Advantages: User friendly, easy to setup, excellent all-round choice
Disadvantages: No DVD playback when recording to HDD

...The setup is relatively easy and mostly intuitive. What's not so straight forward is, that you have to choose each country you want to receive before scanning the DVB-T channels, so the manual could be better. However the the onscreen menu is logical and fairly intuitive. Spend some time with it, fiddle around and you'll learn a thing or two about your new recorder. The digital tuner is excellent, delivering fantastic quality, the EPG is very cool. Separate analog and digital areal connectors makes it easy to supply your free to air digital channels with an analog cable offering the best of both worlds. The recorder can help you in so many ways: If you're running out of space on the HDD, you can set the recorder to lower the quality of the recordings to fit. Never loose another recording! In manual mode, you can fine tune the recording... Read review

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Advantages: Edit out the commercials
Disadvantages: Dense manual, poor menus, etc

...The combo states it will record anything from the HDD to either VHS or DVD. Not strictly true. If your TV channels come digitally by cable or satellite this machine is not for you. Any digital sourced material can only be recorded in VR mode (incompatible with most DVD players and some other similar combos) on to DVD-RW discs only. The only workaround is to record to another VCR and then to this making the VHS deck a useless accessory. Some other brands have the same limitations. If you want to keep the recorded quality (mbps) you can only burn a maximum of 8 programs to a DVD. more than 8 and you have to accept a much lower quality. My HDD went sour after 3 weeks of use and was in the service center for 3 weeks. There is no easy short cut switching between HDD, VHS and DVD - you have to exit all menus (often 3 or 4 steps) before you... Read review

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Advantages: Record many hours of video, upload and view (photos, music and video)
Disadvantages: Inability to use 'Timer' function with HDD.

..., moving onto the specifications of the machine. When you purchase the DV-DS 161 you obviously (with the package) receive a remote control and the essential wires required in order to connect your DVD recorder to the most common external device, namely the television. Internally you get a whopping 160 GB of memory. On the product information provided by Ciao it does not tell you the 4 recording modes available on the DVD recorder. The 4 recording modes allow you to record media at 4 different levels of quality. You could record up to 60 hours on the highest quality mode, up to 100 hours on the one after, then up to 140 hours on the next mode and finally on the lowest quality mode up to 230 hours. Note! The recording hours I previously suggested are close approximations of the actual recording hours. They are not overly exaggerated in any way... Read review

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Advantages: Small, Silent, Mobile, Cheap
Disadvantages: Still some bugs

...Freecom Mediaplayer 35-Kit The basic kit comes without a hard drive, this is great as its much cheaper to buy the hard drive you want and install it yourself, this is child's play and the instructions (if you need them) are easy to follow. I have now had the media player for about three months and originally purchased it for £100 + £84 for a 300GB IDE drive, the price of the player has dropped to less than £85 and I'm sure the hard drives will drop / increase in size in the near future. In essence this is both a USB hard drive which you can take anywhere with your computer for extended storage (if you have a HDD installed), when connected to a TV it becomes a Media Player capable of playing music, movies or displaying your photos. Connect it to a network via a standard CAT 5 cable (RJ45) via a hub or into a PC and you can stream all... Read review

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Advantages: DVD recorder, HDD , Jukebox & surround sound all in one
Disadvantages: cant watch Digital TV if recording Terrestial unless extra scart added

...We scoured the internet to find what we thought would be the answer to all our needs & this system was what we thought would fit them most closely. We needed a new DVD player - multiregion - and a new home cinema system. Also We wanted something with hard disc space so we could store all our CD's & listen to music without getting up & changing Cd's all the time so the pioneer with its built in digital Jukebox seemed like all our dreams had come at once. Setting up was not easy but once we had sorted out the basics from the 155 page manual it was OK. The choice of recording to HDD or to disc was great .. you can also record what you have from HDD to disc if you really like the film or program you have recorded.. BUT you cant record from the digital Jukebox to disc so if creating CD's is your thing then this is not for you .. You can... Read review

