OK, so I grasped the nettle and bought the Bush 250GB Digital TV Recorder with Freeview from eBuyer, total £52 including carriage. This arrived within 7 days and so far (1 week) has worked reliably. The reception is as good as our digital TV, with very infrequent stutters. The interface is fairly intuitive, and not too different from the Thomson. The reception is better than our Thomson with 2.5" HDD.
I miss being able easily to wind back a live programme (you can only pause it then restart from the pause). However, If you get into the habit of pausing a programme for a few seconds when you start watching it, it means that you can wind back as far as that point anytime during the programme. We find this handy when we miss a vital piece of dialogue in a whodunnit, or want our own action replay of a bit of sport. The other work-around is that you can set the programme to record and then just watch it from the start while it records.
There is no facility to add a buffer at each end of a recording, but it does so far seem to record the actual time of the programme accurately. We won't know this for sure until some sporting event pushes a programme out of its time slot. There is no indication on the front of the machine that it is actually recording. I still don't understand the stand-by modes, but we seem to have achieved a usable setup by sheer luck. On one setting the aerial does not pass through to the TV, and since the machine takes an age to power up this can be frustrating when you are about to miss the beginning of a programme.
It is smaller and much quieter than either Thomson we have owned, and better ventilated. The response time to remote inputs is slower than the Thomson, but acceptable.
I agree broadly with MarkPax's assessment of the Hitachi version. The seven day EPG is fine, and no adverts. The series link so far seems to work well, spotting that the reruns of Due South (BBC 2 1.00pm, well worth a look) are not weekly and not daily, but on certain days only.
On balance I can recommend it as a reasonable alternative to the Thomson 4000. Unfortunately eBuyer are now sold out - sorry
.
If any bugs show up I'll post them here in future.
Colin M.
I miss being able easily to wind back a live programme (you can only pause it then restart from the pause). However, If you get into the habit of pausing a programme for a few seconds when you start watching it, it means that you can wind back as far as that point anytime during the programme. We find this handy when we miss a vital piece of dialogue in a whodunnit, or want our own action replay of a bit of sport. The other work-around is that you can set the programme to record and then just watch it from the start while it records.
There is no facility to add a buffer at each end of a recording, but it does so far seem to record the actual time of the programme accurately. We won't know this for sure until some sporting event pushes a programme out of its time slot. There is no indication on the front of the machine that it is actually recording. I still don't understand the stand-by modes, but we seem to have achieved a usable setup by sheer luck. On one setting the aerial does not pass through to the TV, and since the machine takes an age to power up this can be frustrating when you are about to miss the beginning of a programme.
It is smaller and much quieter than either Thomson we have owned, and better ventilated. The response time to remote inputs is slower than the Thomson, but acceptable.
I agree broadly with MarkPax's assessment of the Hitachi version. The seven day EPG is fine, and no adverts. The series link so far seems to work well, spotting that the reruns of Due South (BBC 2 1.00pm, well worth a look) are not weekly and not daily, but on certain days only.
On balance I can recommend it as a reasonable alternative to the Thomson 4000. Unfortunately eBuyer are now sold out - sorry
.If any bugs show up I'll post them here in future.
Colin M.
