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Personal video recorder buyers guide

Anthony Fordham- 07/12/2009

Tags: Anthony Fordham, digital video recorders, DVR, personal video recorders, PVR

Personal video recorders (PVRs) have been on the market for a few years now, becoming increasingly useful as hard drives have become both bigger and cheaper. Combine a big hard drive with an HD tuner and you have yourself a set-top box that can record and archive HDTV.

PVRs are extremely powerful and flexible devices, allowing you to not only record TV for later, but in fact also pause live TV to take a phone call or rewind to catch that awesome goal all over again. Once you've caught up on the action, you just fast forward back to real-time.

Some PVRs record constantly in a one- to six-hour block, called the buffer, which you can browse at will. This means you don't even need to remember to set the recorder - as long as the PVR is tuned to your favourite channel and your show was on in during the buffer period, it's already on the PVR for viewing!

Because they record TV, PVRs have onboard TV tuners. Yes, tuners in plural. A good unit will have two dedicated HD tuners. This allows you to record on one channel while watching another. The best PVRs even allow you to record to two channels simultaneously while watching something stored on the hard drive, or pause and rewind live TV on one channel while you record on another. It's the ultimate high-tech way to banish arguments about what to watch... except for the argument about who gets to watch live and who has to watch a recording!

Capacity

How many hours of programming your PVR can record is determined by the size of the hard drive, and because high definition video is capacity hungry we recommend you go for the largest amount of storage your budget allows. Look for PVRs that allow you to boost capacity by swapping out the internal drive for a larger one, or by providing an internal bay and external USB and/or SATA ports for installing and connecting additional drives. With an extra terabyte of capacity, you can record an extra 200 hours of high definition television.

You can transfer recordings from these external drives to a computer for archiving and then out to a portable player, such as an iPod, but this generally requires a good deal of digital nouse and some jiggery pokery. PVRs that include a DVD drive make this easier, but because DVD is a standard definition format, any HD content will be exported to DVD at a scaled-down resolution, even if you've recorded it to hard drive at full 1080i.

Panasonic has a PVR that includes a Blu-ray drive, and this WILL let you transfer recordings from the HDD in full HD. But you will need recordable Blu-ray discs to do so, and these are more than $30.

While the prime function of a PVR is time shifting - and most people will be motivated to buy for this alone - many models add value by integrating networking features. These allow photos, movies and music stored on the home PC to be enjoyed in the living room and, or deliver YouTube and photo-sharing websites direct to the big screen. One model in our review sample even offers an Internet-based video on demand service which, paired with a storehouse of recordings, helps ensure there's always something to watch, even when there's nothing on TV.

The Electronic Program Guide (EPG)

The Electronic Program Guide, or EPG, makes recording easier than ever. Forget setting clocks and figuring out if a movie runs 90, 100 or 110 minutes. The EPG typically provides programming for the forthcoming seven days, displaying each show as a 'block' of time in a table-like format on the screen. Select the block with the PVR's remote, hit record, and the timer will set automatically to record that show on that channel - you don't even need to set the channel before toddling off to bed.

Most PVRs will even start recording from standby mode, so as long as they are plugged into the wall and the wall switch is on, they'll work!

Beware though: the EPG is very strict with its start and finish times. If Dancing with the Stars runs ten minutes long, you'll get the last ten minutes of Dancing and miss the last ten minutes of your movie. You can edit an EPG-selected recording though - we recommend adding at least an extra 20 minutes to the end, just to be super-safe!

What to look for when buying a personal video recorder

• Twin HD tuners
• Large capacity hard drive
• Expandable storage capacity
• Easy to use EPG
• Networking features
  

Personal video recorder pros and cons

Pros

• Huge recording capacity, and in HD quality
• Easy to program, search and locate recordings via the EPG
• Pause and rewind live TV
  
  

Cons

• Can't easily copy recordings out to other devices or to lend to friends and family
• Fans needed to keep hard drive cool and these can be noisy
• Hard drives eventually fail
  

Keep up with the latest PVR news, reviews and articles, in the GadgetGuy PVR section.

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