Dear Group, as i said in a previous thread, i'm soon taking delivery of a new Samsung LE37R87BDX TV

Following your advice i intend to get a 5.1 Cinema System based around the Yamaha RX-V361 5.1 Channel Digital Home Theatre Receiver.

What i would like to get next is a DVD recorder/player with a hard drive.

What sort of device should i get to make the most of my new TV and 5.1? Personal recommendations would be great, or maybe you could just tell me what sort of features i should be looking for.

Many Thanks

PS, i wont be using Sky, just the in-built freeview thingy
Last edited by Dreamofgilgames : 14-10-2007 at 15:20

I can recommend the Panasonic DVD/HDD combos. The ones that I and my Dad have are now out of date (18 and 12 month old dammit - ancient!). I use mine with a Denon 5.1 system and it integrates very well.

If you are happy to archive to DVD then the HDD size is less critical. Mine is 160 gig and I rarely have it more than half full (I do also have Sky+, so that accounts for a lot of programme storage which I don't want to archive)

I see! Well i don't intend to archive anything. All i need is something to record the odd film and a few TV shows when i'm out, plus the capability to watch a few DVD's

Oh! something else i just thought of. I've seen lots of DVD recorders that advertise the fact that they have Freeview tuners. Would i need that given that my TV will have a Freeview tuner?

I've got a Liteon, and I can say they're brilliant for ease of use.

The "Easy Guider" system is very user friendly.

The fact that your TV has Freeview is pretty much irrelevant. The recorder can only make use of the tuner in the TV if the TV can feed it's output down the SCART lead to the recorder.

But even so you can only record whatever you are watching. And the TV will need to be on all the time you need to make a recording, even when you are not at home!

So to record BBC4 while watching ITV 2 for instance you WILL need a recorder with it's own digital tuner.

Ah i see! Thanks very much for that, it makes sense now!

If you are not archiving anything then you are better off going for a Freeview PVR and a separate DVD player, this is much more convenient to use (and better quality) than a DVD/HDD recorder.

Arrgghhh my brain hurts! Well thats something else to research i guess. I was hoping to keep the amount of gadgets i need down to the minimum, but if you think it's worthwhile option i'll have a look.

Many Thanks

Well, i've had a look at some Freeview PVR's and they seem to be the sort of thing i need. In fact, i already have a DVD player, although not a realy new one i have to say. It does look as though i'd get more for my money with the PVR option.

Right then, same thing applies as before, what features do i want to be looking for please?

Just to make your head hurt a bit more, here's my opinion. I would strongly advise you get a HDD/DVD recorder which has an HDMI output. Sony and Panasonic make pretty well received ones although the 'perfect' machine remanies elusive for some people. As long as the recorder has HDMI it will allow you to connect your recorder to your TV digitally (remember pretty much all of these devices are digital. If you get a FreeView PVR then you will have to use an analogue SCART output to connect to your TV as there are no FreeView PVRs which have HDMI. Your TV will then have to digitise the incoming picture [from the PVR] in order to display it. Even using the best SCART cable you can get and an RGB connection there will be degridation). The HDMI lead will carry digital video and audio from the HDD/DVD to the TV with no degridation (or at least none you could ever notice). Also you can set the HDD/DVD to upscale the video picture to High Definition data rates (essentially you need to set the recorder's O/P to 1080i). This is not as good as true High Definition, but makes the best of the source (most stuff on BBC 1 or from a good DVD look pretty bloody good. However, no amount of processing can sort out football on ITV4 though, you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear!). The final plus is that you can use just one optical digital audio cable from the TV to your Yamaha AV amp and let the TV do the switching. If the TV is a good one it should delay the digital audio out so it stays in sync with the picture (all LCDs and Plasmas introduce small processing delays on the image). I have to disagree very strongly with bobcar regarding picture quality on HDD/DVDs, as long as you set the recorder to record at SP (the default setting) or above there will be no problems. I have a Sony 910 which is long out of production (being almost two years old it is ancient in HDD/DVD terms). I record everything to the hard disk at HSP which is one setting above SP (and lets you get around 1 1/2 hours on a DVD should you wish to archive). The upscaled picture quality is fantastic given a good source. It has a 250Gb hard disk which is plenty.

