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I managed to find a bargain from DABS.com in the shape of a Digihome PVR. I thought for the price of £50 I could give this little box a try which was cheaper than my Sony Freeview box and has twin tuners, hard disk recording and picture in picture.
I was impressed when I first used the Sony box but that was probably more to do with immediately having more than the normal 4 terrestial channels (could not get access to Channel 5 here) than anything else. When turning on the Digihome box I found the picture quality was just as good. When I tried the hard drive recording I was surprised by the quality as well. I was expecting something that was a bit grainier but it was more or less like the original broadcast. It is so easy to record stuff now. No more tapes. Not sure how to transfer via a PC if you really want to archive the recordings. That's probably the realms of the hard drive and DVD combos. Anyway, pressing the Guide button brings a list of channels and programmes. You just move around with the arrows and then click on the record button over each programme and the job is done. It even warns you on any overlaps. The picture in picture I thought was a neat feature. You can be watching a channel and then chose to have a small window in the corner to display a second channel. Useful if you are waiting for a programme to start or wanting to keep tabs on football scores for example. My only gripe, but it doesn't bother me much now, is that jumping from channel to channel isn't as quick as I would like. Swapping between the picture in picture channels can make the whole screen flash. The transitions could be a lot smoother on the eye. I am sure the £200-£300 products are better on this front. I will continue to use this for a while and will see whether I have any need to record and then save say a whole series onto DVD before checking out the combo units. By then the price will have come down.
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