OK, I have only had this unit for one week now and to really truthfull, I wish I had not bought it.
Lets start with the outside of the unit. It looks nice being all black because it fits in nicelly under my tv.
Now the negative part. When the unit is switched on and is in the standby mode, you have a bright blue light from the power button on the front right side. When the unit is on this light goes off. I thought it should be the other way round. So bright that it is very distracting if you are watching anything where you want the lights out. It is so much so that I have actually put a small peice of sticky tape over most of the light and left maybe a pinhead size showing so you know its powered.
The numbers on the readout or small enough to make you squint at them to read if you are sitting, like me, 12 feet away. There is no option to make them bigger or indead make the blue light less bright.
When you start the installation process you have all the connections you need at the rear of the unit including scart, HDMI, S-Video and digital audio connections. Connecting your sky and any other units you have should not prove difficult. The unit will go through the digital TV channels no problem and locate them in the order you will be used to.
Moving onto the media that it accepts. You will be able to use DVDR +/- RW+/-, MP3 CD, Picture CD and Audio CD. Video CD is also one that runs on it. So that covers most if not all.
Now you have it tuned in and all connected the fun starts with the remote control. Not an easy one really. The booklet tries to explain what to do but I found it lacking on a bit of discription to what buttons to press and when. Its not just a case of put a disc in and record. There is a big reb button that says "record/dub". I thought that would be the one to press to record a selected channel. It does in one way because what it does is to pause live tv then start recording the same, similar to Sky+. Then when you press play it returns to the start point and plays that.
Setting the timer is straight forward enough. Press timer then follow the screen. This is where you choose to record to DVD or HDD. You can also record from your Sky unit or freeview part of the dvd. It has a good sized Hard Drive which is 250 GIG. On high quality it takes one GIG for 13 minutes recording.
It is more difficult to play recorded material back. I thought it would be a case of pressing play and picking the content you want to watch from the list. No, its more involved. A button marked as HDD/DVD is pressed then you will get the recorded list up. Scroll down to what you want to watch them press play. Simple isnt it !!!.
Every two hours the unit sort of starts up to the point where it changes the channel on the tv to its own channel then stops. So effectivily you get a disruption to your viewing. The onboard cooling fan is not quiet either. It starts and stops every 15 minutes. The noise it makes is not to bad but if you are watching something on tv that is not noisy then you will hear it in the background.
The sound level is not good. Up full blast on its own volume control it is very quiet. Fortunatly the tv volume gets over it. I paid £149 for this unit from Argos. I was told that the 30 day money back guarentee did not apply as it has a momory. It can be returned only if its faulty. I guess I might be using the part of sales of goods act where it says that if there is an inherant fault I dont have to prove it and can return it and get my money back.
I will give it another week or so and see if my wife can use it. After all, it will be no use if only myself can set it.
With me the recorder has caused negative feelings. This is mainly because of the difficulty to use the menus to get around the functions of the unit.