I suspect that it’s about time I dragged myself up to date and bought a digital video recorder. My first thought is to buy a new PC and set up MythTV on it. But it’ll cost quite a lot to get a quiet enough PC with a large enough hard disk, and it looks like digital video recorders can be as cheap as a couple of hundred quid. So that looks like the cheapest route.
Which leaves me pondering what to buy. I want something with as many features as possible for my money. And, for obvious reasons, it’s essential that whatever I buy works with NTL cable television.
So where’s a good place to get reviews an in-depth technical information about digital video recorders? Is there a web site? Or a magazine? Or am I lucky enough to have a reader who’s an expert in this area?
Any advice will be much appreciated.
Ah, cable. If you were on Freeview I’d recommend the Topfield 5800T.
For cable your options are more limited, as the PVR has to decode the cable stream itself. I think that pretty much means you have to use whatever the cable company provides.
A quick Google turns up this, http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/article/ds25412.html, which is promising, but some time away.
If you can’t wait until then then any cheap HD PVR will do — because they’ve not got the cable decoder though you’re stuck with (probably) fewer features than video — for example, you’ll only be able to use it to record the current channel.
So that’s probably not worthwhile.
If you can do without some of the cable specific channels I’d recommend ditching NTL, going with Freeview and the Topfield, possibly with a TopUp TV card for the extra pay channels you can get on Freeview.