What are the downsides to HDD/DVD recorders. I can only think of one. The best FreeView PVRs (probably Humax) can record two programmes simultaniously as they have two tuners. Whereas to the best of my knowledge there are no HDD/DVD recorders that can do this. However as your TV has FreeView you can watch one and record another. It really comes down to how often you are out and there are two programmes you want to record at the same time, with all the repeats on FreeView my guess is that this would not occur too often.

I hope this has helped your decision rather than confused the issue!

The main thing is to go for a dual tuner version as that let's you record 2 channels at once as well as watch a recorded programme at the same time.

It's been a while since I bought mine (a single tuner since I also have Sky+) so can't make a specific recommendation. Have a look on the PVR section of this forum for any model you fancy to see what others think.

PVRs having 2 tuners is a big advantage, you may not often record 2 programmes at once but once you need to and can't it's a real pain. I have Sky+, a Freeview PVR and a Freeview HDD/DVDR and there has been a couple of occasions I've used all 4 tuners.

PVRs are also generally easier to use than an HDD/DVDR. My Panasonic DVDR is a real pain for things like live pausing TV etc though it does record very well which is what I got it for (archiving).

I agree that the PQ of DVDRs is usually very good though a PVR is perfect (no recoding) and no need to worry about what quality setting to use (XP eats up disc space).

I also think that there is little difference between RGB scart and HDMI for SD Freeview pictures, the main problem with PQ on Freeview/Sky are the low bitrates used, these swamp the very small differences between RGB and HDMI for SD.

I would also point out that for most good TVs using an upscaling DVD player will result in a worse picture than using 576p, for cheap TVs the opposite is often true. My Panny DVDR and TV look better on 576p than either 720p or 1080i. The only way to be sure of what will look best is to try so buying an upscaling machine hoping it will improve the PQ is a big risk.

The advantage of an HDD/DVDR is obviously being able to archive., if you don't archive then in my opinion a PVR is a much better choice. As I said earlier I have 2 PVRs (Sky+ and Freeview) + an HDD/DVDR and for normal timeshifting I use mostly Sky+ (dual tuner), occasionally the Freeview PVR and almost never the HDD/DVDR - the DVDR though is excellent for archiving which is really what it was designed to do.

Thank you all for your most helpfull advice, it's really greatly appreciated. i can see the advantages of both systems.

You see, my current DVD player is getting on a bit, and it has no HDMI slots, and as dear son likes his films i ought to get a player which does. So if i went with the PVR option i would then need to but a new DVD player.
Whereas if i went with the HDD DVD recorder i could get one with HDMI slots.

Although i don't currently archive TV programs i guess if i could record films to a DVD in high quality i would always have that option.
To tell the truth i don't actually use my VCR all that much. I'm embarrassed to say that it's mostly for recording soap operas!

So possibly a 80gb HDD recorder/player would be sufficient, if they still do such a thing.

Anyways, thanks again for your help and time, much appreciated.

A 160GB HDD recorder will record about 200 hours, at the 4 hours per DVD setting.

I wouldn't recommend using the 6 hours per DVD setting, because the results are poor.

It's your decision but if you ask anyone who has a PVR (especially a dual tuner one) whether they would rather have that or an HDD/DVDR for time shifting I think you will only get one answer.

If you wanted a new DVD player you can pick one up quite cheaply - a separate DVD player apart from the DVDR is quite a good idea if it gets used a lot because if it breaks it's a lot cheaper to replace. I also think you may be disappointed if you get an upscaling DVD player and expect it to be much better than what you have - I'm not familiar with your TV but it's a decent make which would indicate any improvement would be minimal (it's the cheap TVs that are most likely to benefit from an upscaling player, really good TVs are usually worse).

I wouldn't recommend the 4 hour setting myself, I find the results are poor from that. The 2 hour setting is good but still not as good as the (perfect) recording of a PVR, even the 1 hour setting is not quite as good as a PVR though for most programmes it's very good and difficult to tell from the original.

You can get a 160GB dual tuner PVR for as little as £95.