Sony RDR-HX 725

I am so glad I bought this machine in time for Christmas! I have it all set up to record all the good shows and I know it will perform flawlessly.

For those not familiar with this type of machine, let me go through some of the features:
1) Record from live TV (including Sky box or cable box) onto the sizeable hard disk. You can choose the quality of the recording and the higher the quality, the more disk space it takes up. At ...
...programmes onto the machine, and this quality is quite sufficient for most purposes.

2) Dub from Video, DV, SVHS. Machine has handy sockets on the front panel (under a flip-down flap) to connect most A/V sources. Again the quality is selectable.

3) EDIT recorded video. To be honest this is fairly limited, but it is quite possible to DELETE a section of recorded video with accuracy. You can step frame by frame through ... more

I am so glad I bought this machine in time for Christmas! I have it all set up to record all the good shows and I know it will perform flawlessly.

For those not familiar with this type of machine, let me go through some of the features:
1) Record from live TV (including Sky box or cable box) onto the sizeable hard disk. You can choose the quality of the recording and the higher the quality, the more disk space it takes up. At lowest quality, you can fit something like 249 hours of programmes onto the machine, and this quality is quite sufficient for most purposes.

2) Dub from Video, DV, SVHS. Machine has handy sockets on the front panel (under a flip-down flap) to connect most A/V sources. Again the quality is selectable.

3) EDIT recorded video. To be honest this is fairly limited, but it is quite possible to DELETE a section of recorded video with accuracy. You can step frame by frame through the video if you wish to set the start and end points, and then preview the results before committing to the edit. You can also SPLIT a recording into several sections in a similar way. Useful if you have a series of a TV programme recorded on video and want to preserve it in a digital format. The reason I say this is limited is that there are no fancy video effects like fades and wipes that you would find on a computer editing package, or on a "real" video editing machine, but for most purposes, I have found this quite sufficient.

4) Create Playlists. Once you have your video recorded, you can combine many segments from multiple files into a playlist. This could be useful for example, if you want to create a highlights file of a soccer game, without making changes to the original (complete) file.

5) Timer record. Unit has a very useful scheduling function which means you can programme it to record a TV programme or series. It will even control your Sky or cable set-top box via an infra-red transmitter, so you can leave it recording while you're away on holiday. Only slight complaint here is that there is no external indication that the unit is recording a programme, so you have to trust it the first few times!

6) Dub from hard disk to DVD. Machine will record onto DVD+/- R/RW disks, although it's worth checking the manual before buying disks. The reason I say this is that for example you can dub 6 hours of "EP" mode recording onto a DVD-R disk in about 15 minutes, whereas it takes over an hour to do the same onto DVD+R. Fitting 6 hours of video onto a DVD is a pretty neat trick, and the quality in this mode is quite acceptable. Machine will format disks and will offer to "finalise" them (for playback on another DVD player) when you eject the disk. You can record individual files from the hard disk, or playlists (see above) as part of your final DVD composition.

7) Record directly from live video to DVD. Not sure why you'd want to do this, unless your hard disk was full, but it is possible.

8) Electronic Programme Guide. Uses the Guide+ technology to obtain programme information from teletext. Unfortunately my cable supplier (NTL) does not transmit the teletext pages on ITV or Eurosport, so I have not been able to use this facility, but if you have SKY, I believe you should be able to make this work. Once it is working, you would be able to select programmes to record in a point and click manner, and I believe it would automatically adjust if the programme time changes for any reason.

9) Pause live TV. If the machine is switched on and ready then you can hit the pause button while watching live TV and it will be paused for you to continue later. The machine will store up to 3 hours of live TV in this mode. A couple of slight frustrations here. Firstly, it does take quite a long time for the machine to become ready for use from power on. Secondly, once you have paused live TV, you cannot come straight back and unpause it immediately. You have to give it a couple of minutes head start.

There's plenty of other stuff that I probably haven't mentioned, but I have covered the stuff that I would have found useful before I bought the machine. Somehow reading the manual (downloadable from Sony's website) is not the same if you don't have the machine in front of you to test things out!

Speaking of the manual - it WAS a little complex at times, but this is hardly surprising for a machine with so many functions and abilities. Don't expect to take it out of the box, plug it in and get it working in 5 minutes - allow yourself time to make sure you understand what you're doing.

I paid a little extra to get a machine with multi-region DVD playback. This was not offered by all retailers, so if this is important to you, check before you buy!

The variant I bought had an analogue TV tuner installed, which is another option for retrieving teletext signals, but since analogue TV is being phased out in the UK in the near future, I'm not sure this is really a bonus!

The remote control is a good quality unit, which also allows you to control some basic functions of TVs. I do find this a little slow and cumbersome when entering the names for programmes and recorded files. It's a bit like writing an SMS message on a mobile phone, but without the predictive text! If someone came up with a "proper" alpha numeric keyboard for one of these, it would be a huge improvement!

Finally, the machine has two SCART sockets plus video in/out, audio in/out SVHS input and DV (input) It can be wired up in SO many ways - the manual gives some guidance, but clearly cannot possibly cover every eventuality. Again, some patience and experimentation may be needed before you get everything how you want it! Also, the machine does not ship with any leads (apart from mains and UHF aerial lead) so buy some extra SCART leads if you need them! 

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