRs such as Beyonwiz, Topfield and DViCO give you the option to subscribe to IceTV's online EPG ($99 per year), otherwise they'll use the free-to-air EPG.
The beauty of PVRs is that they can automatically record your favourite shows each week. Those which download the EPG from the internet tend to check if your favourite shows have changed timeslot. PVRs that use the free-to-air EPG tend to blindly record the same timeslot each week.
Movies on Demand
If there's nothing on TV worth watching, TiVo offers a Movie on Demand service and other manufacturers have similar plans. |