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Advantages: Very quick and easy to use, can be transported anywere with no effort at all
Disadvantages: 16MB, kinda low

...This is simply a multimedia memory stick used in digital cameras, video recorders and PC's to hold or transport multimedia files. Very small, almost weightless, can be used in almost any digital system that uses memory sticks. Holds 16MB of multimedia files. Easy to use, just plug into a memory stick slot, and simply pull out when needed. Upgrades are available from any shop dealing in digital equipment. This is a very good starter memory stick. If you have just started using a digital device that takes one of these memory sticks, than I would suggest you start off with one of this memory capacity as it is low priced with a satisfactory amount of memory. If you buy a high priced memory stick straight away, then you may end up spending allot of money on memory that you may not even use. The more memory, the higher the price. So start... Read review

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Advantages: Easy to use with long record time on the HDD
Disadvantages: none

...What a piece of kit this is, it is so simple to use and set up. It had lots of really good features and a long recording time on the hard disk. There are lots of different settings for recording quality and time but when you get down to the low end then the recording time might be high but the quality of the picture is not really watchable. We have it set so that there is approximately 250 hours worth of record time and this gives a picture quality that looks the same as broadcast. Another thing I like is the USB input so you can use it and your TV like a very large digital photo frame, the only downside is I have not been able to download onto the USB which would be useful as some USB sticks are large enough to take a small movie. The DVD player and recorder both work well and so far we have had no problems with it and would recommend... Read review

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Advantages: huge hard disc volume, friendly menu, many playing/recording possibilities
Disadvantages: will not record data DVD, only DVD video formats

...I purchased the RDR-HX950 back in November. All this time I put it through all sorts of tests so now I have a pretty good idea of what it's capable of. All in all, there are 2 main advantages that I found: 1. the HX950 is a great replacement for the old VCR. I was able to transfer all my VHS tapes (about 120 hours of video) from my ancient VHS player on the hard disc drive (HDD), and then record all on DVDs. The unit also comes with a built-in tuner, so you can plug the cable right into it and start searching for TV channels. It allows recording, on the spot or via timer, from any kind of input (cable, digital broadcast etc.), provided the original content is not copyright protected. You can do that either on HDD or directly on recordable DVDs. 2. the video content on the hard disc is easy to edit. Being digital content, you can edit... Read review

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Advantages: Built in Freeview, easy of Use, Picture Quality, One Touch Record, HDMI upscaling, SD slot
Disadvantages: No DIVx playback on UK model :-(

...Bought one of these to replace an ageing VCR, and DVD player and tidy up all the boxes under our TV set. Does everything I expected and more - very easy setup and use and excellent picture quality for a combined player/recorder. Plays pretty much every kind of disc too. I leave it on short play, which gives around 75 hours of recording time on the HDD and the quality is excellent. Bought this instead of the next model up (the EX-85) as the only difference is HDD size. I figured I could archive recorded programmes to DVD-R if I ever get to the point where I need to free up some space. The electronic programme guide works very well and is v easy to use. Apparently, this DVD/HDD recorder allows HDMI upscaling as well, although I haven't been able to check out this feature yet ! Other features that would have been nice to have would... Read review

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Advantages: Cheap, easy to set up
Disadvantages: Cannot use a topuptv card to get additional channels

...on and to change channel automatically if you want to record on your VCR/HDD/DVD-R >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Not much more to say, the box is compact and lightweight and is modern in appearance. Is built quite cheaply but this is reflected in the price. I stopped using this as I opted to get topup tv which gives me E4, its a must now that Big Brother is on, although I am missing the other programs that were on at 9pm >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Additional info You may need an aerial upgrade, if you are not sure you can book a survey by a Bush approved installer Digital Television Services (DTS) The survey is £35 + VAT DTS - 0870 010 6194 Bush Technical Helpline - 0870 873 0079... Read review

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