I’ve been looking for an excuse to buy a Personal Video Recorder (PVR) for a while now. They just seem like such a neat idea. A DVB/Freeview receiver picks up a free digital TV signal, records the stream of data onto an 80GB hard disk allowing perfect playback and easy recording of about 40 hours of TV. Who needs VHS?
Today I was granted my wish. My wife wanted tonight’s ER taping and our rather nice Panasonic VHS machine – an extravagantly generous wedding present from my brother – is now useless as a recorder. It plays back just fine but the audio is intermittant on recordings.
This really was the perfect excuse. I could keep the VHS machine so the kids can watch the few videos they have and get the PVR I’ve craved for so long.
So I rushed down to Comet and looked at what was on offer. A Humax DVB PVR for �179. I was tempted, so tempted. The Humax is a very shiny gizmo. I like shiny gizmos. And hey, it even records radio programmes, so I need never miss Marc Riley or Andrew Collins on 6 Music.
I paced round the store several times, thinking. I looked at the DVD recorders. Some of them had 80GB hard disk drives in, too. But none of them had a digital tuner.
What would be really good would be a DVD recorder with a hard disk and a Freeview DVB tuner. That I’d pay �179 for.
Finally I came to my senses and thought about how much we actually record. On average it’s far less than 1 hour a week. It’s ER when my wife’s too sleepy to watch it, it’s Conviction on BBC2 when I’m working and The West Wing when the &*$@ers at Channel 4 show it at 7pm or 3am.
So I went to my local Sainsbury’s and bought a Philips NICAM VHS recorder for �45.
Job done.